There are many casinos with promotions where the player can earn extra drawing tickets during certain periods, such as 5x tickets during 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Fridays, or perhaps 10x tickets all day Tuesday.
To the player, whether 5x drawing tickets is worth more or less than 2x points depends on the value of each. You can usually figure out exactly how much 2x points is worth and it will always be an estimate of how much 5x drawing tickets is worth.
Continue reading Multiple Drawing EntriesI recently received an email from a slot director with whom I’m friendly. It read:
I’ve had a number of customers ask me what banks in Las Vegas are gambler friendly, meaning they understand how “professional gambler” is an actual profession and as such, banks would be used to multiple deposits, withdrawals etc. in varying amounts and timing.
Continue reading Dealing with MoneyIf someone were attempting to describe my “system” of winning at video poker, a reasonable 20-second summary would be:
In my classes, I often get out-of-town students. Whether I am teaching Quick Quads, Ultimate X, Deuces Wild, or whatever, there are often students who decided long ago that they are going to take at least one Bob Dancer class — and this is the week they’re in Vegas.
Continue reading I’ve Heard This One BeforeThe Las Vegas Advisor has a Question of the Day. These are questions sent in by readers where a bite-sized answer is sufficient. Sometimes when it’s about video poker, the LVA passes it on to me. They recently sent me a question which is printed below. While the answer isn’t difficult, there are a lot of things to discuss — depending on how advanced the reader is. Since it was more blog-length rather than QOD-length, I decided to answer the question here.
It begins with the question:
I go to my local riverboat casino and play bonus poker video poker. I do not play professional so I would have to pay any W2G that I would get. My question is if I include a 30% tax on the royal flush payout at the dollar machine ($4,000 royal), am I better off playing a 99.17% pay dollar machine or a 96.87% quarter machine where the royals will not be taxed. I would think you need to take the percent of the 99.17% that is the royal payout and multiply that by .7 and add it back in to see if it is better than the 96.87%. Is that correct and what is the percent of the 99.17% that is the royal payout?
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Bonus Poker payouts, the 99.17% version pays 40 for the full house and the 96.87% version pays 30 for the full house. The games are otherwise identical and the correct strategies for both games are essentially identical.
Most video poker software products will tell you that you’ll get a royal flush on Bonus Poker every 40,233 hands. To make this simpler to work with, I’m going to assume this number is exactly 40,000. It will not affect the conclusion.
Playing for dollars, every 40,000 hands (which means $200,000 coin-in) you have to pay $1,200 in taxes (which is 30% of $4,000) which I can treat differently because I file as a professional. If you divide $1,200 by $200,000, you come up with 0.6%. This makes the post-tax 8/5 Bonus Poker worth 98.57%, which is quite a bit higher than 96.87%.
So, obviously, since 98.57% is better than 96.87%, that proves playing for dollars and paying the taxes is the better play. Except there are more things to consider.
First of all, are you playing the same number of hands or the same amount in dollars? It takes the same amount of time to play $50,000 at quarters as it does to play $200,000 at dollars. Your expected loss at dollars is 0.0143 * $200,000 (which equals $2,860) while playing $50,000 at quarters will cost you 0.0313 * $50,000 (which equals $1,565).
Looked at this way, playing quarters is the “better” (meaning “less bad”) play.
(Is it impossibly rude to suggest that staying out of that casino is better than either of these plays?)
We haven’t discussed the slot club. Do you get money in the mail? Do you earn free play from your points? It’s possible that dollars could still be the cheaper play. Without discussing the slot club benefits, it’s impossible to make a final determination.
Another possibility is to play quarter single coins! Playing one quarter at a time is only worth 95.6329%, but in same time it takes you to play $200,000 at dollars or $50,000 at max-coin quarters, you’re only risking $10,000 at single-line quarters. That will make your expected loss $437, which is considerably “less bad” than either of the previous two expected losses.
Playing single coin, however, on those rare occasions you hit the royal flush, you’ll collect a lousy $62.50 instead of the $1,000 you’d get from a max-coin quarter royal, or $250 instead of the $2,800 you’d get from the after-tax max-coin dollar royal. If somebody sees what you did, they’ll tell you what an idiot you are for not betting max-coin and collecting the full royal. Never mind that your move makes financial sense. For some people, they’ll feel so bad at missing out on the max-coin royal that they are in misery, even though they just hit a royal flush.
I tell you, playing single coin isn’t for the weak at heart!
So, looking at these options, how would I boil it down to one choice? That is, what would I do were I to face these exact circumstances?
My answer is simple. I wouldn’t play at all. If the slot club doesn’t pay enough to make up for the shortfalls we’ve listed here, I’m not even frequenting this casino. Going into a casino knowing I can’t be a long-term winner is against my religion.
Author’s note: The basic premise of this QOD and the answer is seriously flawed, but I chose to answer it as given anyway. All gambling revenue is legally taxable — whether you get a W2G or not. The idea that you don’t owe taxes unless individual jackpots are $1,200 or higher is completely incorrect. If any of this is foreign to you, listen to the August 29 Gambling with an Edge podcast where Richard Munchkin and I interview tax expert Russell Fox.
In the 1970s, I was a backgammon player in Los Angeles. Decent enough player, but not great.
One of the semi-regular players at the Cavendish West was a guy named Steve. Steve was a so-so intermediate player — but he cheated. After a while, word got out and he couldn’t get into a game because his reputation preceded him.
I didn’t mind him as a person, although I would never gamble with him nor ever enter into a deal with him where he had a chance to screw me. Our respective girl friends liked each other and sometimes we went out as a foursome. I always insisted on him giving me $100 before we went out to cover his half of the meal. I would return any amount left over. No $100 beforehand meant no double date.
In January 1977, we visited a restaurant that I liked and Steve had never visited. It was a week before the Oakland Raiders versus Minnesota Vikings Superbowl XI. Since the game was being held in nearby Pasadena, there was a lot of local interest and the owner/cook, Jack, had the restaurant decorated in silver and black — signifying he liked the Oakland Raiders in that game.
Steve saw an opportunity. He was quite a charming guy — until it became time to pay up. He chatted up Jack and before too long they made a bet for “double or nothing for the next meal Steve ate” based on the results of the upcoming game.
Although the bet sounded fair, knowing Steve, it clearly wasn’t. If the Vikings won, Steve would bring three guests and order up lobster tails all around with several bottles of expensive wine. If the Raiders won (which actually turned out to be the case), Steve would disappear. He would never be around to pay off the bet.
By accepting the bet, Jack put himself into a position where he couldn’t win, but he could lose big-time.
My personal philosophy on bets between two other people is to stay out of it unless a family member was taking the worst of it. Whatever the two of them arranged was fine. Even if I thought one of them was taking the worst of it, I kept my mouth shut.
And that’s what I did here — with great misgivings.
While I didn’t know Jack well, I had been there for dinner three or four times and we greeted each other by first names. He didn’t know Steve was a sleazeball, but I did. Did he have a reasonable expectation that I wouldn’t bring someone dishonorable into his restaurant? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t feel right to me.
Since the Raiders ended up winning, that was clearly the “least bad” result for Jack. He wasn’t going to get paid off by Steve, but his team won, and he wasn’t going to be out anything.
Even so, I didn’t feel comfortable going back to that restaurant again. I didn’t want to answer questions about “my friend Steve and when was he coming by to pay up.” So, I guess Jack did lose one occasional customer and one occasional friend.
What would you have done? Would you have spoken up at the time? And if so, would it have been in front of both of them or just privately with Jack? Keep in mind that the fact that the Raiders ended up winning is irrelevant to whether I should have spoken up at the time of the bet. When it was time to “do something or not,” the game had not yet been played.
Author’s Note: I recently broke my rule about not getting involved if a family member of mine was taking the worst of it. There was a Caesars Seven Stars party and I got tickets for Bonnie, her sister, and her daughter. I was off at an Improv workshop. The three ladies would have a good time together. Bonnie had met several of my gambling friends that she liked and many of them would probably be there.
During the evening, Bonnie ran into two of these friends, “Tim” and “Alice.” Tim talked Bonnie into a $3 bet on an upcoming football game. Bonnie came back and told me about her bet with Tim, but she had no idea what team she bet on. She couldn’t tell me which teams were playing, let alone who was favored. Tim sent an amusing email contract using over-the-top legalese documenting the bet. I accepted on Bonnie’s behalf and promised to hold her feet to the fire should she lose.
Turns out that Bonnie’s team was a 1½-point underdog and she was making the bet straight up. While she’s definitely a family member taking the worst of it, I kept quiet. For $3 at a time, getting the wrong side isn’t so terrible.
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.
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.
I was recently reading Colin Jones’ new book, The 21st Century Card Counter, preparing to interview him for the GWAE podcast. Colin has been on the show a number of times and runs the Blackjack Apprentice Group which teaches players how to win at blackjack.
When referring to while he was running a blackjack team, he wrote: “We settled on having our players test out one another every month and requiring that management test them out every three months. What we discovered is that it’s easy to let your game slide over time.”
Bingo! If I ran a video poker team (probably never going to happen!), that sounds like a policy I’d implement.
I suspect very few video poker players test themselves very often. Maybe at the beginning when they first are starting out, but how about later? If you’ve been playing NSU (for example) for two years, and you haven’t tested yourself recently, you’re probably making quite a few errors.
Video poker is arguably more difficult than blackjack. Learning one video poker variation (say, Jacks or Better) is certainly easier than counting cards proficiently, but learning Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, Super Double Bonus, Deuces Wild, Super Bonus Deuces Wild, etc., etc. is more difficult.
There are players who only play one game, of course. If that works for them, fine. But if you play at several casinos, and you want to play the best game at each, you’re going to have to learn several games. Sometimes that includes the same game with different pay schedules.
In Blackjack, there are adjustments when you switch from a game where the dealer hits soft 17 to a game where he doesn’t, but those adjustments are few. In video poker, when you switch from Double Bonus to Double Bonus Deuces Wild, there’s a huge difference in the way the games are played.
So, assume you’ve been playing Double Bonus almost exclusively for several months, and for whatever reason, that game dries up and now you’re looking at Double Bonus Deuces Wild. Assume you played the latter game reasonably correctly a year ago, but not since. How do you get yourself ready?
This might not work for everybody, but this is the way I would handle such a situation (and variations of this situation have occurred more than a thousand times over my career).
First, I consult my strategy sheet. Every advanced strategy I’ve ever created is in a computer folder. I find the right one and go over it line by line.
Second, I put the game into WinPoker and use the “Hard Hands” feature, where I have it deal all hands when the first and second plays are closer than 2¢. And then 1¢. And then smaller than that.
I set WinPoker to “show” rather than “warn.” Where the W indicates a deuce, on a hand like W A♠ 3♠ K♥ 8♥, I don’t need practice pressing the buttons. I just need to know whether the correct answer is the deuce by itself, the deuce and the ace, or perhaps something else. So, I call out (sometimes out loud, sometimes silently) what I believe is the correct answer (the deuce by itself in this case) and hit the button to see if I’m correct. If not, I look up why not. If my strategy doesn’t differentiate this case from W A♠ 4♠ K♥ 8♥, where the correct play is W A♠, I either adjust my strategy or make a determination that this is too petty to worry about.
After I do this, I switch to Video Poker for Winners and test myself on both the Advanced level and the Intermediate level, as they deal according to different criteria. Sometimes this will identify hands I was misplaying where the difference between the best and second-best play was too large to be found by using the WinPoker Hard Hands technique.
If it’s a game where there is a Dancer/Daily Winner’s Guide, I take the tests found there. I helped write those about 20 years ago, but my memory is imperfect.
Sometimes I go to the Wizard of Odds video poker strategy calculator and look at the exceptions to the basic strategy. That program uses a very different notation than what I am used to but forcing my brain to look at this from both his notation and mine gets my head “into the game.”
At this stage in my career, this takes me maybe an hour or two to accomplish. When I was less experienced, it took me much longer — because sometimes it was the first time I played a game and I needed to create an advanced strategy using various tools.
After I’ve done these things, it is now time to go into the casino. And if I must change games again in the near future, I do this all again. There are a few games, like 9/6 Jacks or Better, that I have down pat because 1) I’ve been playing it professionally for 25 years, 2) it’s the easiest game to play perfectly, and 3) I’ve taught a class in it more than 100 times.
There are other games, like NSU Deuces Wild, for which I go through this procedure about once a year. Simply put, even though I’ve been playing it for 20 years and have gone through this exercise dozens of times, it’s a much more difficult game than Jacks or Better. Since it’s easier to make mistakes, I review it more often. It’s not like I’ll ever forget it below the 99.9% accuracy level, but I prefer to know the game better than that.
How long it takes you to go through this process depends on you. How much experience do you have? How willing are you to ignore minor errors? How important is winning to you? How good is your memory? And a whole bunch of other things.
I strongly believe, however, that if you don’t do some version of this regimen on a regular basis, you’re playing at a lesser level than you think you are.
There are a number of aspects to being a successful video poker player. Let’s list
the major ones:
1. Know how to play the game(s) competently.
2. Play the game(s) without making unnecessary errors. What I mean is that you’re
able to concentrate and translate what you know into how you play.
3. Obtain and keep the necessary bankroll to survive the swings.
4. Be able to evaluate slot clubs and promotions.
5. Have the discipline to avoid games where you do not have the edge.
6. Have the emotional fortitude to put up with the swings.
7. Be willing to put in the necessary hours for this to work. Video poker is a grind-it-
out affair.
8. Be able to find additional places to play when one or more of your current plays
disappear. This “disappearance” can be that you lost your welcome, the game
was removed, the slot club or promotion which made it a good game is no longer
in effect, along with several other possibilities. If this hasn’t happened to you,
you’re either not very successful or you’re very new at the game.
Okay. If you follow these guidelines, you’ll succeed long term. Most likely. I can’t
guarantee that. It is possible to do everything right and run bad over an extended period
of time. But for most people, the above guidelines work.
So, which of these seven guidelines is most important? In my opinion, keeping
yourself in the money is most important.
Part of this is knowing about bankroll requirements for given plays and avoiding
those that could bankrupt you. “Getting lucky at the right time” can be a part of getting a
bankroll, I suppose, but if you don’t have money management skills, it’s difficult to hang
on to a bankroll.
Over the years, I’ve received a number of emails saying essentially, “I’d like you to
bankroll me. If you believe in what you preach, this should be an easy decision for you.”
And it is an easy decision for me. The answer is always “No” unless I know the
person really well and have a basis for believing in him/her. A stranger who solicits
money via email? They have no more chance for me to send them money than that
prince in Nigeria.
Even those who assure me, “I’ve succeeded at virtually everything I’ve done.
Surely, I’ll succeed in this too. I just need a bankroll to start with.” If they’ve succeeded
at everything, why don’t they have a bankroll? Obtaining money isn’t that difficult for
successful people. It’s “simply” a matter of spending less than you make. (There can be
extenuating circumstances, but I’d have to know a person pretty well and believe their
money problems are a thing of the past to be willing to make a bet on them.)
Most people who don’t have a bankroll have financial leaks in their life. If you’re
trying to save a bankroll for gambling, then tobacco, alcohol, recreational drugs, and
other expensive hobbies (Perhaps skiing? Vacations? Jewelry? New cars?) should be
off the table — or at least very limited. If you have your bankroll issues handled and
want to spend your money on whatever you like, knock yourself out.
