Frugal Fridays – January 2005
1/5/2006
We’ve just finished closing out our gambling figures for 2005 and, as usual, it was a roller-coaster ride. We spent a lot of time riding around in deep valleys, losing seven months out of 12. After being nice winners in January and February, we lost six months straight in the middle of the year. However, the hilltops made up for the valleys, with an exhilarating ride into the clouds in November and December and a healthy profit figure at the end of the year.
I guess I could talk about VP volatility every month from one angle or another. It’s the main cause of most of the whining and crying by VP players and the basis for many of the questions I get from my readers. One of these frequent questions is about moving up in denomination. I always tell people to be VERY VERY careful if/when they do this, because they might not be prepared for the steep roller-coaster ride that volatility will give them. Recently, the following discussion on this subject was posted on Skip’s VP Forum (subscribe at www.vpinsider.com) and I thought that these “raw” figures might be more meaningful than any complex math I could give you. The poster who shared these personal results wishes to remain anonymous, but I can tell you that he is a very reliable source!
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Volatility
by a long-time full-time VP player
The bottom line is that NOTHING can really prepare you for the extremes that
video poker has to offer. Experience helps, but even I am sometimes
amazed at the streakiness. I guess that’s one of the things that makes
it fun for me, even after years of full-time play.
The following list might prepare those of you out there who might be thinking about moving up in denomination or to a more volatile game. I have listed my worst hour and day ever on that game/denomination/platform.
FPDW or full-pay Deuces Wild: 1-2-2-3-5-09-15-25-200-800 … 100.76%
DB or full-pay Double Bonus: 1-1-3-5-7-10-50.0-80-160-50.0-800 … 100.17%
JoB or 9/6 JoB: 1-2-3-4-6-9-25-50-800 … 99.54%
NSUD or Not-So-Ugly Ducks (Deuces): 1-2-3-4-4-10-16-25-200-800 … 99.73%
Loss figures
25-cent FPDW: one hour $400; one day $1,100
$1 10/7 DB: one hour $1,300; one day $5,000
$2 10/7 DB: one hour $,3000; one day $10,200
$1 3-Play 10/7 DB: one hour $3,000; one day $8,800
$1 5-Play 10/7 DB: one hour $4,000; one day $10,000
$1 5-play NSUD: one hour $3,000; one (long!) day $11,000
$2 5-play NSUD: one hour $5,000; one day $14,000
$1 9/6 JOB: one hour $900; one day $2,200
$2 5-Play 9/6 JOB: one hour $3,000; one day $10,000
$5 9/6 JOB: one hour $2,500; one day $10,000
In eight years, I’ve been dealt about 14 million hands and have
played about 40 million, if you count all the hands in multi-line. I’ve
listed the games/denoms/platforms that I’ve played enough to be
confident that the figures are pretty close to “”as bad as it gets.””
In particular, moving from 25-cent FPDW to $1 10/7 DB was quite a shock. A
bad hour at dollar DB is worse than a bad DAY at quarter Deuces!
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Makes you think, doesn’t it?
1/14/2006
There are some interesting facts from Fantini’s Gaming Morning Report. You can get this very valuable e-mail report free for 30 days at the following Web site:
“NEVADA casinos poured $1.1 billion of liquor last year, according to state figures. Strip casinos served $701.1 million worth, of which 36 percent was comped. Meanwhile, the megaresort trend toward non-gaming profit centers is revealed in the revenue figures. Just 40.9 percent of Strip revenue came from gaming. Hotel rooms provided 26.1 percent, food 14.1 percent, drinks 5.4 percent and 13.5 percent from elsewhere.”
(I never thought I’d live to see the day that people would come to Vegas more to eat, drink, party, and shop than to gamble!)
Continuing on the subject of drinking, from the same Fantini report:
“HARRAH’S has a new use for radio frequency identification chips, and it isn’t to track table game play. They have tagged cocktail waitresses at the Rio with the RFID chips in an effort to track speed of cocktail delivery.”
(Brad and I rarely drank alcohol, at least after we were sensible adults, but we totally miss out on this casino comp these days for medical reasons. But I report these things for those of you for whom this is an important Vegas subject!)
… an article by Len Butcher, from the eNeon, a product of reviewjournal.com. You can subscribe there to their free weekly e-mail newsletter.
“A 120-year-old banyan tree that has been a Palm Beach, Fla., landmark for more than 100 years will be on display at Bellagio’s Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, Jan. 15 through Feb. 25, in celebration of Chinese New Year, then remain on display until Nov. 25. The tree is 100 feet tall, 40 feet in diameter at the base of the trunk, and weighs 200,000 pounds. It took 12 50-foot trailers to transport it to Las Vegas from Florida.
“This all came about when Audra Danzak, Bellagio’s director of horticulture, heard that the tree was suffering from a fatal fungus and was going to be destroyed. She believed it would make a unique display and quickly made plans to preserve it. But this was not going to be an easy feat. The tree had to be disassembled branch by branch during a week-long process in Palm Beach. Danzak and her professional horticulture staff of 140 then had to spend a month directing the re-assembly process and preparing the tree for its January debut.
“And what a display it will be. Visitors to Bellagio’s Conservatory will be able to walk through the banyan tree, with orchids and Spanish moss woven throughout its branches.
“A state-of-the-art sound system playing Bellagio’s own music composed by Cirque du Soleil musicians, along with light and water features, will help bring the floral artistry to life.
“For the Spring, Summer, and Fall shows, this tree-gardening technique once again will be used and the tree will be reconfigured for each show to serve as the Conservatory’s centerpiece. Bellagio’s Conservatory is transformed five times a year — winter, spring, summer, fall and Chinese New Year, with exquisite floral displays, cascading fountains and theatrical affects. Dates for the individual displays are: Chinese New Year Exhibit: Jan. 15 – Feb. 25; Spring Celebration: March 5 – May 13; Summer Garden Party: May 21 – Sept. 9; Harvest Show: Sept. 17 – Nov. 25, 2006; Winter Wonderland Dec. 1-31.”
(Sounds like a must-see for 2006.)
…an amazingly long list of free things to do in Las Vegas: shows, tours, attractions, and exhibits. Enough to keep anyone busy when they get tired of gambling – or lose all their money! Go to http://www.vegas4locals.com/index.html for this list and many other valuable freebies for the value-conscious Vegas visitor.
1/19/2006
Although video poker has been my main squeeze for 15 years, I’ve messed around a bit with live poker through the years. But now that it’s so big on TV and online, I must confess that I’m greatly tempted to stray big time from my true love, video poker! I spent hours and hours during our Christmas vacation with the Frugal Princess and her family, playing the World Series of Poker game on their PlayStation. (The grandkids were very amused as they taught this don’t-play-any-game-except-in-a-casino-for-real-money grandma how to use the remote control.)
As long as I’m writing books, I’ll probably resist the siren call of regular poker. Although online games and non-smoking casino poker rooms have taken away one of my major reasons for shunning the game – a severe allergy to smoke — there’s still one big problem left for me. Poker would be very time-consuming, especially if I jumped into it like I do most things in my life, with great intensity. I’ve learned how to cut down my time and still be successful in video poker. On the other hand, I’d have a long learning curve with regular poker and would need to concentrate on it fully during the early stages. In addition, while I’m busy with writing projects, I’m already staring at a computer screen for far too many hours a day without taking up another activity online.
However, I’d been thinking that I needed to discuss the new poker rage, in order to give this column a well-rounded coverage of many gambling activities, but I really didn’t have enough experience to write about it myself. I write best about what I know best. So when John Kelly sent me this article, I was delighted; it was the exact thing I had been looking for. John had already established himself as a gambling guru with his Lodestone VP Web site and forum, when I took up the game 15 years ago. So I knew that if he was beginning to dabble in poker, his advice would be worth listening to.
Here’s the article.
Video Poker to Texas Hold ’Em
by John (Lodestone) Kelly
With video poker plays of great value drying up faster than kegs at Octoberfest, many players are looking for greener pastures. Like many, I’ve found my new frontier in the parent game of VP: table poker – specifically, low-limit Texas Hold ’em. For those of you pondering this path, be wary. Contrary to what you’d think, the two games are opposites in almost every respect. Switching to table poker, while possibly preferable, is perilous and peppered with pitfalls.
THE VICTIM
A stark contrast here. With video poker, you’re preying on casino managers’ inadequate math skills. With live poker, you’re preying on your fellow gambler, primarily young foolish gamblers who watched a little too much World Series of Poker on ESPN-2 and thought it looked like a fun way to make easy money. I have a teeny bit of a moral qualm about this; while I take a certain glee in outfoxing enormous corporations, beating up post-adolescents for their lunch money seems a bit cruel. I rationalize it quite nicely by keeping in mind how much I suffer at the hands of the young and stupid, especially every time a rap-booming skinhead cuts me off in traffic, with his intentionally non-functional muffler rumbling as he tailgates his next victim. When embracing that perspective, taking their spare money doesn’t seem quite so heartless.
THE VARIANCE
While dollar video poker is a hell-ride of thousand-dollar swings (often in the same session), $1-$2 low-limit hold ‘em is a gentle journey, where losing so much as fifty bucks constitutes a bad day. Personally, I prefer the latter, but many will miss the adrenaline rush of the $4,000 jackpot. Nothing of the sort exists in low-limit poker: A big hand is worth, maybe, $40. However, bankroll and morale-crushing slides are gone as well. Playing VP, even at the most skilled level, you have more losing days than winning days. With live poker, if you’re the better player you will win, period. You may have a losing day, or a losing
1/27/2006
Last week John Kelly, our guest columnist, started talking about the difference between playing video poker and regular poker. His first two differences were “The Victim” and “The Variance.” Now he continues.
THE VENUE
With video poker, you endure traffic, smoke, drunks, and idiots. With live poker, you have an option: You can go to the casino or play online. Playing in the casino has the advantage of weaker players, especially on the Strip. The most common mistake of bad players is playing hands that they should throw away. The vast majority of hands should be tossed; you often trash a dozen or so hands between keepers, only to promptly toss that hand after an unfavorable flop. Your basic tourist did not fly 2,000 miles to sit around, folding hands. He wants to play, badly. And play badly he shall.
The downsides for the aspiring advantage player are numerous: You can’t readily check your list of hand fold/call/raise decisions; you’re likely to display “tells” that allow expert players to read your hand; the tedium of folding over and over can cause you to play hands that you shouldn’t; and tableside banter is likely to distract you and louse up your learning curve. Better to start off playing online, where you can play super-low stakes (everything down to pennies is available), without distractions, until your understanding of the game is reasonably complete.
The added attraction of playing at home is that you can readily multitask. Most of the time spent “playing” poker is actually spent waiting for others to decide what they’re going to do, so beside keeping track of who tends to bluff and who raises without reason, you can watch TV, read, catch up on your email, surf the Web, eat, do your taxes, whatever. This is enormously different from video poker, which tends to be all-consuming. Playing on the Web is “gambling lite.”
Alternately, most online sites allow you to play in multiple games at the same time, which allows you to make money faster. The downside is that it can get aggravating, if not downright confusing, when you’re actively involved in three or four hands at the same time!
THE VEX
Learning video poker is a straightforward process: If you read the books, memorize the strategy cards, and get a perfect score on your software, you play as well as anybody on the planet. Learning live poker is a completely different creature. It’s more like learning chess, and reading a tutorial by Bobby Fisher does not enable you to beat Bobby Fisher. This was a major adjustment for me. My mindset was that I was playing as per my “strategy card”; ergo, the winning would commence shortly. Not so fast, my friend! A good book on poker can tell you which hands to fold before the flop and give you some general guidelines for what to do afterward, but that’s about it. You’re on your own after that, as the endless combinations of player personalities, size of the pot, your drawing position, and the number and personalities of players in the pot all conspire to render decision-making too complicated to be handled by any sort of flow chart. And this usually results in novice players staying in way too many hands, especially those weaned on video poker, where the whole concept of “folding” is foreign. You’ve got to break the habit of drawing out every hand. It’s fatal. Curiosity will kill the cat and you along with it. Fold, fold, fold. Get the hell out. Patience is your virtue.
THE VITTLES
Looking at the numbers alone, video poker would seem to be the game to play. I play primarily dollar video poker. Historically, I’ve made about $25 an hour, plus at least another $10 an hour in free food, show tickets, and merchandise. Playing $1-$2 and $2-$4 Hold ‘em, I average about $10/hour (playing at higher denominations does not equate to winning more money, as the skill level of your opposition rises sharply at higher stakes). But we’re comparing apples and oranges here.
When I’m “playing” poke”