A reader asked me to “show him the way” to easy play. Then he wouldn’t listen. I was frustrated, but kept on.
What brings me great satisfaction? Turning just one newbie away from the dark side of foolish wasteful gaming. This is a calling, my friends. We are but seekers of the truth, hunters of the mathematical epiphany manifesting as a royal flush.
That slim chance of deliverance is a 40,000-1 redemption. We soldier on, knowing it’s coming if we just learn to play the Good Game.
Really, it’s okay to just play. Heck, I have a profound desire — no, a need — to play, to dance and imbibe like any of us in this one-of-a-kind adult Disneyland, even at my advancing age and maybe even more so. It keeps me young and fresh and alert.
But as they say, “You can’t keep it if you don’t give it away,” so when I was corresponding with “Joe,” though frustrated, I kept insisting this neophyte do what for many these days seems a rare commodity: THINK!
Read “The Best Video Poker on the Strip,” learn the games, and walk away from anything under 99.5%. Avoid the siren call of the Strip — the bright lights enthralling you as your wallet is vacuumed clean — and your intense regret on the flight home, hungover and broke. “Why did I go to the (dark chapel of) ATM again, and again?”
It’s okay. You’ll get another chance at redemption. As long as you didn’t actually sign a marker for your home, car, and first born.
But even Joe, after pleading “I want to play at Caesars,” saw the light. “I didn’t realize even at quarter level I’d need a $1,000 bank and at $1/$5 many times more than that.”
Though he’d danced along the edge of the bad-gaming precipice, he turned away! That satisfaction, turning one player and toward the light of advantage play? Excellent.
This is not a game for everyone. It requires patience, skill, and dedication, while frivolity reigns and surrounds you like a waterfall. Witnessing people plied with free drinks, pouring dollar after dollar down the rat hole, hoping against hope, is downright tragic, especially knowing that if they just looked at the pay schedule and understood what they were seeing, their future would be nicely laid out for them and they could’ve avoided all the sucker traps. Maybe 3% do. Is that you?
Here’s the kicker. Once they see us coming, then observe us for a time, the Big Houses don’t like us at all.
“Don’t give that guy a room, a meal, free play, or a damn dime. He actually knows what he’s doing and we can’t have that!”
And like a lonely Dirty Harry (“Do I feel lucky?”), I ride on down the road. No worries, there are 100 more where Joe comes from.
And since he read the guides, is learning the good games, and will be on the search for the better way of advantage play, I, having converted one more soul, for that today I’m content.