Tag: Bob Dancer

Posted on by — 16 Comments

The Cost of Tips

In mid-February, Andrew Uyal, a Las Vegas Strip casino pit boss, wrote in his Behind the Curtain column on the www.gamblingwithanedge.com site an article titled Who Actually Cares? It was about tipping. One of the comments made to his article was about my writing, so Uyal forwarded it to me to make sure I saw it. I’m going to address that today.

When Bob discusses how a given game in a given casino has a positive EV, I have never seen him factor in tokes in his highly detailed calculations despite his listing every other conceivable variable involved. It seems to me that giving up even $5 or $10 or more on big wins would have a substantial impact on beating the casino if one only hopes to beat the casino by ~.02%

Do APs refrain from toking, because it’s the only way to maintain a positive EV? If APs do tip when they win, why doesn’t Bob cost tips in his calculus for the EV of the games he plays?

I have written more than a dozen articles through the years about tipping. The Cliff Notes of my views are:

  1. Tipping is a personal matter. Everybody must decide for himself.
  2. I tip less than many other players.
  3. If I’m teaching at a casino, e.g. the South Point now but it has been other places as well over the years, I always tip at least $5 on every hand pay. I do not wish complaints about this to get upstairs which might affect my welcome.
  4. If I’m playing at a 15-machine bar, which abound in Nevada and very occasionally offer very lucrative games/promotions, the only casino employee on sight is the bartender. If the game is lucrative enough, I tip more generously in these situations than I would in a regular casino. (If the game is not that lucrative, I don’t play.) A bartender can easily complain to the boss if I’m “winning all the time.” If he is well-tipped, he has an incentive to keep his mouth shut in this regard.

So, without expanding on the Cliff Notes too much, let me see if I can find something new to say. The letter-writer to Andrew Uyal believes that video poker players only have a 0.02% advantage. Believe me, if that were the size of the advantage, I wouldn’t be playing. I need a significantly larger advantage than that.

To show how this is not nearly enough, I used Video Poker for Winners and looked at NSU Deuces Wild (returning 99.728%) and assumed a slot club of 0.3%. This gives the player a 100.028 game, which is actually quite a bit more than the 0.020% edge posited. A dollar single-line player needs a bankroll of more than $1 million to have a 99% chance of not going broke in the long run. I’ve never heard of a dollar player having anywhere near this size of gambling bankroll. Those of us who do have larger bankrolls typically play for larger stakes than dollar single line.

In his column, Andrew Uyal addresses tips from the point of view of table games. In table games, the dealer and the player are face-to-face all-day long. A good dealer can enhance the gambling experience. In places where “when to shuffle” is a dealer-decision, a well-timed tip can sometimes get you one more hand. But unless you’re betting $100 or more, a $5 tip will almost always be cost-ineffective, and anything less than that could be perceived as an insult.

In video poker, you rarely interact with the floor people except in the case of a W2G. The floor people bring you the money. Period. I’m nice to these people. I learn their names over time. But I don’t see normal jackpots as a tip-worthy event.

An exception to this would be a high-value promotion where there are LOTS of W2Gs hitting all the time. Then tipping makes sense because if the floor people have to decide who to take care of first, it’s human nature to help the tokers first.  Since time is money on these types of plays, “sharing the wealth” a bit is smart gambling.

So yes, video poker APs tend to tip less than recreational players. With that said, there will always be APs who honestly believe that toking well is simply a cost of doing business and that minimum wage floor people need the money more than a player who can afford to play $50 a hand or more.

I understand that point of view. I also understand the point of view that when you lose $10,000, floor people never offer to share your losses with you. It’s a one-way street. They only want to share your wins.

Both points of view make sense to some degree. You’ll have to balance them for yourself.

Finally, in most cases I tip zero, which is why I don’t explicitly list the cost of tips in my calculations.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

How Do You Figure?

Let me describe a hypothetical situation that is based in reality.

Let’s say the two best games for you at a casino are 25¢ Ten Play 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe (99.64%) and 25¢ Spin Poker 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%). Let’s also assume the slot club plus the various promotions adds a half percent.

You have a miniscule edge at JoB (namely 0.04% — 99.54% + 0.50% = 100.04%) and a slightly-less-miniscule edge at BPD (0.14%). In addition, the Ten Play game requires $12.50 per play while the Spin Poker game requires $11.25 per play.

The reason the difference in amount per “pull” matters is calculated by the advantage times the amount bet. In our example, the bet size for BPD is 11% greater than that for JoB, so that increases your edge.

Further, let’s assume you know both games well, like them both equally, bankroll is not an issue, and want to play the game where you have the bigger advantage. So far, that’s going to be BPD in the Ten Play version.

If that’s all there was to it, there would be no discussion worthy of a column. To make things interesting, assume that when you play the Ten Play machine rapidly, one out of ten hands doesn’t register. That is, for every ten hands played, instead of earning the 125 points (at $1 coin-in per point) you deserve, you only receive 112.5 points. Now what? Which game is better? The lesser game gets full points and the better game awards only 90% of the points you are supposed to get.

Go ahead and work out your answer. I’ll be happy to wait for you.

Since the JoB game works exactly like it’s supposed to, we know that has a 100.04% yield. The only game we need to work on is BPD.

For BPD, the game itself is still worth 99.64%, as it would be if you didn’t use your slot club at all. That number isn’t affected by the player tracking system and the slot club. It’s only the 0.5% slot club that’s reduced to 0.45% when you only get credit for 90% of your coin-in. So, 99.64% + 0.45% = 100.09%.

As I mentioned earlier, it isn’t the raw percentages we wish to compare, but rather the raw percentages multiplied by the coin-in. But since 90% of $12.50 per hand comes out to be $11.25, which is the same as you’re betting for Spin Poker, no adjustment needs to be done here to compare the two games.

The best play is still BPD. Is that what you deduced? This isn’t that difficult, although figuring out exactly how to calculate this is a bit tricky to some players.

The guy who told me about this had a totally different take on it. He argued, “The casino player tracking system shouldn’t be making this mistake. It’s like they’re cheating me. And since I don’t like being cheated, I’m going to avoid the game I’m being cheated on and go with the other game. That’ll teach them!”

Well, I don’t like being cheated either. The word “cheated” implies the casino is doing this on purpose. I doubt this is the case here. If you bring it to the slot director’s attention, in most casinos he will attempt to fix the problem.

Personally, even though I’m not afraid to address mistakes to slot directors when I think it appropriate, in this case I would likely keep quiet. In our example, we’re assuming this is the loosest game in the house. Those games make slot directors nervous. Since the fix to this problem would cause the casino to pay out more money for the same amount of play, the slot director might well decide to fix the problem but downgrade the game to 8/6 rather than 9/6. That wouldn’t be to my liking at all.

What I would do is play the BPD, even though the machine had a malfunction. Or maybe avoid the casino altogether because a 0.09% edge is just too skinny. But going all the way down to a 0.04% edge would never be my solution.

Just because there’s a malfunction doesn’t mean that the game should necessarily be avoided. You need to estimate the cost of the malfunction and proceed accordingly.

Posted on by — 21 Comments

Apples and Oranges

I’ve written before how I sometimes play at various Dotty’s outlets. My usual pattern is to play about $100,000 coin-in each time I go.

In January, I received an offer from Dotty’s that was the first ever of its kind, in my experience anyway. They sent me a two-night stay at either the Hoover Dam Lodge or Laughlin River Lodge. The offer included $1,100 in free play and $150 in resort credit.

The Hoover Dam Lodge is about 25 miles away from where we live. I told Bonnie that for $1,100 I planned on going.  If she wanted to go too, after we paid for dinner, she could spend the rest of the resort credit in the gift shop. She decided she had time to do this.

I assumed that the games and promotions would be the same at HDL as they were at regular Dotty’s outlets. Based on this assumption (which turned out to be correct), my plan was to invest $150,000 – $200,000 coin-in on the play. Dotty’s was making this offer in the hopes of generating additional play and, if I ever want to receive another offer like that, I had better play. Nobody told me to play that much. It’s just the amount that “felt right,” given the parameters of the offer.

I ended up losing $4,800 on the play. If you count the free play earned, future mailers, promotional entries earned, my loss was reduced to maybe $4,100, meaning the promotion cost me $3,000 (minus the hotel room night, dinner, and two blouses and set of earrings that Bonnie brought home.)

I told someone about this and they told me that I was confused about how to play these promotions. I was told that if they send you $1,100 the basic rule is stop before you lose it all. Maybe lose $1,000 and keep $100. Maybe donate $900 and keep $200. Something like that. I was told it is just plain idiotic to get such a generous offer and give it all back and then some.

Apples and oranges.

Remember, Dotty’s has games that I would play anyway that week even without receiving the extra $1,100. My daily scores are sometimes plus and sometimes minus, depending on the luck factor on that particular day. I took $10,000 with me and was willing to spend all of that plus the $1,100 they gave me. There have been days at Dotty’s that I’ve lost that much. There have been days I’ve won more than that. I truly have no idea of what my score will be “this time.”

The $1,100 was, basically, a gift to my bankroll, both short term and long term. It changed my short-term bankroll (i.e. cash on hand) from $10,000 to $11,100 and my long-term bankroll (however much it is) was increased by the same amount. This gift was given to me as a reward for past play and as an incentive to get me to play more on this particular trip.

Once that money becomes part of my bankroll, it has no more special significance. The number is entered on my daily log and then I go from there.

I actually could have stiffed the Hoover Dam Lodge. Because of a glitch in their player tracking system on the day I got there, I received $1,100 in cash and a gift card for $150. Bonnie and I could have eaten, gone to the gift shop, and then gone home immediately. I’m sure some people have done that, but not me.

Monthly mailers are a part of the Dotty’s system. Any month my play drops down, my future mailers are affected as well. I had no reason to expect this offer would be treated any differently. Collect money without playing and your future offers decrease. Many players have learned this the hard way.

If I had to do it over again, I would have played it exactly the same way. Except on the do-over, I’d have hit a royal flush!

Posted on by — 20 Comments

History of Your Bankroll

A player, “Alex,” came to one of my video poker classes and chose to tell me how his bankroll developed. I’m guessing he was 45 years old, although I could be off in either direction. He started by borrowing $100 from a friend, hitting a good hand which allowed him to end the first day up $500, and slowly building it up from there. Now he was up to “five figures” with no money input at all from himself. It was a point of pride with him that his gambling bankroll was entirely sourced by other people’s money and his skill. He called this his “pure” bankroll.

He never told me what his “five figures” actually meant. While it could be anywhere between $10,000 and just shy of $100,000, I’m going to assume for this article that it’s $11,000 or less. I’ve never heard of anybody bragging about their bankroll in terms of a number of figures and I imagine he probably passed the $10,000 threshold recently and was quite proud of it.

Playing mostly for quarters while building up a bankroll of that size is pretty impressive, and it definitely took some time. In no way am I putting him down.

He then shared what games he was willing to play and under what conditions. He treated this $11,000 pure bankroll as though if he lost it all, his life as a gambler would be over. Even though he had considerable wealth outside of this bankroll, that other wealth was totally out-of-bounds insofar as his gambling went. But within those parameters, he wanted to grow his bankroll as fast as he safely could.

Is this the right way to look at bankroll? Not to me, but every player has to make that decision for himself.

Let’s say you have ten $20 bills in your wallet. Do you know the provenance of each bill? I don’t, unless I just received all ten of them from the same place. If you spend one of those bills for lunch, is it important to decide whether you’re actually spending one of the bills you got from a jackpot at a particular casino or one of the bills you got from a tax refund check?

Not to me. I might care that I had $200 and now have $180, but exactly which bill I was spending is irrelevant. I’m looking at the total only.

The fact that Alex is proud of “never spending a cent of his own money in a casino,” is understandable. But it’s short-sighted.

Alex is 45 years old now. He will not live forever. Video poker opportunities, in general, are declining. They will probably not be as good five or ten years from now as they are today.

Alex’s insistence of only using his pure money, when he has plenty of other money available, is restricting his opportunities in an environment where opportunities in the future won’t be as good. Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me.

Alex should ask himself why it is so important to only gamble with pure money. Is it for purposes of pride? Okay. But who is he going to brag to and do they really care? If someone were concerned about his total wealth, would they be more concerned with the total amount or the pathway it took to get there?

With all that said, I’m not recommending Alex plunge and suddenly start playing bigger stakes because his real bankroll is much larger than his $11,000 pure bankroll. He still has to limit himself to good opportunities.

It’s still possible to find 100.8% opportunities and larger in Las Vegas if you limit yourself to quarter single line games. You won’t always find opportunities that size for dollars. But 100.4% opportunities for dollars offer twice the earning potential per hour played as 100.8% opportunities for quarters, simply because you’re playing four times as much.

Playing for dollars entails larger risks. If things went badly while playing for dollars, Alex could go through that $11,000 bankroll. While he has plenty of actual wealth behind that $11,000, I’m not at all sure how much psychological wealth he has. He’s going to have to figure this out for himself.

There’s much to be said for “making hay while the sun shines,” meaning take bigger risks while the opportunities are bigger. There is also much to be said about staying within your comfort zone. These two philosophies lead to different paths going forward.

There is no unique best path for everybody. The only thing I can recommend with certainty for you is that you should examine your alternatives. Sometimes tweaking your philosophy can pay off more in the long term.

Posted on by — 7 Comments

I Don’t Want to Lose That Much!

This particular incident happened at the Gold Coast casino in Las Vegas maybe ten years ago, on games that are long gone. The fact that these individual games are no longer available doesn’t change the thought processes of the players involved.

My game of choice at that casino back then was a $2 single line 99.81% version of Double Bonus Deuces Wild (DBDW). With a 0.30% slot club 24/7 (if you had achieved the highest tier level — called “Emerald”), the game provided a very small edge to the competent player. They would regularly have days where you could earn 0.50% or 0.60% on play up to $10,000 coin-in per day. If you played more than that, you reverted to the 0.30% slot club.

They had drawings. They had mailers. They had other promotions. Overall it was a modestly profitable place to play — at least on a $10,000-a-day coin-in basis.

This game came with a variance of 40.4 — which is very comparable to that of Double Double Bonus (42.0). These variances are moderately high, especially when compared with Jacks or Better (19.5) or NSU Deuces Wild (25.7).

A typical session of $10,000 coin-in (1,000 hands) ends up a thousand or more dollars to the red unless you connect on one or more hands of $1,600 five aces (every 2,565 hands on average), $2,000 four deuces (6,766 hands), $4,000 four deuces with an ace kicker (38,088 hands) or an $8,000 royal flush (44,211 hands). The “average loss” of $19 (based on a 99.81% return played for $10,000 coin-in) before you collected your $30, $50, or $60 dollars in free play from the slot club was a score you never saw. Over hundreds of sessions, your score would approach a $19 loss per session, but individual sessions varied wildly from that. Hitting three or more jackpots in one 1,000-hand session wasn’t that rare. Not hitting anything at all for several sessions in a row wasn’t that rare either.

Until they told me not to do it, I played on both my card and that of Shirley (my wife at the time). I would play through $20,000 each time I played and that would take 2½ hours or so. Since the casino is across the street from the Palms, and I played a lot there before it was purchased by Station Casinos, the Gold Coast was a fairly convenient place to drop in and drop out of for these small plays.

When I started each play, I would feed in ten $100 bills. When this went down to zero, I would feed in ten more bills. When I hit for $1,600 or $2,000 (which was paid in cash), I would frequently create a ticket for that amount.

There was nothing sacred about the way I did this, but there was some method. It was done to simplify record-keeping. For tax and other reasons, I need accurate records. Adding an additional $1,000 per time is easy accounting for me. If I were playing for smaller stakes, perhaps adding $100 or $200 at a time would make sense. But on this game, you could go through $200 in five minutes if you ran bad and continually reaching into my pocket and making sure to record each bill was tedious and I would have worried that I’d occasionally forget to record a Benjamin or two. I could have easily inserted $2,000 at a time, but I settled on $1,000 and it worked for me.

There were perhaps six of these machines and I’d see the same faces seated at them over and over again. A few dozen players had analyzed the game similarly to the way I did and played more or less the same amount (although several played for $1 or 50 cent stakes for which the odds were the same but the amount you could lose was less. It would also take you two or four times as long to play the 10,000 points if you played for the lesser stakes.) If all the machines were taken, it was common to be asked, “How long do you intend to play?” We all were pretty civil about sharing because it was obvious that the guy who had the machine this time may well be the one wanting a machine next time.

One day, a lady I knew sitting next to me, Helen, had 9,400 points when her credits went down to zero. She needed to play $600 more though the machine to get the maximum slot club benefits that day — or she could have used that as a good time to quit for the day.

She was debating whether she should put in $100, $200, or $300. Helen only had 60 hands to play and was trying to predict how much it would cost. The simple answer is: Who knows? I’m pretty good at predicting how the next 6,000,000 hands will go, but really bad at predicting the same about the next 60 hands.

Helen asked me how much I would put in. I was basically concentrating on my game but told her, “I always put in $1,000.”

“But I only need to play $600 more,” she responded.

“I would put in a grand.”

“Well, I’m not going to do that,” she told me. “I don’t want to lose that much!”

I gave her a “Do whatever you want” shrug and we didn’t talk anymore about it. But I went away thinking that how much I wanted to lose didn’t have anything to do with the equation. I would be planning on stopping at 10,000 points, as she was, and I also wanted to keep good records. Cashing out at whatever amount I had on the ticket when I had reached 10,000 points was no problem at all. I could either turn it into cash or save it until tomorrow when I was going to play again.

There could be exceptions to this, of course. If I had 9,980 points when my machine ran out of money, I would either have put in $100 or maybe quit for the day. If I had a $20 bill on me, it’s even possible I would have put that in instead of $100.  

Each player must work out for himself what technique works on this. For nickel players, obviously $1,000 at a time is way too much. For $5 Ten Play players ($250 per pull), $1,000 is probably too small. Inserting large amounts of money into a machine doesn’t cause me any kind of anxiety. I know players who agonize over every $20 bill.

Many modern casinos create tickets for you which allow you to put substantial amounts of money into the machine more easily. The Gold Coast didn’t have that at the time. Probably they still don’t, but I’m not sure. When I was restricted from receiving mailers there, I decided the casino was “too smoky” and haven’t been back.

You have to do what works for you. Since Helen had a different “default” than I did, it should be no surprise to anyone that she found my advice totally unworkable.

Posted on by — 12 Comments

A Reason to Leave

In many jurisdictions, including Las Vegas, casinos can restrict players from competing. The restrictions can be complete or partial — permanent or reviewable. For many players, including myself, being restricted is a state of being with which we are quite familiar.

I was waiting for a drawing at a casino in December and a friend, “Charlie,” stopped by to chat until the winners were announced. He started by telling me of the new luxury automobile he had just purchased. Eventually the conversation diverged into casinos at which he (and his wife) and I were or were not allowed to play. I mentioned that in February I was going to apply to Casino A for reinstatement.

When I was restricted from Casino A I met with the General Manager and argued why I thought I should be allowed to continue to play. The GM listened to me but said that my restriction would remain. It was a partial “no mail” restriction, and I was still welcome to play, but without the mailers the edge was too skinny to make it worthwhile in my opinion. It was clear he wasn’t going to budge. I then asked if we could revisit it in 2018, and he agreed.

Although I wasn’t successful in 2017 when I spoke with him, I’m going to try again a year later. I was glad I was able to meet and talk with him and present my case. Every restriction is a negotiation. Some players roll over and play dead with every restriction. They accept the first verdict and that’s that. I treat a restriction as a starting place for a negotiation.

If you ever wondered why some player ended up being restricted at a particular place and some other player with a similar record wasn’t, reread the last four sentences of the preceding paragraph.

I try to find a way that the casino can get basically what it wants and I still get to play. Perhaps I was restricted because I won the Senior Drawing too many times. Okay. What if I agree that whenever I earn at least $500 in such a drawing I don’t participate in them for three months? That way, the casino isn’t bombarded with “that guy always wins” complaints, which in this case might have been the underlying reason for the restriction.

Or perhaps they want me to limit my play on point multiplier days to such and such an amount, rather than being unlimited. Whatever. There are a zillion ways to reach a compromise.

It’s very possible that there’s a happy meeting ground where they can allow my play and I still feel I have a decent-enough edge. We won’t know this until we talk about it. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t. But, for me anyway, it works enough of the time that it’s worthwhile to go through the process.

Although the discussion with that casino’s GM will probably happen before this article is published, the particular results of that discussion will be for a later time — or most likely never. Let’s go back to my conversation with Charlie.

Charlie told me that he thought it was ironic that I was trying to get back into Casino A because he had just decided to stop playing there. I asked him why?

“Because,” he told me, “I’ve been playing $2 8/5 Bonus Poker there (which is the best game at that casino) and I’m down more than $40,000 for the year.”

“Okay,” I replied, “you’ve been unlucky there. Five cycles behind is no fun. But why did you decide you should quit playing there?”

“If I can’t win there,” he told me, “why should I keep throwing good money after bad?”

Before we could continue the discussion, they held the drawing, neither of us were called, and then we each left to do whatever else rather than keep chatting. But I thought this was a good subject to write about. Charlie is certainly not alone in the way he thinks. But I believe that such thinking is incorrect for intelligent gamblers.

Charlie’s logic was basically: I’ve run bad. The future will be like the past. Therefore, I should cut my losses and get out.

My thinking is: This is a 99.2% game. The slot club pays 0.30% there. If you play $xxx a month you generally receive weekly mailers of $yyy, plus food vouchers and other non-cash items. They regularly have promotions and drawings that add considerable equity. Reaching their highest tier level is obtainable for me and it offers benefits I value. Over a year, I expect to have an advantage of $zzz there.

Notice that in my thinking, the fact that I was ahead or behind any given amount in the past year was not part of the equation at all. My assumption going forward is that things will be “average” in the future. The fact that I’ve had non-average results so far this year is largely an irrelevant, albeit sometimes exciting and sometimes frustrating, piece of data.

For many people, being behind $40,000 would create bankroll issues.  In Charlie’s case, I don’t believe this is an issue. (Although clearly it was at least somewhat of a psychological issue if not an actual financial issue.)

I know that things in the future won’t end up being average. Every gambling situation turns out being better or worse than I calculated. Those folks who want guarantees should pick a different hobby. But just because I know things won’t end up being average doesn’t mean that being average isn’t the best assumption to make at this point. If the $zzz I’ve calculated is big enough to meet my needs, and the variance is reasonable enough given my bankroll, and I have time to fit it into my schedule given my other gambling and non-gambling activities, then it’s full speed ahead. Being behind five royals in a year is just so much “noise.” There have definitely been years I’ve been ahead more than that. There will be good and bad streaks in the future.

In my calculation, I mentioned xxx, yyy, and zzz. These are numbers you’re going to have to estimate for yourself for every casino you’re considering. The numbers I get may not be the same as the ones you get. You may or may not like the food at the restaurants in any particular place. If you play at a lot of other casinos, you may already have more food available to you than you can possibly consume. Some promotions make more sense for bigger players — or just for seniors — or just for locals who can come in every day if the situation warrants — or whatever. Estimating these things is something you can get better at over time.

Since I’m writing this before I actually know whether I’ll be re-welcomed at Casino A and, if so, under which conditions, my 2018 “prediction” is that I will be reinstated and Charlie will decide to return. As all gamblers know, sometimes your predictions come true and sometimes they don’t.

Posted on by — 11 Comments

A Different Way to Look at It

In Week 2 of my free video poker classes at the South Point, I usually teach beginning 9/6 Double Double Bonus Poker. Many of my readers wouldn’t be caught dead playing such a game. It returns only 98.98% when played well and there are plenty of better games around, at least in Las Vegas.

Still, players DO play this game regularly, so they might as well learn how to play it correctly. It might surprise you to know that in 2017, I played more coin-in on this game than any other! (It sure surprises me! If somebody would have bet me this five years ago, I would have bet against it. Of course, had I made a big enough bet, that would have affected the odds and I wouldn’t have played it more than any other!) While DDB is the most popular video poker game in the country, I didn’t play it because I particularly liked it. I played because with certain combinations of slot club benefits and promotions, this was the game that made the most sense to play.

In the class a few weeks ago, I was explaining that you NEVER hold a suited ace-ten in this game. One lady, who apparently goes for the royal every chance she gets, wanted to know how I could justify not going for the royal. The hand in question was A♠ T♠ 8♥ 7♣ 6♦.

As is my practice, I put this hand on Video Poker for Winners and displayed the results on the screen in front of the class. The display showed in Table 1:

 

[table “74” not found /]

 

After class I wondered if I could display these numbers in a way that would make more sense.I said holding the ace by itself was worth 21¢ more to the five-coin dollar player, and I pointed to the column that said holding the ace was worth $2.346 and holding the AT was worth $2.133. The lady nodded blankly, which told me she believed what I said, but these were just numbers. The numbers didn’t mean anything to her.
[table “73” not found /]

In this table, you have the value of each combination in dollars and cents (and tenths of cents.) That is, the chance you get a high pair (most frequently AA, but you can get JJ, QQ, or KK as well) is worth $1.274 when you hold the ace by itself but only $0.911 when you hold AT. This is a difference of $0.363. When you think about it, it’s not too surprising that you get fewer high pairs when you hold a ten in the hand. It both makes fewer “empty spaces” with which to make a high pair and when you pair up the ten, it’s not a high pair.

If you go through the differences on the bottom line, you’ll see that the two biggest advantages of holding AT (namely you can get a royal flush and you have a better chance of getting a flush) are worth almost a quarter apiece. But you lose in most of the other categories.

This chart is a little surprising to many players. After all, did you really think that the amount you get from high pairs is worth about half of the value of holding either the ace or AT? When you see these starting positions, you’re thinking four aces or maybe a royal flush. You’re not thinking of a measly high pair.

Don’t even think about trying to memorize these numbers. They are highly dependent on the exact five cards chosen. If one of the other cards is a spade, it greatly affects how much the flush draw is worth. If one of the other cards is a 2, 3, or 4, it affects both the chances for a straight, the chances for four aces with a kicker, and four 2s, 3s, and 4s with a kicker.

Is it useful to see how much each combination is worth in dollars and cents rather than in the number of occurrences? Maybe. Opinions will vary.

But if you think it’s useful, it’s already included in the Video Poker for Winners software. When you analyze a hand, you have a choice between “Show Possible Outcomes,” which gives you the information in Table 1, and “Show Coins Out,” which gives you the information in Table 2.

I didn’t know this was already included in the software until I looked while writing this article. I’m sure many of you didn’t know it either.

Posted on by — 12 Comments

Am I Healthy Enough?

In December, the M Resort had a promotion involving W2Gs. Simply put, every W2G you earned from December 1 – December 29 gave you a “drawing ticket.” For each drawing ticket you earned through those 29 days, if you also received another one on December 30, you received a bonus of $150 in free play. In addition to being able to earn as many of these $150 bonuses as you could, there were drawings based on those tickets.

 A W2G promotion is basically geared towards high limit players. Lower-stakes players don’t earn very many of these documents — and the best lower-stakes machines were excluded anyway. There were still some high limit machines where I believed it made sense to play this promotion. So, by December 29, I had received a few dozen W2Gs. These would be worth a lot more if I could earn the same number of W2Gs on Saturday, December 30.

Unfortunately, beginning Tuesday, December 26, I began coming down with a cold, or maybe something worse. Beginning that day, I began scarfing down mega-doses of Vitamin C, drank a lot of water, and slept a lot. Even a pint of chicken broth every day along with DayQuil. I’m not positive such a regimen works, but I was optimistic.

By Friday, December 29, I was probably 75% of the way back to being healthy. Staying away on Friday and Saturday would have cost me a significant amount in EV. This was not a close decision for me. I was healthy enough.  Was I still contagious? Probably not. I certainly told people I wasn’t. But I couldn’t be sure. I participated in their drawings on Friday (they forgot to call my name) and played heavily beginning at 1 a.m. Saturday (which was still December 29 casino-day wise).  Beginning at 4 a.m., when the casino day became December 30, I continued playing heavily so as to match the number of W2Gs I had already earned.

Enough about me and this promotion specifically. (I did okay. Not great. Nothing to brag or complain about.) But what if I had been only 50% of the way back to being healthy? Or 25%? Or 10%? Or 0% for that matter? And it isn’t just me, of course. It’s hundreds of players in each casino who are making this type of decision independently. Players who might be too sick to go to work, but definitely aren’t too sick to go to the casino.

You should always assume that many people in the casino aren’t completely healthy, but during this time of year especially, there are players in every casino who are infectious. Don’t even dream about not washing your hands regularly. Whatever your health regimen — flu shots, exercise, getting enough sleep, eating as best you can — it is especially important now. New Year’s resolutions generally don’t work very well, but now is a good time to make some anyway.

I don’t have any new advice in this column, but just another reminder to “be safe out there.”

Posted on by — 10 Comments

Video Poker’s Participation Awards   

A ‘participation award’ is one you get just for being there — whether you win or lose. There are people who believe that when raising children, winning and losing isn’t so important, but participation is. With that in mind, there are some sports leagues for children where every player gets a trophy at the end of the year.

I’m not here to argue the merits of such a program and I’m not here to tell you how to raise your kids or grandkids.

What I want to talk about today are video poker’s participation awards. It’s possible you didn’t know there are any such things. But there are!

They are called jackpots!

A royal flush, which is the top award in most video poker games, is really a participation award. Show me a player who has hit 20 royal flushes in the past two months and I’ll show you someone who has played a LOT. Show me someone who hasn’t ever hit a royal flush, and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t played very much at all.

If you want to change the discussion to four aces, or maybe four deuces depending on the game, or dealt quads, or some other hand that pays well, be my guest. If you play long enough, you’re going to get these hands. If you don’t, you won’t.

But, do I hear you say, in the sports league for children that awards trophies to everybody, your skill level doesn’t matter. Surely, it’s different in video poker where you need to make skillful choices.

Well, yeah, sort of. On a hand like K♦ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 4♦, there are games where you should hold the kings and others where you should hold the spades. If you hold the spades, rightly or wrongly, on average you’re going to end up with a royal flush once every 1,081 of these hands. If you hold the kings, you’re never going to get a royal flush on this hand.

So, if the computer says to hold the kings on this hand but you actually held the spades and the 1,080-to-1 shot came in, would you consider that skillful? If you take a picture of the royal flush and show it to your friends, do they ever ask what cards you threw away? Or what game you were playing? Doubtful. Mostly they congratulate you on your good fortune and wonder what it’s like to be such a winner as you!

I participate on several Internet forums related to gambling. On some forums, you’ll see players posting pictures of dealt royals when they’re playing 8/5 Double Double Bonus, which is a game that returns less than 97%. There are other games shown in the pictures as well, yielding approximately the same thing.

Other posters on the forum line up and immediately congratulate the poster on the good fortune. My personal feeling is that anyone who plays a 97% game is clueless about the winning process. Clearly this is a losing player who got a participation award to briefly provide them with some ammunition to play more. To me, posting jackpots on such a bad game announces to the world that you are not a knowledgeable player. Why not keep this secret?

If I actually post such a comment, I get my head handed to me. People want to celebrate their participation awards. People want to be praised for how good they are. They tell me (correctly!) that it’s okay to be a recreational player and rejoice in their successes when they come.

So, I generally don’t comment on these jackpot pictures anymore. But I take note of who posted them. When that person enters into a later debate on some matter on the forum, I’ll understand going in that their opinion does not carry the same weight with me as the people who are actually knowledgeable players.

In my own case, I’ve hit more than 500 jackpots of $20,000 and larger. Are they all participation awards? Absolutely! Every last one of them! The only thing that number of jackpots tell you is that I’ve been playing a long time for higher stakes than many others play. It doesn’t tell you anything about how good a player I am.

Until you know why a player was playing a particular machine on a given day, what slot club benefits and promotions were available, and the accuracy of the strategy used, you have no idea how good that player is. You cannot say with confidence that someone who has hit 200 royal flushes is a better player than one who has hit four — although you CAN say the former has participated a lot more than the latter.

Posted on by — 7 Comments

Why Do Casinos Do That?

In a December 26 post on gamblingwithanedge.com, someone named Sandy asked the (slightly abbreviated) following:

Apparently, EV is only positive in VP when you factor in comps. But comps and maybe other rewards that aren’t strictly “comps” as APs define it, are voluntary payments by casinos. You can’t complain to the Gaming Commission or Control Board that you’ve been cheated on comps if casinos reduce or eliminate yours. That being the case, why do casinos cooperate in turning the house edge to a player edge by giving comps?  

Today I’m going to respond to part of this. My posts are read by both players and casino employees and if I explain everything it creates a roadmap for casinos to change things in a way I don’t want them changed.

With that said, I think grouping all comps together yields misleading results. Let me break them down, somewhat arbitrarily, further.

Comps, short for complimentaries, to me, consist of non-monetary gifts casinos give to players as a way to induce players to play. These include such things as either free or highly discounted hotel rooms, meals, spa treatments, show tickets, shorter lines, VIP lounges, etc. These are nice, but if this is all I received for playing 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%), I would find the game unplayable.

Even though I’m calling these non-monetary gifts, some of them may be sold. Although I haven’t sold rooms for more than a decade, there were times long ago I did so. I’ve occasionally bartered certain benefits — e.g. free show tickets to my barber in exchange for a certain number of haircuts.

These comps are worth different amounts to different people. Room comps in Las Vegas aren’t so valuable to me because I live there. But for out-of-towners, they are worth more. Free alcohol is worth more to heavy drinkers than to teetotalers.

There are also monetary, or almost monetary, gifts given to players for the purpose of inducing the player to play: These include cash back, free play, monthly mailers, loss rebates, and other things. The distinction between items in this category and those in the comp category aren’t always clear cut. For example, airline ticket reimbursement could conceivably be included in either.

There is also a third category of casino gifts to the player called promotions. Some of these are monetary (e.g. point multipliers) and some are more in the comp category (e.g. half-price margaritas on Tuesday.) There are casino gifts ranging from “casino crap” (e.g. a logo cap) to a free or highly discounted cruise.

There can be earn-up promotions where you have to play x amount of points to get the gifts. Or maybe get one for free and play more to get additional ones or perhaps a bigger one. There are dozens of types of drawings and tournaments — all with the aim of getting the players to play more.

There are no limits to the types of promotions that can be offered. If a marketing director can think up some new way to induce players to come in, he/she can make a promotion out of it. Some of these promotions are well-thought-out and work well for the casino’s bottom line. Other promotions not so much. Not all marketing directors have the skills to predict how a promotion is going to appear to their strongest players.

There are promotions that are essentially costless to the casino but valuable to the players — such as earning six times drawing entries on Thursdays. If you estimate that drawing entries are worth a tenth of a percent, this promotion adds a half of a percent to the player without costing the casino anything. That could conceivably turn an unplayable game into a playable one.

In every casino, several of these items are going on at once with players playing a wide variety of games at various skill levels. Just limiting the discussion to video poker for now, you have 94% games, 95% games, 96% games, . . ., and maybe 99%+ games at some places. There isn’t a lot of difference to the casino, perhaps, between a 99% played poorly and a 97% game played expertly. They both contribute similar amounts to the casino’s bottom line.

Casinos can be very profitable if most players lose and a few players win. If a casino wants to make it so that winning is impossible, then most players will play elsewhere.  Even then there will be short-term winners. Players will still hit royal flushes on 95% games.

A significant part of the skill of good players is in figuring out which promotions are worth pursuing. Additionally, good players learn where they can “stack them up,” meaning play on multiple point days for a tournament and multiple drawings at once, while maintaining enough play to keep their monthly mailers coming while not winning so much the casino takes actions against them. Figuring out how much the point multiplier added to their bottom line is easy.  How much the drawings add is tougher. How much do you need to play to get a good mailer? These are not trivial problems.

Some promotions work better for low rollers. Some work better for high rollers. The best decision for you may well not be the best decision for me. Correctly figuring out where you can get the most benefit is part of the game.

Part of the premise of the original question is that casinos can easily evaluate how good a player is. That’s easier said than done. If a player is ahead after six months, can you say how much was skill and how much was luck?

How much should winning tournaments and drawings count towards whether the player is a net-winner or not? Different casinos answer that question differently. The casino has already budgeted $xxx for the drawing and within certain limits doesn’t much care which player wins it (so long as the same players don’t win most of the time.)

Running a casino well is as difficult as playing well. It’s always going to be a cat-and-mouse game to some degree. The smartest players learn to survive in this game. The smartest casino managers do too. In many casinos there is room for both.

Sandy is partially correct and partially wrong when she says that you can’t take it to the Gaming Control Board if casinos cut back on your comps. If a casino decides to “no mail” you, you’re stuck. If they take away already earned free play, you probably do have redress. If a casino offers things in a drawing and then reneges, sometimes the GCB will take it up. It’s a bit complicated about what casinos can and can’t do to you, but it is nowhere near “they can do anything they want.”

Are there things I’m not sharing with you here? Absolutely! But even so, I think I’m providing a framework with which to look at the situation.