Bob Dancer – Page 16 – Las Vegas Advisor

Posted on November 8, 2022August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 8 Comments

Comparing Two Different Games at Dotty’s — Part One of Two

Today I’m going to discuss a play that is of limited interest to most of my readers. It includes, however, a “how did I figure it out” discussion that could be useful to many of you.

Long-time readers of mine know I sometimes play at Dotty’s. Dotty’s has numerous (more than 100) locations in Nevada which are mostly 15-machine locations. It does have a few full-blown casinos with several hundred machines each, and at least one intermediate-sized location (at Sunset and Green Valley Parkway) with about 50 machines in it.

Posted on November 1, 2022August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 7 Comments

What Was Your Best Gambling Decision?

Pick your one or two best gambling decisions throughout your life. Pick them before reading on. Take however much time you need. This blogpost will be here when you get back.

This post has been inspired by my recent reading of Annie Duke’s books, “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit.” I wrote about these books last week. I’m not sure which book spoke about this topic. I read them more or less concurrently as audiobooks checked out from the library, and they’ve both been returned.

Posted on October 25, 2022August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 8 Comments

How Much Should I Lose Before I Quit?

I’ve been asked variations of this question more than one hundred times over the years. Sometimes phrased as, “If I lose $100 (or some other number), should I give up for the day?”

My answer usually was some form of the following:

Only play when you have the advantage. If the house has the edge, don’t play. It’s fairly easy to calculate in video poker whether you have the edge or not. In general, if you don’t know if you’re the favorite or not, you’re not.

My answer assumes you have sufficient bankroll, actual and psychological, to ride it out. How to calculate how much bankroll you need is a discussion for another day.

Are you still playing alertly?

Posted on October 18, 2022August 29, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 13 Comments

Putting Bills Into a Machine

Before playing a video poker machine, I typically load it with $500 or $1,000 in bills or tickets. I do this for a number of reasons:

I keep records of how much I win or lose each day. It’s easier for me to remember round numbers. If I’m playing a $2 game, ($10 a play), it’s common to be up or down several hundred dollars in a session. If I add another hundred-dollar bill as needed, it can be difficult to remember whether it’s four or five of those so far.

For each additional bill, I could record it on my phone (I use the Notes app on my iPhone), but I can keep thousand-dollar increments straight more easily. If I go in for $3,000 or more in a session, I write each $1,000 play as I go.

Posted on October 11, 2022August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 9 Comments

Help Me Make Sense of This

I received the following email. It was originally intended for the Gambling with an Edge mailbag, but I felt it was too technical to be discussed over a podcast:

I know video poker has a ton of variance, but I recently endured a hellish series of events on $5 NSU Deuces Wild at a tribal casino.

Posted on October 4, 2022August 29, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 6 Comments

When is a Wild Royal Flush not a Wild Royal Flush?

Using a W for wild card to indicate a deuce, assume you are dealt W W Q♦ J♦ T♦ on a Triple Play version of Deuces Wild. This is not a tough play. You hold all five cards for a wild royal flush. (Other terms for the same hand are royal flush with deuce and dirty royal.) Usually this pays 100 or 125 coins, depending on the pay schedule, and in the specific version you’re playing it returns 100 coins.

Posted on September 27, 2022August 29, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 2 Comments

How Would You Play This One?

I received an email from a player, “Sam,” discussing a promotion that has come and gone, in an unnamed casino in an unnamed state. He wanted to know how I would have analyzed whether or not to play it.

The gist of the promotion was that for two consecutive days, four hours per day, each W-2G received the following free play bonuses:

Posted on September 13, 2022 by Bob Dancer — 7 Comments

Why Aren’t You Still There?

I wrote recently in a two-parter about a trip I took where I ended up quite a bit ahead. Sometime after I got back, Bonnie and I were having dinner with her sister, Robin, and Robin’s husband. Robin asked about the trip.

“Bonnie tells me you did pretty well there.”

Posted on September 6, 2022August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 3 Comments

I Don’t Want Him Looking Over My Shoulder

Last week I wrote that my son-in-law passed away recently. My wife Bonnie is very close to her daughter, Joyce, so we’ve spent more time than usual hanging out together.

It probably had to happen. One of my gambling buddies, “Al,” lost his wife to a lengthy illness some time ago. Bonnie likes Al a lot. After Joyce signaled that she might be ready to date, setting up Al and Joyce for at least one blind date became inevitable. So, we made it happen. Although Al and Joyce were both involved in Bonnie’s and my wedding party eight years ago, they didn’t remember each other. They were both married at the time and not at all on the make. They were polite to each other, but I guess neither did anything particularly memorable that day!

Posted on August 30, 2022August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 13 Comments

“Doing it Bob Dancer’s Way Can Lead to Bankruptcy”

My son-in-law, or perhaps a more correct term is step-son-in-law, Michael, passed away recently after a long illness. Michael was married to Bonnie’s daughter Joyce. He was more than 20 years older than Joyce, and in fact was a few months older than me.

After a somewhat rocky start, where Joyce and Michael were initially opposed to Bonnie marrying a professional gambler and did their best to sabotage the wedding. Over time we all got to know each other well and became friends.

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