I was playing at a Dotty’s, a local chain of small casinos. The best game for me is 9/6 Jacks or Better. Without going through all of the slot club benefits and promotions, the one that is most relevant to today’s story is the “Big Bonus.”
In this promotion, all W2-Gs become drawing entries, and 10% of these entries get a 10% cash bonus. That is, if a $5,000 W2-G is drawn, the player who hit it will get a $500 reward if he collects it within a month.
Although the inventory of each Dotty’s varies, the most convenient Dotty’s for me has the game for $2, where you can bet anywhere from five to fifty coins and still get the full 99.54% return on the game. Since I want to get W2-Gs, I need to play for at least 24 coins ($48) per hand, yielding $1,200 for every quad, but I usually play for 25 coins ($50), yielding $1,250. I record the game on my gambling log as a $10 game.
The nature of 9/6 Jacks or Better is that you tend to lose during a session unless you hit a royal flush.
Another promotion in effect at Dotty’s is the machine bonuses. For the stakes I play, these come around every five to ten minutes. The first five are always, in order, $1, $1, $1, $5, $2 — which are negligible amounts when you’re playing $50 per hand. These bonuses then increase to $10, $20 or $25 each time if you continue to play for more than an hour. These amounts are not so negligible. Suffice it to say, I usually play for at least a few hours when I come.
Most of the players in the place are playing for far smaller stakes than I am and very rarely, if ever, receive a $1,200-or-higher jackpot. Since I get them regularly, some players assume I’m killing the game, whereas in fact I’m usually losing.
On this particular night, after I collected my fifth or sixth W2-G (and I was behind perhaps $2,000 after being paid), a lady approached me and asked if she could invest with me. She and her husband were homeless and playing keno hoping to strike it rich. Since I was obviously doing well, she wanted to pay me $200 for a share of my next jackpot.
I wanted no part of this particular arrangement. I told her that if they were indeed homeless, the last place they should be is in a casino, and the odds on the keno game they were playing were prohibitively in the house’s favor. I told her I was losing this night (I’m not sure she believed me) and many of the benefits I receive were deferred. I’m sure she understood I was telling her “No,” but I don’t believe she understood what I was talking about when I said “deferred benefits.”
I was earning slot club points (which were cashed and mailed to me once a month), the Big Bonus drawing wouldn’t happen until next Wednesday, and the machine bonuses are paid in slot club points. The $40,000 royal flush was unlikely to be hit on this particular night. I had the bankroll to wait for it — but this lady didn’t.
I wanted to give her $20 or so to “go away,” but several other players were watching the exchange. If I started paying all players with a sob story, I would have been deluged with these stories. There are few winners at Dotty’s and the clientele tends to be less affluent than those players who play in the larger casinos. Paying players playing losing games and are always broke is a bottomless pit.
The lady and her husband went away and that was the end of this particular incident. The aftertaste of it remains with me, though. I’ve frequently been asked for money in casinos. I usually politely say “No,” and continue with what I am doing.
I know that most players lose in casinos, and many can’t afford their habit. And the ones I see don’t include the spouses and kids at home. Yes, I’ve found a way to beat the casinos, but coming face to face with the ones who can’t, especially during the holidays, is a sobering experience.
Since I’ve been doing this for decades, I’m somewhat immune to these feelings. But not totally immune.
Great story, Bob. It is hard sometimes to be cold, as empathy toward a fellow human being is a part of people’s behavior. You have to look at the situation & pick & choose.
As a young man, I was aware of the possible consequences of uninformed wagering. Occasionally I’d be slapped in the face by it in a way that was both heart-wrenching and frightening. I distinctly remember an occasion at the venerable Stardust when the young man sitting in the sportsbook next to me, who had been loudly rooting for this and that throughout a Saturday afternoon, finally started begging me for “just $10 to play a parlay card.” He had sure winners for tomorrow, he said, and let me know the Raiders were one of them.
What struck me was he was visibly shaking, so he had either lost much more that Saturday than he could afford, or he had a severe issue with meth or something similar (or both). He went from asking for $10 to shaking and wailing and begging. While I had seen gambling breakdowns before, I hadn’t seen such a public, visceral lesson in the dangers and consequences of losing.
The man was literally begging for $10 to play a parlay card. That brief snapshot has stayed with me all these many years.
I’ve come up with a half-way efficient kind of response for most situations of homeless people (or maybe in some instances NOT homeless people) asking me for money. I tell them that I have a limited amount of money that I can afford to give to other people, while there are millions of needy people around, and I’ve already chosen the people or charity whom I will help financially. I usually try to stay away from the discussion about how I don’t know whether they really are needy, versus just wanting money for something that I don’t want to fund. But in those minority instances in which I DO give money to a total stranger, I usually ask them to swear that they will not spend it on drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol, but only on food and non-alcoholic beverages. They usually don’t mind promising that, and I have a feeling that more than half of them do keep the promise.
I came across a paytable that I have a question about. It’s a 3 coin DB with a progressive royal, SF, and aces. The royal was at $1,121.50. That has to be a pretty positive game. Is there somewhere I can find information on it. It’s 9/6 DB.
Based on that much info, NOT positive
I was thinking only paying .75 for a royal over 1k might be a good deal?
Very interesting story on many levels Bob. Thank you for sharing this.
Chris — you’re right — but there’s a lot of info I left out. There are approximately a half percent worth of benefits that I didn’t outline in this article. I’ve discussed some of them in other articles about Dotty’s. I’m convinced the game is positive
Bob
I, for one, enjoy it when you respond to the comments in your column.
But I believe Chris was responding to Renee’s comment about the paytable she found not your excursion to Dotty’s.
If I’m wrong, no harm, no foul.
I was thinking only paying .75 for a royal over 1k might be a good deal?