Tag: blackjack

Posted on by — 2 Comments

How Often Do You Test Yourself?

I was recently reading Colin Jones’ new book, The 21st Century Card Counter, preparing to interview him for the GWAE podcast. Colin has been on the show a number of times and runs the Blackjack Apprentice Group which teaches players how to win at blackjack.

When referring to while he was running a blackjack team, he wrote: “We settled on having our players test out one another every month and requiring that management test them out every three months. What we discovered is that it’s easy to let your game slide over time.”

Bingo! If I ran a video poker team (probably never going to happen!), that sounds like a policy I’d implement. 

I suspect very few video poker players test themselves very often. Maybe at the beginning when they first are starting out, but how about later? If you’ve been playing NSU (for example) for two years, and you haven’t tested yourself recently, you’re probably making quite a few errors. 

Video poker is arguably more difficult than blackjack. Learning one video poker variation (say, Jacks or Better) is certainly easier than counting cards proficiently, but learning Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, Super Double Bonus, Deuces Wild, Super Bonus Deuces Wild, etc., etc. is more difficult. 

There are players who only play one game, of course. If that works for them, fine. But if you play at several casinos, and you want to play the best game at each, you’re going to have to learn several games. Sometimes that includes the same game with different pay schedules.

In Blackjack, there are adjustments when you switch from a game where the dealer hits soft 17 to a game where he doesn’t, but those adjustments are few. In video poker, when you switch from Double Bonus to Double Bonus Deuces Wild, there’s a huge difference in the way the games are played. 

So, assume you’ve been playing Double Bonus almost exclusively for several months, and for whatever reason, that game dries up and now you’re looking at Double Bonus Deuces Wild. Assume you played the latter game reasonably correctly a year ago, but not since. How do you get yourself ready?

This might not work for everybody, but this is the way I would handle such a situation (and variations of this situation have occurred more than a thousand times over my career).

First, I consult my strategy sheet. Every advanced strategy I’ve ever created is in a computer folder. I find the right one and go over it line by line.

Second, I put the game into WinPoker and use the “Hard Hands” feature, where I have it deal all hands when the first and second plays are closer than 2¢. And then 1¢. And then smaller than that. 

I set WinPoker to “show” rather than “warn.” Where the W indicates a deuce, on a hand like W A♠ 3♠ K♥ 8♥, I don’t need practice pressing the buttons. I just need to know whether the correct answer is the deuce by itself, the deuce and the ace, or perhaps something else. So, I call out (sometimes out loud, sometimes silently) what I believe is the correct answer (the deuce by itself in this case) and hit the button to see if I’m correct. If not, I look up why not. If my strategy doesn’t differentiate this case from W A♠ 4♠ K♥ 8♥, where the correct play is W A♠, I either adjust my strategy or make a determination that this is too petty to worry about. 

After I do this, I switch to Video Poker for Winners and test myself on both the Advanced level and the Intermediate level, as they deal according to different criteria. Sometimes this will identify hands I was misplaying where the difference between the best and second-best play was too large to be found by using the WinPoker Hard Hands technique.

If it’s a game where there is a Dancer/Daily Winner’s Guide, I take the tests found there. I helped write those about 20 years ago, but my memory is imperfect.

Sometimes I go to the Wizard of Odds video poker strategy calculator and look at the exceptions to the basic strategy. That program uses a very different notation than what I am used to but forcing my brain to look at this from both his notation and mine gets my head “into the game.”

At this stage in my career, this takes me maybe an hour or two to accomplish. When I was less experienced, it took me much longer — because sometimes it was the first time I played a game and I needed to create an advanced strategy using various tools. 

After I’ve done these things, it is now time to go into the casino. And if I must change games again in the near future, I do this all again. There are a few games,  like 9/6 Jacks or Better, that I have down pat because 1) I’ve been playing it professionally for 25 years, 2) it’s the easiest game to play perfectly, and 3) I’ve taught a class in it more than 100 times.  

There are other games, like NSU Deuces Wild, for which I go through this procedure about once a year. Simply put, even though I’ve been playing it for 20 years and have gone through this exercise dozens of times, it’s a much more difficult game than Jacks or Better. Since it’s easier to make mistakes, I review it more often. It’s not like I’ll ever forget it below the 99.9% accuracy level, but I prefer to know the game better than that. 

How long it takes you to go through this process depends on you. How much experience do you have? How willing are you to ignore minor errors? How important is winning to you? How good is your memory? And a whole bunch of other things.

I strongly believe, however, that if you don’t do some version of this regimen on a regular basis, you’re playing at a lesser level than you think you are.

Posted on by — 10 Comments

A Look at the Blackjack Apprenticeship Boot Camp

Colin Jones is a former leader of the “Holy Rollers” blackjack team and has founded blackjackapprenticeship.com as a way of helping players learn to play. He’s been a guest on GWAE a number of times.

Several times a year, Blackjack Apprenticeship runs a two-day “boot camp” in Las Vegas. This is a $3,000 intensive training over two days. Players come out of there with the knowledge to count cards profitably. They are supposed to know perfect basic strategy when they arrive. Most do. Some don’t.

I thought it would be interesting to check this out. I last played blackjack professionally some 26 years ago and I am not interested in becoming a working blackjack professional again. But I was interested in seeing how good players can become in one weekend.

On a personal basis, I used the Uston APC count way back when — a poor choice in retrospect — and they use the HiLo count at the bootcamp. I know the HiLo count in general (2-6 each count as +1, 7-9 count as 0, and tens and aces count as -1), but I’ve never played it and never have memorized the indices for strategy deviations.

Day One of the bootcamp (a Saturday) was about becoming as profitable of a blackjack player as possible. They discussed ways to maximize EV, comps/cover/travel, and bankroll management. I skipped this. I was not interested in becoming proficient myself, but rather seeing how others progressed through the training.

On Sunday, which I attended, were checkouts, advanced stuff, and celebrity speakers. (Tommy Hyland, who has been leader of a blackjack team for 40 years, told his stories. Andy Bloch, former MIT blackjack player and WSOP bracelet-winner poker player told his. And I spent some time talking about whether it makes sense for blackjack players to also play video poker.)

There were levels of checkout. At a minimum, the players were tested as to whether they could keep the count and move their bets accordingly. That is, when the count moves up, could they increase their bet appropriately. This skill requires paying attention to the cards and being able to figure out how many cards are left. For some players, this is as far along as they got.

The next step is to use the index number deviations. That is, when you have 16 versus a dealer ten card, it’s a close play whether to stand or hit. Many other plays have index numbers as well. Mastering all of them is more difficult, but some players were up there.

A third level of checkout included all the above, plus somebody asking you questions, such as: “Where are you from?”; “Have you seen the show here?”; “Have you tried our steak house?”  These questions weren’t mean or unusual. They were merely to see if you could walk and chew gum at the same time. You will certainly face this in a casino, and competent players need to be able to handle this kind of thing. A few players had the game down at this level.

During the checkout, you could see which players had practiced hard in preparation for the boot camp, and which ones hadn’t. Several of the students came out ready to play. Others needed a lot more work. You simply must put in the work (before, during, and after the boot camp) before you’re ready. The students were pretty unanimous that they got their money’s worth and came away inspired to keep working.

There were some students who flunked the checkouts — even the most basic one. Some of these students will conclude that this is not for them. It simply requires too much work to become good at this game. Others will use this as a wake-up call and apply themselves. There is another bootcamp in a few months, and some of these people will be back (at a reduced price, I assume) to see how much they’ve improved and if they are any closer to success.

You certainly don’t need a certificate to play. Any player of age can go to any casino and bet away. But if you can’t pass checkouts, you probably don’t have the skills to succeed. Blackjack is a pretty cut and dried game mathematically.

I was asked several times if returning to blackjack is something I’m considering. The short answer is “No”. My traveling days are largely over, and my face is too well known by casino employees. Getting good again is within my capabilities, I believe, but it’s not how I want to spend the rest of my life.

I was also asked if I wanted to create a video poker weekend boot camp — and right now my answer is “No.”

Video poker is way too difficult to master in one weekend. In blackjack, once you learn basic counting skills, the adjustments for different rules and deck sizes are relatively minor. In video poker, you play Deuces Wild considerably differently than you play Double Double Bonus. And one pay schedule in Deuces Wild is played considerably differently than other pay schedules. Players are certainly capable of learning one game (or maybe two) in a weekend, but with more than that, they would be overwhelmed.

Also, the best game differs from casino to casino. The best game in one place is often not the same as the best game elsewhere. Starting out with 9/6 Jacks or Better might be good for players in some areas, but many parts of the country don’t have that game.

Finally, a major part of the video poker game is learning to deal with slot clubs and promotions. That’s a several-hour course in and of itself. And while I’m generally familiar with the casinos in Las Vegas, if someone lives in St. Louis, Tunica, Pennsylvania, etc., I just don’t have the depth of knowledge to explain how the casinos in each of those areas differ from each other.

Colin Jones joked that he was going to reserve the web address www.videopokerapprenticeship.com. If he does, I’ll be happy to work with him and help him on the course. But I don’t predict a lot of success for it.

If you’re interested in becoming a competent blackjack player, www.blackjackapprenticeship.com is a good place to start.

Posted on by — 9 Comments

The Twenty-Third Annual Blackjack Ball

The Blackjack Ball is an annual institution where about 100 of the world’s best gamblers meet up, socialize, drink too much, and compete against each other. The 2019 version occurred a few weeks ago.

The first order of business after two hours of drinking and socializing was to vote for the newest member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Six worthy candidates were nominated, and each professional player got one vote — with Hall of Fame members votes counting triple.

This year’s winner was Rob Reitzen. This is the way Rob was listed on the ballot.

There are few, if any, players that have won more money in the history of Blackjack than Rob Reitzen. From simple card counting to shuffle tracking/sequencing to bottom steering to advanced computer play, Rob has beaten games in more innovative ways than most professional blackjack players even know to exist.

The founding partner of CORE, which went on to become the largest and most profitable player-banking operation in history, Rob was featured in an Esquire Magazine article in which thereporter followed him and watched him beat Caesars Palace in Las Vegas out of more than $500,000 while using a sequencing technique he dubbed “The Hammer” on a single weekend!

Rob’s acceptance speech was somewhat lengthy. Host Max Rubin quipped afterwards that Rob must have thought he had a chance to win so he wrote “War and Peace” to read just in case.

The highlight of the ball is the test of 21 Questions. The five top scores get invited into the skills contest. Of these five, one player is eliminated quickly.

There were three people there who were ineligible to play: James Grosjean, Richard Munchkin, and myself — albeit it for different reasons. James and Richard have each won three times and have been determined to be “too good.” The first-place winner gets the Grosjean trophy, and the second-place winner gets the Munchkin cup.

The winner also gets an engraved Nebuchadnezzar (15 liters) of Luc Belaire Champagne, donated by Hall of Fame member Don Johnson who is an ambassador for that company.

I got included on this list for an entirely different reason as my blackjack career was short and uneventful. Although I did get to the final table at the Blackjack Ball once, I blew out immediately and didn’t end up in the money.

My contribution is that I submit a LOT of test questions. I submitted about 30 questions this year and they actually used seven or eight of my questions, depending on how you count. Since host Max Rubin has been a bit under the weather, he doesn’t have the time and energy to create as many questions as he used to and he’s grateful to me for supplying some. And, since taking a test where I had submitted a third of the questions would hardly be fair to the others, I’m not eligible to play. That’s cool. I get a kick out of composing questions that stump some of the smartest gamblers in the world — while other such gamblers get the questions correct.

Before the competition, we have a Calcutta auction. Host Max Rubin is a very charming auctioneer. He groups each of the 100 or so contestants into about 20 categories and we bid on who is going to win. Max teases, cajoles, insults, and praises various people in the audience in order to get them to bid. About $20,000 is raised and this goes to whomever owns the players who end up in the top four positions. Each player is allowed to buy up to 50% of himself back after the Calcutta and before the test is given.

The test is difficult — and questions can be about anything and everything. Some of the more interesting ones were:

  1. You are betting $100 on the pass line and place maximum odds at the Bellagio where 3-4-5 odds are allowed. On winning bets, what is the typical payout for the combination of pass line bet plus the odds?   

 

Answer: $700 — $100 for the pass line and $600 for the odds

 

  1. Donald Trump is the 45th American president. Express the number forty-five in roman numerals.

 

Answer:  XLV — this is not trivial. Many will say VL, which is incorrect

 

  1. In a National Basketball Association game, with 0.2 seconds left, the ball is out-of-bounds in possession of the team trailing by 2 points. The inbounding player throws the ball directly at the basket — and the ball would indeed have gone in except one of the inbounder’s teammates gently touches the ball when it is directly above the basket, 12 inches from going in. The teammate guides the ball into the basket. What happens?

 

  1. The inbounding team scores three points and wins the game
  2. The inbounding team scores two points and sends the game into overtime
  3. The inbounding team is guilty of offensive goal-tending, which causes them to lose possession and the game
  4. 0.2 seconds is not enough time for any of this to happen, so time runs out before any points are scored or there’s a change in possession

 

(Answer b: offensive goal-tending only occurs when the shot originated within the field of play. Since this “shot” originated from out-of-bounds, offensive goal tending could not happen.

Although the play originally began beyond the 3-point-line, the fact that the ball was touched directly above the basket turns this into a 2-point play.

The clock doesn’t start until the ball is touched by a player within the field of play — which in this case happened when the ball was one foot above the basket headed downward. 0.2 seconds is plenty of time for the basket to be made before the clock runs out.)

Those questions were three of the ones submitted by me, so naturally I think they are some of the most interesting. Here is one submitted by James Grosjean.

  1.   Playing six deck blackjack where the dealer stands on soft 17, which of the following starting positions has the highest EV.
  1. You have a hard 20 against a dealer ace before he checks for blackjack.
  2. You have an 11 versus a dealer 5
  3. You have a pair of aces against a dealer 4.
  4. You have a ten and a nine against a dealer 8

(Answer:  the exact numbers were given at the Ball, but the correct answer is a.)

One of the professional players only got four out of 21 questions correct. He was invited forward to receive a small “World’s Worst Blackjack Player.” The teasing was good natured, but he definitely got razzed.

The player with the most correct, 14, was Andy Bloch, former member of the MIT blackjack team and also an accomplished poker professional. Two players got 13 correct: Gemlo and Big Player. Since they want to be identified by their pseudonyms, I won’t identify them any further.

Coming in at 12 correct were four players: Arnold Snyder, John Brahms, Tony S, and attorney Bob Nersesian. Since only five players advance to the final game, we had to eliminate two of these four players. The way this was done was each of these four people had to name a casino that was formerly in Clark County but is here no more. Giving an incorrect answer, or a duplicate, eliminated you. There were probably fifty casinos named (e.g. Stardust, Riviera, Dunes, Landmark, Las Vegas Club, etc., etc. and finally Arnold Snyder and John Brahms gave incorrect answers and were eliminated.

On to the skills competition, which is held at a blackjack table. There was a stack of cards in the discard tray. Each of the five contestants needed to estimate the number of cards there. Worst guesser was eliminated — which happened to be Big Player. We were then down to four players.

Next test was a card-cutting competition. The 6♣ was placed at the bottom of the deck. Each player got to cut the cards. Munchkin then burned a card and dealt any number of hands that player named (from 1 to 7), with the object being to place the 6♣ face down in the dealer’s hand, e.g. as the dealer’s hole card.

The players all chose to deal six hands. Unfortunately, Andy Bloch cut the card four spaces away and was eliminated.

The third test was very unusual and was designed by James Grosjean. JG cut approximately one-inch squares out of the center of all twelve picture cards. Players had 90 seconds to figure out the rank and suits of each of the squares. Positive points were awarded for being accurate. Negative scores were awarded for inaccuracy. The mean score was negative! Gemlo did the worst and was eliminated.

It was now down to Tony S and Bob Nersesian and the contest was counting down a double deck. Richard Munchkin, who was running the final contest, removed three cards from each of the two deck stacks. The players had to determine what those cards were, using any card counting system they wanted.

Unfortunately, Bob Nersesian has never counted cards, whereas Tony S was a highly skilled professional for a number of years. Bob’s only chance was a wild guess. As soon as the clock started, he should have slammed his cards down and predicted his three cards would have a count of zero in HiLo.  He would win if there were three neutral cards, or one high, one low, and one neutral. He had a reasonable chance for success, whereas if he actually tried to count the double deck, he had basically no chance. There are actually better counts to use if you’re just going to guess, but Bob wouldn’t know about this.

Bob chose the wrong way to go about it. He tried to count the cards and ended up almost a minute behind Tony. Tony was accurate in his count, of course, and it was over. Although it didn’t matter, we asked Bob what he thought the count was in his deck. He said +6, which is an impossible number with only three cards using HiLo. Bob is a hell of an attorney but has never counted cards.

Congratulations to all our winners. We hope to have Rob Reitzen, Tony S, and Max Rubin on our podcast soon celebrating the twenty-third Blackjack Ball.

Posted on by — 7 Comments

Learning from Munchkin

My co-host on the Gambling With An Edge podcast is Richard Munchkin, a table games player who’s been successful at gambling for several decades.

We often answer listener questions on the show and if anyone asks about a table game, Richard is the go-to guy. Sometimes I’ll have a bit to add, but mostly what Richard says covers the subject very well.

He has used one particular phrase in his answers over and over again. The questions vary, but part of the answer stays the same.

For example, some blackjack player is using one particular count and is considering learning another count because it’s more powerful. Richard will discuss the features of each count, but say, “You’re stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. A slightly better count is NOT where the money is in blackjack. There are far more important things to spend your time learning.”

I’ve heard him say variations on this numerous times and I started to wonder if the way I tackle video poker makes me guilty of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies?

As many of my readers know, I try to learn most video poker games at the 100% level. In NSU Deuces Wild, for example, letting a W stand for a deuce, I play W 4♠ 5♠ 3♥ J♥ differently than I do W 4♠ 5♠ 3♥ J♦.

For the five-coin dollar player, if he holds W 4♠ 5♠ both times he is making a quarter of a penny error half the time. If he holds just the W both times he is also making a quarter of a penny error half the time.

I avoid this small error. I learned the game this well when I was playing $25 games so the error every other time is 6¢ rather than a quarter cent. I still have that play memorized even though the larger games aren’t available, insofar as I know.

Although this particular distinction is one of many many I have memorized, it is safe to say I’ve spent dozens of hours, probably more, learning these exceptions in the first place and reviewing them often enough to keep them memorized.

Have I gained enough to make the difference between learning these things worth more than even an additional $2 per hour over all the hours I’ve spent studying? Probably not.

Without spending this time learning these exceptions, could I have played games worth substantially more than $2 per hour and been better off financially? Definitely yes, insofar as finding games worth more than that.

So, is this a case of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies? Have I been violating Munchkin’s advice (never mind that I spent most of those dozens of hours studying that game before I ever heard Richard give that advice)? Maybe, but if so, as
they say in Traffic Court, I plead guilty with an explanation.

Although in the Dancer/Daily Winner’s Guides for both NSU Deuces Wild and Full Pay Deuces Wild, we distinguish between penalty cards and “power of the pack” considerations, for the sake of simplicity today I’m going to include both of these into the term “penalty cards.”

The underlying assumption behind the question “Is learning penalty cards worth it?” is that without studying the penalty cards you can play the penalty-free strategy perfectly. For me, at least, that assumption wouldn’t track with reality.

Just the study and practice I undergo to learn the penalty cards causes me to be practicing the basic strategy simultaneously. For example, the difference between W J♦ 9♦ 5♣ 6♣ and W J♦ 9♦ 5♣ 7♣, which is a basic strategy play, is probably ignored by all players who have not also made a serious attempt at learning all the exceptions. Even though this play is clearly shown on the Dancer/Daily Strategy Card and Winner’s Guide for this game, I suspect most players simply ignore it or don’t understand why the two hands are played differently.

So, while learning the penalty cards might only return $2 an hour on my study time, I also gain considerably more than that because I learn the basic strategy better during the process.

For me personally, since I’ve chosen a teaching career and a how-to writing career, there are additional income streams available to me for learning this stuff that wouldn’t be available to most others.

Plus, I like being a student. I was good at school and continue to try and learn new things. So even if learning penalty cards doesn’t make great financial sense, it brings me pleasure. Can you really put a price on that?

I’m going to conclude that Richard’s “stepping over dollars to pick up pennies” warning doesn’t apply to me in this particular case. And I make this conclusion knowing full well that others may disagree with my conclusion. That’s okay. I’ve made my own bed here and I’m perfectly happy sleeping in it.

Yes, I know I mentioned that certain hands were played differently than others, but I didn’t explain what the differences were. If you want to know, you’re going to have to look up the information for yourself. If that annoys you, so be it, but the learning process isn’t easy and you need to go through it to become a strong player.

Posted on by — 5 Comments

Build A Wall!

Mr. B, a highly successful AP who doesn’t play casino table games, said to me over lunch in a casino coffee shop, “Why don’t they fix everything? If I ran the casino, I would just make it so that no game is beatable!” I’m sure you would try, B! It’s a fair question, but the full answer goes beyond game protection.

Let’s start with the idea of complete game protection. It’s a unicorn. First of all, it’s not even an appropriate objective. Though some casinos actually do have a pathological drive to thwart all APs, that’s just biting off your nose to spite your face. The real goal is profit maximization. The most random shuffle, which would thwart many AP moves, is not as profitable as a much faster shuffle that may occasionally be beaten by a highly skilled AP. Thorough background checks on every person walking into the casino would shut down some APs, but would create a major discouragement to the thousands of degenerates who want to gamble right now! London’s style of casino management is stupid. A zero tolerance policy is not optimal.

Even if a casino wanted to stop every AP, they couldn’t. Casinos have to play the hand they’ve been dealt. Their employee pool consists of people who are less educated and under-incentivized relative to the top APs who are trying to beat the games. Think about it. Casino employees universally believe that the idiot at third base is killing the table by taking the dealer’s bust card. These are people who believe that simply by virtue of a big bankroll and proper money management, a player can beat the games. Ackkk!

If a new casino opens up in Pennsylvania, there are no local employees who have the experience of the long-time Vegas pros who are about to walk in to whack the games. These employees will not know every AP method to beat the games, and it’s not their job to know. Even a Table Games Manager is not a game-protection specialist. A Table Games Manager has to do many things, while APs specialize. There are always new casinos, new employees, new games, new equipment, and new circumstances that make it impossible for a casino to anticipate and thwart every new method of beating a game.

My crew recently found a new game in a casino. The game gave the basic-strategy player an edge of 10.6%, and this was the stingier incarnation (the first gave an edge over 15%). Since the game was new and unique, the casino had no one to turn to for answers or to check the inventor’s math, and the game died a horrible death. Next!

But the real reason that it is difficult to thwart all AP activity is not related to game protection, but rather game design. Suppose that the casinos actually want to provide some entertainment value while they suck every penny from a gambler’s life savings (I said “suppose”!) In that case, they probably want the game to involve some playing decisions. (Obviously, the success of three-reel slots and baccarat shows that playing decisions are not necessarily critical to provide entertainment value. Addictive drugs are entertaining.)
Furthermore, they probably want the game to give the players an edge in the ballpark of -4% (fast games, such as blackjack and Casino War, can make money for the casino even with edges in the -0.5% to -2.5% range). Here’s the key question: Given that there are playing decisions to make within the game, what is the gap between the typical gambler’s edge and the expert player’s edge?

If the game involves tricky consequential decisions, then the expert player’s edge might be 20% higher than the gambler’s edge. But if the casino wants the masses to be playing at -4%, then it means the expert is now at +16%. If we were to make the payouts stingier, to put an expert at breakeven, then the gambler would be at -20%. At that level, the gambler probably gets gutted too quickly, and the game won’t be popular. The zero-tolerance policy to thwart the expert makes the game unpalatable to the thousands of regular gamblers.

You’ve got to give the fish some play for their money. Fantasy sports websites started to see this problem. The pros were gutting the fish so efficiently that the fish lost interest, and the regulators started questioning the equity of it all.

So the key in game design is to offer a set of decisions where the range from the smart to the stupid is not too extreme, or to offer decisions that provide entertainment, but which are completely inconsequential in the game, and which are meaningless in terms of EV. For instance, in Rock, Paper, Scissors, the player has a choice, but a meaningless one if measured by EV. Likewise, choosing Banker vs. Player in baccarat is a relatively inconsequential decision, but one which receives more human scrutiny each day than the debate over climate change.

Posted on by — 22 Comments

The Important Message

I’m a fan of The Moth podcast, in which people stand up without notes and give a 10-minute autobiographical talk about something interesting. Some time ago I thought I would try to be a performer on that show. I couldn’t use notes to tell the story live, but I sure as hell could use them to help prepare for the talk. So, I wrote out what I’d say about an incident that happened almost 40 years ago.

Sometime later I decided not to try out for The Moth, although I thought the story would fit well enough into this blog. I’ve already shared parts of this story with my readers, but not all of it, and certainly not the big secret I reveal at the end. So here is what I was planning to say:

In the 1970s, I was a professional gambler. My game was backgammon. It was played in discos, at least in greater Los Angeles, which is where I lived. I even took lessons learning how to disco dance so I could hang out in these discos without looking like a gambling hustler. I also played at an underground club near Los Angeles called the Cavendish West.

It isn’t hard being a successful gambler when the competition isn’t very good. And that was the way backgammon was for me in the mid-1970s.

I had first heard of the game from an article in Playboy, which I really only picked up because of the articles. I bought every book I could find on the subject, bought a board to practice on, and soon was in business. As bad as the books were at the time, my studying was more than my competitors did. Plus, I was smarter than average and had been playing board games since I was a pre-teen. I did well.

At the Cavendish, I became a regular.  In backgammon, you are not playing against the house. You are playing against other players and the house charges each player a rental fee for providing the boards and the place where other like-minded players can congregate.

No matter how good or bad you are, your success at backgammon is primarily determined by your skill relative to that of your opponents.  If you are the third best player in the world but always are playing with numbers 1 and 2, you’re going to be a loser.

For those who don’t play the game, it’s a board game where there’s a special device called the doubling cube. If you’re not playing for money — or perhaps trying to win a backgammon tournament — the doubling cube is irrelevant and kept in the box. If you are competing for cash, though, learning to use the doubling cube well is important. It’s every bit as important as learning to move the checkers well.

Without going into details about the cube, it can be used to increase the stakes of the game dramatically. If your opponent is too aggressive or too passive or too timid with the cube, so much the better. Systematic mistakes were exploitable. So, similar to reading poker tells, good players kept a catalog of sorts on the doubling cube practices of every opponent. If you saw your opponent make a doubling cube error, AND THEN MAKE IT AGAIN in another game, this was called “confirmation” and you had a potential gold mine. A single game of backgammon usually lasted less than 10 minutes — and we played for 6-8 hours at a time. There were LOTS of opportunities to get confirmation on these exploitable habits of others.

In 1979, I was a much better backgammon player than I was in 1975. But I was going broke. Gone was the regular infusion of bad players that were easy to find in the disco era and not so easy to find anymore. The players still in the game had been there for as long as I had. I was a good player, but I was mostly playing REALLY good players. This was not a recipe for success.

I started contemplating getting a job. This I viewed as an admission that I was no longer able to live off my wits in the gambling world. I was no longer able to accurately assert superiority over those doofusses who actually had to find a job in order to survive.  I was now going to be a doofus too.

This was very traumatic. I also didn’t know what I could do to earn money. Although I had a pretty good education and got up to the almost-PhD level in Economics, I had been fired five years earlier from a think-tank job in which I was a research associate. I hadn’t read any economic books or journal articles in five years. My skills were woefully out of date.

Since I had used some Fortran-based computer packages in my research-associate position years before, I decided to market myself as a computer programmer. The available jobs were in COBOL, a computer language I didn’t know at all. Still, I read a how-to-program-in-COBOL book one weekend and went on a job interview the following Monday. Before I did, I shaved off the beard I had worn for 10 years and got a haircut that made me look like a Republican. God! It was awful!

I was interviewed by two guys, both of whom liked to gamble. I talked backgammon with the first guy and blackjack with the second. Although my skills weren’t good enough to survive as a gambling professional, they were WAY better than these two wannabe gamblers. They were impressed with my abilities. The $25,000 a year job in programming I was applying for had been filled that morning, but there was a $35,000 a year job as a systems analyst available. It was now the week before Christmas and their budget didn’t allow another hire until after the first of the year. Was I interested in starting in two weeks?

I was, although I had no clue what a systems analyst did. I went to a bookstore, bought two books on how to be a systems analyst, and went home where I stayed in bed for two weeks. I’d come out of my room only to grab something out of the refrigerator or go to the bathroom. Otherwise, I read the books over and over again and was seemingly catatonic. I was sure I was going to be found out as a fraud and fired immediately.   When that happened, I didn’t know what I was going to do. The fact that I was having to get a job in the first place wasn’t helping matters any. And I liked my hippie look WAY better than looking like a Baptist preacher.  But that look was now gone. Not shaving for two weeks didn’t come close to making me feel better.

I was living with a lady named Betty at the time. I didn’t say a word to her for those two weeks. Not one word. She’d ask what she could do to help, or suggest I get out and exercise a bit, or maybe we could go see a movie or something, and I’d just lay there with my back to her, totally mute. I didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t anything to say. I was a doofus who looked like a Republican.

She kept the refrigerator stocked with good eating options, bless her heart, and didn’t get too freaked out by my behavior.

Two weeks later, Wednesday January 2, 1980, I was 10 minutes early to work. I came up with a couple of good answers to questions I was asked in the first week and somehow lasted on that job for three years — at which time I went out and found a better one. I can’t tell you exactly how I did it. I just don’t know. I suspect being in the right place at the right time helped a lot.

One year after I had started working, I received a phone call at three in the morning from a lady friend named Margo. Not a romantic lady friend — I was still with Betty — but a good friend nonetheless. Margo was contemplating going back to work. Margo was a nurse and had written some books on pain management. She had gone around the country lecturing to nurses about treating those in pain. But her 15 minutes of fame was now up. She no longer got enough attendees to come to her lectures. It was time for her to go back to work.

Like I had been, Margo was severely traumatized. She didn’t want to go back to work. She knew I had gone through something similar the year before and needed some good advice. And she needed it now! At three in the morning. What could I tell her?

She had just returned from a nightclub where she’d probably had several beers (or something stronger). I was sound asleep when the call came. I gave her the best secret I could come up with on the spur of the moment. I told Margo that I hadn’t spoken to Betty for two weeks prior to starting my new job and recommended she not speak to Betty either. Not talking to Betty, I told Margo, was the secret to my success, and now I was going back to sleep. Good night.

Flippant though it was, Margo took my good advice to heart. For the next 10 days or so, Betty and I would get messages on our family answering machine that said things like, “Bob, I’m getting ready to start working at a hospital a week from Monday. Don’t let Betty know. I’m not talking to her.”

Margo started her job and did well at it. This, my friends, is confirmation! You now have the magic secret of getting through whatever it is that you are fearing most. And that secret is: Don’t talk to Betty.

Posted on by — 9 Comments

Whom Do You Trust?

I’m showing my age, but I remember the “Who Do You Trust?” television show hosted by Johnny Carson before he got the Tonight Show gig. He always said later that the first word should have been “Whom” rather than “Who,” and if you can’t trust Johnny Carson, whom can you trust?

Many of the people who attend my classes are quarter or dollar players. It’s no secret that I play for higher stakes, at least some of the time. Usually once or twice a semester, someone says something like, “Although I would never play for the stakes you do, I’m really curious as to what games you play and where. Will you tell me?”

My standard answer is that I write about the places I play that I don’t mind you knowing about, and don’t write about the ones I would rather keep secret. So, if they don’t already know about one of my plays, I’m not going to tell them.

The reason for this is simple. Many plays can only support one or two competent players. Telling the world about such a play would be the kiss of death to the play. No thanks.

One player followed up with, “But I promise I won’t tell anybody, and I certainly won’t be playing those stakes myself. Don’t you trust me?”

Well, I’m not sure. I’d rather not put it to the test. If I trust 20 people and 19 of them never told a soul, the secret is still out. Is this guy one of the 19, or the one who says, “It won’t hurt anything if I mention this to my brother-in-law?” I don’t know beforehand, so it’s better that I keep quiet.

I’m not a proponent of the “Two can keep a secret only if one of them is dead” philosophy. If Richard Munchkin wants to know the where and why on any of my plays, I’m going to tell him. I trust him — even though he has the bankroll along with family members and close friends who could burn out any play I told him about. Among top gamblers, their word is their bond. If I told him, “I’ll tell you about it but you can’t play because of xxxxx,” I believe he’d honor that.

On the radio show, we’ve had blackjack team captains describe teams they were on where one of the team members ripped off the others. This is rare — but it happens — and it’s always a shock when it does. You can protect yourself from this by never telling anybody anything, but that’s going to be a lonely life you lead.

Trusting somebody has similarities with marriage. Although it ends badly some of the time (and I’ve experienced my share of that), overall, I’m convinced my life works better being married than being single.

I’d actually be more comfortable telling Richard about a play than I would be telling Bonnie! Bonnie is not a player at all and although she’s definitely on my side, if I tell her I’m going to be playing at the (pick a casino), it’s possible that she would inadvertently tell her sister, daughter, or a girlfriend where I’m playing. If I tell her over and over again, “This is a secret — you can tell no one,” she’ll honor my wishes. But she has no good gambling sense about what is a secret and what isn’t and she’s not really practiced in keeping secrets. It’s better not to tell her.

If I took her to a comped meal at the Wicked Spoon buffet at the Cosmopolitan, she would figure out that there was some play (now gone) that I had there, but she isn’t really capable of understanding why the play there was better or worse than playing at some other casino. She’s willing to listen and nod her head if I tell her, “The game pays xxx% off the top, with yyy% from the slot club, and zzz% from the mailers.  This other promotion they’re having now adds another vvv%, and there’s a pretty good chance I can talk them into www% worth of comps.”  These are just numbers to her and it’s all kind of gobbledygook.

Richard, however, would understand each of these things and if he didn’t, he’d ask me to explain further. And he could put the numbers into context of other plays he knew about. That is, a 100.5% play is pretty good if the best you can find otherwise is 100.3%. But if you can find a 101% play for the same stakes, a 100.5% isn’t such a good deal.

Posted on by — 17 Comments

You’re Not Ready Yet

Immediately after one of my classes at the South Point, a man, “Joe,” came up to me and asked if I would mentor him in becoming a professional video poker player. He told me he had plenty of bankroll and wanted to turbocharge his learning process. He had heard that I would do private consulting for $250 an hour with a two-hour minimum and that did not present a problem for him.

I had another engagement after class, so we scheduled a lunch date for the near future. Although I have food comps at casinos, I preferred having the conversation at a local Applebee’s where the chances of being overheard by other players was far less. I don’t pay retail for food in Vegas very often, but this was one of those times.

In the time before I met with Joe, I tried to figure out what kind of person I would be willing to mentor. Assuming he had the bankroll, I figured the main criteria were:

a. His personality was acceptable to me. This isn’t a particularly high bar to cross, but there are a few people I just don’t enjoy hanging out with. I didn’t want a long-term relationship with somebody like that.

b. He was smart enough. Video poker is applied math. Not everybody is capable of learning it at a high level.

c. He had some history of success at the game and could study on his own. When I’m consulting with somebody two hours at a time, I don’t really care how good they are when they come to me. I’ll spend the two hours doing my best to improve their skill and knowledge level. But a mentoring relationship is a longer-term affair and spending dozens of hours while moving somebody from beginner to intermediate isn’t how I want to spend my time.

Okay. After Joe and I ordered lunch, I asked him where he lived and how he got his bankroll. I had spoken to Joe a few times previously and he passed the personality test, such as it is. He had sent me a number of emails over the past few years with questions and/or suggestions for the Gambling with an Edge radio show. These emails led me to believe he was smart enough to succeed at this.

Joe told me he was 49 years old, lived on the East Coast, and had recently inherited more than $2 million. He planned to retire from the Air Force Reserve in a few months and was looking at how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

Joe had listened to a number of the radio shows and it really sounded like I enjoyed my life more than he enjoyed his. Plus, he had read my Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography and was fascinated with the life of a gambler. He decided he wanted to invest a portion of his inheritance, maybe $200,000, to see if he had the aptitude to maybe be the next Bob Dancer.

I asked him how many of the Winner’s Guides he had closely studied. He told me he had purchased a set but had yet to open them up. I asked him how much time he had spent with a computer program such as Video Poker for Winners. He told me he hadn’t purchased a copy of that yet but it was next on his list.

I told him he wasn’t ready for mentoring yet. In the next six months, I suggested he learn two games at the professional level — perhaps Jacks or Better and NSU Deuces Wild. Using the Winner’s Guides and the software, this wasn’t such a formidable task. But neither was it a trivial one.

Then, I wanted him to spend at least two weeks straight in Las Vegas or another casino city gambling 30 hours a week. At the end of that, if he still wanted me to mentor him, he knew how to get in touch with me. I would give him a test on the two games, and if he knew the games at a high level, we could revisit the mentoring idea.

Joe was in love with the idea of being a gambler, but he hadn’t had any actual experience. It’s hard work to get to the professional level at one game — let alone two. Playing 60 hours will turn out to be a boring experience for many people.

Video poker is a grind-it-out affair. It’s one thing to be fascinated by what appears to be a glamorous life. It’s another thing entirely to go through the process of getting good at some games and then successfully playing those games for 60 hours without going totally bonkers.

Can Joe do this?

I don’t know. If he can’t, he was never going to be a success at gambling anyway. If he can master two games and still be interested in being mentored after some real-life experience, then at least he will be going into this with his eyes wide open rather than looking through the rose-colored glasses he seems to be wearing today.

On one of our radio shows, Richard Munchkin told us that he periodically gets these kinds of requests from people wishing to learn blackjack. Richard tells them to learn basic strategy completely for four different games — i.e. with or without standing on soft 17 and with or without the ability to double after splitting. Once they know all four of these basic strategies, come back and see him again.

Richard tells me he’s never had somebody come back to him with these four strategies memorized.

I guess Richard’s experience influenced how I dealt with Joe. The task I gave Joe is more difficult than learning four basic strategies — each of which is more than 90% identical with the others. Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild are games very different from each other.

Still, if Joe passes this test, he’ll be a worthy student and I won’t mind at all working with him.

Posted on by — 28 Comments

Is it Wrong?

I’m glad my articles are now posted on the GamblingWithAnEdge.com website. That provides a forum and often people take the time to respond to what I’ve said — or to comment on other responses.

A while ago somebody posted there, “Is it wrong to see someone drop money and you don’t tell them?” I want to tackle that one today.

My answer today is probably different than it was twenty-four years ago. Twenty-four years ago, I was brand new to Las Vegas and had moved to town with $6,000 in cash. My car was in decent repair. I wasn’t broke — but I was one or two unfortunate incidents away from being broke. I was playing blackjack with a girlfriend-partner, and that $6,000 had to cover bankroll AND living expenses.

At that time, I would probably have kept my mouth shut, waited until the person who dropped the money had stepped away, picked up the money, and left the area. This exact scenario didn’t happen to me, but similar-enough situations occurred that I’m pretty sure that’s what I would have done. I REALLY was in survival mode. Not literally, but psychologically. Since I hadn’t caused the person to drop the money, I wouldn’t have felt I was stealing the money. I could have slept at night.

Today I’m in a different situation in life. When I see people drop something, I normally speak up — basically by reflex. It’s usually not money which is dropped, of course, but sometimes it is. Today, the pleasure I get from an “extra” $100 is usually less than the grief felt by the person who lost it.

Even when I was barely getting by, there would be situations where I would speak up. Such as:  If a mother was struggling with three young children and one of the kids caused her to drop some money — even if I was in a survival mode, I would have spoken up. Whatever her financial status, a mother with three young kids is having a difficult time and I wouldn’t want to make it any more difficult. Keeping the money would forever have me worrying about, “What if she was getting medicine for one of the kids and that was the only money she had?” Best to play it straight and not have those worries.

Picking up money that has been inadvertently left behind has lots of analogs in a casino. You see credits left on machines. You see multipliers left on Ultimate X machines. You see players leave “must hit by $500” machines when the meter is at $498. Sometimes you know who left these things and sometimes you don’t. Collecting credits left on the machine may be against the law in some jurisdictions (usually you won’t be caught), but often there’s no law telling you what you must do. Often, you’re free to make your own judgments and decisions.

Is there a moral difference to what my actions should be based on whether I was poor or I was rich? Probably not, but the world sure looks different depending on whether things are going your way or not.

I like living in a world where random acts of kindness are not all that unusual. And to have that world exist requires that I do my share. So, I do.

Posted on by — 16 Comments

Legal Musings: “Making a Bet After the Outcome is Known”

With all the casino cheating going on these days (see my previous two-part post), casinos have stepped up their game. Not only do they cheat you by not paying when you win, but they strengthen the move by enlisting the local district attorney to extort you. The way it works is that the casino doesn’t pay. Simultaneously, they get the DA to intimidate the players by filing charges relating to the game, or threatening to file charges. A law-abiding AP is terrified by criminal charges, so it’s a no-brainer to accept the implicit deal — virtually always available — to have the DA drop the charges, and let the casino keep the money. Continue reading Legal Musings: “Making a Bet After the Outcome is Known”