I like my life. And my life includes (currently) maybe 40 hours a month playing video poker. In the good old days, there were long periods where I averaged 200+ hours of video poker each month.
That said, while video poker is not unpleasant at all to me, I do not do it because it’s fun. I do not consider it a hobby. I consider it a profession. It’s how I support myself and family.
There are many things I put up with: sore back after long hours, sometimes smoky environments (although I’ve cut out playing at casinos where this is really bad, no matter how high the EV), distance in time and energy to get there, security issues, needing to be present according to “their schedule” rather than mine in order to get the right play, forced interactions with certain people with whom I’d rather not interact, my wife insisting I pick up the latest “casino crap” even though we have absolutely no use for whatever it is, eating at restaurants because they are “free” rather than because we enjoy them, etc.
I put up with these things because, overall, the profession is lucrative and the lifestyle it provides is pleasant. But my idea of “fun” would not include these things.
I call my writing career interesting. I call my radio career fun. I call the “big fish in a small pond” aspect to my life usually enjoyable (although it does make me a target for many). We enjoy cruising. We enjoy dancing at fancy dinner parties. We take advantage of going to shows. Some casino locations (Lake Tahoe, New Orleans, and Cherokee come to mind) are a lot of fun to visit after I’ve done my playing in the casino. At times, we have access to better restaurants than we would frequent if we had to pay retail. These goodies are a direct benefit from playing video poker.
Hosts and other casino employees are trained to say, “It’s not whether you win or lose but rather whether or not you have fun,” and it makes sense for them to be doing this. Most players are not successful at the game and if the casinos can convince players that gambling is fun and losing is all right, then the casinos will prosper more.
Many people buy the slogan in the preceding paragraph, and it actually makes sense that they do. People need to justify to themselves that what they spend their time and money on is “okay.” So, they convince themselves that playing is fun. And if that’s the way it is for you, that’s fine.
When I lived in a location without machines, I moved to Las Vegas. There are some casino locations where there isn’t anything playable if your choice is between playing and winning or not playing. (There are not nearly as many of these locations as people believe. There are MANY ways to win in a casino if you have the skills and do the scouting.) But if I couldn’t find games to beat, I simply wouldn’t go into a casino.
On cruise ships, I “never” visit the casino. (Well, there have been promotions where I got $100 in cash or $125 in slot machine play if I ran it through once, so I took the slot play and ran it through once on 7-5 Bonus or worse. But after I played the minimum to qualify for the bonus, I was out of there.)
I’m in casinos looking for profit, not fun. I see gambling as a means to support myself. I understand the swings, and I certainly don’t win every time (or even every year), but if the overall result over a period of three or four years is negative, I’ll quit. I’ll do something else. It just makes no sense for me to throw good money after bad.
Even though I don’t go to a casino specifically because it’s fun, while I’m there I try to enjoy myself. I joke or chat with friends and casino employees. I look to find humor and pleasantness in the things I’m doing — whether it is in the casino or not.
Good article Bob. I don’t go to casinos to seek what I would call fun times either. The entertainment, alcoholic beverages, shows, concerts, dining restaurants and clubs are nice but it’s not what I’m there for. I only go on the mindset that I’m going to win other peoples money.
Another burden of going to the casino is driving several hours just to get to a casino in my case vs. living in a town that has them available.
I was really hoping that you might address in today’s post the likelihood that the LV shooter was a video poker AP. Obviously, the cruises, the comped suites and all seem eerily familiar to many of us.
The implications of how decades of being a compulsive gambler might have played in his becoming deranged have not been discussed in the media that I have seen to date. But I have wondered about it.
The possibility of huge losses finally causing him to crack with indiscriminate rage is a possibility that I have not seen raised in the endless reporting on the tragic event, but is something that occurred to me as a remote, but not entirely implausible, explanation for his behavior, especially in the absence of any other motive.
But his getting cruises and free rooms does not mean that he was part of the small subset of chronic gamblers who apply Bob’s advantage play techniques with study, precision, and discipline. It just means he was a chronic gambler, maybe a whale, maybe an addict.
According to at least one report, he hadn’t worked for 30 years and yet he was quite wealthy so if he was a professional gambler, he was most likely a winning one. To point to his gambling and he possibly being an AP as a reason for what he did seems very far-fetched. A much more likely reason is having a father who was a serial armed robber and a diagnosed psychopath.
Most of my columns are not “timely.” I did post on vpFREE and addressed the shooting in the first five minutes of this week’s GWAE broadcast which will be posted tomorrow.
Bottom line. I didn’t know the guy. I never heard his name until after he was dead. I have not been keeping up with all of the speculation about whether he was or was not an advantage player. Without having read it, I’m still confident that a significant proportion of the speculation will turn out to be wild-ass guesses and not at all close to the truth.
Where and what type of gambling this guy did to receive two free rooms at that casino should be part of the story. I expect the casino will play down and keep much of this information from the press here in Las Vegas.Negative news on casinos does not happen often in Las Vegas
The casinos are already in damage control mode. They want the shooting to be known as “The Las Vegas Village Shooting” where Las Vegas Village was the actual outdoor venue of the concert. Or the “Harvest Country Music Festival Shooting.” Anything but “The Mandalay Bay Shooting.”
Some of the local politicians like Mayor Caroline Goodman have sounded like Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority ads with their hyping Vegas as a great place for a vacation after expressing their grief.
The fun part of gambling is winning a big jackpot or big drawing prize, even if the casinos try to make you feel guilty or even immoral or even attempt to illegally detain you just for getting lucky. The fact that casinos have to offer drawings to attract play shows you that their machines are too tight or just not competitive with modern entertainment choices. If the casinos decide they no longer want to be in the casino business but instead want to compete with Orlando style resorts, they will have to make some major changes.
VP is one of my hobbies (used to be BJ). Hobbies should be fun. Winning is more fun than losing. Thanks to Mr. Dancers software (and lasvegasadvisor) I have more fun than I would otherwise.
How could that guy win playing VP at Mandalay Bay? With 99.58% being the best play, he would have needed some great promotions. I think he did not make his fortune at VP.
Depends how much “show up money” he was getting. Casinos pay top players just to show up, hence “show up money”. It probably didn’t hurt that his girlfriend was a host at Reno Atlantis.
As a side note, and I could be wrong here, but I believe Bob made his millions playing a 99%+ game at MGM. He got lucky, it happens. I think his position is that it was his skill that enabled him to get lucky, could be, hard to say.
You are missing a critical factor. If we didn’t think the game was worth considerably more than 100%, we would not have been playing
Yes the game itself paid 99.54%
The slot club paid something like .6%
[exact numbers may be found in ‘Million Dollar Video Poker’. It was a long time ago]
About .2% went towards year end rewards — we got 6 automobiles, among other things
We earned American Airline miles for every point earned
There was a 3% class comp rate — and hotel rooms and show tickets could be sold
Monthly events where $100,000 – $250,000 were given away to invited guests
For a couple of months, some machines were awarding points at the slot machine rate rather than the video poker rare
These things added up. If you think they added up to less than 100% you are very much mistaken
Our expected win was for several hundred thousand dollars. We got lucky and did much better than that. But it was the casino’s inadvertent generosity that was the real reason we played so much
Video poker is not fun. You play and play and play and play until finally, MAYBE, the ^&^$% royal shows up–or doesn’t. You either win one-half of one percent of your action or get crushed like a grape. All the while, you’re inhaling pigarette smoke and trying to ignore loud music interspersed with yelled announcements about the latest promotion or drawing. You sit for hours and hours, until your back goes out or you develop thrombosis. Then you stagger off to the coffee shop for an unhealthy meal that you would never have gone out of your way for, but it’s “free.”
It’s not even really a living. if you have a big enough bankroll that you can play at stakes where that 0.1% advantage actually amounts to something, it’s not really any different from sticking that money in a bank CD. In other words, you aren’t really making the money; the MONEY is making the money. You’re just directing it. A boring, repetitive process at best.
I’m not sure if some of you are saying this guy was not an AP in order to feel better about yourselves…but it is pretty clear at this point that this guy was an AP.
He is us.
When the narrative first broke that his brother claimed he gambled “$100 a hand at poker and sent pictures of jackpots” I started to suspect we were dealing with an AP here. As details emerged about the extensive planning and preparation he went through to pull this off I knew he was an AP. Think about it, this guy got off a few thousand more bullets than any other lone wolf mass shooter has ever before him. He wanted to raise the bar and set the mark for killing by a mass shooter. In fact, I think he probably died thinking he had killed hundreds maybe thousands. Don’t confuse this for being respect or praise for his actions. This guy was pure evil.
The clinical diagnosis that we commonly refer to as being a sociopath is Antisocial Personality Disorder and it occurs in roughly 3.8% of Americans from my research. However, in the world of Advantage Gambling I’d say it is 10-20x more prevalent. There is a natural progression towards sociopathic behavior that comes from making money in a casino environment. You’re making your money by beating inefficiencies in the casino…who in turn is making their revenue from the stupidity of the gambling masses. You begin to get a sense of superiority above your fellow casino patrons. You begin to lose empathy. You employ deception to get what you want. You become immune to taking risks. You become emotionally disconnected from the world around you. All of these are personality traits of sociopathic behavior.
I’m not sure the public is ever going to fully understand what could cause someone to do this. They will be quick to accept the narrative that this guy was a degenerate gambler who lost all his money and decided to extract revenge on Las Vegas. However, gambling addiction leads you to hate inward, not outward. Someone in their 60’s is a candidate for suicide, not mass murder. Hopefully the FBI decides to try to get inside the mind of an AP to understand how this guy could develop the personality disorder to an extreme that it would result in this. When you’re an AP, you’re an AP at every aspect of your life. Maybe seeing what it’s like to be on the extreme edge of this personality spectrum will be enough to help some AP’s take a step back and gain some serious introspection.
He is us….and it’s making me ill.
Jeez, That was depressing.
Gambling can certainly be very addictive, there is probably a gambling crisis hiding behind the acknowledged opioid crisis. Anthony Curtis has said that video poker is the crack cocaine of gambling, but I think it’s far worse than that, more like the carfentanyl of gambling, with the casino industry increasingly targeting the most vulnerable. Fortunately, there is help available if you think gambling has taken over your life, starting with: gamblersanonymous.org
Bob Dancer,
Do you actually win while playing video poker at Cherokee?
I’ve had one trip to Harrahs Cherokee ever, about 5 years ago. They sent a free play and airfare offer out of the blue that I couldn’t refuse — and didn’t
I played $5 NSU and lost a bit, which is not an unusual result for a short play.
We enjoyed the Smoky Mountains and would eagerly go back if it were easier for us to get to.
Thanks for your reply. Because of my work, I traveled all over the U.S. and went to many casinos. My favorite was Barona. I now live in NC, and Cherokee is the closest. Used to do great there; have walked out with over $80,000. But, the last few years, the video poker machines have not been loose!