Tag: video poker

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New Promotion on Norwegian Cruise Lines

Bob Dancer

As I write this, Bonnie and I are spending two weeks aboard the NCL Bliss having set sail Sunday, October 26. We tour the Mexican Riviera (Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán) on back-to-back cruises. This is our “go to” itinerary for three reasons.

First, I have extended family near our departure port, so after a 200-mile drive from Las Vegas, we get to have a place to spend the night before, a place to park the car while we’re cruising, transportation to and from the port itself, and a chance to visit family I don’t see very often. In exchange, I buy everybody dinner Saturday night — and many of my family members accept this bribe.

Second, the Bliss has a Texas barbeque specialty dining option. While Bonnie and I are not barbeque fans, Texas-style or otherwise, the venue also has a country-western band playing every night next to a nice dance floor. And we are fans of that. We are better than average dancers and Bonnie never tires of compliments we receive from other passengers.

Our third reason will resonate with more of my readers than the first two. The last time we were on the Bliss, in the fall of 2024, the casino offered a sizeable number of persistence slot machines, many of which I knew how to beat. There are many fewer of these slots than there were a year ago, but there are still 11 Super Star machines which include Ultimate X (UX). 

These UX machines have three games (Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Deuces Wild), in Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play configurations. Each of these come in five different denominations, yielding 45 different combinations per machine.

Since cruise ship gamblers tend to be less sophisticated gaming-wise than those found in Las Vegas, these UX machines may frequently be found with unplayed multipliers. I don’t seek unplayed UX multipliers in most casinos I frequent because several casinos remove players who do so. I do look for those unplayed multipliers aboard the Bliss because it is both lucrative and if I get kicked out of the casino, it’s relatively small potatoes. Especially since I plan to give up gambling in a few months anyway.

Plus, the casino’s smoking section is behind sealed glass which makes the rest of the casino relatively smoke-free. Not completely, because some smoke escapes whenever one of the doors between the smoking and non-smoking areas is opened, but it is far less smoky than many casinos. Which is a huge plus for me.

In the casino, you earn points for your play. One point for every $5 coin-in for slots and one for $10 coin-in for video poker. The points are redeemable for free play, at a miniscule yet non-zero rate. As near as I can tell, it’s 0.01% for video poker and twice that for slots.

Starting in early October, they began a fairly lucrative promotion called “Points to Paradise.” According to the slot club boothling I spoke to, this promotion is valid on most NCL ships, and they plan to run it indefinitely. 

If you earn 500 points, you receive $250 off your next cruise. One thousand points gets you $500 off, and 2,000 points earns you a free cruise. After you earn these benefits, you must book a cruise within 60 days and sail within a year or the benefits evaporate. If you stay on the ship for two or more weeks back-to-back, insofar as this promotion is concerned, and you end up with, say, 450 points on the first week, those points do not carry over until the following week.

For the mathematically challenged, if you are planning on, or at least willing to, cruise again on NCL within a year, playing on slots gives you a 10% rebate, and playing video poker gives you a 5% rebate — assuming you stop playing when you reach exactly 500, 1,000, or 2,000 points.

If you play nothing other than vulturing UX machines, it’s unlikely that you’ll earn 500 points. You are, after all, only playing one hand at a time whenever you find a good situation. And the number of good situations you find largely depends on how many other UX vultures there are on the cruise. There are some persistence slots which earn points much faster than vulturing UX, simply because you often play a lot of hands on such machines until it becomes unplayable, so I’ll end up with close to 1,000 points each week. I’m writing this in the middle of our first week of cruising, so I’m not sure what my balance will be.

The best non-UX video poker I found was single-line 8/5 Jacks or Better in denominations between 50 cents and $10 — which returns 97.3% if played correctly. I don’t think I’ve ever played 8/5 Jacks or Better before, but I know 8/5 Bonus Poker perfectly and that strategy is “close enough” to play for a few hands. A a machine with a casino edge of 2.7% paired with a promotion that returns 5% is definitely playable. If I end up with, say 800 points by the time the cruise ends, I’ll earn the remaining 200 points by playing $2,000 coin-in worth of 8/5 Jacks or Better, with an expected loss of $54. This will allow me to receive my second $250 discount for the week. I plan to do this for both weeks. If the competition for unplayed UX multipliers during the second week of our cruising is greater than it is the first week, I might end up with only $250 in cruise discounts for the second week.

Bonnie and I have already qualified for our highly discounted NCL cruises for 2026 that we’ve earned by maintaining Seven Stars status. I may well not be gambling after January 2026, but I will be cashing what I earned prior to that. We’ll probably reserve two back-to-back Mexican Riviera cruises on the Bliss again next fall.

While we won’t have the casino as a reason to go on the cruise, I’ll still have family in Southern California and there will still be country-western dancing on the ship (we hope). Those two reasons are sufficient.

I won’t make the mistake of picking dates during the World Series like I unwittingly did this year. I’ve been a Dodger fan since the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958, and if they’re in it again next year I’ll want to watch the games at night in preference to going dancing. Which won’t be to Bonnie’s liking.

While the Dodgers are longshots to make it back again to the 2026 World Series, they probably have better odds than any other team. And we can just as easily go the week after the Series.

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A Look at Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness, by Tim Grover

Bob Dancer

The book Winning was recommended to me by a friend. Since I think of myself as a winner, at least in my most confident moments, I thought I knew most of what the book was about. I was wrong. Whatever winning I do is junior varsity stuff. The winning this book talks about is World Championships!

Tim Grover is an athletic trainer, trained in kinesiology, who, when he was 25 years old, sent letters to all the Chicago Bulls except Michael Jordan applying to be their personal trainer — an uncommon position in 1985. Jordan saw the letter in the locker room, had Grover checked out, and hired him for 30 days as a sort of tryout. 

Jordan had played one year in the NBA at that point, done really well, but was bullied by the bigger, stronger players. He knew he needed to bulk up without losing his speed, quickness, and other skills, and was willing to give Grover a chance to help him.

Grover was with Jordan for 15 years, through six world championships, and a not-so-successful two-year stint trying to be a professional baseball player. After Jordan retired, Grover helped a number of other players, including Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Charles Barkley, and others. Most of you know these were top basketball players of their era, and Michael Jordan is largely considered to be the GOAT – Greatest of All Time. Today Grover mostly consults with business CEOs.

This book doesn’t tell you what to do. It tells you how to think and how to approach winning. If you’re not already motivated to succeed, this book won’t help you. The book is about adding that critical extra edge to people who are already successful.

Grover lists 13 steps to winning — all of which he labels number 1 because they are all necessary. I’m not going to go through all 13, but I will mention a few.

  1. Winning is not a marathon — it’s a sprint with no finish line.
  1. Winning takes you through hell — and if you quit, that’s where you end up.
  1. Winning makes you different, and different scares people.
  1. Winning makes war on the battlefield of your mind.
  1. Winning is selfish.

I could discuss what Grover says about any of these points, but I’ll just look at the last. If you’re going to win, you have to go all in. This often means lack of balance in such things as family and relationships. We’ve all heard of people who work too many hours, and their marriage suffers. Grover says that if you want to be a winner, this is par for the course. 

Grover strongly dislikes motivational cliches such as “You’ve got this!”, “You’re crushing it!”, and “Play hard until the final whistle blows!” These are junior high expressions, in his mind, and every competitor already knows these things without having them yelled at by a coach. True winning is much different.

There are lots of anecdotes in the book, especially about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, on how their will to succeed was far beyond that of most people. But this will to succeed is what it takes to be a winner.

Grover says four things are needed to be a winner: talent, intelligence, competitiveness, and resilience — and the most important of these is resilience. This is what makes you get up and keep going after you’ve fallen on your face. 

And falling on your face is definitely going to happen. Nobody has clear sailing to championships over and over again. It’s very hard work and there are always setbacks.

Nobody wins all the time and when you do win, as soon as it’s over you start from scratch and have to work hard to make it happen again. You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect to succeed. You have to come back better because your competition will have analyzed what you have done and will make adjustments to counter what you did before.

I found this book inspiring. Perhaps I would have had more success in my life had I come across this book earlier.

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If I Could Do It Over Again

Bob Dancer

I’m approaching the twilight of my life and career, and I sometimes reflect on whether I could have done it better. My readers are, for the most part, younger than I am, and at least some of them would like to pursue successful gambling as a career. Perhaps there are some lessons for others in my musings.

For the sake of today’s blog, I’m going to take it as a given that I became a successful gambler, writer, and teacher. This ending was never a foregone conclusion. That’s just the way it turned out. 

Education:

At the time I stopped going to graduate school in the mid-70s, I had never heard of video poker. While I was reasonably proficient at games and just beginning to play backgammon professionally, I didn’t envision my life turning out the way it did.

I studied a lot of math and economics in school, which was a good choice. Gambling is mostly applied math, especially probability, and the more I knew about that the better. When I attended UCLA, economics was taught as logic applied to the real world. That’s a perfect background for a gambler.

Today I wish I knew more math and computer programming. There were many video poker games that arose which needed to be analyzed by computer programs. Commercially available computer software came of age during my career, but there were many problems these software programs couldn’t solve. Sometimes I hired others to do the programming for me, but I could have addressed these games more efficiently had I known how to program myself.

I had no idea I was going to be a writer. Somehow, I went all the way through school while never having to write a term paper. I never completed my Ph.D. dissertation, largely because I didn’t know how to write well. Today I get my blogs edited before you see them.

The irony of this is that if I had been a competent writer, I probably would have completed the dissertation and become a professor of economics — or at least started out that way. Others have gone from academia to the world of gambling. Perhaps I would have too.

I took some public speaking classes along the way, including debate. This was valuable training for teaching classes. Debate teaches you the principles of argumentation. There have been a lot of disagreements with casino players and other players. Knowing how to present my case clearly has led me to have a better-than-average results in these arguments.

I’m fortunate that my career included both teaching and writing. I wouldn’t know the subject nearly as well as I do without all the study required for these two activities. 

Consulting: 

I consulted for a variety of casinos and game manufacturers — although I haven’t for several years. The effects of this were both good and bad.

On the good side, I was paid well to look at casinos and their inventory all across the country. I wrote reports to the casinos that hired me to do this, but I also learned so much while I did this. Plus, getting paid well was a nice cushion when my gambling activities weren’t going so well.

On the down side of consulting, there were a lot of players who were very uncomfortable with me doing this. Basically, they wanted me to “pick a side and stick to it.” If I were going to write for players, fine. If I were going to write for casinos, that’d be okay too. But writing for both led to a lot of mistrust because they didn’t know where I stood. Many believed I was doing something shady or detrimental to players’ interests. I don’t believe I was doing either of those things but convincing some players of that proved impossible for me.

I took a lot of abuse from a large number of players over the years. In the early days of the internet, a lot of people using pseudonyms anonymously criticized and ridiculed me on video poker forums. I tried responding, but when the abuse is coming from several different directions with many choosing to believe the worst about me no matter what I did or said, it became an impossible situation. The only available response for me was to shut up and try to ignore it. No fun at all.

Love life:

My love life has been nothing to brag about. While I believe that humans should mate for life, I haven’t been able to manage that. By a long shot.

Still, for some reason, I ended up okay. Bonnie and I have been happy with each other, and we didn’t get together until we were both senior citizens. I’m used to the debate concerning “skill versus luck” in gambling. Finding Bonnie when I did was definitely good luck.

Podcast:

I was interested in doing a podcast at the same time Frank Kneeland was. Unfortunately, Frank and I were not a good fit together, and we lasted only six months before I asked him to bow out. 

Richard Munchkin was a miraculously good replacement. He gambled successfully for decades at table games — which is different from my expertise. He knows tons of people in the gambling world and is universally well-respected. At his first stint as co-host, he still lived in Southern California. He felt the podcast was better if he did it in person, so he drove four-or-so hours each way each week. Understandably that got to be a drag and he asked to find a replacement for him after a while.

I talked Michael Shackleford into being a co-host, and that worked pretty well for a while. Michael was far more mathematical than I was, and the guests he knew — game designers, other mathematicians, and sports bettors — were a change-up from the guests Richard and I attracted. Which wasn’t a bad thing.

After a year and a half, Shackleford became bored with the podcast. Richard had moved to Las Vegas by this time and was willing to resume cohosting the show. I was delighted.

For more than 10 years, we aired more than 50 podcasts per year. We attracted professional gamblers and wannabe professional gamblers as an audience. I was preparing for the podcasts more than playing video poker — which was good.

I learned details about winning at other forms of gambling — especially blackjack and sports betting. 

For whatever reason, I started being criticized less and respected more.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ll take it. My best guess is that many of the people who previously criticized me had not met me but had merely heard things about me. Now they heard me on the podcast and figured out I wasn’t the monster I was portrayed to be. 

My detractors will never go away completely. My style/personality/sense of humor rubs some people the wrong way. I am what I am.

Health and Diet:

For the most part, I’ve been good at this — with some lapses. I struggle to keep my weight under control, but it’s not terrible. I’m up to date on my vaccines and hope I’ll always be able to get them regardless of whomever is in charge of the CDC.

I’ve done a lot of study on longevity and believe I’m doing things that will give me a decent chance to reach my 90s or maybe beyond. We’ll see.  

Conclusion:

Yes, I could have done things differently, but I’ve had a good life and a good career. And my writings will leave a legacy of sorts behind me. Not such a bad result.

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A New Book?

Bob Dancer

I’ve written recently about retiring from gambling when the new IRS rules for gambling become effective on January 1, 2026. While I’m a senior citizen and retirement is what many people my age dream about, that doesn’t sound very attractive to me. I’ve always taken great pleasure in using my brain and figuring things out. So, what am I to do?

My current best guess is that I’ll write my second autobiography, tentatively entitled Million Dollar Video Poker — The Next 25 Years. The story from my original Million Dollar Video Poker ended in 2001, with me getting kicked out of MGM Grand and Venetian after having a lucky six-month period when I netted more than $1 million.

In 2001, I had my 54th birthday and was still in my prime gambling-wise. While there is no doubt that gambling at video poker was much more lucrative in the 1990s than it has been since, I have still found numerous opportunities every year since then, and have made more money from gambling after 2001 than I made up to that point.

Most of the opportunities I found are no longer around. Do players really want to learn about this history? Do they want to know what kind of mistakes casinos were making in 2004 and 2015 and 2023? I think yes. While there are an infinite number of ways for promotions to be structured, the same types of mistakes by casino marketing people keep happening over and over again. At a minimum, the book will give players examples that just might be relevant down the road.

Good games remain today. After the pandemic. I had good years along with an expensive 2024 — but they added up to more than a half-million dollars net win for me. Some of the games I profited from are gone, but many remain.

I think, though, that the most useful thing I can write about is how I attacked whatever came along. The actual solutions I came up with may not be relevant in a changed environment, but the approach I used to come up with those solutions is still relevant.

Would Anthony Curtis publish this book? Probably. Depending on how good it is. And part of his role as a publisher is to help make the book better. If the first draft weren’t quite good enough, that wouldn’t necessarily be a showstopper.

Part of the problem is my memory isn’t as good today as it was during my first book. And the events I would describe would be 20 years ago, whereas most of the action in MDVP was from two or three years prior to when I wrote about it. We may have to include a disclaimer like what is found at the front of many movies, “Based on a true story.”

Another problem is that some of the juicy promotions are still going on today, and writing about them and how to beat them would be tantamount to killing the deal. That’s probably not a showstopper because it’ll take three or four years to work through the Huntington Press queue, and by that time the promotions would be killed off by others.

Before announcing this project, I wanted to be certain I could see it through. So, beginning in August of this year, I began drafting several chapters for the new book and also making a list of things I wanted to talk about that I haven’t written yet. While it is nowhere near completed, perhaps the first draft of 20% of the final book has been finished. I’m convinced it’s a worthwhile project and I can keep going.

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What Will Casinos Do?

Bob Dancer

I’ve written a few times that starting January 1, 2026, the tax law will be changed drastically for professional gamblers — especially those who get W-2Gs or have a significant paper trail, such as those who bet big amounts in sportsbooks or play in large casino tournaments of any kind.

Blackjack players and poker players who don’t play in tournaments have largely been on the “honor system” to report their wins and losses. These players can apply a “fudge factor” to their scores and generally be all right, despite the new tax law. 

I’m neither suggesting nor condoning they do this, nor am I happy with the fact that they can do this to their taxes and I can’t, but I’m sure it will be done in several cases.

Players who receive W-2Gs and the casinos which send this information to the IRS are hard pressed to find a way around the extra tax. While the IRS threshold for issuing a W-2G is said to be increasing from $1,200 to $2,500 or some other number, and maybe 1099s also (nobody is too sure), these will have a minor effect. A large percentage of W-2Gs are for bigger amounts.

If you’re a big sports bettor with one of the major U.S. books, each sportsbook can report your wins and losses there to the IRS. Whether they will or not, I’m not too sure. My sports betting is very “small time,” and I don’t know how these books treat their bigger customers.

I, for one, announced a few months ago that I will quit gambling on January 1, 2026. Nothing has changed in the meantime to make me change my mind. How many other players will quit, or at least cut back drastically, is an open question. I have no way to estimate how much business in high limit slot rooms will evaporate, but I believe it will be a significant percentage.

There will be players who don’t know about the new law, or don’t think it will apply to them, or basically don’t care. While the profit motive is a major reason I gamble, and when the profit disappears, I disappear, many gamblers don’t care all that much about that. They want to win, but expect to lose, and if it turns out to be an extra $250,000 lost, well that’s too bad. No big for them, perhaps, but it would be for me and most others.

Some though, will put up with the extra loss for one year, and decide they can’t do it anymore, and by calendar 2027, the high limit slot rooms will be largely empty. We’ll see.

I expect casinos to come up with dollar video poker games where the royal flush returns $2,495. We’ve seen “tax free” quarter royals for $1,199, for the same purpose. Or maybe $5 games requiring three or four coins. You still get a W-2G for a royal, but you won’t for most 4-of-a-kinds.

If casinos lose a lot of their high limit slot revenue, you can assume they will tighten up pay schedules and promotions to make up for it. What they’ll actually do is unknown. But my prediction is that most readers of my writings will not like it.

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An Interesting Promotion

Bob Dancer

I wish I knew more about the promotion I’m writing about today, but I’ll share what I have surmised.

For the past several months, some Caesars Rewards properties have offered Next Day Bounceback (NDB). At these properties, if you play at least a minimum amount during a casino day (often 6 a.m. to 5:59 a.m. — but it varies), you get a certain amount of free play added to your account at approximately noon. The exact time can vary from casino to casino.

The percentage return can vary as well. I’ve seen it from 0.1% to 0.75%, depending on the casino. Some “expert” players get a lesser amount. At many of these casinos, the percentage amount returned is less today than it was six months ago.

Sometimes these casinos offer a multiplier to their NDB. At least one of the casinos offers a multiple NDB reward once a week (or sometimes once every other week). It’s at least 2x, and usually 2x, but sometimes more. You don’t learn if you received a 2x, 3x, or other multiplier until after the promotion is over. Another casino awards a 20x NDB multiplier weekly for two hours — but video poker is excluded from this promotion. There are daily limits for the amount of NDB you can earn — but this is only relevant for the biggest of high rollers. Well over 99% of all players won’t come close to earning the limit.

Usually, the casino won’t tell you what the percentage return is on the NDB promotion, so you have to figure it out yourself. Or ask a knowledgeable friend. 

To figure it out, you need to know how much money you received, and how much coin-in you played to earn that money. For example, let’s assume you played 500 Tier Credits (TCs) at video poker and received $20 in NDB. What percentage is that?

On most video poker machines at these properties, it requires $10 coin-in to earn one TC, so 500 TCs mean you played $5,000 through the machine. Your percentage return is $20 / $5,000 = 0.004 = 0.4%. 

At some of these casinos, it takes $20 or $25 to earn a TC on the loosest video poker machines. In these cases, 500 TCs mean you played $10,000 or $12,500, respectively. The percentage return becomes 0.2% or 0.16%, respectively.

Slot players at these casinos typically earn one TC for $5 coin-in, so if you’re a slot player, the return, in this case, is 0.8%.

The percentage you’ve received before does not have to be the percentage you’re going to receive today. While the percentage rate could go up, I suppose, I’ve only seen it stay the same or go down. 

While NDB becomes available at noon, it needs to be downloaded into your bank within a certain number of days (which varies by casino) and once it’s in your bank it’s good for 72 hours (or some other period of time). The Caesars Rewards booth at the particular casino you’re interested in will likely tell you these lengths of time.

At one out-of-town casino I frequent, NDB used to be good for 90 days after earning it, but now it is only good for 30 days. If I have to leave for my flight home before noon on my last day, this might mean I don’t play on the next-to-last day. That’ll be the day for sightseeing. If I leave for my flight after noon, I probably won’t play between 6 a.m. and when I leave because if I did, I would forfeit any NDB I earned. If I were a local, I wouldn’t worry about this because I know I’ll be back before my NDB expires.

On the last day of my stay, it could be that a promotion is in effect that dwarfs whatever I could earn from NDB, so I’ll keep playing after 6 a.m. even though I know that I won’t be able to collect the NDB (assuming I’m not planning on returning to this casino within the requisite time period.)

The expiration period for multiple NDB days does not have to be the same as the regular 1x NDB days. In fact, it usually isn’t.

For most players, they’ll learn to stay until after noon on their last day in order to collect their extra money. This means they might stay longer than they used to. For most players, NDB means they’ll lose less money because of this “rebate,” although many will simply play more and it’ll all come out about the same.

These casinos have multiple promotions and NDB is just one of them. Often, you’ll have multiplier days for TCs or Reward Credits (RCs), which are different. Sometimes if you play a certain number of TCs you get extra benefits. Sometimes you earn benefits that are hard to quantify (such as 100x drawing tickets). These casinos have monthly mailers and for big-enough players, they’ll receive a certain amount of free play based on how much they played.

As best I can, I try to add up the value of the benefits with the return of the video poker machine I’m playing. Sometimes I can get it pretty precise. Sometimes it’s sort of a scientific wild-assed guess based on the best information I have. 

When I play slots, it’s hard to get the precise percentage return. I might know that it’s positive-equity to play a certain machine when the mini meter is above 22 or the minor meter is above 30, but if I find a machine when these numbers are at 21 and 29, I assume I have the advantage but I’m unsure how much. While both numbers are slightly below being positive in and of themselves, the combination is surely a good one to play.

Also. when I play slots, I usually only play when one-or-more meters is above a certain level. When it’s no longer that high, I move on and try to find another game in a positive state. On each machine I check, it could be there are 50 different amounts to check, ranging perhaps from 50 cents to 50 dollars. Any of these could be positive and I won’t know before I go check which one(s) will be that way. In video poker, on the other hand, I’m usually playing one particular machine and I know going in what denomination I’ll be playing and the return on the game.

I don’t know how much longer NDB will last. The fact that the return rates have been decreasing leads me to conclude that they will be down to zero in the relatively near future — at least at some of these properties— but I could be wrong. 

When the new tax law kicks in on January, if enough players quit or cut back, these casinos might increase NDB in order to lure players back. For me this won’t work, but it might for some other players.

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I Wanted to be Henry

Bob Dancer

From about 1975 through 1993, I played a lot of backgammon at the Cavendish West Club in the West Hollywood part of Los Angeles. I probably played 60 hours per week in the 70s, went broke, and starting in 1980, had a full-time job — which cut down on my backgammon hours.

In about 1984, I started to teach myself how to count cards in blackjack and would fly to Las Vegas periodically to play that game. I learned about special deals at casinos where if I played so many hours at $5 or higher blackjack, I’d get some food vouchers and a certain amount in bonus chips. Trust me. Blackjack is easier if you get bonuses to play.

At the Cavendish West, good players from Las Vegas and other cities would occasionally come by to play. This is where I first met Richard Munchkin. I also saw a man named “Henry,” who would play the Cavendish’s best players for $100 a point (a sizeable stake) and usually beat them. 

At some point, Henry became Richard Munchkin’s roommate, and I learned that Henry was a highly-rated chess player and an excellent card counter, in addition to being quite good at backgammon.

I played some chess when I was younger, was getting better at blackjack, and was trying very hard to become good at backgammon. He was miles ahead of me at all three games. 

I figured if I became as good as Henry, my gambling future would be secure. I tried to figure out just how he did that.

I concluded Henry was ahead of me in some combination of three different areas. First was raw brain power. The last IQ test I took was more than 50 years ago while in graduate school, and I was rated well into the top 1% in IQ. With a US population of 215 million in the mid-70s, if 1% of the population was smarter than I was, that’s more than two 2 million people. It’s no wonder that I would run into some of them at a place where intelligence was rewarded. (Today, I believe I’m still in the top 10% IQ-wise, but I’m not sure. As I age, brainpower, among other things, is diminishing.)

The second area where Henry might have been superior to me was in the amount that he studied — or the amount he effectively studied. I studied a lot — but perhaps he studied more or did it in ways that I didn’t. Just having Richard Munchkin as a roommate, if he and Henry discussed various aspects of the games, that was more than what I had. Computer programs, primitive though they were, started to become available in the 1980s. I didn’t get them. Perhaps Henry did.

The third area where Henry might have surpassed me is in aptitude for games. It’s not your raw IQ that counts — it’s the type of IQ. Top chefs, architects, and interior decorators, among many others, probably have high IQs, but that doesn’t mean they have an aptitude for games. Some people are much better strategic thinkers than others. Some people can grasp the overall concepts of a game almost instantly, whereas in the games I mentioned, I needed to learn from what other people had figured out and written.

Whatever the combination of brains, study habits, and aptitude — he had more of what I wanted than I did. So, I wanted to be him.

Obviously, I never became him. After I moved to Las Vegas, I got to know Henry and we became friendly. By the time this happened, I had become successful at video poker and would see him playing that game in some of the casinos I frequented.

I once told him I had wanted to be him in the mid-80s, and he was amazed. He didn’t figure his skill at games was worth all that much. It hadn’t helped him much in the real world. I remember thinking that casinos were the real world.

Today, I have no desire to trade lives with Henry — and I suspect he has no desire to trade lives with me. We each made our way through life the best we could and have generally been successful at this. Although there are some overlapping interests, we really are quite a bit different from each other.

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Speeding Away

Bob Dancer

I was using Lyft to get to the airport.  This was a quick business trip while Bonnie stayed home. If I expect to do a lot of walking at my destination, I usually take my walker — and Bonnie and I both use it. This time, though, I was alone and wasn’t expecting a lot of walking, so I left it at home.

Sitting in the back seat, I saw a sign telling me the driver has mostly received perfect (5 out of 5) ratings and that my comfort and safety were his highest concern. And, of course, tips are greatly appreciated. I didn’t mind the sign. The driver is running a business and doing what he can to improve his profits. If his sign accomplishes that, good for him.

As I exited the car at the airport, before I was completely out of the back seat, the Lyft driver started to pull away. It was a compact car and I’m six feet tall, and it takes me a while to exit in that situation. The right rear tire clipped my right heel. When it happened, I didn’t know if I was injured or not — but I was angry that the driver didn’t wait until I was completely out of the car. I look my age, more or less, and it’s not breaking news that seniors are slower and sometimes clumsier at doing things than younger people are. 

The driver stopped immediately. I yelled at him and he kind of looked at me and shrugged. I might have slammed the door a bit more forcefully than I usually do and went into the terminal. I didn’t notice any pain as I walked.

I figured this was a one-off mistake on his part and that he didn’t mean to injure me. There had been minimal conversation in the car and nothing for him to get mad at me about. I surmised that if I reported this, he would suffer consequences. Having a “black mark” on your record is never a good thing.

I debated with myself whether or not to report it. Was his error big enough to warrant him getting a black mark? Rightly or wrongly, I decided it was. Had he immediately jumped out of his seat to make sure I was okay, and apologized profusely along the way, I might have decided differently. But his indifferent “s@%t happens” shrug struck me the wrong way. He seemed to be in a rush to get to his next fare and my welfare was my own problem.

Although I didn’t seem to be injured immediately, if some lingering pain showed up, I wanted a record of the incident.

I didn’t have a lot of time before my flight took off, so I waited until I started to get texts when I was near my destination airport before I did anything. Lyft sent its standard: “Did you enjoy your ride? Rate Antonio’s performance from one to five. How much of a tip do you want to leave Antonio?”

There was a space to write an extended comment, so I wrote that he started to drive away before I was totally out of the car and his tire clipped my foot.

Lyft offered me the chance to chat via text with one of their reps to get this problem resolved. I could have spoken to a live person had I wanted to, but I was still on a full plane and would be for a few more minutes, so I opted for the text chat.

I explained what had happened. I inferred that the rep was female, although I could be wrong. She asked me if I was injured? “I’m not sure,” I replied. “I’m not in pain now, but right now I’m still on the plane. I’ll know more after I walk to baggage claim, and I’ll know even more tomorrow.”

She told me she had contacted the driver and he and I would be separated from him in the system — presumably meaning he would never be my driver again. I don’t know if what other repercussions, if any, Antonio faced. 

She kept pressing me to declare myself okay — and I kept demurring. “I need more time.” She gave me a deadline to keep texting or the claim would be declared resolved, I waited until a minute before the deadline and said I still needed more time.

By now, a different rep had been assigned to the case and needed time to orient herself with the situation. That agent never got back to me.

The next day I received a text message from a lawyer representing Lyft. Apparently, a claim had been opened, and she was there to find out the status of my injuries — and whether or not I was going to sue.

I decided to wait for a few days to see if any lingering pain existed. So I temporized with, “I’m consulting a lawyer about this. I will give him your contact number and the claim number.”

As I write this, it is a week after the incident, and I have no physical pain whatsoever from the incident. “No harm no foul,” as announcers are fond of saying in basketball.

Except there was a foul. Antonio drove away too hastily and I could have been hurt – or worse. The fact that I wasn’t was fortunate.

But since I’m not injured, I’m not going to sue either Antonio or Lyft. That sounds like way too much hassle and since I wasn’t hurt badly, a judge (or jury) wouldn’t likely award me very much, if anything. I could fake injury, of course, but that’s not my style at this time of my life. Back when I was “hurting for money,” possibly I would have used some trickery in order to get some cash, I’m not sure, but not today.

Lyft, of course, is ultimately responsible, but this was a freak incident that could have just as easily happened to Uber or any cab company. So, I’m still going to utilize Lyft to get back and forth to the airport. But I probably will start saying, “I’m slow” when I exit the back seats of cars. 

Ironically, had I taken my walker with me this never would have happened. The driver would have been forced to get the walker out of his trunk (or wherever he had stored it), and by that time I would have been well out of the car.

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Career Path — Part II of II

Bob Dancer

In last week’s blog, in a semi-fictionalized story, I had a conversation with a recent college graduate, “John,” about whether he should become a professional gambler. I think I should have given him the “Stan and Pearl” test to see if he understands the basics of gambling.

I first discussed Stan and Pearl in my Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography. (Actually, it was my first autobiography. I’m considering penning Million Dollar Video Poker: The Next 25 Years if the new tax law provides me with a lot more free time than I currently have. We’ll see.) Every student who attended one of my “Secrets of a Video Poker Winner” classes has heard this story, and I’ve written about it in this blog at least a few times — but not for several years, and some of my readers haven’t been exposed to it before.

Most people believe the Stan and Pearl problem is very easy. And it is. Surprisingly, however, a high percentage of people get the wrong answer the first time they hear the problem. People who correctly understand what successful gambling is all about get it correct every time. People who don’t understand successful gambling, but think they do, often get it wrong.

Stan and Pearl are imaginary video poker playing friends. They play video poker with a level of skill and discipline far beyond what is found in most players. 

The game they play perfectly is $1 9/6 Jacks or Better — without a slot club, returning a bit more than 99.5%. 

Stan plays 10 hands every day and then, win or lose, stops. 

Pearl plays 10 hands every day. If she has hit a flush or higher (paying 30 coins or more), she plays another five hands (costing 25 coins). If in those five hands she connects on another flush or higher, she plays another five hands. Eventually she’ll hit a five-hand dry spell and will quit for the day.

Stan stops and Pearl parlays. “Parlay” is a term with quite a few different definitions. Here I’m using it to mean she bets with her winnings.

The question is: Assuming Stan and Pearl follow their strategy perfectly, who is likely to have the better cumulative score at the end of one year?

Don’t let the genders of these imaginary friends influence your decision. The names were selected for wordplay reasons. I could just as easily have made them both men —Stan and Paul — or both women —Stella and Pearl. 

When I teach it in class, I ask the students to raise their hands if they think Pearl will have the better score. I then ask the people with a hand up why they chose Pearl. The answers typically include:

“She’s riding a hot streak — betting more when she’s winning.”

“When she’s not winning anymore, she stops.”

“She’s playing more, giving her a better chance at getting lucky.”

Pretty soon we exhaust the reasons why people select Pearl. I then announce that anyone who voted for Pearl having the better annual score has no clue about what the winning process is all about.

I then ask if someone who voted for Stan having the better score will explain why. Almost always I get the correct answer: 9/6 Jacks or Better without a slot club is a game where the house has a half-percent advantage. Since Pearl plays more when the house has the advantage, she will lose more than Stan, on average. Since Stan plays less of this negative game, he will lose less. They will both be net losers, but Stan will lose less.

I then give them the second version of the puzzle. This time they are playing the same 99.5% game but there is now a 1% cash slot club. Stan still plays 10 hands per day, and Pearl still plays at least 10 hands, and more if she hits a flush or higher. Now who likely has the better score?

Most of the class correctly vote for Pearl this time. With the slot club, the player has a half-percent advantage over the house and now whoever bets more has the better chance of coming out ahead.

In summary, if you have the advantage, over time you’ll likely come out ahead. If you don’t, you likely won’t.

The reason I’m bringing this story out again is that in the scenario I outlined in last week’s blog, I had a discussion with a recent college graduate about whether he could pursue a life as a professional gambler. 

I wished I had given him this test. Anyone wishing to succeed at gambling should get the right answer for the right reason.

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Career Path — Part I of II

Bob Dancer

Today’s story starts off completely true about a recent meeting I had. About half-way through, I’ll veer into fiction because I didn’t think of the right things to ask until after the meeting was over. So, I’m going to list the questions I should have asked. And I won’t presume to give his answers to these questions, although I will forward the article to him and maybe we’ll continue the conversation later. 

A valued decades-long friend has a son, John, who just graduated from the University of Nevada Reno. John got a job as a slot analyst at a large Reno casino, and the father asked me if I would speak to John about the gambling world. The father thinks, probably correctly, the son has stopped listening to him. So Bonnie, John, and I had a dinner meeting.

John told me his girlfriend was a senior at UNR, and he hoped to marry her. For the next year, at least, he was planning to stay in Reno, but after that, he could go anywhere.

The first “casino business” thing we spoke about was the recent tax bill, the uncertainty about whether it will be modified, and my plans to give up gambling effective January 1 should it not be modified. (Should this be news to the reader, I discussed it at length in this column about a month ago.)

At this point, John told me that if I wanted to pass along my knowledge before I retire with all my secrets, he’s willing to be my student. And starting with the next question, things get fictionalized.

I asked him, “Is being a professional gambler a lifelong dream of yours? Or maybe you’ve heard that I’ve been successful and you just want to be rich?”

John gave a sheepish grin and said maybe a bit of both.

“How long has being a professional gambler been a dream of yours — and what have you done to prepare yourself for such a career?”

He admitted that it hasn’t been a dream that’s been on the front burner, and he really hasn’t done anything to prepare himself.

“How much bankroll do you have? What I mean is how much money could you lose without it being a major burden on your way of life?”

John said he had essentially no bankroll and he had some student loans that would need to be addressed soon.

“The complete answer is pretty long, but the bottom line is you’re not a very good candidate to be a professional gambler.”

I then spelled out my pretty long answer.

First, you need a bankroll. Just starting a marriage and bringing along student debt for at least one of you is not the best time to be saving 40% of your income for future gambling purposes.

Speaking of marriage, if being a professional gambler hasn’t been discussed with your bride to be, it’s possible that it could be a showstopper with respect to whom she wants to marry. If not specifically for her, maybe her family.

Second, being a professional gambler is a way of thinking. Most of us were playing strategic games for a long time before we gambled at it. Were you good at chess, scrabble, Minecraft, or any other games where strategy is a prerequisite?

Third, I’m leaving gambling because I think I can’t make a living at it under the new tax law. Do you think following my methods can lead you to success when I think those methods won’t work anymore under the new law? I could be wrong, of course, but are you willing to bet you know more than I do about this?

Fourth, succeeding at video poker is a lifelong process. I’ve been playing more than 30 years and am still learning things. This is not a profession where you can read a couple of books and be set for life. Are you a lifelong student sort of guy?

Fifth, the best professional gamblers are much smarter than average. Genius isn’t required, but being smarter than the casino employees who decide which games and which promotions to offer is useful. Does this describe you? 

Sixth, successful professional gamblers often change games they play if situations change. Video poker itself is reasonably well understood by most casino slot directors and few casinos offer lucrative opportunities for players. I’ve found some, but who knows how long they will last and who knows how long my welcome will last. It’s very possible that in ten years the successful video poker players of today will be playing gambling games that haven’t even been invented yet.

I’ll leave this fictionalized conversation off for now, although I’ll continue it in next week’s blog, and just surmise that John’s last response was a polite, “Well, Bob, you’ve given me a lot to think about.”