I’ve watched a lot of sports on television through the years. Some of the “common sense” you pick up by watching the games and listening to the media is just plain wrong if you try to apply it to gambling. Let me give you some examples.
Let’s say a baseball manager tells a player to sacrifice bunt. (A bunt is a tap of the ball just in front of home plate. When it is done to sacrifice, one or more players are on base and the hope is that these base runners will safely advance to the next base while the player who bunted is usually thrown out at first base.) The player decides to ignore what the manager requested and instead swings away. Let’s say he hits a home run. A home run is a much better result than could have been achieved by bunting. Is this a good thing or bad?
The announcers will tell you this is a good thing. A player is “forgiven” for disobeying the manager’s orders if he hits a home run.
I think this is a bad thing. A manager needs to be able to direct his players. Even though it worked out this particular time, overall it’s no good. If the player regularly ignores the manager, often instead of a home run there will be a strikeout and one of the base runners will be thrown out as well. If players refuse to obey orders, this handcuffs the manager and puts the team at a competitive disadvantage.
In baseball, the manager can’t really punish the player who does this. The public can’t understand how a player is punished immediately after hitting a home run. Fans care about the score today. They forget the price that is paid by the team that doesn’t obey its manager. A player who disobeys and then strikes out into a double play may be punished. But not a player who hits a home run.
In video poker this is like connecting on a royal flush while playing 9/5 Double Double Bonus. There is no intelligent reason to play such a lousy game. Hitting a royal flush does not mean the player was smart to play this game. Over time that machine will eat up his bankroll. Just because a royal flush was hit today doesn’t come close to making up for all the losses that are sustained over time playing such a lousy game.
And yet if you go on vpFREE or other forum, you’ll see players proudly posting pictures of good results on a machine with bad pay tables. Anyone who berates them for being too ignorant to play good machines is punished. The Administrator tries to keep a friendly forum and gambling intelligence isn’t a pre-requisite for posting there.
A second area of “common sports sense” is that in basketball when one team goes on a 10-0 run, the other team always calls a time out. This probably is a sensible thing in basketball. The time out allows the players to regroup and focus on the next play in particular. The parallel in video poker is that if things are going badly you change machines. This is not the same thing at all, but it “feels” right to many players because they’ve seen the smartest basketball coaches do the “same thing.”
You do not need to make adjustments to your play of NSU Deuces Wild. There is one correct play to every hand. Just make it. Whether you’ve been collecting on wild royals recently or not should not influence the way you play subsequent hands.
The third area of “common sports sense” is about matchups. It may be that the San Antonio Spurs beat the Los Angeles Clippers something like 21 times in a row (an actual streak that ended earlier this year). This happened because the Spurs had better players or simply because of who guarded whom. These things happen.
But players will use this type of common sense to say things like: I don’t play at Silverton anymore because I never hit a royal flush there. Or: I’ll play Triple Play or Ten Play, but not Five Play. My three biggest losses came on Five Play and I’m not giving the machine a chance for four. That’s nonsense.
Royals are relatively rare. There will be spells where you are over-royaled at a few casinos and under-royaled at others. This is the normal state of affairs. Assuming that eliminating playing at a casino where you have been under-royaled in the past will help your results in the future is simply wishful thinking.
It can be legitimate to not play Five Play because you simply don’t like the way the game plays. But if you like Triple Play and Ten Play, there’s no reason not to like Five Play. If the game is good (considering casino, pay table, denomination, slot club, and promotions) there’s no reason to expect your results in the future won’t be more typical than they have been in the past.
I will continue to be a sports fan. I will continue to have my favorite teams. But I’ll try to separate the type of logic that’s prevalent among sports broadcasters from what I know works in a casino.