I’ll begin this article by discussing live poker. Some of what I’m going to tell you is hearsay. I’m not a strong player at poker — but I believe what I am saying is true. When we discuss video poker later in this article, I’m on more solid ground.
Poker is a game where many good players go broke — often more than once. (Bad players certainly go broke too. It can be difficult for a player to know if he’s a good player running bad or just plain not good enough.) Poker is a game where it’s difficult to accurately gauge the strength of your game and that of your opponents — either of which can fluctuate depending on who is ahead or behind, who is tired, how much alcohol has been consumed, etc. The swings (both positive and negative) can be large with respect to your expected hourly win rate. Plus, every gambling game attracts a certain number of degenerates, many of whom fail to properly care for their bankroll.
Poker is also a game where the skill level of the players varies greatly with the stakes played. The players who play in a $1/$2 game are typically not as good as those who play in a $5/$10 game who in turn are not as good as those who play in a $20/$40 game.
Players who are good enough to regularly beat a $20/$40 game (meaning their play is sufficiently better than the average player in that game allowing them to more than make up for the casino rake) can typically crush a $1/$2 game. They are just that much better. If they go broke at the higher stakes, players often step down a level or two in order to build up their bankroll again.
It may not always be pleasant to go down in stakes. Ego is involved for many players and to be seen in a mere $1/$2 game can be humiliating if you’re used to playing with the better players in the higher stakes games. Still, if you’re broke and you can’t convince anyone to back you in the bigger game, you do what you have to do and play at the lower levels. If you can. Some players used to higher stakes feel that playing for lower stakes is like playing for “play money” — and they can’t concentrate well enough to succeed.
Although the caliber of players is different, the rules of the games at the $1/$2 level are the same as those at the $1,000/$2,000 level.
In video poker, it’s a different dynamic. You still have players going broke, of course, but it’s wrong to assume that a player who is usually successful at a $5 game can crush a 25 cent game. One reason is that these players don’t play the same games. Being really good at Jacks or Better, for example, doesn’t automatically make you a good player at Deuces Wild. Each game, and each pay schedule, must be learned separately.
If you know one or two games well, it’s not that hard to pick up others. But it’s not a gimmee either. Every game has its own idiosyncrasies.
The most successful players at high stakes games use hosts and know how to work the comp system. They can sometimes negotiate front money just to show up and play. They get travel money reimbursement. Often they receive gifts of various sorts which can later be sold on eBay.
There is more than one book out there explaining how being great at comp hustling makes up for being an okay-but-not-great player. But comp hustling for the $5 player is an entirely different ball game than comp hustling for the quarter player. Hosts and comps just aren’t that relevant for quarter players. Casinos give these players a little bit, but on average, casinos make less off of quarter players so they do not reward them as generously.
If you’re going to cut back from good $5 games to good 25 cent games, you’re often going to have to change casinos. Some casinos have good low-level game. Some games have good higher stakes games. It is not usually the case that one casino is looser in all games than other casinos.
Changing casinos means you start all over again learning the system and moving up in tier levels. Knowing the Caesars system doesn’t give you much of a head start at learning the Boyd system. Even dollar players learn to feel entitled standing in the shorter VIP lines. At a new casino, you’re not a VIP. Even if you earn that free buffet, you’re going to have to stand in line for an hour in order to redeem it.
Moving down in gambling stakes may require you to get to know a new group of gambling friends. Such friends can be useful in sharing with you where the best opportunities are. But the $5 players often do not know where the best quarter games are.
On the flip side of the coin, video poker is a MUCH easier game at which to succeed than is live poker. In video poker you’re competing against a fixed target—software is available to tell you how to play each hand exactly and how much each game is worth. Perhaps because live poker is a more difficult game, successful poker players tend to be much smarter on average than successful players at video poker. (For example, you hear of players dropping out of Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc., to take up live poker. I don’t know of students bright enough to get into schools like these who drop out to play video poker. At the same time, poker players get profiled in poker magazines and so you learn about their backgrounds. Relatively few video poker players get profiled in this way.)
And the stakes at video poker are more predictable than they are in No Limit poker games — where you could play several pots of from, say, $10 to $30, and then all of a sudden be in one for $1,000.
Conversely, the payouts in video poker are often large multiples of the maximum bet — where an 800-for-1 royal flush can happen at any time. In live poker, usually the amount you can win in a hand is only a few times larger than what you can bet. (You might “triple up” if you go all in and two others call your bet).
The bottom line is that it’s probably easier to avoid going broke at video poker than it is at live poker. But it still happens. In both games, going broke is tougher at age 60 than it is at 25 because you have less opportunity to “make it back.” So whatever the video poker software tells you that you need for a bankroll, if you’re a senior citizen, you probably need more than that.
In both games, senior citizens are rightfully more concerned with preserving whatever bankroll they have, while a young player might rightfully be more concerned with building her bankroll for bigger and better things down the road.