Another excellent post by James Grosjean in his Las Vegas Advisor blog called “Beyond Numbers” occurred in mid August. Continue reading When to Show ID
Category: Advice for Players
Nevada’s Prop 3: A Bad Bet for Gamblers
This is a rare but timely guest-blogger contribution, penned by renowned Las Vegas attorney Robert Nersesian, the top counsel representing players who run into legal problems involving casinos including (famously and on many occasions) James Grosjean. (For more of this, check James’ own guest contribution to Arnold Snyder’s now-defunct Blackjack Forum publication.)
Change for Gold Coast Seniors
Mondays have been “Young at Heart” (for seniors 50+) at the Gold Coast for some time. Some benefits stay constant, but the rewards for video poker players changes from time to time. Beginning November 1 they removed their senior drawing and 5x points for video poker players and replaced it with a 100-coin bonus on four natural fives (no wild cards, bottom line only on multiple line machines, $100 maximum bonus).
Overall this isn’t a terrible tradeoff. On a game like Jacks or Better, the promotion adds 0.4%. On a game like NSU Deuces Wild, the game adds 0.3%. If you play at the Emerald level, (0.3% every day), these bonuses ADD to what you already get. The previous promotion only added 0.2% for these players because the 5x points (totaling 0.5%) was a MAXIMUM amount no matter what level you were at. The new promotion, for some players at least, more than makes up for the loss of 5x points and goes a long way toward replacing the drawing.
It was somewhat surprising to me that the casino was really jumping with video poker players on Sunday November 7 when they were giving 5x points, but largely dead when they had the four fives promotion on Monday November 8. I played from 9 p.m. to midnight, connected on the promo twice (a rare occurrence to be sure), and the slot shift boss was telling me that these were the 6th and 7th bonuses they’d paid all day and they’d paid a similar number the week before. I would have thought that they’d have three or four times that many. What gives?
Part of the answer lies in what else was happening in the video poker world. Sunday was a day when “nothing special” was going on promotion-wise, but Monday had gift cards at the Palms (in addition to video poker bingo) and senior day at the Silverton.
To be sure the Sunday promotion was open to all ages and the Monday promotion was only open to 50+, but usually more than half of players in a casino qualify for the senior category. Also, how the two promotions compare is affected by your tier level. If you are Ruby level, 5x points and the four fives promotion have approximately equal EV. If you are Sapphire level, four fives is a little better. And if you are Emerald, four fives is a lot better. Overall, four fives is a better for the players mathematically, but clearly (looking at head counts) many players don’t see it that way.
Although four fives is worth more than 5x mathematically, there is a huge difference in terms of frequency and certainty. You’ll connect on four fives every 5-8 hours, depending on how fast you play. If you’re going to be playing 2 or 3 hours on Monday, you’re probably not going to collect the 100-coin bonus this time. If you were getting 5x points, you’ll get a small bonus on every hand played.
Over the course of 4,000 hands (the approximate frequency of four fives in some games), the additional 0.2% (i.e. the difference between the daily 0.3% for Emerald and the 0.5% for the 5x point promotion) would have been worth an extra 40 coins. To me it’s no contest between a promotion that gives me an extra 40 coins over 4,000 hands versus one where I get an extra 100 coins. I appear to be in the minority about this.
Many people seem to prefer the guaranteed 40 coins versus the theoretical average of 100 coins for the same amount of play — but which probably isn’t going to happen today. Players who can figure this out and are able to take a long-term point of view to their gambling find this obvious. Others, not so much. To me this is a variation of my “today’s score doesn’t matter” mantra that I’ve been preaching for years. One wag recently called my preaching “ear banging.” I thought that was a clever expression.
Another player told me that he preferred to play Five Play machines, and since this bonus only played on the bottom line, this was equivalent to a 20-coin bonus for him. That’s true, of course, so long as he insists on playing Five Play. But why do that? Winning players learn to swing with the punches. If one promotion pays better on a particular type of machine, those are the machines to play.
Players differ in their flexibility on this. If you want to take a “if the promotion doesn’t work really well on the machine I usually play, then screw it!” attitude, fine. That’s your choice. As for me, I’ll look for ways that I can benefit from what is being offered. Which is why in the ten casinos I play the most at, I play a total of seven different games, and at some casinos am playing a different game this month than I did last month because of promotions.
The Type of Hands that are Most Difficult to Play
I’ve had a lot of discussions with “Kal.” Kal played successful blackjack for years and is relatively new to video poker. We bring different “beating the house” skills to the table and enjoy learning from each other.
Recently Kal told me, “on hands where three or more relevant combinations are in the same hand, my accuracy rate is much lower than on hands where only two combinations exist.” This seems sort of obvious when you think about it, but it isn’t the way I’ve been studying.
In the past year, I’ve learned four new games as opportunities change. When I’m trying to learn a new game, I frequently use WinPoker (yes, I still use that product on occasion) and set “Hard Hands” to 0.02 or so. This deals me hands where the difference between the top play and the second-best play have a EV difference of 2¢ or less for the 5-coin dollar player. I figure that if I can learn the hard hands, the easy hands surely won’t be a problem.
Sometimes just being close in EV isn’t the same as being difficult. In 9-6 Jacks or Better, for example, from AJ542 “rainbow,” the best play (AJ) is worth less than a penny more (for a 5-coin dollar player) than the second-best play (J by itself). For those of us who have learned the rule “two high cards, suited or not, are ALWAYS preferred to one high card in this game,” this is a no-brainer type of hand, even though the difference between the top two hands is fairly small.
What Kal was talking about is different. He’s talking about hands such as: Ah Kh Qc Tc 8c, where you need to consider the 2-card royal flush ‘AK’ (the correct play in 9-6 Jacks or Better by 18¢), the 3-card straight flush ‘QT8’ (the correct play in 9-7 Triple Double Bonus by 6¢), and the 4-card inside straight AKQT (the correct play in 9-7 Double Bonus by 25¢).
In none of these three games would this hand show up when I was checking for hands where the top two plays were within 2¢ of each other. And since each play was correct in one of the games, and a number of players use the same strategy for all games, it’s a 100% lock that some players will misplay the hand in one or more of the games. Since I wouldn’t be concentrating on this particular hand, it’s possible that I personally would mess it up. My accuracy rate is very high if I have recently reviewed a particular game. But if I haven’t, and I’ve played a lot of different games recently, sometimes I’m not 100% positive of the correct play.
In the Triple Double Bonus game it’s a “penalty card” hand, because you play Ah Kh Qc Tc 8c differently than you play Ah Jh Qc Tc 8c, where ‘AJ’ is the better play by less than a penny. A play this close would definitely show up during my practice of hard hands, but I’d need to be on my toes to realize that the play was different depending on whether the lower heart was a jack or a king. It would be easy to reach the wrong conclusion — at a rather major cost of 25¢.
In “Video Poker for Winners,” the computer software I helped design, the hands discussed here show up regularly when you have the “Level of Difficulty” set to “Advanced.” When designing which types of hands should be displayed when this feature was turned, I included a number of possibilities where you had 3-card straight flushes of various stripes mixed and matched with inside straights of various stripes. Many other combinations were included as well.
While there were dozens of criteria used to determine what the advanced hands should be, “dozens” isn’t very many. You’ll find you’ll get the same types of hands listed over and over again.
Still, the difficult hands presented to you in WinPoker are different from the difficult hands presented by Video Poker for Winners. Which is why owning and practicing with two or more software products is advisable. Although there is a lot of overlap in doing the basic things, each computer trainer has features the other ones don’t. Considering the money many of us run through the machines every year, the price of these products is small compared to the potential value.
The Cookie Jar Technique
There was a very lucrative promotion at the South Point this past July. To be eligible for the greatest reward, you needed to do two things:
- Play $60K coin-in (video poker) or $30K (slots) in May and you receive what they call the A+ mailer. For players with a reasonable bankroll, this wasn’t that difficult. The casino has the best video poker in the country (with the possible exception for 25¢ players who play FPDW with 0.25% free play and no other benefits at the Palms). The 0.30% cash club at casino makes a lot of games exceed 100% and the at-least $200-per-month in the A+ mailers is an attractive incentive.
- Avoid the purge. A number of players at the South Point were excluded from the slot club this spring. Most of these players played at the $60K+ level.
For all players at the South Point in July, earning 200 points five days a week awarded you a spin on a virtual wheel. Rewards ranged from 1,000 free points (worth a buck) to $50 in either free play or a Chevron gas card. For A+ players, however, it was always $50 free play or gas card. It appeared to be random as to which of two prizes you received, but you definitely got one of the two.
It didn’t take long for the A+ players to recognize the pattern. Show up every day between Sunday and Thursday, play $200 through on an even game (99.73% Deuces Wild with a 0.30% cash card was the game of choice for many) and get a $50 bonus. Do it all 20 eligible days and receive a $1,000 bonus that month. Most players who lived in the area were not too busy to show up and collect the bounty.
A friend of mine, “T.J.,” came in every day. On the days he collected a $50 gas card he was delighted. On the days he “only” got $50 in free play, T.J. was irritated. Even though the high percentage of players who weren’t A+ would love to get as much as $50 in free play, getting this award instead of the gas cards pissed him off.
I didn’t understand this. Although there are tax considerations that make a difference, to me fifty bucks is fifty bucks. This was a 25% bonus on playing $200 on an even game and I was delighted to get it. I know that the $50 free play isn’t guaranteed to become $50 cash, you get slot club points on your free play there (unlike certain other casinos) so you’re playing a 100% game. Sometimes the $50 free play becomes only $25, but sometimes it becomes $200. Over the course of a year, the money earned from the total amount of free play awarded comes out reasonably close to that amount in cash.
Not to T.J. He segregates “gambling bankroll” from “money to live on” to a higher degree than anyone else I’ve met (although, frankly, I haven’t had a lot of “how do you manage your money” conversations with a lot of gamblers.) When he moved to Vegas five years ago, he bought a house (paying cash), set $10,000 aside for a gambling bankroll, and vowed that if he ever lost that bankroll he was done gambling for the year. If he lost, he’d place another $10K into his gambling account the following January. All other expenses came out of savings. He has no other source of income and it’s going to be a few years until his retirement money kicks in.
As it turns out, T.J.’s bankroll has expanded to more than $30,000. His skills are considerably better than they were when he moved to Vegas. For the stakes he plays in the games he plays, there is essentially no chance he can lose his bankroll. Fifty dollars in free play would go towards his bankroll, and basically his bankroll is in fine shape already.
The gas cards, however, do not go to bankroll the way T.J. keeps score. Every gas card means $50 he gets to keep in his savings account. It bugs the heck out of him to take money out of his savings account, and gas cards let him keep the money in his savings account longer.
There are a lot of people with regular jobs who use a number of cookie jars to help them budget. A certain percentage of every paycheck goes into the rent cookie jar, or the car payment cookie jar, or the vacation fund cookie jar, etc. If they’ve budgeted correctly, at the end of the month, there is enough in each of the jars to cover the bills. I never used this technique, but I know a lot of folks who did.
My personal technique is different. I have funds in a safety deposit box somewhere and extra money in a checking account. Whether the money comes from jackpots or from writing this column is largely irrelevant to me. (Accounting-wise these are different, but I’m not talking about that here.) I need much larger cash-on-hand than most people because my daily gambling swings exceed $20,000 one way or the other probably twenty times each year. Although there are big swings, over time the sum of the funds has grown. Periodically I take a portion of these funds and invest it in the stock market or elsewhere. I don’t have tags on the money telling me exactly how much came from where.
T.J. appears to be using the cookie jar technique to deal with gambling bankroll versus his “everything-else” bankroll. This leads to some unusual conclusions (from my point of view), but it seems to work well for him.