Category: Advanced Strategy

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“You’ve Already Hit the Royal”

When I wrote recently about hitting a $120,000 royal flush at Dotty’s and explained when I planned to return to playing there (after a four-month hiatus, which I explained in the earlier articles), I received the following comment from a reader who calls himself/herself Hop Hoofer:

You have a very small edge. And playing with an edge is mainly for preparing for the worst. Since the best, the $120K royal, already happened to you, why would you still want to risk your money? Your score will be balanced out eventually and most likely your profit will be evened out if you continue to play. If you are already ahead a lot, I don’t see a point of chasing for the tiny edge and losing your profit back.

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A Not-Too-Disturbing Farewell

In Las Vegas blackjack circles, the El Cortez in downtown Las Vegas is well-known for having a decent single-deck game — aside from the fact that they are extremely quick to pull the trigger on kicking players out. Several blackjack teams send their new players to play there, knowing they’ll be kicked out fairly quickly, just to get the first barring out of the way.

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A Mailer to Appreciate

I recently wrote that I had hit a $120,000 royal flush at Dotty’s in October. I mused that possibly the plug had been pulled on my welcome as I had hit a number of big jackpots there in the past. Several readers responded that surely my time was up there.

In November, I received no mailer at all. I looked at this as a “possible sign” of the end of my welcome, but not definitive. In October, my mailer was for $1 a week for the first three weeks, and a whopping $2 for the fourth week. I left them uncashed, except for cashing one of them on the one day I went in to play.

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Adventure at Railroad Pass – Part 2 of 2

My play at Railroad Pass had largely stopped. While they still had dollar $1 9/5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus with a 0.75% slot club on Wednesdays, I could only play 400-hands-per-hour on those coin-droppers. I had earlier played dollar 8/5 Bonus Poker Wheel Poker (99.59%), which was much more lucrative because it required $30 per hand to fully load. This was worth more, and was a lot more fun to play.

When that game was pulled, I pretty much retired from Railroad Pass, except for playing enough to keep my account active (at least one point every six months) so that my comp dollars didn’t evaporate.

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Adventure at Railroad Pass – Part 1 of 2

Railroad Pass was built some 90 years ago. Insofar as Las Vegas casinos go, that’s ancient. Railroad Pass isn’t actually in Las Vegas, of course. It’s in Henderson, almost to Boulder City. At the time this story happened, almost 20 years ago, they actually had a traffic signal in the middle of the 95 freeway to get into the place. In addition, it was owned by the MGM – Mirage corporation, although totally separate from that players club. Today that signal is gone, and MGM no longer owns a piece of the Pass.

A lot of the machines were coin-droppers. With a 0.25% slot club, I favored dollar 9/5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus (99.80%) on Wednesdays, which was 3x point day. I couldn’t get many dollars per hour through the machine. When credits on the machine exceeded 400, dollar coins fell into the hopper. Quad 2s, 3s, and 4s ($600) were a hand pay, as were four aces ($1,199). It was about a $20-per-hour play, but they had mailers and comps which added considerably.

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Comparing Two Different Games at Dotty’s — Part Two of Two

The story from last week continues. If you didn’t catch last week’s blog, you need to read that one first for context. Last week was more about my decision process. This week is more about the actual results when I went to play at my local Dotty’s for $150 a hand.

My first $3,000 was lost in about five minutes. It took a full eight minutes to lose the next $3,000. A half-hour later, still with no W-2Gs, I was down $15,000. This was not the way I envisioned the game!

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Comparing Two Different Games at Dotty’s — Part One of Two

Today I’m going to discuss a play that is of limited interest to most of my readers. It includes, however, a “how did I figure it out” discussion that could be useful to many of you.

Long-time readers of mine know I sometimes play at Dotty’s. Dotty’s has numerous (more than 100) locations in Nevada which are mostly 15-machine locations. It does have a few full-blown casinos with several hundred machines each, and at least one intermediate-sized location (at Sunset and Green Valley Parkway) with about 50 machines in it.

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What Was Your Best Gambling Decision?

Pick your one or two best gambling decisions throughout your life. Pick them before reading on. Take however much time you need. This blogpost will be here when you get back.

This post has been inspired by my recent reading of Annie Duke’s books, “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit.” I wrote about these books last week. I’m not sure which book spoke about this topic. I read them more or less concurrently as audiobooks checked out from the library, and they’ve both been returned.

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How Much Should I Lose Before I Quit?

I’ve been asked variations of this question more than one hundred times over the years. Sometimes phrased as, “If I lose $100 (or some other number), should I give up for the day?”

My answer usually was some form of the following:

  1. Only play when you have the advantage. If the house has the edge, don’t play. It’s fairly easy to calculate in video poker whether you have the edge or not. In general, if you don’t know if you’re the favorite or not, you’re not.
  1. My answer assumes you have sufficient bankroll, actual and psychological, to ride it out. How to calculate how much bankroll you need is a discussion for another day.
  1. Are you still playing alertly?
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