Tag: Bob Dancer

Bonnie and I sometimes travel to Harrah’s Cherokee, which is in the Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina. 

Although there are many reasons we go there, one is that we have casino friends, “Jack” and “Jill,” who also play there. I email Jack when Bonnie and I are going to be traveling east, and sometimes they make a trip there at the same time. And when that happens, we share at least one meal at Brio, the Italian restaurant at the casino.

Rather than split the cost of the meal, we each pick up the entire check every other time we do this. All four of us play at the Seven Stars level, so, among other things, each gets five $100 food vouchers a year. Often one of those vouchers is redeemed during our meals together.

This time it was Jack’s turn to pick up the check. I asked him how much of the meal his host was picking up, and Jack said he never asked a host to buy his food.

“You’re leaving money on the table,” I told him. “You and Jill each play $50,000 coin-in per day you’re there and annually you each earn Seven Stars status primarily from your play at this casino. Hosts will consider you valuable to the casino and will be willing to give you something.”

He told me between them they earn $100 worth of Reward Credits a day, sometimes more if there’s a multiplier, and that’s enough to cover much of what they spend on food.

“Okay,” I continued. “I don’t know what kind of benefits your play entitles you to, but let’s say the host is willing to pick up $250 in food for your four-day trip that usually you pay for with Reward Credits. That many Reward Credits can be turned into $125 free play — which essentially means cash. Are you so rich you can’t find a use for another $125?”

The answer was obvious. I had given Jack the name of our host previously. He had spoken to the host over the phone, but never met her and she didn’t know they were at the casino now.

“You’re going to be here tomorrow, and she’ll get in at noon. Why don’t you give her a call and see if she has five minutes to chat. Once she puts faces to names, she can look up your play and figure out what she can do — if anything. It’s possible, I suppose, that she can’t do anything, but I very much doubt that. Even if that turns out to be the case, it will only cost you five minutes to find out. The odds are very good that she’ll be able to do something.” 

Jill commented she would rather get free facials and manicures than free food. Jack thought a bottle of Scotch Whisky would satisfy him more.

“Let your host know that. Your host’s job is to take care of valuable customers. She has guidelines she must follow, but also, she has a lot of flexibility. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

“And sometimes you play at Harrah’s New Orleans too. If you don’t have a host there, get one. Let them know when you’re coming and see if they can offer you anything.”

Bonnie and I regularly played at an out-of-town Caesars property where part of the monthly mailer was $200 in resort credit apiece. If we played our usual amount, our host would pick up food charges. So that left the resort credit to be spent at gift shops. They had a women’s store, a men’s store, and a jewelry store, in addition to a typical small gift shop where you could get various sundries. 

Generally speaking, you don’t expect casino gift shops to compete on price. At the men’s store, I was told that if I paid with cash or credit card, I’d get a 35% discount. If I used Reward Credits, I’d get a 20% discount. And if I charged to my room, I’d get no discount. Part of the deal with the $200 resort credit was that you had to charge it to your room. 

The resort credits weren’t worth anywhere near face value to us — but they were obviously worth something and made the play worth more to me than if I didn’t get to spend them. So how much are they worth?

No gift shop is worth the same amount to every player. I would wear a few of the shirts sold by this particular men’s store — but not all that many. A younger man — or a man whose taste is different from mine — might find he liked a much larger percentage of the inventory than I do. Bonnie is usually with me on these trips — and she can usually find something in one of the gift shops. If I tell her she has $400 to spend at such and such a selection of stores, she’ll find at least that much for one of us — or for one of our relatives or friends.

If I were thinking a $200 gift shop award might be worth $100, I asked myself, “Would I pay $100 in cash to get that $200 gift shop award?” For me, the answer was, ‘No.’ But I might pay $50 in cash. So, I figured that’s what the award was worth. 

I find it useful to turn this into a percentage — so I can add it into the mix along with the return on the game, the slot club, and other such awards. If I regularly played $10,000 and they gave me this award worth $50 to me, the award would be worth 0.5%. If I played $100,000 (which is closer to what I actually play), the award is worth 0.05%.

Frankly, something worth 0.05% would rarely be enough to tip the play-or-not-play scales into positive territory. Maybe if a play were already worth 100.3%, which is about the minimum I’ll play, I’ll make a play I might otherwise pass on. But that exact circumstance rarely happens.

It turns out that I find such awards most valuable for “keeping Bonnie happy” reasons. 

Bonnie and I keep our finances separate. If I win or lose $40,000 on a trip, it basically doesn’t affect her finances at all. But if I have the advantage on the play, and I can play on her card as well as mine, it’s good for her to make the trip with me, even if there is not much for her to do once she’s there.

So, gift shop awards, at least one nice dinner per trip, free movies in the room, and excursions to sight-seeing places are all part of what we do while we’re there. Sometimes I give her half of my win in a drawing. She’s 80 years old, I’m 77, and staying happy together is a significant part of our game plan. If there is suitable music, we dance for a few hours. If we earn cruises, she gets a big say in where we go. Bonnie’s generally a good sport about coming with me when I take these “business trips,” I want her to look forward to our time together. If getting to go shopping brings a smile to her face, I’m all for it.

The following incident happened while a friend of mine was playing slots, but there’s enough in common to gambling at video poker that I think it’s worth discussing.

“John” was scouting a casino in Las Vegas looking for slot machines in positive conditions. There are many, many slot machines that are sometimes positive — but most of the time, on each of these machines, the house has the advantage. Most players, however, are not aware of when the game is positive or not and simply play the game, quitting whenever they feel like it. Sometimes they quit when the game is positive, and then when the next knowledgeable player comes by, that player typically sits down to play it off. 

John has “strike numbers” on perhaps 20-30 different slot machine titles. That’s nowhere near all or even most of the beatable machines, but still, it’s more than most players know.

He found a game for $25 a play that he thought might be positive. This is a much larger game than usual for slot players. Most players can’t afford to play this game, but the size of the game was not a showstopper to him. He shifted the denomination on the machine so that it showed the $10-per-play game and consulted his notes. The $10-per-play game was nowhere near a positive play at the moment, and other pros seeking games would walk right by. He wanted time to think about this situation without drawing attention to the game.

His notes said that the game was a play when a certain meter was at 15 or higher — and sure enough this meter was at 16. So, it was a play. His notes also said the game is highly volatile. He knew that on a volatile $25 game, he could easily win or lose several thousand dollars. If he played this game in this situation several dozen times, he figured he’d make a sizeable profit. But there was no way to tell at the outset whether this time would be positive or negative.

He had $3,500 on him. He figured that would cover the swings most of the time. He wouldn’t likely run out of money, but if he did there were people he could call. He didn’t like making these calls — partly because that meant others would have the right to call him when they ran out. He trusted himself to run out of money very rarely, but some of the people he called wouldn’t have the same discipline. But if he asked for help, he had to be prepared to give help to others in the future. He didn’t want to open that door.

He actually called me to ask my opinion. John and I respect each other’s knowledge and have helped each other out occasionally. I know him well, know how he handles swings, and I thought he should go for it. I wasn’t in Vegas at the time, and he was, so there was no way I could get money to him if he ended up needing some.

He was just about to start when another pro, “Peter,” approached him and asked if he were going to play the $25 game. John knew Peter vaguely. He’d seen him checking out machines but wasn’t sure how knowledgeable he was.

John said yes. He thought it was a good play and he had the bankroll to play it. Peter said he had the bankroll too, but wasn’t in the mood to risk his daily score on such a volatile play.

Peter, it seems, had been losing recently and was sort of gun shy. He didn’t trust his own judgment, so he didn’t want to play such a big game. He could likely find a sizeable number of smaller games where he could increase his bankroll by dribs and drabs rather than making a big jump one way or the other all at once.

Peter said he had a few thousand dollars on him and suggested they partner up for this one game. John thought about this. It had some positive aspects to it. It essentially guaranteed he wouldn’t run out of money. 

At the same time, John had never done business with Peter before. Was he trustworthy? Who was going to eat the W-2G if there was one? Peter was friendly now, but what if Peter was the one playing when the bonus round hit and denied making a deal? So John passed and played it by himself. Peter wished him luck and left.

As it happened, the bonus round went off rather quickly and John ended up making $900. This was a nice result, but it certainly didn’t have to be that way.

I want to look at Peter’s reaction to this. Peter had actually seen the game first and passed on it. He had the financial bankroll — but not the emotional bankroll — to play the game. So, I believe he was right to pass.

Everybody has his own emotional bankroll. Respecting your bankroll parameters, both financial and emotional, is critical to long term success at gambling. I also think that Peter suggesting they be partners was a move that made sense for him. This would lower the swings and lower the risk. So now it might have been within his comfort zone. 

It couldn’t have been too much of a surprise for Peter that John turned down his offer to partner up. That’s probably the usual result. But you don’t know unless you try. 

All in all, the situation was well played by both men.

I was paid to help somebody learn the strategy for 9/5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus. “Mary” was a person who wanted to learn the minimum and take the strategy with her. Whenever Mary wasn’t sure of how to play a hand, she’d look it up on the strategy sheet.

I suggested this wasn’t such a good way to go about learning this game. There were enough unique hands in this game that you’d never know if it was an unusual play unless you knew the whole strategy. But Mary reminded me that she was paying me by the hour and the customer was always right, so we were going to do it her way.

Today’s lesson dealt with hands starting with an A of one suit and a suited JT of another. Mary wanted to concentrate on just those hands where the final answer was A or JT, but I informed her there were a lot of other possibilities. She allowed me to go over them.

“You hold all trips, which can only be aces, jacks, or tens, given that each hand we’re talking about starts with AJT and there are always exactly five cards in each hand.

“We hold 4-card straight flushes, namely KJT9, QJT9, and QJT8. Whether we hold 3-card straight flushes, KJT and QJT, depends on whether there is another king, queen, or jack in the hand.”

At this point, Mary stopped me and said she thought the lesson was just about A and a suited JT, not all this stuff about royal flush draws and straight flush draws, not to mention 3-of-a-kinds and I seem to be getting into high pairs.

“I am and it is,” I assured her, “but every one of these hands includes AJT. If you don’t want to look at every line of the strategy and use a top-down approach, these are all hands that can arise starting from AJT. Each of the high pairs, AA, KK, QQ, and JJ have different things to be concerned about, and low pairs are not treated all the same either. We haven’t even gotten into most 4-card consecutive straights and 4-card inside straights, nor have we discussed most 3-card straight flushes, which come in four different flavors, each of which is treated differently strategically. You probably should be taking notes. We’re less than halfway through and there are still some tricky hands ahead.”

Mary looked uncertain, not sure she was ready for this. If she pulled the plug on this lesson, so be it. I needed to know all of this because I played the game myself.

“Let’s look at pairs, remembering that we’ve discussed trips, so they are off the table. A pair of aces is better than any other possibility, as are a pair of kings. For a pair of queens, it matters if one is suited with the JT. If so, we’ve already discussed the 3-card straight flushes. If both queens are unsuited with the JT, the pair is better than anything else not discussed so far.

“For a pair of jacks, we now have the possibility of two pair — jacks and tens. This is the only two pair combination we hold with hands included with AJT. Pairs of nines and tens are lower in value than JT9. 

“Now let’s look at the 3-card straight flushes. Six of these include an A and two low cards. These are simple to play. Hold the three cards.

“JT9 is more valuable than any two suited high cards and any 4-card straight in the hand except QJT9.

“JT8 is more valuable than any two suited high cards and any 4-card straight in the hand except JT98. It is lower in value than every pair.

“JT7 is less valuable than two suited high cards and 4-card inside straights with three high cards (i.e., AKJT and AQJT).

“If you have a K in the hand suited with the A, hold AK unless there is a flush penalty to the AK, in which case you hold AKJT. If you have an unsuited K in the hand, hold AKJT.

“A Q in the hand is played identically to a K, with the exception that QJT9 is greater than either AQ or AQJT.

“There are three other hands starting from AJT where you hold neither A nor only JT. From AJT98, the correct play is JT98 and those hands with a 4-card flush (including JT), hold the 4-card flush. From AJT and any low pair, hold the low pair.

“Okay. We’re now ready to discuss the hands you wanted to look at first: AJT with none of the above items in the hand. But as you can see, there are a LOT of other possibilities before we get to this point.

“With AJT without any of the cases already described, first look at penalties to JT. If there is a 9, 8, or flush penalty to JT in the remaining cards, you hold the A by itself, no matter what penalties the ace has.

“If there is a 7 in the hand, hold the A unless there are two flush penalties to the A. In this case, a straight flush penalty to the case counts as a flush penalty.

“If the JT is totally unpenalized, hold the JT if the A has one or more flush or straight flush penalty.

“That’s it. That’s the entire strategy for these hands.”

“So, I’m ready to play now?” Mary asked me.

“Not really. AJT is probably the trickiest combination in this game, but an unsuited AQJ is played differently in this game than any others. Plus, the 100-for-1 return for straight flushes, rather than the more typical 50-for-1 return causes quite a few unusual plays. We can go over those later if you like. I think you’ve had enough for today.” “Finally, something we agree on.”