3/6/2003
Jean, you aren’t in Indiana anymore – and you haven’t been for a long time! Those famous lines from “The Wizard of Oz” (slightly reworked) hit home for me the other night while I was sitting in the living room of our Vegas condo. An odd noise, seemingly emanating from all parts of the condo, had begun, but when I walked into my office and looked out the window, I burst out laughing. It was raining – and raining very hard – a once-familiar sound that I no longer immediately recognized!
Las Vegas has had an uncommon amount of rain recently, breaking some records and disappointing visitors who had been escaping from the snow-bound East in search of balmier climes. Starting this Saturday, however, the 7-day forecast is our usual “boring” one: 72 to 74 degrees; sunny or partly sunny. It’s a rough life – but someone has to do it!
Sticking with the subject of Indiana: A former church secretary made her initial court appearance Friday in LaPorte, Indiana Circuit Court on charges she stole $342,000 from the parish to gamble (http://www.casinowire.com/news.asp?id=4464). As always, people can find “”sin”” in many places other than our so-called “”Sin City””! Stigmatization aside, in reality it’s no more difficult to lead a moral, upright life in Southern Nevada than it is anywhere else in the nation.
From Billhere’s free weekly e-mail newsletter (subscribe at http://www.billhere.com): Bellagio’s President, Bobby Baldwin stated: “”Gamblers lose about $140 per day on each of Bellagio’s 2400-plus slot machines, about 40% more than The Strip average.”” Doesn’t sound like good publicity to get more customers, does it?
Are you staying at the Palms and want to find free transportation to the Strip – or staying on the Strip and wanting to visit the Palms? Either way, the Palms has a free shuttle going back and forth between both locales. It makes a circuit from the west entrance of the Palms, outside the Race and Sportsbook. Stops are the Fashion Show Mall, near Treasure Island at the Saks 5th Avenue entrance; the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, downstairs valet entrance; and then the Desert Passage Shopping Center at the Aladdin, downstairs valet entrance, before returning to the Palms. Call the Palms for the current schedule.
Read in Ellis Island’s monthly calendar, sent out to regular customers: “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.”
3/14/2003
I’m going to talk this week about gambling and losing. Some have suggested that I talk too enthusiastically and positively about playing video poker and too often imply that it’s easy to win. Well, this column may help give a more balanced picture.
Playing video poker has never been easy. You have to study hard just to get started. Then you have to study even more to stay on the right track. Finally, you have to continue studying no matter how experienced you get because playing conditions are constantly changing. But in spite of how much you know about choosing good games and playing perfect strategy, you’ll lose in many of your sessions. And the longer you play, the more likely you are to have a losing streak from hell.
Last year we hit that streak and for the first time in 12 years of VP play, we ended up the year in the red. (Some of you may remember that in 2000 we had a “”technical”” loss, only because we delayed picking up some of our cashback since a TV crew was coming in early January and wanted to film us collecting it.) We’d suffered through some long losing streaks before, but for 11 years when we closed our gambling logs on December 31, the final net cash number (not counting comps) was a plus. Sometimes it was a very modest amount; sometimes it was a surprisingly large amount. We didn’t care how much, really. Our goal has always been to break even on the actual game and enjoy the comped life — and we’d always achieved at least that, and often much more.
This red-ink ending of a year was difficult for us to accept. As I’ve said many times, it’s not nearly as much fun to lose as it is to win. And it wasn’t that the amount we lost was that large: If we’d been playing quarters instead of dollars, our loss would’ve been $1,000, just one royal away from breaking even. The loss was just a tiny percentage of our gambling bankroll and it had no negative effect on our present or future financial condition.
Still, we were affected emotionally.
Losing streaks are good times to take inventory. Thus, we sat down and looked through our records to see if we could find any reasons for this bad year. No, we hadn’t played any negative-expectation games unless accompanying cash benefits put us over the 100% mark. We’d reviewed our strategy charts and practiced on computer programs so we knew we were playing accurately. We hadn’t changed games too often and when we did, we reviewed the strategy before we played the new game. We continued to emphasize promotions and maximize slot club benefits.
So what was the reason for our loss? Tune in next week for the rest of the story.
3/21/2003
This week I’m continuing the subject I started last week: losing at video poker. If you remember, I told you that 2002 was the first year we ended up in the red during the 12 years we’ve played. I promised that I’d give you reasons for that loss, perhaps some that might help you avoid some losses or at least be able to deal with them better.
The first reason for our loss: We played within a very broad range of denominations. Sometimes we played $1 or $2 machines, betting $5 to $10 a hand. Often we played dollar Triple Play, which meant $15 a hand. Sometimes we played $5 single-line machines or $1 Five Play, both requiring $25 a hand. And once in a while we even tackled $1 Ten Play and had to pony up $50 a hand. At the $1 and up level, the choice of steady and good video poker plays is limited, with many available only on certain promotion days and others appearing and disappearing quickly. We were always trying to play with the best hourly advantage we could find, so we couldn’t be real choosy as to the bet level. We preferred staying around $10-$15 per hand, but went up or down, depending on the opportunities.
We had the financial bankroll to play any of these games we found, but by the end of the year, our psychological bankroll was being stretched to the limit. It takes nerves of steel to go through streaks where you’re getting royals frequently at the lower levels, but can’t buy one when you’re at the higher levels.
This led to the second reason for our loss: We didn’t play as many hours as we used to when we were younger and more energetic AND when I wasn’t doing so many writing projects and speaking gigs. Brad and I averaged only 20-25 hours of play a week between the two of us. At that rate, one year may not (probably WILL NOT in many cases) be long enough to get to the winning long term for EACH of the levels played.
This brings up a third reason: We played a lot of multi-line VP. Yes, on one hand, if you have “”average”” luck, you’ll get to the long term faster. But, in our experience, you seem to have either good luck or bad luck with multi-line — with little of the average sort. Good luck means you’re dealt better-than-average starting hands and therefore, your results on the rest of the lines will be better and propel you to the winning long term faster. Also, the total EV of the game includes getting a dealt royal on occasion, albeit a rare one. If you don’t get dealt a royal — and we didnít — and if you don’t play long enough to get that average number of good starting hands — and we didn’t — then you haven’t played enough hours to get to that winning long term. And we didn’t.
I have more to say about losing — so I will continue this topic next week — because there’s a happy postscript to our losing year.
But I want to insert a personal note here. Last week, right after I finished writing the first part on this subject on Monday evening, Brad became very ill. We thought he was having an asthma attack and a reaction to some asthma medication. But his condition worsened on Tuesday and I drove him to the doctor’s office, where they diagnosed him. It turns out it wasn’t asthma. He was in the middle of a heart attack. I’ll never forget how gray he looked as they hurriedly loaded him into the ambulance to go to the hospital and I didn’t know whether I’d ever see him again alive.
Well, there’s a happy ending to this story. He immediately had angioplasty to unblock two sections of one artery, one of which was 99% closed, and two stents were inserted to keep the artery unblocked. He spent two nights in intensive care and one night in a regular room. He came home last Friday and he’s feeling good, slowly regaining his strength. He says that after this “overhaul” he should be good for another 20 years or more.
I’ll continue to write about how to cope with losing at VP, but you can understand if this subject is just not as important to me now as it was two weeks ago.
3/28/2003
I’m filing this column early since by the time it comes out, Brad and I will be enjoying a trip back to Indiana. It’s part business — I’m speaking at a seminar for casino executives at Caesars’ Indiana riverboat-resort (across the river from Louisville, Kentucky). But it’s also part pleasure, returning to our old stomping grounds and visiting friends and relatives. The latter includes my 88-year-old preacher Daddy, who is expecting to beat me soundly at Scrabble — as he still might do in this play-for-blood family competition. You may remember in the introduction to The Frugal Gambler that intensity in playing games has always been our family tradition — I’m still at it 61 years after I first played Uncle Wiggley!
This week I want to wrap up the series on losing at VP. To summarize what I discussed in the previous two columns: We had a losing year in 2002, our first in 12 years of play, not because we were doing anything wrong, but because of factors that made a long losing streak more likely: a broad range of denominations played, a limited amount of playing time, and the play of multi-line games.
There’s another reason for our loss in 2002: We were playing with a slimmer edge than we ever had in the past. And nothing will threaten a gambling bankroll more than this. We’ve discussed in several columns in the last months the ever-decreasing number of good VP plays. Gone are the days when the dollar-and-up players could frequently find juicy edges of 1%-2% and higher. I see more and more of these players having to settle for a .1% or .2% edge — and some are settling for a basically even game and counting comps to get them any edge at all.
This is the reason why, when people ask me if they should move up in denomination, I advise them to stay at the quarter level where there are still good percentage plays, albeit requiring more scrambling to find the best edges.
It takes a very large gambling bankroll to survive the long losing streaks that you’ll definitely be reduced to when you play advantage VP with a tiny edge. And it takes an even heftier psychological bankroll. It’s no fun to lose anytime, but to lose for extremely long periods can bankrupt the mind of even the normally cool and stoic player.
But I don’t want to leave things on too pessimistic a note. There’s a happy ending to our story. One night in January of this year (showing something non-terrible can happen at Terrible’s Casino) in one 45-minute span of time, Brad and I each hit a royal — and those two jackpots covered our entire loss of 2002. In addition, we’ve been seeing good results in our overall play ever since. The losing streak from hell has finally ended! Our financial bankroll was never really in danger, but our psychological one was severely strained. Still, we survived, and hopefully we’ll be fully recovered before that next bad losing streak comes along, hopefully never again as long as this one, though, of course, we have no guarantee of that. That’s the nature of gambling, especially VP with its built-in volatility.
Again, I will sign off with a personal note — my life seems to be lurching from crisis to crisis these days. Brad is recovering quickly from his heart attack and I’m trying not to worry about him — at least not much — anymore. But a new worry has come to our family. Army Ranger Steve, our son-in-law, has been deployed to somewhere in the war zone. So many have asked to be kept up on these developments that I have added a “Personal Notes” section to my Web site, www.frugalgambler.biz. On the homepage, click on “Calendar,” where I’ll try to post updates (I’m finding it difficult to answer the flood of e-mail I’m getting). I do want everyone to know how much we appreciate your messages expressing your concern and prayers.
And maybe we will see some of you Midwest friends at Caesars Indiana. On the same “Calendar” page of my Web site, you can find details of an informal get-together at Caesars