6/2/2006
“Here I go again – writing a book I never planned on writing and certainly never wanted to write. Why would I, a 67-year-old grandma who is trying to retire, take on a job that is extremely complex and continually frustrating, that involves thousands of hours staring at a computer until the eyes glaze over and the brain shuts down, and that when you think you’re almost finished you feel the need to revise and rewrite at least a dozen more times?”
Yes, that’s the introduction to my new book, Frugal Video Poker, and I wanted you, my faithful Frugal Fridays readers, to have the first official announcement.
As I continued in the Introduction to this book: “…I always hoped that someone would write a VP how-to book that, one step at a time, detailed the way that the beginner could learn to play video poker and slowly but surely work up to becoming a knowledgeable player. I thought perhaps one of the well-known VP gurus and/or a mathematician would bring out this book. But although many of these writers provide us with extensive writings on various general and specialized VP subjects – and I’m grateful for every bit of information they give us – there’s no one book that the average gambler can go to for a comprehensive look at the video poker situation in casinos today and learn how to play skillfully.”
“I guess it’s both the writer and teacher in me that refuse to let me retire. If no one else will write a book that I can recommend to all those who beg me for down-to-earth practical light-on-the-math help, well, I’ll have to do it myself. Not being strong in math – remember I taught English not math – I identify strongly with these players. But the one thing my husband Brad and I have learned from 22 years of gambling in casinos, the last 16 playing VP with great financial success, is that you don’t have to be an egghead mathematician to be a knowledgeable gambler. Not that you don’t have to understand some basic math principles – you do. And the more math you can understand, the easier and quicker will be your walk up the VP path. However, so many resources today have figured out the math for you that all you have to do is study and apply the existing tools. This book shows you how to do that.”
I’ve been working on this book for almost 4 years, from the time I realized I had many more video poker notes than would fit into More Frugal Gambling. But the most important fact is that I had lots of help along the way. Viktor Nacht, skilled gambler and proprietor of RGE Publishing, came onboard the project over a year ago and gave me considerable help, especially when I was stuck on the technical computer aspects. However, there are literally thousands of “helpers,” some named and many more unnamed, whose footprints appear throughout the book. These include the writer-experts whose resources I followed all these years, the knowledgeable posters who contributed information on many Internet forums, and the multitude of frugal friends who shared their expertise in person and in e-mails – and that includes many of you valued readers.
The book is now in the hands of Huntington Press and should be off to the printer within the month. The distribution process is a very complex and lengthy one so it will be several months before it’s on the shelves of your local bookstore. However, I’ll alert you here when you’ll be able to order it online. There will be pre-pub discounts both at www.shoplva.com/ (for LVA subscribers) and at www.frugalgambler.biz/ (where you can order personally autographed copies).
6/8/2006
This week we again visit the subject of comps, with a guest column from a friend who wants to stay anonymous. He corrobarates the warning I’ve been issuing for years: Be very careful that you can afford any comp you earn.
PLAYING FOR COMPS
Playing for comps is a touchy subject among experts and smart VP players. It usually involves heavy play on a slightly negative game in order to earn certain premium comps, such as gourmet dining, nice hotel rooms, VIP tournament invitations, etc. There are many things to consider when deciding if this is for you.
1) Your honest evaluation of the value of the comp. For a tournament, just divide the total prize fund by the number of players to get the equity. For gourmet meals, you have to decide what you’d be willing to actually pay, out of your own pocket, for the meal, and use that figure. And don’t forget to include the tip, which must be paid with real money. For rooms, timing is important. A room at a Strip casino over a holiday weekend might cost $400 a night, while a similar room at a local casino on a weekday might cost $40. And the local casino will almost always have better VP to play for the room comp. As with the meal, you must decide what you’d be willing to pay for the room, in real money.
2) Your expected loss on the game. This is simply your disadvantage times your coin-in. For example, at 9/6 JoB, playing $20,000 through a 99.54% game (assuming you play accurately) gives you an expected loss of about $100. If this play earns a comp worth $200, you might consider it a good deal, at least from a monetary standpoint. You should also add in any cashback or bounce-back offered by that casino for your play. In this example, if the casino has .2% cash back, your expected loss drops to $60.
3) Your time. How much time will you invest to earn your comp? In the above example, you might play dollar JoB for five hours to earn your $200 comp. Subtracting your expected loss (not counting cash back) leaves a $100 “”profit”” for your five-hour investment, or about $20 per hour. Not bad, but you might be better off playing a better game at another casino — only you can decide what is best for you.
4) Your risk. This is the part that the experts have trouble agreeing on. It’s essential that your worst possible loss will not be an amount that will significantly impact your bankroll. If you usually play quarters, with a bankroll of $5,000, you should not attempt to earn RFB at Bellagio. In the above JoB example, you could easily see a loss of $1,000+ on a bad day. If that were to occur, how would you feel? If the worst-case scenario is not an acceptable outcome for you, then you might want to pass on that particular comp. As a general guideline, if you might lose more than 1% of your total bankroll in pursuit of the comp, you ought to think twice about it, no matter how desirable the comp might be. Most people will not enjoy their steak dinner if they lose $5,000 earning it!
Many gambling experts simply say, “”Don’t play for comps!”” While this might be good advice for many players, there can be lots of exceptions. Like in anything else, evaluating risk versus reward is crucial. If you know all the facts and can do a bit of easy math, you might decide that the reward is worth the risk. But you must decide for yourself.
6/15/2006
Editor’s Note: Jean Scott contributed a column, as usual, for this week’s Frugal Fridays. But this is the rare occasion when her faithful and dutiful editors overruled her, in favor of something different. Jean is much too modest to submit the following herself, so it was pieced together from a phone call and three emails starting last Saturday evening, after a major event occurred in her and Brad’s lives. Here’s the story.
“Another couple, our very close friends, went in with Brad and me to enter the million-dollar Fortunes of Rome slot tournament at Caesars Palace last weekend. The entry fee was $10,000, but if you accrued 135,000 players club points (Harrah’s basic Reward Credits) in a three-day period during the tournament, Caesars would give you back the $10K (135,000 players club points equates to $1.35 million coin-in).
“The tournament invitation came in Brad’s name and we had the bankroll to go it alone, but neither of us relished playing long hours for three days straight. So the four of us pounded away at $5 Five Play 9/6 JoB, fulfilled the requirement in about 30 hours of play, and got back our $10,000 entry fee.
“We and the other couple were kittying our win/loss on the floor as well as in the tournament and sharing all extra benefits. We got two royals and had good luck pretty much the whole time, so depending on the bounce-back cash we’ll receive in the mail later, Brad and I and the other couple will split about $40,000 for the play. We were happy before the tournament even started, so it didn’t really matter how little we won from the tournament’s million-dollar prize pool.
”The rest of us were busy on Saturday, so Brad played in all four of the 15-minute slot-tournament rounds. Since we’d never been in a tournament with only 75 entrants, we didn’t really know what a good score might be, but we guessed (hoped?) his final tally was good enough to end up in the top ten, maybe even the top five. It was a long suspenseful day, but at about 7 p.m. at the awards banquet Saturday night, Brad’s name was the last one called — meaning he took first place and a grand prize of $500,000!!
“Needless to say, all four of us were so excited we could hardly breathe.
“Our senses returned when we were given a choice of getting the half-million dollars in cash or a check. I joked with the cashier, saying we wanted it in one-dollar bills. He never blinked an eye; he just said he’d send for a forklift!
“Obviously, we took the winnings in a check. Neither couple wanted to carry around $250,000 in cash — which would’ve been 50 stacks containing 50 hundred-dollar bills each!”
Jean added this footnote last Monday. “We’ve all been in a state of shock for two days now. Well, maybe not Brad. He’s still carrying the original check around, showing it to all of our friends to see the expression on their faces. I’ve never seen him so animated!”” And this came on Tuesday. “”I finally made a copy of the check he could keep in his pocket –- so he’s off to the bank to deposit the original!”
6/22/2006
First, I want to thank everyone who e-mailed us personally or posted congratulatory messages on Internet forums, especially on the LVA board and vpFree. It’s a wonderful feeling to have so many friends who are generous in their joy for us, even though they’d love to have such an event in their own lives.
However, I guess I didn’t give Deke enough details to put into last week’s column, because everyone had so many questions. One person said he didn’t want to pry into our personal lives, but he still wanted to know all about this tournament experience, because he didn’t think he’d ever win this much money, so he was anxious to vicariously live the adventure. So, I’ll be using this column for the next few weeks to give you answers to your questions. They’ll be straightforward; our life has always been pretty much an open book.
“What are you going to do with all that money?”
“Are you going to buy a bigger house? A bigger fancier car?”
“I hope you and Brad take a nice long vacation.”
No, we aren’t going to buy a bigger house. We’ve had big houses; we deliberately downsized and simplified when we moved to Vegas. Our little condo suits us fine. Someone else takes care of the green grass and shrubs and trees around it. We can walk just a few steps to the heated swimming pool year round. If friends and relatives visit, they much prefer to stay in a free luxurious hotel room that we get for them rather than a guest bedroom if we had one.
We wouldn’t think of replacing our little PT Cruiser in which we tool around town. We love the Frugal Plum.
And as for taking a vacation, one person got it right, “What a wonderful fairy-tale retirement you and Brad have had since you first moved here.” We feel like we’re on vacation every day!
Now, as for how we’ll spend the money, Brad and I have talked about this at length, but we still can’t think of anything we want that we haven’t already been able to afford. The casinos provide us with almost all of our needs: food, gas, and gift cards that cover most of the necessities of life; and more entertainment and vacation options than we have the strength to pursue.
We did think of one valuable thing this windfall might give us: less anxiety when we’re in a long losing stretch of video poker. We never play beyond our bankroll, but losing is never the most mentally calming event. A bigger bankroll cushion will definitely make us more relaxed!
In a similar vein, someone suggested I take a part of this win and put it in a metaphoric To-Heck-With-It fund. I can give myself permission not to pick up bounce-back coupons if we’re not in the mood to drive across town and, more important, not feel a twinge of regret later over that loss of fifty “easy” dollars. To heck with it! When I feel we’re overscheduled, I can suggest we skip a 2x-bonus-point casino promotion with no guilt. To heck with it. I don’t know if I can stop taking the toothpaste tube out of the wastebasket in Brad’s bathroom and see how many more brushings I can get out of it, but I might try it soon and see how I feel. Sure, I’ll have to take tiny steps here; I have 67 years of habits to break. But already I’ve found it a wonderful way to begin easing up on my “nutty frugalness,” as Brad calls it.
Don’t worry about all that money getting moldy in a bank somewhere. We have some worthy causes that we’ve supported in the past and will be able to be even more generous with in the future. Plus, we have children and grandchildren who are never out of ideas for spending money!
More Q+A’s next week.
6/29/2006
As I promised last week, this week I’ll tackle more questions and comments arising from our first-place win in Caesars’ million-dollar slot tournament.
“It’s got to be nice to share a hit like that with another couple who you’re good friend with.”
“You really must trust your friends. Did you guys have a written agreement?”
Yes, it was fun to be with friends in this endeavor, from beginning to end. But we didn’t give them a check for a quarter of a million dollars just because they’re nice (even though they are) or because we’re generous. We had an agreement from the beginning: to share, equally, both the risks and the rewards. We trusted each other enough that it didn’t have to be in writing, but we discussed all aspects of it thoroughly in advance.
A note here: Before you make such an arrangement, be sure you’re very good friends and trust each other 100%. Even though we thought we’d covered every eventuality ahead of time, we did have to have some serious discussion when our play for the $10,000 rebate was only half-completed and we found ourselves ahead. We had to consider the option to quit and forget getting the $10,000 entry fee returned, since we knew about others who were losing big-time, as much as $60,000+. The four of us weren’t in total agreement at first and it took a few hours of crunching numbers and batting options back and forth to come to a final decision. Throughout the discussion, the main concern was that one couple would put pressure on the other to continue, which would leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouths if we did continue with the last half of play, then suffer a big loss. Our friendship was more important than any “good play.” However, we all decided we were willing to take the risk — and win or lose, our relationship could weather the storm.
“Did Caesars give a nice tournament gift? I’d think so at this high level.”
Yes. Caesars gave the participants a huge Faberge crystal bowl (that retails for more than $200). However, as with so many of our casino gifts, it didn’t fit in our small condo, so it’s sitting in the Comp Museum in our garage, waiting for someone to come visit us and take a fancy to it.
“The four of you seem rather matter-of-fact about the size of this win. If I won this much money, I’d consider it a life-changing event.”
Well, this has a lot to do with one’s age and circumstances. We can all remember a time when we were young and had children to raise and educate that a quarter of million dollars would’ve seemed like all the money in the world. It would’ve made a major impact on our lifestyle. When you’re older and have fewer financial responsibilities and, at last, have accumulated a nest egg for your golden years, the impact on your lifestyle isn’t as dramatic. Now, if someone gave us a promise of good health for 20 or more years –- that would be dramatic.
Tune in next week when I’ll talk about the issue here of luck vs. skill.