Comments on: Be a Calculating Player

By: queen of comps

queen of comps — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:56:25 +0000

Good answers, Kevin. Saved me a lot of time and I couldn’t have answered them any better!!!

By: Kevin Lewis

Kevin Lewis — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:25:34 +0000

To Larry: It’s really not all that difficult. LVA (lasvegasaddvisor.com) has a chart that gives you all the slot club redemption rates. vpFree2.com lists the coin-in required to earn one point, including whether and how that varies for slots, positive VP, and negative VP, for each casino. You can also simply ask the slot club representative. If you are confused by bonus point multipliers, just remember that it will take the same amount of coin-in to earn a BASE point, then the points earned will be multiplied.

To Steve: a drawn card being replaced by another of the same rank will happen 3 out of 47 times. The cards dealt by a VP machine are completely randomized. There is no bias. What you are experiencing is the innate human tendency to overweight “unusual” events. This is typical of the brain wiring that makes us think erroneously about gambling, probabilities, and randomness. If you throw away the 8 of clubs and get back the 8 of diamonds, that is EXACTLY as unusual (or usual) as receiving the King of hearts or the 4 of spades, but your brain remembers that “unusual” event and stores it away for future reference, even though the event doesn’t mean anything. That’s why you THINK it happpens more often than it “should”.

By: Steve Ryan

Steve Ryan — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 03:06:35 +0000

I’ve never known how to contact you. I’ve wanted to ask someone who knows a lot about video poker a question. Do you know if a study has been done as to how often a card not held is replaced by another card of the same rank? It seems to happen a lot. More than the odds justify. Thanks and I enjoy your writing.

By: Larry

Larry — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:49:00 +0000

Anyone who posts to a gambling forum surely knows that 3/1000 = 0.3%. The much, much bigger problem is knowing the coin-in required to earn a point. This varies from casino to casino, day to day, and even inside the casino where in most cases, slots earn at one rate and VP earns at another.

And then you have different redemption rates and specials from day to day. Or special prizes bases on points earned that day, awarded without affecting your point balance.

Honestly, I’ll visit LV for several days at a time and I just can’t make any sense of it. As soon as I start to figure things out, it’s time to go home. And when I return, the rules will be totally different.