Every year, the gaming industry holds its biggest show-and-tell convention of the year in Las Vegas, called the Global Gaming Expo or G2E. And every year, I go and look at what’s coming up in the near future.
Continue reading What I Saw at G2ECategory: Advice for Players
When You’re No Longer Welcome
Let’s assume that your local casino has taken away your player’s card, meaning you can no longer receive most of the benefits from playing there. For the sake of today’s discussion, you are still allowed to play there without a card if you like. Further, assume that you insist on playing with an edge or not at all.
What do you do now?
First, sometimes you can talk your way back into being able to play with the card. Not often. But sometimes. If winning the drawings too many times was the reason for your ouster from the club, for example, perhaps agreeing to not enter certain categories of drawings will be enough. Perhaps agreeing to not play certain machines will work, or not playing on certain point multiplier days. Whatever. Being in the club is better than not being in the club if this option is possible.
If this is not possible, you need to look closely at whether there are games you ignored before that could be playable at least some of the time. The most likely candidates for this would be progressives. Sometimes a 9/5 Double Double Bonus machine (97.87% at reset) with one or more progressives can be a profitable game to play when the progressives are high enough. Not every day. Certainly not every time you check. But sometimes.
The best book on how to evaluate progressives is Frank Kneeland’s The Secret World of Video Poker Progressives. Some of the information presented in the book is dated, but I don’t know of any better source. If you can find and hook up with other pros playing progressives, perhaps they can show you the ropes.
In general, you need a bigger bankroll to play progressives than you do playing games with a 4,000-coin royal flush simply because a higher percentage of your return is in the relatively-rare royal flush. You lose much faster between royals than you do at games that start out with a higher return. In addition to the physical bankroll, you need a psychological bankroll to survive at this. Losing streaks will be longer. If you were barely scraping by financially before you got restricted, progressives are likely not a good option for you.
On the other hand, sometimes progressives get big enough that you’ll have a 2% or larger advantage while playing them. You virtually never get advantages this high playing machines without progressives.
Advantage slots are another possibility. Sometimes it has to do with progressive meters. Sometimes it is a “must hit by” progressive and the meter is very close to the maximum. Sometimes it’s looking for a certain number of a particular kind of symbol, and when you find that condition, the game is beatable. How to recognize the games that are beatable is found on several sites on the Internet. Which of these sites provide the best information is something I can’t share with you simply because this is not an avenue I have pursued.
There are players being kicked out of casinos for playing advantage slots these days. Since my face is relatively well known as a sharp machine player, I will get extra scrutiny if I play slots. And I expect my welcome will be short-lived. So, I haven’t even gone through the effort of learning which machines to play.
Particularly in Las Vegas, there are a LOT of players seeking out and playing advantage slots — which seriously reduces the likelihood of you coming across a playable game at any particular time. Success requires scouting — and sometimes being in the right place at the right time when someone leaves a machine that is in an advantageous state, but it can be done. In other locales, slot hustlers are less common, and you can do well at this.
Another option is to simply stop visiting this casino and patronize others. If you live in a place where there are a lot of casinos, this is no problem (assuming you haven’t been run off by too many of the other ones as well.) If you live in a place where there aren’t many casinos, this is tougher.
Some high limit players need to resort to playing dollar machines in order to keep playing. They have the bankroll to play higher, but they might not have the welcome or full benefits at the places that have the bigger machines. At a smaller level, some dollar players may need to resort to playing for quarters at other casinos to stay in the game.
Going the other way (meaning formerly playing quarters but being forced to play dollars at another casino in order to have an edge) doesn’t happen as frequently. Comparatively speaking, few quarter players are restricted at casinos. (It absolutely does sometimes happen, however.) If you are forced to move up in stakes, make sure you have the bankroll to do so. You can check bankroll requirements using the Video Poker for Winners software, or Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker. The products yield similar results using very different methods of analysis.
Traveling to play is another option. Players in Las Vegas can travel to several locations in California, Northern Nevada, and elsewhere if they are out of places to play at home. I’m not going to tell you to go to the XYZ casino in such-and-such a city simply because publishing the play will likely kill it. These plays are out there, but you’re going to have to scout and network to find them. Players who have developed networks with other winning players will find out about these possibilities much faster than those who are starting from scratch. Traveling takes time and is not cheap. Some players do not have the time, interest, or resources to pursue this avenue.
A final option is to give up video poker and take up bowling — or any other activity you’re interested in. Some people will not be able to find beatable games within their bankroll. When this happens, some tough decisions need to be made. Using the suggestions in this article, however, will sometimes postpone for another day having to make that decision.
A Scholarship Offer
In last week’s column, I reprinted a seven-year-old article I wrote about Edward Thorp saying that gambling is a tax on ignorance, which I would amend to being a tax on the ignorant and the lazy.
Soon after I wrote that, John Chang (former long-time manager of the MIT blackjack team) appeared on GWAE and commented that while he agreed that gambling is a tax on the ignorant and the lazy, it also provides a scholarship for the smart and hard-working!
That’s exactly the way I look at gambling, although I accept the words “ignorant” and “lazy” as being relative terms and not absolute.
Simply put, beating a casino is difficult. You need to have some moxie. And even then, you need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to succeed. But that was largely what last week’s article was about. Today let’s talk more about what I mean by a “scholarship.” How do you get it? How do you keep it?
What I mean by scholarship is that if you do it right, the casinos pay you to come in and play intelligently. They do not do this on purpose. Their goal is not to support professional players. But that’s the way it works out.
Casinos do compete with each other and they do offer promotions to attract players. Some of these promotions are beatable. Some of the games are beatable. Play those!
Casino marketing people are not always savvy about doing the math on all promotions. This is a simplified generalization and not always true, but marketing types tend to be creative right-brained people while the ones who can figure out the math for promotions (for casino employees AND players) are left-brained people. When the promotions are developed by the right-brained marketing people, that is the time for you to play!
Casinos basically recycle money from the losing players and give it to the winning players, while keeping a small percentage to cover their own expenses and profit. If the casinos have enough losing players, they can afford to have a few winning players.
Why knowing this is important is that if you want to win, you have to treat the losing players with respect! They pay for your golden goose! If you go around insulting them because they are playing 8/5 Jacks or Better when there’s 9/6 Jacks or Better a few aisles over, you’re jeopardizing your scholarship!
(Yes, I know that my teaching others to identify good machines and play well hurts the players who already know how to play, and wish to keep the “secrets” to themselves. Whether anybody likes it or not, this is one of my chosen missions in life and I plan to continue on that mission indefinitely.)
The casino needs to make its profit somewhere. If nobody played the bad games, they would find it wasn’t profitable to offer the good games. If losing players got insulted when they came to the casino, that would take a lot of their pleasure away. It’s already an expensive activity for these players. If it isn’t fun, many will stop donating to your scholarship fund.
One key to keeping your scholarship is to not keep rubbing it into the casino’s face. There are players who keep playing until the casino kicks them out. For players who are comfortable being on the road all the time and always going to new places, that might be an okay procedure. But for those who want the golden goose to keep paying and paying, this is not a good plan.
This means that if you get significantly ahead, stay away for a while. If you win more than one drawing in a short period of time, don’t enter any more for a few months. This also means, if you’re a winning player, don’t be loud and obnoxious or otherwise a pain in the ass to the casino. They will put up with unpleasant behavior if you’re a loser. But if you’re a winner, this gives them one more reason to kick you out.
Video poker players have an additional edge over other types of advantage gamblers in that we lose most of the time! Royal flushes are relatively rare. The time between royal flushes will usually consist of negative scores. A video poker player who wins every day is largely unknown — unless something fishy is going on. That lets casinos believe that your royal flushes are mainly luck and you’ll give it all back. And it lets losing players have their memory of that one night in 2016 when they hit two royal flushes. These players will return over and over trying to catch magic in a bottle again.
A Tax on Ignorance
This article was originally published by me on July 24, 2012. Someone recently commented on it to me and I went back to check it out. I feel the article has stood up well over the past seven years and is worth revisiting, partly because many of my readers today weren’t readers way back then. Plus, I wish to extend the story next week.
I was reading a 2011 interview of Edward Thorp, a mathematical genius who created the first widespread blackjack card-counting system (Beat the Dealer) some fifty years ago, and then published a methodology for investing in various markets (Beat the Market) a short time later. He is widely credited with being the first “quant,” which is someone who uses advanced quantitative models for deciding where to invest.
He was interviewed by a group called “Investment Management Consultants Association” as part of their “Masters Series.” This organization is associated with both the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. This is a group of academics with top-notch credentials.
Most of the interview concerned financial investing, but there were a few gambling questions as well. In particular, Thorp was asked why losers at gambling don’t simply quit.
Thorp said, “It seems to me that people are not just wealth maximizers but seeking to maximize something else, whether they do it accurately or inaccurately, whatever their total satisfaction is from whatever they’re doing. I imagine that’s the explanation for why people will gamble and lose money. They supposedly get an entertainment payout. Part of it, though, is that gambling has a tax on ignorance. People often gamble because they think they can win, they’re lucky, they have hunches, that sort of thing, whereas in fact, they’re going to be remorselessly ground down over time.”
Thorp was not speaking about or to advantage gamblers. Although there are a lot of smart gamblers that read my articles, Thorp was addressing a group of people who were accomplished in financial investing, but likely were not particularly knowledgeable about gambling. These people probably believed the house ALWAYS had the edge. For the vast majority of gamblers, this is a realistic thing to believe.
Although it’s possible that Thorp has never played video poker and almost certainly was not thinking of that game in particular when he addressed these writers, I found myself thinking about how Thorp’s comments applied to recreational video poker players.
There are “smart” recreational gamblers. These players know they are taking the worst of it but enjoy what they are doing and don’t mind paying for it. This is actually a rational way to act for some people. These players believe becoming skillful is too difficult, too time consuming, too boring, or too whatever. These players pay for their gambling excitement. Thorp wasn’t talking about this group of gamblers either because these players are not ignorant about their chances.
There is a large group of video poker players who simply do not believe that pay schedules matter very much and that strategy is mostly common sense. These people believe they will win if they’re lucky and lose if they’re unlucky.
These players often use systems to limit their losses. Some of them believe that if they refuse to lose more than $100 each time they go gambling — but their potential win is unlimited — that this, then, is a good money management system. Others use variations on the Martingale systems. These systems can usually book a small win, but the occasional big losses wipe out far more than those accumulated small wins.
Still others believe in changing machines if either the machine has just hit a jackpot or has been too stingy in paying out jackpots recently. Both reasons are equally fallacious.
These people are not necessarily stupid (although some are). They have their strategies for playing as they do. They just don’t have the knowledge to realize that their strategies are largely worthless. And they don’t understand that this lack of knowledge dooms them to being a long-term loser.
A lot of these players defend their strategies and will argue with anybody who attempts to explain what modern experts believe is the correct way to think. In the days of Internet forums, everybody has the right to post what they believe. If you’re just beginning, you don’t know who is knowledgeable and who isn’t.
Gambling’s tax on ignorance is quite high. It is especially high for those who don’t believe it exists or think that they are immune to it. Most people who know they aren’t knowledgeable play for small stakes relative to their total wealth. To lose a lot, somebody either really must think that their system works or that they really know the right way to do it. And when the ignorant bet big, the results almost always involve getting into a financial hole that keeps getting bigger and bigger over time.
Take Care of Your Money
As I told you last week, I was recently reading Colin Jones’ new book, The 21st Century Card Counter, preparing to interview him for the GWAE podcast. Although Colin is addressing his comments towards blackjack players, a lot of the general information is useful to video poker players as well. Today’s column was inspired by his Chapter 7: Traveling as a Card Counter.
The first thing I want to address is how much money you should take with you to a casino. If you have access to markers (casino speak for IOUs) at the casino, then you take as little as possible. If you collect money at the start of your play and turn it in at the end, there is less chance for it to be stolen from you between here and there.
But markers are a major difference between video poker players and card players. If you play big enough to use markers, in video poker you’re going to be getting W2Gs that require you to show ID. Therefore, showing ID at the cage is something video poker players have to put up with in order to do business. Many times, blackjack players do not play rated — meaning they do not give their identity to the casino. These people are not willing to show ID at the cage, so that precludes getting markers. For some reason casinos do not respond well to a request such as, “I’m not going to tell you who I am, but I want to borrow $20,000 in cash for a few days.”
So, let’s assume for the current discussion that we are not talking about markers. You’re going to be playing a game where, even if things go really badly, there’s a 99% chance that you will lose less than $5,000 today. (You can get such numbers from the Video Poker for Winners software, or another good product is Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker.)
If that’s your only play today, it’s unnecessarily risky to start the day with $10,000 in your pocket. Nothing good can happen from having that extra money on you, and we all can think of plenty of bad things. One time in a hundred you’re going to run out of money with “only” $5,000. (That’s basically what having a 99% chance of it not happening means.) Unfortunate, but a cheap enough price to pay for the unpredictable, but real, chance that you could lose that money to either carelessness or malfeasance on the part of others.
Another point on this subject that Jones drives home is to be aware of your surroundings. If you get paid for a big jackpot, it can be noticed by others who want to separate you from your winnings. For this reason, if I hit a jackpot of $8,000 or higher, I ask if I can be paid “in private,” which can mean different things in different casinos. Having a slot attendant loudly counting out, “One hundred, two hundred, three hundred . . . “in front of anybody in the vicinity creates some risk.
In the era of cell phones, it’s very possible for somebody to text, “A 40-something guy in a green shirt with brown pants is carrying a lot of money. I’ll let you know when he’s heading towards the parking lot.” (That would not be me. It’s been decades since someone identified me as being 40-something, and it’s extremely rare that I wear brown pants.) So, your attacker may well be someone who wasn’t present when you were paid, but who found out from somebody else.
After a big winning session, I frequently stroll through the casino, zigging and zagging, too see if anybody is following me. Many times, I’ve approached a security guard and said, “I would like an escort to my car, and if you bring along another guard, I have tip money for both of you.”
If there is a parking garage elevator and there’s another guy waiting there who I don’t know, I’ll frequently “remember” something to do just as the elevator comes and let him go up alone. If there’s a large group in the elevator, I feel safer. If you’re healthy enough, walking the stairs in a parking garage is safer than taking the elevator, plus it’s rare enough that you can easily see if somebody is following you.
If you are mugged in an elevator, be sure to report it to security. Many casinos have cameras in the elevators and that can go a long way towards verifying your story and possibly apprehending the culprit.
There were certainly more things in this chapter that are worth remembering, but these were the items that tickled my “I haven’t written about that recently” button. Thank you, Colin.
Those Who Don’t Know History are Doomed to Repeat It
The title quote is attributed to Edmund Burke, among others. But it applies to something that happened in Las Vegas recently. I didn’t see it all and there are parts of the story I don’t have, but the part I do have is plenty interesting.
On Wednesday, July 17, I received a text from a friend telling me there was a video poker free-for-all at the Downtown Grand and the word is out. I didn’t know exactly what this meant, but clearly video poker players were making some money there.
The Downtown Grand is where the Lady Luck casino used to be. It’s on the north side of Ogden, which is one block north of the Fremont Street Experience. It’s not in the heart of the casino district, but it’s pretty close.
I live a little more than ten miles south of the DG — with 90% of the trip on the freeway. I had something else going on that evening and didn’t want to get mixed up in a big mess. When a casino makes a “too good to last” promotion (which is what I figured it was), it lasts a short period of time. The earliest birds get the biggest worms, and anybody after that gets whatever scraps there are. Often the casino retaliates against any player who “took advantage” of their mistake.
On the morning of Friday, July 19, I had a gym date with a friend who had gone to check out the situation. He said there were 40-50 new machines with games such as Full Pay Deuces Wild (100.76%), 10/7 Double Bonus (100.17%), 10/6 Double Double Bonus (100.07%) for denominations up to $2 single line.
In addition, there were two multi-line machines which were locked up by a team. These machines went up to $2 Ten Play and had the same games on them.
They were offering no slot club benefits. If you wanted to park for free, you had to run $25 coin-in through a slot machine. Otherwise parking was $15 or $20, depending on which day of the week it was. Since you didn’t get any slot club points, there was no reason to put your card in, so he didn’t know exactly how fast the machines were. But he estimated he could play over 1,000 hands per hour.
Oh my! A $2 machine at 1,000 hands per hour places $10,000 into action. A 100.76% return on this game means an expected value of $76 per hour. He said there were plenty of machines and there was no trouble getting on one.
Okay. Maybe it was time to take a visit!
I haven’t played FPDW in more than a decade. Still, years ago I played the game for more than 1,000 hours, wrote a Winner’s Guide on the game, and taught a class on the game perhaps 30 times. At my age, my memory isn’t what it used to be, but it isn’t terrible.
I took out a copy of the Winner’s Guide for that game and went through all the quizzes. This took me less than 15 minutes and I could now play with more than 99.9% accuracy on the game. If someone were starting from scratch, it would take considerably longer to get up to that level. Many people never do.
After Bonnie’s and my dinner-and-dancing date on Friday night, I headed to the DG. It was now pretty much as advertised, except some time in the past few days about half the formerly-$2 machines were now maxed out at $1. Still, checking every machine that wasn’t being played, I found one for $2 and sat down.
For those who don’t understand $76 per hour, it’s not like a paycheck. It’s a long-term average assuming you get the typical number of $2,000 deuces (frequency: 4,909 hands) and $8,000 royals (frequency: 45,282 hands). Any deuces wild player knows that if you play several hours and don’t hit one of these hands, you’re going to lose today. And that was my result on this day. I spent five hours and lost $1,900.
On the two multi-line games, one player (who I recognized) was playing $1 Ten Play. The other player was playing 25₵ Triple Play, the smallest amount you could play on that machine, slowly. I figured she was a “place holder.” The team only had so many competent players, with each one playing 6- to 8-hour shifts, and apparently there was one shift where they couldn’t find anybody. So, somebody’s friend was called in to “save the seat,” presumably with the team paying her a wage and covering her losses. The team didn’t want to give up a seat because they well could not get it back — and a seat on such a machine was worth thousands of dollars a day for as long as the game lasted.
I found an excuse to go down and play the next day (Saturday) as well. All the $2 games were gone but there were still plenty of $1 machines. This time I got two sets of deuces in five hours and came out $900 ahead.
I attend a workshop Monday evenings in the downtown area and so that was a good excuse to go early and play at the DG. Now most of the $1 machines had been downgraded to 15-11-4-4-3-2-1. This is not a terrible game at 99.957%, but without any benefits it’s unplayable compared to games a few blocks away. I realize many players around the country would kill to get a game this good, but currently in Vegas you can do better and there’s no reason to play games where you do not have the advantage.
There were still nine $1 FPDW available and I was able to get one. This time I played four hours and won $800. This ended up being my last play there, and my net score was minus $200. A plus score would have been more pleasant, but for a short play, this was well within “normal.” Had the game lasted longer, I’d still play it some of the time.
One of the players on the team machines was a lady I’ve known for more than 20 years and I went up to chat with her. The machines were cut back to 25₵ Ten Play or $1 Triple Play. She was playing the Ten Play version, as I would. It’s a smaller amount of coin-in ($12.50 per play versus $15) but the variance is much smaller. I gave her the name of the person I thought was running the team and she told me I was wrong but didn’t indicate who was really running the team. It didn’t really matter to me.
I figured all the games would be downgraded by Tuesday, but I went there anyway to be sure because in the back of my mind I was planning on writing this article. All 40-50 machines were now at the 15-11-4-4-3 game rather than FPDW. And absolutely none of them were being played. The multi-line games still had players on them. I recognized one of the players as a competent pro but didn’t go up and talk to either of them.
I was quite surprised that those games outlasted the others. Although not all the players who were on it were competent, most of them were, and certainly the ones who were playing the highest stakes were. With multi-line games, you get into the long run much faster than you do with single-line games. It begs credulity that these machines were profitable to the casino. But if you left them, why not the others?
How long the two multi-line machines had the FPDW on them, I don’t know. I am not planning another trip to the DG in the near future unless I hear the FPDW machines have been resurrected — which I doubt, but who knows?
There have been several times in the past two decades where a casino has offered $1 or higher FPDW. The machines have never lasted very long because the game returns a significant amount over 100%, is very easy to play, and there is a competent player base that has good communication. Add that all together, and a casino who puts it out there is going to lose money. How long the casino puts up with this money drain depends on the casino. In some cases, slot directors have lost their job over their decision to install such games.
So why did these games resurface now at the DG? Rumor is that the place is up for sale and the casino was trying to drive up coin-in. If that was their goal, they succeeded. But it must have been a very expensive success. Any potential buyer who dropped by early in the promotion would have been impressed with all the customers. Coming by after the FPDW machines were downgraded, the place was morgue-like.
Choosing Between Promotions
In playing to win, you need to figure out where to spend your time. I came across such a dilemma recently and tried to figure out how to solve it. The problem was too complex for me to solve completely, but I created a simplified model using “reasonable” assumptions and was able to come up with a solution using the simplified model.
Let me explain.
On Wednesday evening, July 3 of this year, Bonnie and I were eating at the South Point with friends. On the way into the restaurant at 5:30, I noticed the jackpot level for the $600,000 “Mad Money Madness” casino-wide progressive was at $23,000. When we finished dinner an hour later, it was at $23,250.
This is a jackpot that will go off before it hits $25,000 (at which time it starts over again at $10,000). If you’re the lucky player who hits it, you get the prize, of course. If you’re playing when somebody else hits it, you get $25 in free play.
It was going up at a rate of $250 per hour, and likely it would go up faster as the evening wore on because evenings generate more slot and video poker players than daytimes do.
Starting at midnight, however, earning double points would begin. This adds 0.30% to the return.
Assume I would commit five hours to play — either before midnight (when the progressive was very likely to hit) or after. Which would have been the play with the higher EV? (Hybrid results of “play until the jackpot goes off and then if you have any more of your five hours left come back after midnight” were not being considered in this model, but might be a reasonable decision in real life.)
The are many combinations of games and denomination I could consider. I’m going to pick two — namely, NSU Deuces Wild for quarters and NSU Deuces Wild for $2.
This game returns 99.728% with perfect play — and for simplification I’m going to assume the return with the normal 0.30% slot club was 100.00% and the return with the double points was 100.30%.
I’m going to assume a speed of 800 hands per hour. This is playing pretty quickly, but nowhere near a record pace. This speed has the advantage of making the coin-in for the quarter game to be $1,000 per hour and the coin-in for the $2 game, $8,000 per hour. Again, round numbers make the math easier.
My next assumption may or may not be valid, and that is a quarter machine and a $2 machine have equal likelihoods of being selected as the winner. This could be true, and it also could be true that the $2 machine has eight times the likelihood because eight times as much is being wagered. The rules are very vague on this. The phrase “any machine any time” could apply to either way of doing it.
I’m also going to assume that in the next five hours, the progressive is going to be hit. Not guaranteed, but very, very likely.
Before I go on, take your best guestimate. Is it worth more to sit down now or wait for double points?
Okay. Figuring out how much the games are worth on double point days is easy. A rate of 100.30% means it’s worth $3 per hour on the quarter machine and $24 per hour on the $2 machine.
Figuring how much the game itself is worth before midnight is also easy. A game worth 100.00% is worth $0 per hour, no matter what your stakes.
So, it comes down to estimating how much the chances at the jackpot are worth. Again, to make the math easy, I’m going to assume 1,000 active players, and that each player has an equal probability of hitting the jackpot. So, on a per-person basis, actually hitting the jackpot is worth $25 — although 999 out of 1,000 people will get zero and one person will have a big smile on his/her face.
We are guaranteed to get $25 when the jackpot goes off so long as we’re playing and we don’t hit the big one. Adding these numbers together, the value of the jackpot to us is $50.
Adding $50 in EV to $0 (the amount the game would be worth with a 0.30% slot club) is also easy. Playing five hours before midnight gives us $50, or $10 per hour.
Comparing the $10 per hour to the $3 or $24 hourly rates we’d earn after midnight is also easy. If we’re playing quarters, sit down and play now. If we’re going to be playing a $2 game, wait for double points.
So, it turns out the problem of whether we should play now or later depends on what denomination we’re playing. I suggest denomination is a consideration that many of you didn’t think was a factor.
The third choice of “the game is not worth enough to bother with” is always an option. Different people will come to different conclusions about that.
If you don’t like my simplifying assumptions, make up your own. Your conclusion will likely end up being the same as mine unless you assume the $2 player had eight times the chances to win the jackpot as the quarter player did. (And I don’t know if that’s a true-to-life assumption or not.) If that’s your assumption, the right conclusion might well be for the $2 player to sit down now and start banging away as fast as he/she could.
What’s Your Take?
Bonnie and I were recently returning from a cruise and were waiting in the Fort Lauderdale airport for our flight home. We were sitting next to some Vegas friends who were on the same cruise — a man and his wife, their 13-year-old son and their 11-year-old daughter.
I was absorbed in a book and wasn’t following what was going on, but all of a sudden, the girl, Kelly, asked me if I wanted her to get me a free drink from a vending machine? There were sodas, water, and a few types of energy drinks available. Maybe other choices as well. It was across the room and I didn’t look closely at it.
“And just how are you going to get me a free drink?” I asked. “They are usually sold at a premium in an airport and not given away.”
“Daddy found this code on the Internet. You enter the code into the vending machine, and it thinks you’re an employee. You then get whatever you want.”
“Have you tried it?” I asked.
“Well, we tried it and got to the last step and then we chickened out. I’m not a thief and couldn’t bring myself to do it for me. But to give to somebody else, that’s different. And I really want to see if it works. So, what do you want?”
“I want to pass on this,” I replied.
Kelly then asked Bonnie, who didn’t really understand what Kelly was suggesting, so she looked at me for guidance. I told her it looked like a scam that may or may not work. But if it does work, it’s clearly stealing from the vending machine company. When I phrased it that way, Bonnie wanted no part of it either. Kelly got a similar response from both her parents.
Since none of the adults wanted to do this, Kelly concluded that it wasn’t the right thing to do — so she let it go. Had she taken the free drink, I would hope one of her parents would instruct her otherwise. For me to do so would be hypocritical, as I’ve done far worse. Some of those instances readers of my columns have heard about. Some they haven’t.
This is something I might have said yes to 25 years ago. I was new in Vegas and desperately trying to make it. Three dollars saved is three dollars earned.
Even then, however, I wouldn’t have done it in front of five people who knew me and looked up to me. It would have been something I did by myself or with at most one accomplice.
This time there was a dome on the ceiling housing a security camera — which may or may not be active. They didn’t have those 25 years ago. You could just look around and see whether anybody was watching. Not anymore. Although it is doubtful the security system was there to protect against this kind of scam, you never know. The chance of being caught definitely enters into the equation when you’re considering crossing a line.
Would you have taken the free soda?
In casinos, there are numerous situations not so different from this one. When they unexpectedly arise, you need to make a decision. Those with a strong moral compass have no trouble at all with these decisions. The same is true for those with no moral compass at all, although they make the opposite decisions from the ones in the previous category. Where it presents problems are for those of us who look at each situation as a new problem to consider.
I’ve heard it said that the difference between an advantage player (which I consider myself to be) and a cheat (which I do not consider myself to be) is that the advantage player always does things in a casino legally. I wonder. Temptations arise and we make decisions. Even on the decisions we can justify to ourselves, others may decide we have “crossed the line.”
I chatted about this article a bit with a friend and he listed a couple of cases that would be taboo for him that I thought would have been acceptable for me. And vice versa. He was amazed that I considered something off limits.
Dan Ariely is a professor at Duke University and the author of many books and articles including “Ask Ariely,” an advice column in The Wall Street Journal. One thing I’ve learned from reading Dr. Ariely’s works is that the decision we make now (when temptation is far away and just a theoretical concept) can be different than what we decide in the heat of the moment. Although Ariely’s conclusions are often about sexual matters, I believe they also apply to financial matters. Getting “more money” is one of the major things that inspire those who gamble — whether it’s gambling with or without the advantage.
Reasonably Ready
A little more than two years ago, I wrote an article called “You’re Not Ready Yet” which may be found here. The article described “Joe,” a player who wished to hire me as a mentor.
In the article, I told him that he didn’t have enough experience yet. He should go and study the Winner’s Guide for two separate games and master them at the advanced level. If he did that, and gained considerable experience in the casino, I would happily consider entering into a mentoring relationship with him.
But until then, I believed Joe was in love with the idea of being a gambler without going through the effort of actually becoming good at it. My best guess at the time was that Joe wouldn’t go through the necessary work to “qualify.”
Joe is someone who periodically emails a question suitable for the Gambling with an Edge podcast, so we’ve been in touch. About a month ago, I asked him how his gambling career progressed after that article. Here is his response, slightly edited for his anonymity:
I took your advice and studied the Video Poker Winners Guides and practiced on Video Poker for Winners for jacks or better and also NSU deuces wild. I probably spent at least 100 hours each doing both of these. I was able to play about 600-700 hands per hour at the “advanced” level with very few errors. By playing video poker in 2017 at a Caesars property, I achieved 7-star status.
Since I got 7-star status, I had been receiving lots of comps (at both Caesars and non-Caesars casinos). The non-Caesars casinos think that I am a “gambler” based on my 7-star status, so they tend to extend me comps just to get me there to try them out. I might have been able to take advantage of even more comps if I had not gotten injured on military duty – that slowed me down a little.
Some of the comps that I have gotten include: free flights to casino locations; free hotel stays; free food; free shows; free box seats at sporting events – football and baseball (basketball and hockey have been offered but not accepted yet); free tours; cruises on various cruise lines where I only have to pay for port fees and government taxes; and of course free bets, match plays, and free slot play.
Since my 7-star was valid through January 2019, I decided that I wouldn’t re-establish my 7-star until sometime in 2019 (in order to extend it through January 2021). I have not re-established my 7-star status since I have something else in my life that keeps me very busy, and I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the benefits. Since I don’t live in Las Vegas or even anywhere near a casino, when I do go to a casino, I tend to play blackjack (when I can get away with it). I do NOT play blackjack at the same places that I play video poker.
Consequently, I would definitely have to restudy, and re-practice with the software to get back to “advanced” level whereas blackjack is kind of second nature since I have been doing that for almost 10 years.
When I get closer to retiring from what it is that I am doing now (probably in about two more years), I plan to move to Vegas. Besides the opportunities to use the 7-star and other gambling related benefits, I am a veteran and there are a lot of entertainment related benefits given to military members.
When I do move to Vegas, I plan to restudy and re-practice the video poker so that I can get mentoring from you.
Joe has progressed considerably further than I would have predicted. Good for him! There are dues to be paid and he has shown the willingness and ability to pay them! My prediction that he wouldn’t do this wasn’t based on him individually, but rather that a pretty low percentage of people in his position would have put in the work he did.
Whether or not we actually enter into a mentoring relationship down the road remains to be seen. But he has done what it takes to “qualify” and he will definitely get more bang for his buck now than he would have earlier when he didn’t have the knowledge or experience to put the information I can share with him to good use.
Way to go, Joe!
I Can’t Help
I keep strange hours. Sometimes I’m up all night. Sometimes I’m up all day. Overall, I get my sleep, but nobody knows at any given time of day whether I’ll be awake or not.
At about 2 a.m. on a recent night, I was writing an article when I received a text message from a friend, George. The message showed two jackpots. One was for deuces with an ace kicker for $3,400 on a $1 13-4-3-3 Deuces Bonus game with two progressives, and the second was for the royal itself — $8,000. By looking at the numbers for the screen shots, they must have hit almost back to back.
I responded with “Congratulations,” but didn’t say more. This is not a friend who sends me pictures of every W2G he gets, and I don’t want to turn him into one.
As soon as I sent off the congrats, he texted “Can we talk?” I didn’t know what it was about, but I called him right away.
It turned out that he hit the aces jackpot and his sometimes-partner, Cliff, hit the royal. He said this time they were partners on all of the scores.
Cliff, it turns out, is a Canadian citizen in the United States on a permanent work visa. He has a temporary driver’s license, which gets renewed one year at a time, because he is not a United States citizen.
The floor person noticed the temporary license and asked about it. When she found that Cliff was a Canadian citizen, she said the casino was required to withhold 30% of the W2G — $2,400. Cliff has previously earned hundreds of W2Gs and this is only the second time money has been withheld.
When the money is withheld, it is sent to the appropriate taxation department in Canada. To retrieve any or all of it, Cliff would need to file a Canadian tax return. Right now, he only files United States returns.
The slot supervisor showed up and told Cliff that the 30% would be withheld, period. It would be withheld temporarily if Cliff said he could bring in a United States passport or a non-temporary driver’s license. If Cliff didn’t think he could produce one of those in the very near future, the money would be sent to Canada.
So, George asked my advice as to what to do.
I told him that my read was that the casino was acting appropriately. That’s the law. The $2,400 they were withholding wasn’t doing the casino any good because they had to forward it to Canada, but refusing to do it could get them into trouble if it was discovered.
I suggested that Cliff’s options were to become a United States citizen (which I understand is his intention, but it is sometimes a lengthy process), accept that losing 30% of jackpots occasionally was just an expense of doing business, or, perhaps, find another way to earn money.
I had no advice about filing a Canadian tax return. I don’t know the rules and can’t speak to the advantages and disadvantages of going that route.
Although I’ve met Cliff and like him, George is my friend. I suggested that if George and Cliff are going to continue to be occasional progressive-chasing partners who share some or all of jackpots, then this potential of 30% being withheld should be explicitly discussed. Right now, George and Cliff are sharing that 30% “penalty.” It probably hadn’t been discussed because it hadn’t happened recently, but now that it’s out in the open, it needs to be discussed.
I don’t particularly care how they resolve it. It could be that Cliff is the dominant partner and George is lucky to be allowed to tag along. In that case, sharing in the 30% is probably correct. If Cliff is the more knowledgeable partner, a different arrangement would be appropriate.
There are privileges that are associated with being a U. S. citizen. This particular one has been agreed to by treaty and is not likely to be changed in the near future. The fact that this particular one affects some of my gambling friends is unfortunate, but that’s the law and we all must live with it.