Tag: Bob Dancer

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A Life Changing Event

Bob Dancer

On Mother’s Day, my wife Bonnie suffered a stroke — meaning a blood clot to her brain. Fortunately, she was at a church service with her daughter and sister, and they rushed her to the ER.

I had been “investing” until about six in the morning and wasn’t at church with them. I got a phone call as soon as she was checked in. We all agreed that spreading out the visitors was better than all three of us being there at once, and that I would come later in the day to relieve them. My daughter-in-law wasn’t at all sure Bonnie was going to survive this. I started crying when I heard this.

Two hours later I got a call and was told that the nurse said I should get there fast.

SHIT!

I pulled myself together as best as I could and got to the ER. They are trying to get a blood sample from Bonnie, and Bonnie is thrashing around, loudly screaming in gibberish. Bonnie’s full name is Bonita, meaning “pretty” in Spanish, but now she is ugly. Her face is contorted in pain/rage/confusion. I hold one arm still while a nurse draws blood. While I outweigh her 2-to-1 and can easily immobilize one of her arms, this is the first time in our relationship that I have used my strength to overpower her and it bothers me a lot. But for now, at least, it is necessary.

They wanted to do tests, such as an MRI of the brain and CAT scans, but Bonnie is thrashing around so much that they would have to sedate her to do this. She has “Do Not Resuscitate” and “Do Not Intubate” medical directives on file and if they slightly over-sedate her and she goes into respiratory or cardiac arrest, they would not be allowed to revive her. So, they are hesitant to give her tranquilizers.

On the spur of the moment, I decide to bring out my iPhone and start playing “Could I Have This Dance” by Canadian pop-country artist Anne Murray. This is “our song.”

Although the song was in the soundtrack of the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” and has been played at many thousands of weddings over the years, it’s the song I had used to teach her to waltz thirteen years ago. The waltz has become Bonnie’s favorite dance, and whenever we are out dancing, we request this song. We claim the song is ours — although many other couples make the same claim.

When the music started, Bonnie immediately quieted down. She started to sing the song, off key and in gibberish, so I began to sing along with her, also off key, but not in gibberish. When the song ended, I played it again.

After three or four repetitions of Anne Murray, I switched to some of her other favorite songs. She remained quiet and relatively docile. The nurse was amazed and told the powers that be that Bonnie was now quiet enough to get the MRI and CAT scans. I accompanied her to the room where they did this, playing songs on my phone. For safety reasons I was removed from the room when the machines were working, but my phone remained, playing songs, and Bonnie remained quiet enough for them to get accurate readings.

From the ER, they transferred Bonnie to an Intensive Care Unit, where each nurse has only two patients to monitor. While she was 1000% better the following day, she couldn’t remember anything that happened the day before after going to church.  And although ICU was no longer necessary, they kept her there for the remainder of her hospital stay because there was no available “next level down” hospital room.

It was an actual stroke, albeit a relatively mild one, and brain damage was done. Her memory is perhaps 90% of what it was, and she doesn’t recognize people as well as she used to. But she’s alive and functioning at a reasonable level. There is some follow-up therapy that needs to be done.

Although I have help, I am Bonnie’s chief caregiver — and she needs more now. This means I have to re-prioritize how much time I spend away from the house. We ordered her a medical guardian unit to wear so she can call for help if she needs it. She’s good about wearing it every day, and sort of good about having her cell phone with her most of the time. When I go over plans for the current day and upcoming days, I know I will have to go over these plans two or three times.

Although we expect she will recover a little and eventually have nearly the same amount of energy she had before, when brains get damaged, they don’t regenerate all that much. 

While there is no doubt in my mind that I will be with her, helping her, for as long as we both shall live, both our lives have changed. I’m now spending more time at home. I’m not gambling nearly as much. This may change eventually. I don’t know.

It’s not what I foresaw. It’s not what I wanted. But it’s the right thing to do now and both of us are doing the best we can.

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Playing Mistake Free

Bob Dancer

A poster, Boris, wrote regarding one of my recent blogs: “You guys always seem to assume nobody makes a single mistake during play. Let’s be honest. Is it really possible to play mistake-free during such sessions?”

Although the question didn’t seem to flow organically from what others were discussing, I’m assuming that Boris is referring to me saying things like NSU is worth 99.73% and 9/6 JoB is worth 99.54% when played well — and other such references that regularly appear in my writings.

As for me personally, I definitely know every possible 9/6 JoB play. Whatever mistakes I make will be due to losing focus, or perhaps mis-keying. It doesn’t happen very often on this game.

With NSU, it’s a different matter. The game returns 99.728% when played perfectly — which I suggest nobody does. There are too many really rare situations. For example, who plays Q♠ T♥ 7♦ 8♦ 3♠ the same as he plays Q♠ T♥ 7♦ 8♦ 3♣? I know I throw all five cards away in both hands, but that is only the correct play on the first one. In the second I should keep 78. There are a lot of such plays listed in the appendices of the Winner’s Guide. Memorizing every last one of them is a difficult, time-intensive process — with limited value. Each of these hands come about very rarely and the difference between the best play and the second-best play is very small. 

In my younger days, I studied the appendices regularly and probably played at the 99.725% level out of a possible 99.7285. Today at 79 years of age, it’s probably closer to 99.65%, if that. If I’m playing when I’m tired, I make more errors.

I can’t speak for anybody else, but I doubt that anyone plays 100% perfectly all of the time. So, if nobody plays this game at the full 99.728% level, why do I use 99.73% in my writings? 

First, I need to know whether I’m playing above 100% or not when everything is included. If there are a half-percent of benefits, then I know this game qualifies whether I play perfectly or not. If I were considering playing 8/5 Bonus Poker (99.17%) with those same benefits, I would know that I’m below 100%. 

Second, I want to know which game to concentrate on. For the games that can be analyzed on WinPoker, I know the “perfect play” returns of most of the higher-paying games. When I come across a game I don’t know, I figure out what the return is. Generally speaking, I’m only playing the loosest game in a casino for the stakes I’m interested in — and I need to know these numbers to know which game that is.

Third, merely being greater than 100% is not enough for me to play. I can’t support myself on break-even games simply because I have expenses (as we all do.) I look at the denomination, an estimate of how fast I play, the various benefits of the slot club, and the base game. Using 99.73% overestimates what I can get by a small bit, but it gives me a good idea of what I’m dealing with.

Fourth, I know that the next session won’t follow the book. I might win or lose, but it’s extremely unlikely to exactly match the expected return. There are positive and negative swings in gambling. I know this and so do my readers.

Fifth, I consider myself a video poker teacher and using these numbers is the best way I know to communicate with my readers. A high percentage of my readers check out my column at least semi-regularly. If every time I wanted to talk about NSU I’d say — “this pays 99.73% factored by your accuracy level” instead of just saying “99.73%”— that would get really old really fast. 

I assume my readers know this and for practical purposes, using 99.73% is “close enough.” Even though it is an exaggeration for most of us — some more so than others.

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What I Didn’t Know Then

Bob Dancer

If you look up the season 1989 episode 45 of Jeopardy! (March 3 of that year) you’ll see what I looked like at age 42. I had studied hard for that appearance, but it turned out that I neglected to master a critical aspect of the game.

The rules were a bit different than they are now. Back then you could win up to five times in a row and then you were retired. Starting in 2003, you could keep going as long as you kept winning.

If you came in first place, or tied for first place with a greater-than-zero score, you got to keep the money you earned and come back and play in the next episode. If you didn’t win, you received no money. You were offered consolation prizes — which you paid taxes on, if you kept.

From the beginning of the contest, it was a back-and-forth match with all of us getting some answers correct and missing others. The part of the game that I hadn’t mastered was how much to bet during Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy. I thought it was fairly straightforward. I was wrong.

Early in the second half of the game, I landed on the Daily Double in  “Astronomy” when I chose the bottom answer of that category — meaning it would be more difficult to get correct than if it had been one of the earlier answers. Choosing the Daily Double allowed me to bet any amount up to the total amount of my accumulated score. If I missed the question, the other contestants didn’t get a chance to get it correct.

While I haven’t seen a video of this episode in a while, this is what I remember: I was in third place going into the question, and if I bet everything and got it correct, I’d temporarily be in first place — with about a third of the game still to go.

If I bet everything and got it wrong, I would be wiped out and there was insufficient time left to recover and have a chance to win the game. If I bet less than everything, I’d at least have something left if I missed the question and could fight on from there.

Astronomy wasn’t my best subject. While I had taken an Introduction to Astronomy class in college more than 20 years previously, I didn’t remember much of what I had learned. I knew the planets in order (back then Pluto was still a planet!) and the names of some of the constellations. I certainly didn’t know the names of all the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. There were some questions I could answer, but not many.

The question became: How much should I bet? To simplify, I’ll give you three choices to consider:

A. “True Daily Double” — meaning I bet the maximum I could. This gives me the best chance to win the game if I get it right and wipes me out if I get it wrong.

B. Bet about 2/3 of my total — saving some money “in case” I got the question wrong. And I believed that I was probably going to get the question wrong.

C .Bet a minimal amount so my score wasn’t affected much whether I got it correct or not.

What would you bet?

I bet option b. The answer was something like: “Built on the palace grounds of Charles II beginning in 1675.”

I guessed, “What is the Greenwich Observatory?” and it turned out to be correct. I never knew when or where that observatory was constructed, but it seemed to be a momentous enough event to be worthy of a Jeopardy! question. My answer turned out to be correct — but my bet turned out to be wrong.

What I didn’t sufficiently realize at the time was that to win at Jeopardy!, you have to take your chances when they come. If I had missed the question, even if I had $1,000 left to play with, I would essentially be out of the game. Since I wanted to win (otherwise why would I be there?), I should have bet the farm and taken my chances.

As it turned out, had I bet everything and the rest of the game went as it did (big assumptions!), I would have tied for the lead following Final Jeopardy and come back to play on the next episode. Since I hadn’t bet everything, the leader going into Final Jeopardy was able to bet enough to shut me out if I bet everything and we both got the Final Jeopardy question right (which is what happened.)

So, I came in second place — got a Lazy Boy recliner (which didn’t survive the cut when I next got married) and a framed lithograph (which did). My first day of competition turned out to be my last day.

After the round was over, it was easy to calculate that I would have tied had I bet the Daily Double properly. While I couldn’t have known that was going to be the result when I made the bet, I should have been able to figure out that if I was going to win, betting everything on the Daily Double gave me the best chance. It was a small chance (I first had to get a difficult question correct) but it was my best chance.

Oh well. Spilt milk, and all that.

In case you want to test yourself on the Final Jeopardy question from that day in the category of “American Revolution,” the answer was:

One of the two people Paul Revere was attempting to warn when he made his famous ride.

While I didn’t know the correct question before hearing the answer, I knew that Revere’s ride was in the Boston area and one of the revolutionary firebrands in that part of the country was Samuel Adams, so that was what I guessed (in the form of a question.) It turned out to be correct and John Hancock would also have been correct.

I never watched the following episode to guestimate how well I would have done had I bet correctly and gone on. All in all, even though I didn’t win, I felt I had done pretty well — with one exception.

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Playing Craps with an Advantage

Bob Dancer

This article is not about dice control. There are organizations that will sell you lessons that purport to teach you how to throw the dice so that sevens come out less often than their normal 1-in-6 frequency. Stanford Wong, a respected gaming writer, wrote a book on how to do this and came on Gambling with an Edge to talk about it. (Later he said he wasn’t sure if it worked or not.)

Call me a skeptic. Frank B was also on our show and he convinced me that this was likely impossible — and if not impossible, at least very difficult. Today’s article is about something else entirely. 

I’m assuming you know the basics of craps before we start. If you don’t, and you want to, www.wizardofodds.com/craps provides an excellent free primer you can read.

A friend told me about a casino, not in Nevada, where if you play craps for $50,000 coin-in a month, you get very nice weekly mailers. He asked me if this was potentially beatable.

Absolutely!  . . .  Depending.

In simple terms, it’s beatable if the mailers and comps exceed your expected loss from playing $50,000 a month at a negative game.

The biggest factor is, “Do they count odds when they figure your average bet?”

The usual answer is no. But sometimes they do! Especially at small, out-of-the-way casinos where somebody in marketing gets a “brilliant” idea on how to attract more play.

Odds are an even money bet, meaning neither the house nor the player wins or loses on these bets in the long run. Well run casinos do not count odds bets as part of your average. Since the house doesn’t make money on these bets, they don’t reward players for making them.

But if they do . . . 

For now, let’s assume they count odds bets. In this case, you want to be betting the don’t pass/don’t come side and laying odds rather than betting the pass/come side and taking odds — simply because the size of the bets you make when laying odds are larger than when you’re taking odds.  

If they do not count odds in your average bet, it doesn’t matter a lot which side you take. While the ‘don’t’ side has a very slightly lower house edge against you, there are social reasons why it’s better to take the pass/come side. Namely, more than 90% of players bet the pass/come side and you blend in better when you go with the crowd. 

Betting $50,000 coin-in takes a while, so let’s assume you’re going to bet $25 a roll and you’re going to do it on the pass/come side. Now what?

On every come out roll, make your bet. This will create a “point” to hit (4,5,6,8,9, or 10). Do not buy numbers. That’s more expensive.

If it’s not the come out roll and you don’t have bets on all six of the points, bet $25 on the come. This will keep the most money in action per time period. 

After knowing how to play, the object becomes slowing the game down. The casino isn’t actually counting every bet you make. They use your average bet and the time you are at the table to make an estimate.

To slow the game down, it’s better to be playing at full tables, where lots of players are making hard way and other sucker bets than it is to play at a table where there are very few players. The more people who are making these bets, the longer it takes to pay them off. So you get fewer hands per hour.

When it’s your turn to throw the dice, take your time! While I believe that all the dice are the same and if you throw them and hit the foam diamonds at the end of the table the dice will be “random enough,” dice players as a group are superstitious. Many players have quirks. Be a quirky shooter!

You will be presented with a group of dice at the start of your roll and instructed to pick two of them. Take 10 seconds deciding which ones are lucky! When it’s time for you to throw the dice, take time to set them “just so” before you let them go. It won’t affect the outcome, but it will kill valuable seconds.

After all, other than the mailers you’re getting back, every roll made costs you money. The fewer rolls you can make, the less money you will lose in getting your mailers.

Approximately every 10-15 rolls, throw one or both dice off the table! Apologize profusely, of course. Then say, “Same dice, please,” as though it really matters. Well, it does matter. When the die is retrieved, the box man is going to have to examine it to make sure it’s okay, and if you have insisted on the same dice, everyone has to wait until he finishes that process. If you didn’t request the same dice, he can examine the die during the time you’re throwing.

Aim, without appearing to, for stacks of chips at the other end of the table. If you can hit one (which you won’t usually be able to do), they will need to scramble to figure out how many chips were in whose stack. This takes some time. Sometimes there is a dispute about who had which chips. Great! That takes a lot of time!

Once an hour or so, step back from the table (while you can still see your chips to make sure nobody is messing with them), and take a five-minute fake phone call. You’re still there, sort of, and your clock keeps running while you’re not losing anything!

Occasionally, ask a question. Perhaps for the best nearby Chinese restaurant — or whatever. It will take time to get the answer. Wasting your time is your friend! In his book, Comp City, Max Rubin discusses other ways to slow the game down. Well worth reading. It’s almost 30 years old, and some things have changed since then, but the general principles outlined in the book still apply.

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Betting in Opposition

Bob Dancer

Today’s article involves sports betting rather than video poker. It’s still “advantage gambling,” so I believe it’s a worthy topic for me to discuss, but I know some of my readers are not interested in any gambling other than video poker. If that describes you, perhaps you should skip this week’s article.

A friend of mine, “Pete,” recently attained Diamond status in the Caesars Rewards system. He now qualifies for a monthly $75 “free bet” (after betting $100 with “real money.”) Since I have Seven Stars status in the same system, I get a monthly $150 in free bets. I’ve mentioned this several times in my writings. Since Pete generally reads my articles, he was aware of this.

Pete wrote to me and asked if I was interested in “opposition betting” with him so as to minimize the risk.

I told him I wasn’t interested — for a lot of reasons.

He didn’t define “opposition betting,” but generally it means betting both sides of a proposition so as to reduce variance. And there are two bets we’re talking about here. The “qualifying” bet of $100 that must be made to qualify for the free bet, and the free bet itself.

Insofar as the free bet goes, you do not get your original bet back, so it’s most profitable to bet underdogs. Betting favorites on free bets is NEVER a good idea, so I’m going to assume he wasn’t talking about these.

So for the qualifying bet, $100 per month, let’s assume he’s interested in betting one side of a game and me betting the other. Let’s say we’re doing it in football. On a given week, say the Kansas City Chiefs were favored by three points over the San Diego Chargers. He’d bet KC, giving up three points, at 11/10 odds against him I’d bet SD, receiving three points, also at 11/10 against me. (Paying eleven to win ten is written as -110 in sports books.) Since we’re each betting $100, usually one of us would lose and the other would win $191 (round numbers) and would pay the other guy $45.50. This reduces variance. (We’ll ignore the case where the game ends with KC winning by exactly three points. It doesn’t affect the point I’m trying to make today.)

This bet costs him $5.50 to get a $75 (or in my case $150) free bet. The thing is, a bet chosen at random, without me on the other side, is also going to cost him about $5.50. What he’s getting is the certainty of the loss of $5.50 on this $100 bet versus the expectation of the loss of $5.50.

He’s making these bets monthly — indefinitely. Over time, the expectation will be pretty close to reality. 

I generally do not make -110 bets. I’m not a sports betting expert and have become convinced that betting when I’m a 2-to-1 favorite (odds -200 in sports-book-speak) is a smarter way to go on these qualifying bets. Opposition betting wouldn’t work so well on these bets.

Another reason I would not want to bet in opposition with Pete is Bonnie and I both have accounts at Caesars Sports Book. Since Bonnie and I are often in the same room with each other, and Pete lives 2,000 miles away, it would be far easier to opposition bet with Bonnie (if I wanted to, which I don’t) than it would be with Pete. 

The odds of KC minus three points might very well last all week — but it could also shift around quite a bit. If we wanted to guarantee our bets were in opposition, we’d need to do it at the same time. And when he’s ready, I might not be, and vice versa. One or both of us might not even be in a state where we have a Caesars Sportsbook account. Or we might be gambling at a casino with poor Internet connection. Or we might be in the middle of something else and not want to drop that “right now.”

And this rigamarole, to my mind, would be for no gain. I’m betting millions of dollars a month in video poker and slots where my decisions are based on expectation. Locking up a guaranteed loss of $5.50 over an expected loss of the same size strikes me as really pointless. 

Finally, to me, it appears that the reason Pete wants to bet in opposition is that he really hates to lose. A $100 loss to him is much more painful to him than it is to me. While he still bets as an AP, he’ll sometimes give up a bit of EV if it will increase his chances for a positive score. I’m looking for the highest EV I can get and I know that means I’ll have some losing sessions.

Pete is one of those APs who is relatively risk adverse. Seems strange for a successful gambler to be this way, but that’s the way he is.

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Helping a Friend

Bob Dancer

I received a phone call from a very good friend — who isn’t a video poker expert. He’s the kind of person I’m willing to help basically an unlimited amount for free. 

He asked about using the “user defined games” section of WinPoker to add Deuces Bonus Poker (DWB). He didn’t see any way to enter a game with wild cards using that feature.

“Well,” I told him, “You’re correct that you can’t enter such a game using user defined games, but fortunately the game is already included. If you’re looking for “Deuces Bonus” you won’t find it, but if you’re looking for “Bonus Deuces,” you will.” 

Sure enough, he found it easily, and was embarrassed he couldn’t find it before he called me.

I asked him if he could share where he found a playable DWB game. I knew he wouldn’t be playing for small stakes, and he wouldn’t be playing if he didn’t think he had the advantage. 

Sometimes players aren’t willing to share such information, figuring that more skilled players who know about a particular play will kill the game. Still, we do favors back and forth so maybe he’d share with me this time. (And maybe not. He’d still be my friend if he felt he couldn’t share this particular game.)

“It’s actually an Ultimate X (UX) game. I’m trying to run coin-in at a casino in case I can’t find enough slot plays there. It’s not a positive play by itself, but enough coin-in gets you good mailers. Playing that game exclusively would be too expensive of a way to earn the mailers, but if it only averaged 20% or so of your play (with the rest being slots), it would be a good filler.

“I know UX games are played differently than regular video poker,” he continued, “but I don’t know the DWB game at all and wanted to get a feeling for it.”

I told him he was going about it wrong. The strategy for UX DWB is much different from regular DWB — primarily because when you get a straight flush in UX DWB, you get a 12x multiplier on the next hand. So you play for straight flushes MUCH more often in the UX game than you do in the regular game.

I do not have a UX DWB strategy. If I felt I needed to play that game, I’d have to buy the strategy from somebody else — and I currently don’t have anyone I know who can make one — or use the VP PRO strategy analyzer on videopoker.com to figure it out. 

The VP PRO strategy analyzer requires a monthly or annual fee to use. It allows you to get correction on several games that WinPoker doesn’t — and one of those games is UX. 

You can play the game, get correction when you are wrong, and ask it the correct play for any hand with any “sum of multipliers (SOM).” It’s a lot of work to create a strategy using this tool, but it’s the best way to do it for those of us without access to advanced programming skills.

The difficulty with UX for any game is that the strategy changes for different SOMs. Consider the Triple Play version. Multipliers can range from 1x to 12x for each hand — meaning the SOM can range from 3x to 36x. There are hands you play the same for all SOM levels (like a dealt straight flush, for example) and there are hands that you play differently at low SOMs and high SOMs. 

To cover all possibilities, you need to create 30+ strategies. Which is not a trivial feat. Five Play SOMs range from 5x to 60x, so that means 50+ strategies. For Ten Play you need a different approach because VP PRO doesn’t cover that game. It’s far too complicated.

When I played UX, I used a simplified strategy for each game — created by someone who I’m not in touch with anymore. It was complicated, but manageable. I don’t play the game anymore because the games I have the strategy for (like 9/6 Double Double Bonus UX Ten Play) do not exist anywhere that I know about.

I’m not sure my message was welcome news to my friend, but it kept him from wasting his time practicing something that wasn’t going to do him any good.

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Further Look at Changing Strategy

Bob Dancer

A few weeks ago, I discussed a long-gone game where getting all 13 quads yielded a 500-coin bonus. In the article, a lady, “Joyce,” asked me about a situation where you just needed four kings to complete the cycle and you were dealt KK443 in 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe.

I said you should hold two pair — and Joyce said that whatever I said she was just going to hold the kings because it made more sense to her.

One of my readers, John, wanted a better clarification because holding the kings made sense to him as well.

Another reader, Mike, suggested he read the Wizard of Odds discussion of Power Quads — which describes a very similar situation. In that discussion, Michael Shackleford analyzed the game under a “use a constant strategy for the entire cycle” strategy — but suggested at the end that the return might be higher with strategy deviations — but the reader would have to figure out those adjustments for himself. If you’re going to be making adjustments, presumably, at the minimum, you’d hold the kings from KK443 if kings were the last quad you needed to get your bonus.

With a great deal of nervousness, I suggest Shackleford is wrong! I believe a constant strategy is best. 

By the time you see this, you can be sure that Shackleford has been forwarded the original article and my statement that I think his line in the Power Quads article is incorrect — and if he chooses to respond, I will publish here what he says. 

Shackleford is an extremely proficient mathematician, specializing in analyzing games, and my skills in this area pale in comparison. Comparatively speaking, I might be a smart high school student and he would be an award-winning college professor. Not in the same league at all!

I did reach out to Shackleford. He said he stands by what he wrote in his original article, and from the hand in question, he would just hold the kings. He went over the math of the value of holding the kings — for this one hand only — and the value of holding two pair — and holding the kings was clearly superior.

I’m not disputing that. But I’m looking at maximizing the value of getting all 13 quads, again and again, not getting kings once. I didn’t continue the discussion with Shackleford. He’s largely retired now from analyzing games and living in the state of Washington.

There was another promotion years ago that leads me to my belief that a single strategy might be best.

Perhaps 25-30 years ago, the Orleans casino in Las Vegas had a promotion where connecting on two royal flushes in the same denomination within a certain time period (perhaps it was one week — perhaps it was one month — I don’t remember) would lead to the second royal being paid double.

They had a dozen or so dollar Triple Play machines with a number of games on them including both 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.54% — royal cycle 40,391) and 10/7 Double Bonus Poker (100.17% — royal cycle 48,048). (Those were the days!)

At the time, Triple Play was relatively new and they didn’t have any version with more lines than three. Still, if you’re playing a promotion where you get paid double on the second royal within a given time period, playing the same pay schedule on Triple Play rather than single line is a no-brainer you had sufficient bankroll. Royals come about much more frequently on Triple Play than they do on single line games. I think I decided to play JoB because the royal cycle was shorter.

The question then became: What strategy should I use? Although there are many possible strategies, I decided to look at two.

  1. For the first royal, use regular 4,000-coin royal strategy. After I got that one, if I still had time to play, use an 8,000-coin royal strategy until I hit the second one.
  1. Use a 6,000-coin royal strategy and keep going until I hit two royals. 

I’m not going to reproduce my analysis here, but I remember it came out using the single 6,000-coin strategy until I hit two royals was more profitable than using the 4,000-coin strategy until I hit the first one and then use the 8,000-coin strategy. 

The differences between the two promotions are numerous. Still, I’m guessing (hoping, really) that the one strategy rule applies in both cases.

I still believe that the one strategy approach is better — even though Shackleford seems to believe otherwise. I have a ton of respect for him. But this time I think my approach is better.

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Annie’s Rule

Bob Dancer

A few weeks ago, I published a colorful chart (originally created by Jimmy Jazz) about how to hold the 4-card straight hands W567-WQJT in NSU Deuces Wild. The chart I created in Word didn’t translate to the program used for the column, but the information on the chart was correct.

Strangely, holding the 4-card straight every time is worth exactly $5 to the five-coin dollar player. Of the 47 possible draws, 9 give you your money back exactly, 19 give you a straight worth $10, and 19 give you five cards that do not return anything.

If you just hold the deuce, the hand is worth between about $4.97 and $5.03, depending on the rank and suit of the 47 remaining cards. 

A now-deceased friend of mine, Annie Fried (sometimes she used Annie Lefton, or Annie Fried Lefton), decided she didn’t like memorizing the rather complicated rules and always held the deuce in these hands. She justified this in numerous ways:

  1. The rule was complicated. Memorizing it used mental band with and was subject to errors. 
  2. Always holding the solitary deuce in these hands is much faster to play.
  3. It’s only worth a few pennies if it’s wrong.
  4. Sometimes she connects on a nice hand (say 5-of-a-kind, dirty royal, or four deuces), which are a lot more fun than just a straight.
  5. She inherited a lot of money, increased it through employment and shrewd investing, and was really gambling for entertainment — not profit. If her play reduced the total EV of the game from 99.728% down to 99.726%, what difference did that make to a multi-millionaire?

I understood her logic, but I always tried to play the strategy exactly correctly. I was using video poker for my livelihood, and my rule of thumb was to play as accurately as possible. 

There was a casino we played at where the best two games (for considerably higher stakes than dollars) were 8/5 Bonus Poker (99.16%) and 9/6 Double Double Bonus (98.98%). I played BP because it was higher EV. Annie played DDB because the bigger jackpots were more fun for her.

So far as I was concerned, the two decisions were consistent with each other. I was a “nit” looking for every little edge and Annie was looking for fun as she gambled. We understood the position of the other, talked about it some, but didn’t dwell on the subject repeatedly.

The reason I bring this up now, is that in the chat following my column on categorizing hands, a poster named Bradley Davis said he always held the deuce on these hands. His “reasons” were very close to some of Annie’s. He took some flack for presenting this opinion from somebody who didn’t understand the point he was making — welcome to my world!

Turns out I know Bradley Davis and we’re friends. Some 35 years ago he wrote a book called “Mastering Joker Wild Video Poker.” The strategies in the book were much more accurate than those published by other video poker writers of the day — most prominently Dan Paymar and Lenny Frome.

I met him in the mid-nineties at an Atlantic City function sponsored by Casino Player magazine. A bunch of gambling writers from around the country were invited to speak. It might have been my first teaching gig. At the time, I had three self-published booklets on video poker I was peddling for $10 apiece.

Davis used a laser pointer in his presentation. I had not seen one before, commented on it, and he gave his to me! We’ve kept in touch over the years and sometimes meet up when he comes to Vegas.

Anyway, while I continue to play as a nit, I’m not critical of those who play for fun. I don’t know Davis’s exact bankroll by any means, but I believe he’s a senior citizen with enough money to last him “for the duration.”

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You Need the Right Tools

Bob Dancer

I was playing $5 NSU at Harrah’s Cherokee sometime last year. A man I didn’t know, who said his name was Archie, sat down next to me and started playing the $1 version of deuces wild on the same bank of machines.

He was dealt WWQJ3, where the W indicates a wild card (i.e., a deuce) and the bold italics indicate that all the cards were suited with each other. He looked at me and asked if he should hold all five cards (a flush) or maybe throw away the 3 and go for the wild royal flush. I told him I didn’t know for sure. I had never played that game before.

“Anybody who plays $5 deuces wild can play $1 deuces wild,” was his reply.

“It has nothing to do with denomination,” I told him. “At this casino, the $1 deuces wild pays 100 coins for wild royals and 60 coins for 5-of-a-kinds. The $5 deuces wild pays 125 coins and 80 coins for those same two pay schedule categories. The $1 version is more than 2% tighter and many hands are played differently between the two games. 

“The return on 5-of-a-kind isn’t a factor on this hand, but the return on the wild royal definitely is. 

“I’d need to study the $1 game to know how to play each hand,” I continued, “and since the game pays so little, I know I’m never going to play it in a casino. Why should I bother to study a game I’m not going to play?”

“But I don’t know how to play this hand,” Archie continued.

“Not my problem,” I told him. “I’m here to play my own game. I didn’t come to the casino today to help you play a terrible game.”

Five minutes later, he asked me about another hand. And then another a few minutes after that. After telling him twice more that I wasn’t there to help him, I didn’t even acknowledge his further questions. I cashed out and went to play on the opposite side of the bank of machines. If he followed, there were other $5 NSU machines elsewhere in the casino.

Later that day, Archie came back near me, but this time he had a couple of buddies with him. One of them had obtained a deuces wild strategy card and they were using that card to tell them how to play the hands. This was fine with me. They were not asking for my assistance.

The thing was, the deuces wild strategy card they were using must have been for a game called full pay deuces wild. This is a game where the pay schedule categories, from wild royals to flushes, pay 25, 15, 9, 5, 3, and 2. The machine they were on paid 20, 12, 10, 4, 4, and 3 for the same pay schedule categories. Nothing matched up! I’m guessing more than 20% of the hands were played differently between the two games. I didn’t actually see the card they were using. It might have been one they bought from me!

In addition, they had trouble figuring out how to read the card. The right number of gaps with straight flush draws takes some time to get correctly. These guys were trying to figure it out on the fly — and their results were predictable.

Using the wrong strategy card turned a 97.6% game into one that might have paid 96%, although this was probably better than not having the card and guessing all of the time. Plus using the card for every hand slowed them down so they weren’t playing many hands — which meant they weren’t losing quite so fast.

I didn’t say a thing to them. I could have told them they were using the wrong card, but from earlier experience with Archie I believed that saying anything would give him permission to start asking a lot of questions again. And I didn’t want that.

I don’t know how much they lost — but it’s certain that they did lose. Even with good pay schedules of deuces wild played well, if you don’t hit four deuces or a royal today, you’re going to have a losing session. And with only 100 coins for a wild royal and 60 coins for 5-of-a-kind, your score is going to be even worse. A royal would have locked the machine up and these guys would have whooped and hollered if they connected on four deuces. They didn’t.

The lessons were clear — at least to me. Play better games, use the correct strategy, and practice before you get to the casino. Still, if they guys were once-every-two-years players, and the money lost was small change for them, perhaps they went about it the right way. Studying might have ruined the fun for them, and studying makes more sense if you’re a more frequent player.

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I Didn’t Mean to Upset Him

Bob Dancer

Years ago, Sam’s Town in Las Vegas had one $5 8/5 Bonus Poker progressive machine slightly to the right of the cashier on the main floor. On Thursdays they had a “Young at Heart” day where seniors would get benefits. I don’t remember what all was involved. Maybe a point multiplier and half-price meals, but I’m sure there was a senior drawing in the afternoon where your play on that day earned you drawing tickets. Ten seniors earned $500 apiece in the drawing.

Playing on a $5 machine for two or three hours usually meant I would be called in the drawing. The vast majority of seniors played for smaller stakes — including quarter Full Pay Deuces Wild — and few seniors earned nearly as many drawing tickets as I did. On occasion, one of the other seniors would come up to me and tell me in no uncertain terms that it was unfair of me to play the $5 machine on Thursdays. “The rest of us can’t compete with that. Go back to the Strip where you belong!” 

I didn’t argue with these players. I just listened to what they had to say. I understood the point, and there was the possibility that these same complainers would talk to casino management about my “unfair” presence. Since I was a winning player there, enough complaints and the casino might be motivated to “fix the problem” by removing the machine or removing my welcome. Neither of these solutions appealed to me. So, whenever I was drawn, I would skip playing for the next week or two. There’s a big difference between winning semi-regularly and winning all the time.

But it wasn’t these players who led to the title of today’s blog.

Next to the $5 8/5 Bonus Poker progressive machine was a $5 8/5 Double Double Bonus machine. Many times when I was playing on Thursdays, the same guy was playing the DDB machine. This is a 96.8% game when played well — which this guy didn’t. How much he ended up losing, I don’t know, but it must have been a lot. He was always glum — and totally untalkative. His silence may have been due to the fact that he was losing — or he might have just been a quiet guy.

One day I ended up hitting AAAA4 on my machine. On my machine, where kickers don’t matter, it was worth $2,000. On his machine, it would have been worth $10,000. I was pleased with the result, of course, but gloating would have been insensitive. He was probably losing that day and “needed” such a hand to catch up. 

He groaned audibly. Seeing the hand he needed on the machine next door doesn’t affect the odds on his machine, of course, but he seemed devastated. He probably figured that my hand had “used up” the aces with a kicker quota for the day because he cashed out and left the machine, and probably left the casino, before I was even paid. Usually he stayed for the drawing — where he was called with regularity but $500 didn’t come close to what earning the tickets cost him. 

He skipped the drawing that day, I think. At least, I didn’t see him. He must have been pretty upset. As was often the case when I played there. I got called that week at the drawing. I got enough evil eyes from some of the quarter players — but none from my fellow $5 player who wasn’t around.

Although I was glad I hit four aces — with or without a meaningless-to-me kicker — I didn’t draw that hand on purpose. As if I could. If I had the power to make aces with a kicker show up on my machine whenever I wanted, I assure you I’d be playing a different game for much higher stakes. But I can’t. Nor can any of us.

When I saw him again three weeks later, we were both playing our usual games. We didn’t discuss what happened “last time.” Or anything else for that matter. He was just his normal sullen self while I quietly played to earn drawing tickets.