Video poker is the only game at which I gamble. Although I moved to Vegas more than twenty years ago to count cards at blackjack and used to play both bridge and backgammon for money, today it’s video poker exclusively for me. But I still read publications devoted to other games. Occasionally I’ll read something by someone writing about another game that will give me insight into how I can improve my video poker play. Poker magazines, especially the free ones given out in poker rooms, are part of my library.
Not too long ago I was reading one of these poker magazines and saw an article about money management. The author shared his “secret:” If you get ahead, put a certain number of chips to the side as your profit. You will go home a winner if you have the discipline to never dip into those “profit” chips. While this is a true enough statement if you are only going to gamble once during your lifetime, it is actually harmful advice if you plan to gamble regularly.
Let’s change the game to video poker and see why it is so harmful. Let’s assume you started with $100 and built it up to $300 and made the “money management decision” that if it ever got down to $200 again you would quit and go home with $100 profit. What could possibly be harmful about that?
What is harmful is that you are not considering the conditions under which you are playing. Is this a game where you are the favorite? (If not, why are you playing anyway?) Is there a special promotion going on (i.e. double points or some special award for certain 4-of-a-kinds)? Are you feeling alert? Are you enjoying yourself? Is this is a better-than-average play for you?
These are all important considerations. Tonight’s score is just one small data point on your year-long result log. And this log will show many sessions where you win and many where you lose. The best technique to have more and bigger winning sessions is to play more when you have the biggest advantage. So if double points last for three more hours and you are feeling great, then this is a probably a good situation for you to continue playing. But if your score drops down to $200 and your money management rule says to stop, then your money management rule is costing you money. Or if double points end, you should probably quit even though you have won big over the last half hour. Deciding about whether to play based on game conditions is important. Making this decision based on what has happened since you last went to bed is not.
Many people care a lot about whether they are up or down for the day. I don’t. I don’t think today’s score matters much at all. My score for the last year? Yes, that matters a lot. If that’s not positive I am doing something very wrong. But my score over the last two hours? Totally irrelevant. So any sort of shenanigans to play more or less just because you are a little up or down on the day is useless and probably counter-productive.
I recently re-read another money management rule that makes a lot of sense for most players. Simplistic, to be sure, but useful for many of us. It was from Michael Shackleford, the self-proclaimed Wizard of Odds (www.wizardofodds.com). Shackleford’s rule is to stop playing when it isn’t fun anymore. Period. That’s his whole rule. For recreational players, this makes a lot of sense. For professional players, whether you are having fun or not isn’t a high priority — although even professional players tend to play better when they are enjoying themselves.
If I were no longer enjoying what I do, I’d retire. I’m certainly old enough. If I could no longer come out ahead at the end of most years, I’d retire. Probably both conditions will happen at about the same time. If I can’t win anymore, it won’t be nearly so much fun, and I will be gone!
My radio show co-host, Richard Munchkin, uses the amount he’s ahead as a stopping point all the time. And for him that makes sense! He’s playing table games (usually with a much bigger advantage than we find at video poker) and he has to decide how much the casino will let him win before they do something about the game or do something about his welcome. In that situation, it makes a lot of sense to have a rule for a particular casino that says something like, “When I get ahead $20,000, I’ll quit for the day.” At other casinos, his rule will be different.
For video poker the dynamics are different. Generally speaking we lose, lose, lose until we hit a royal flush (or perhaps four aces or deuces). The “all at once a big score” feature doesn’t lend itself to incremental stopping points. Whether we are up or down $500 (or any other figure) tells us nothing about whether we will hit a royal flush later in the day.