3/2/2007
More good stuff that had to be cut out of Frugal Video Poker.
Q: What’s the RNG in a VP machine and how does it work?
A: RNG is the abbreviation for Random Number Generator, the electronic device inside a VP machine that makes sure the results are random. I like the way Mike Fields, a VP expert at Action Gaming, puts it at the videopoker.com Web site:
“The RNG’s sole responsibility is to shuffle the deck of 52 cards (or 53 in Joker Poker) constantly. This manic activity goes on and on until you hit the ‘Deal’ button. When you hit that button, the machine displays the top five cards from the ‘deck’ at that precise moment. The RNG works all the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
“It is this highly regulated and closely monitored piece of technology that keeps VP games mathematically fair and accurate. It cycles through all the conceivable outcomes for a five-card deal until that ‘Deal’ button is hit. There is no ‘pattern,’ no strategy for how it works. It just constantly cycles random card combinations until you hit ‘Deal.’”
Q: I heard that on some VP machines when you hit “Deal,” the RNG chooses 10 cards, five that you see and five behind those front cards. For any card that you don’t hold, when you hit “Draw,” the card behind it takes its place in your final hand. I don’t think this is fair – the card you really need might be in another position in the back and you had no chance to make the hand you wanted. My friend says I’m wrong, that the RNG does choose 10 cards, but those second five are kept in a “computer stack” to replace any discarded cards on the “Draw” and each replacement card will come off the top of the stack. Which of us is right?
A: Actually, if you’d asked me this question many years ago, the answer would have been that either way is legal and random, and each VP machine manufacturer can make their own choice – which they did back then. The first method you describe is called “parallel dealing.” Your friend’s method is called “serial dealing.” However, today most manufacturers have gone to a third way of dealing the cards. When you press the “Deal” button, only the five displayed cards are chosen. The RNG keeps shuffling the 47 (or 48 if it’s a Joker game) cards remaining in the electronic deck while you’re thinking about what to hold. It doesn’t choose the replacement cards until you hit the “Draw” button.
Although this method may seem more “fair,” all three methods are equally random. However, manufacturers prefer this latest method, because it thwarts cheating opportunities for computer-whiz thieves. I like it because it keeps me from second-guessing myself. For example, what if I have a choice in a JoB game between holding a high pair vs. three to a royal? I correctly hold the high pair – and the two royal cards I needed pop up first. That doesn’t mean I’d have made the royal if I’d held the original three royal cards. That slightly larger sliver of time to hold three cards instead of two would have put the RNG in a different place and two different cards would have come up. Knowing that has saved me a lot of unnecessary grief!
3/7/2007
More good stuff that had to be cut out of Frugal Video Poker.
Q: People are always talking about RFB or RFBL when they’re discussing casino comps. What do those abbreviations mean?
RFB is short for room, food, and beverage. If you check into a casino RFB, you can usually eat and drink at any restaurant or bar owned by the casino (not by an outside contractor), and your room is free. RFB usually covers only the person who registers into the room and one guest. To take more guests, you’d need to ask your host for more comps.
RFBL is short for room, food, and beverage, with the “L” standing for limited. Your room is free, but you’re limited in your restaurant choices, sometimes to just the buffet and coffee shop and not the finer restaurants. You need to ask when you check in what restaurants are covered when you’re RFBL, so you won’t be surprised by charges on your bill when you check out.
Q: What’s the difference between cashback and free play?
A: Cashback is cold hard U.S. currency that the casino puts right into your hand, money that you can stuff in your pocket, then walk straight out the casino door. Free play is a given number of credits you must play through the machine once before you can cash out. To redeem your free play, sometimes you’ll get a ticket to put into the machine; other times you download it into a machine using a PIN. Often, some machines are excluded from free play, and sometimes you must play it on specific machines.
Obviously, players prefer cash, but casinos prefer to give free play. A good number of people continue playing on these credits until they’re gone. You don’t need to feel obligated to do this, though. Play it through once, then stop and decide whether it’s wise to cash out or count it as part of your gambling bankroll and continue playing.
Q: What’s the difference between coin-in and coin-out players club systems?
A: Most casinos figure your points by coin-in. That is, when you put $100 through the machine (either in new money or replaying credits), you earn points for that $100, win or lose. A few casinos, however, award points according to the amount won, which is the coin-out figure.
Which way is better? If you’re playing a negative-expectation game, the coin-in system is better, because over the long run you’ll lose, but your points will be based on the larger coin-in figure. When we play positive-expectation games, we like coin-out, because in the long run we earn more points that way.
Some players don’t like the coin-out system, even though they understand the long-term advantage to those who play positive games. They feel it’s a double whammy when they have a losing session: They lose money and get fewer slot club points. However, because so many hands, especially on video poker, are ties, this difference is not as big as you might expect.
A good Internet friend wrote the following post, which shows the math that perhaps will keep you from worrying needlessly about whether a slot club bases its award system on coin-in or coin-out:
“The only reason I don’t like the coin-out system is that it’s harder to make sure you’re getting the proper amount of points credited by the machine.
“But you really shouldn’t be that concerned about dry spells and being penalized during losing sessions. There isn’t that much difference. For example, say you play six hours of 25¢ full-pay Deuces Wild and you average 600 hands per hour. You just put $4,500 through the machine. At $1 equaling one point, you’ve earned 4,500 points with a coin-in system.
“Now, let’s assume you don’t hit quad deuces or a royal, and you lose about $40 an hour, which is about your expected average loss. With a coin-out system, you’re only penalized six (hours) times 40 (points), or 240 points altogether. You’ve still earned 4,260 points for the session. This is not the major calamity that people seem to have in mind for losing sessions using a coin”
3/15/2007
The Stardust is now just dust –- and a pile of rubble. But it will forever be in my memory, for it provided so many years of casino pleasure and profit for Brad and me.
It was the scene of many firsts for us. It was the first slot club we ever joined, while staying there for the first time on January 12, 1990. And there I had the thrill of my first royal, on Dec. 14, 1992. By this time we had completed our game transition from blackjack to video poker and the Stardust had became one of our first core casinos.
It was at the Stardust that I began my serious study of the casino comp game, laying the foundation for all the books I later wrote. We mastered the art of never-ending free food, and never standing in line to get it. Here we discovered the joys of free gifts and comped show tickets. After a while we experienced the thrill of being “special,” with invitations to VIP parties and a red VIP light illuminating when we put our slot cards in a video poker machine. We enjoyed a seemingly boundless supply of free rooms, starting in the simple garden rooms at the back of the main building. But as we slowly upped our play from quarter to fifty-cent and dollar video poker, we were promoted to the luxury of the main tower rooms.
During one of our frequent stays at the Stardust, in January 1995, our first TV gig was filmed, a “”48 Hours”” crew in tow while Brad and I did our frugal thing. But since all the Vegas casinos were mad at “”48 Hours”” for doing a negative story on their town a couple of years before, all the shooting was done undercover. And our first big (and still the biggest) drawing win came during that shoot, when my name was pulled out of the Stardust drum for a shiny new Mercury Mystique. I guess they forgave “48 Hours,” because in later years in their gift shop they were selling my first book, The Frugal Gambler, which carried the story of that secret filming and car win!
And now it’s gone.
But as long as I and thousands like me are around, the Stardust will not be forgotten.
3/22/2007
The good news for everyone: You have two extra days this year to file your 2006 tax return, because April 15 falls on a Sunday in 2007, and the following day, Monday, April 16, is Emancipation Day, a legal holiday in the District of Columbia. The bad news for some of you is that you still haven’t figured out what you need to do about reporting those W-2Gs a casino has given you, whether you have just one or two or a whole stack of them.
The first thing you need to remember is that when you get a W-2G or a 1099 from a casino, the IRS gets a copy of it too. The second thing you need to know is that the government has a computer-run “Information Reporting Program.” A computer matches up various reporting forms (like W-2Gs and 1099s) to returns with the same Social Security number and, if it can’t find that you accounted for these amounts, it kicks out your return. You’ll get a CP-2000 letter informing you that you owe taxes on this “income.” This isn’t a full-fledged IRS audit, but what’s informally called a “letter audit.” However, any letter from the IRS can strike terror within a taxpayer’s pocket!
In the book Tax Help for the Frugal Gambler, Marissa Chien and I have discussed the wide range of issues that the gambler must face in dealing with the IRS. Some basics are clear: All gambling income must be reported; you must maintain records as you play; you must keep wins and losses separate and can’t net them out at the end of the year. But a multitude of details aren’t specifically discussed in IRS publications, including how exactly to handle the reporting of W-2Gs.
In the book, Marissa and I discuss what seems to be a logical interpretation of sketchy IRS explanations, reporting winning “sessions” as income and, if you itemize, reporting losing “sessions” as deductions. If you do this, then you’ll need to attach a list of your W-2Gs and/or gambling 1099s, with an explanation that these are included in your session wins and losses on lines XXX. If you don’t do this, you’ll probably get hit with the above-described letter audit.
However, some people have been hit with the letter audit even though they’ve done the above. And much to their dismay, they’ve had difficulty in dealing with entry-level IRS personnel who know little or nothing about the taxation of gambling. Some have even had to go to tax court to explain their position. So, to avoid this problem, many gamblers simply use the W-2G total as their total gambling “income,” even if it means paying more taxes, as it often does. If you decide to do this, you still should have a diary of your gambling sessions, separating your wins and your losses. Because in the case of an audit, this diary is what the auditor will want to see. He/she will want to know about ALL your gambling, not just the sessions you hit a jackpot and received a W-2G.
How you handle the reporting of W-2Gs on your tax return will depend on your individual situation. Marissa and I discuss in detail some of the following factors you might need to think about. Do you have a lot of W-2Gs or just a few? Is your diary win total larger or smaller than your W-2G total? Is your total income large enough that big gambling wins will negatively impact other parts of your return, like reducing the number of deductions you can claim? Do you live in a state that allows no deductions for losses, so you’ll have to pay high state tax on gross wins even though over all you lost for the year? (That’s called a double whammy!)
If you feel you need to be more knowledgeable about tax issues relating to gambling, either so you can do your own return or you can give your tax preparer the proper information needed to do the return for you, you can order Tax Help for the Frugal Gambler at http://queenofcomps.com/ or http://www.shoplva.com/.
3/29/2007
In my book Frugal Video Poker, I included toward the end a long chapter called “Fine-Tuning Your Strategy Accuracy.” Although I talk at length early in the book about the importance of learning proper strategy for each different game that you play and give detailed instructions on how to read a strategy chart, I wanted to stress that improving your accuracy is an on-going goal. I talk about basic errors you can work on at home, mechanical and distraction errors, and those errors you make because you’re a human being and not a robot.
Then after I provide a laundry list of playing hints to improve your accuracy, I share my favorite practice technique, using the Frugal VP software:
Choose a game in FVP on which you want to improve your accuracy. Go to “Tutor Options” and mark “Don’t signal errors during play” and “Don’t show best hand on deal.” Go to “View Options” and be sure you’ve marked “Don’t highlight dealt winners” and “Active Marquee.” While you’re there, change the background color and card colors that you’re used to using when you’re practicing. Go to “Audio” and select “Disable all Sound Effects” and “Enable Music,” choosing the selection you hate the most and turning the volume up high.
You’re trying to duplicate the crazy noisy distractions of real VP play in a casino, so it would help to have two friendly cats that like to jump up on your desk and look at the screen and/or two dogs that bark all the time. If possible, work on this lesson while you’re babysitting two toddlers who constantly pull at your sleeve for attention. And have a loving friend or spouse offer you an alcoholic drink every 15 minutes. Play as fast as you can for about 30 minutes, without looking at strategy cards and without thinking too long about each hand.
Then go to “Session Errors” and see what types of mistakes you made. These are the things that you need to watch for as you play.
Now go back and set all the software choices to the ones you use when practicing. Be sure to go to “Replay errors” under “Options” and enable this valuable teaching feature.
I’ve found that this is one of the best ways to identify weaknesses in my strategy skills. Do I often miss small pairs? Straight-flush draws? Now I know where and how I need to be more careful in my play.
You can order both the Frugal Video Poker book and software at http://queenofcomps.com/ or http://www.shoplva.com/.