10/5/2006
One of the most fascinating Vegas Web sites I’ve ever seen is http://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/index.htm.
From its home page: “Vegas Today and Tomorrow is an up-to-date, comprehensive and easy-to-navigate collection of current news, maps, plans and renderings of proposed and future projects in the Las Vegas valley. The site is packed with over 600 photos on 112 pages of developments under construction, as well as plans for future and proposed projects. The Dreams page has renderings of projects that never left the drawing board. On the Cool Stuff page there’s a collection of little known trivia, ranks, comparisons, facts, ratings, quizzes, maps and statistics of the major hotels, condos, casinos, convention centers, and much much more…”
Want to keep up with what property Harrah’s will buy next or who will buy Harrah’s? This site gives you up-to-the-minute rumors and facts. Want to know which Vegas hotels might be haunted? This site provides the skinny. Want to see all 11 casino implosions? What about a map that shows which casinos serve Pepsi and which serve Coke? What about finding out whether the Luxor pyramid is bigger than any in Egypt? Need an aerial map to give you a bird’s-eye view of who owns what up and down the Strip? This is your one-stop site that answers more questions than you ever thought to ask about Las Vegas!
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If you’ll be in Las Vegas over the Halloween weekend and want to attend a party that brings together players who enjoy gambling more when they use their brains, you might want to check out the second-annual Halloween Blackjack Ball, put on by my Frugal Video Poker co-author, Viktor Nacht. Brad and I went last year and had a really great time. (Unfortunately, we’ll have to miss it this year, as we’ll be on a comped Venetian cruise on the Star Princess.)
The party is the evening of Saturday October 28th and will have a DJ, bartender, and some blackjack-oriented competitions. However, the main draw, besides just having fun, will be the privilege of chatting with other skilled players who are looking to play with an advantage, not only at BJ but on any casino game.
The admission fee is just $5 per person or couple. Costumes or disguises are required. Visit www.HalloweenBlackjackBall.com for information on how to RSVP, get directions to the venue, and see pictures from last year’s party.
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I was briefly lost in cyberspace due to the fact that my old Web site has temporarily been taken from my control. But thanks to Viktor & Bettie at RGE Publishing (yes, the same Viktor), I have a new Web site, queenofcomps.com/. For now, we’ve just put up links where you can order my books (signed) and favorite products. But Viktor is promising a more comprehensive and thoroughly frugal site to follow in a few weeks! As he says, “We’re building an e-castle where Queen Jean’s frugal monarchy can truly reign.” My new e-mail address is [email protected].
10/12/2006
It seems like I can never write too much about bankroll, the subject of more questions from readers than any other. Probably the most common question I get from most recreational gamblers is, “How much money do I need to take with me to the casino for one session?”
In our newly released how-to book Frugal Video Poker, Viktor and I discuss at length short-term bankroll. Viktor shows you how to use the Frugal Video Poker software to estimate your bankroll needs for almost any VP game (including some multi-line games) for any length of session you wish to play.
Also in the book is a whole chapter of session risk-of-ruin (ROR) charts provided by Michael Shackleford for many popular VP games. You can use these charts in several ways:
Start with the game you want to play and look for the amount of the bankroll you have, to see what denomination you should play to give you the longest playing time.
Start with your actual bankroll size and scan the charts for the game at which it looks as though you could play the longest on that bankroll.
Start with a game you know you want to play and the length of time you want to play, then see what bankroll you’d need.
However, there’s another important bankroll question, one that’s apt to be asked by those who plan to play VP for a long time: “How big a bankroll do I need to be sure that I can play forever.”
Now, we aren’t talking about a short-term bankroll but a long-term one.
First, let me make some absolute statements:
Success in gambling is never 100% guaranteed. There are only “confidence percentages” worked out by the math, i.e., with a bankroll of XXX you have a 99% chance you’ll never go broke. Or, putting it another way, your risk of ruin (ROR) is 1%.
There’s no bankroll large enough to keep you from going broke if you choose plays that are under 100%, at least for most of us ordinary folks. I guess Bill Gates could play, for all his waking hours even if he lived to be 100, nickel VP with a bad schedule and never have to worry about going bankrupt!
“Well,” you may ask, “how can we, who only play VP when the total EV (game plus benefits, like cashback) is over 100%, know what’s a fairly safe lifetime bankroll?”
Math formulas can help you with this. For example, the Kelly Criterion gives a precise way to compute what you should bet to maximize your winnings, but limit your risk. And online tools are available to determine long-term bankroll needs for specific games, like wizardofodds.com/games/videopoker/analyzer/CindyProg.html and www.vid-poker.com/TSI.html.
However, many people want just a long-term bankroll estimate, so that they can decide on what denomination they can play. They might not need an exact figure, because they can replenish their bankroll from regular income as needed. But they don’t want to bother with complicated math.
Tune in next week when I’ll discuss some practical ways to decide on an approximate long-term bankroll.
10/22/2006
Last week I talked about short-term or session bankroll. Now I turn to the subject of estimating your long-term bankroll needs if you want to play VP indefinitely.
When I wrote Frugal 1, I talked about the need for at least a 3-royal long-term bankroll ($3,000 for the quarter player), but mentioned that I liked a 5-royal cushion better, because I don’t like to be near the bottom of the barrel. By the time I wrote Frugal 2, I had more experience in playing different kinds of games. I found I needed to explain that when I talked about the 3-royal bankroll, I was talking about playing full-pay Deuces Wild with the heavy use of promotions and slot club benefits that made our EV very high, often as much as 102% or better. Back then we really scrambled and also did a lot of couponing to supplement our VP play. But when we changed to a more volatile game, like Double Bonus, or did plays that didn’t have such a high EV, we found the 3-royal, or even the 5-royal, bankroll guide needed to be raised.
Today, with the gradual decrease of high-EV 100%-plus games, Brad and I require a much bigger bankroll, because we’re playing with a much lower total-play EV than we were several years ago. Often playing with only a .5% advantage, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with much less than an 8-times-royal bankroll. And if we’re counting in tournament equity, which is very long term, we can’t feel secure with much less than a 10-times-the-royal bankroll and we usually have even more that that. We really like to feel secure! And this is still based on a lot of scrambling to squeeze every penny of EV out of every coupon, bounce-back, and cashback promotion we can find.
We never count comps in our EV, although you could if you value them realistically and adjust the bankroll requirement upward by adding the actual amount the comps save you. The food comps we use reduce our grocery bill; the show, cruise, movie, and party comps reduce our spending on other entertainment options; the stuff the casino gives us reduces our gift spending on children, grandchildren, and friends. If you do count comps, I suggest you low-ball the actual worth figure. If you get a $1,200 shopping spree in overpriced stores where you buy stuff you really don’t need or even want and have to give away most of it, I count that worth about one-third for us — about $400.
For most of you who play just barely over 100%, I don’t think there’s a big enough bankroll for you to ever be very secure that you’ll reach long-term winning. I see a big danger for many here. You think, for example, that if you play fairly accurate 10/7 Double Bonus (with a theoretical EV of 100.17%), you’re an advantage player and thus are destined to win long term. The bottom line here is that in general, the higher the EV you play, the smaller the long-term bankroll you need. And the lower your advantage, the bigger the bankroll must be. I don’t mean to be harsh — I just hate for people to be crushed when they go broke before they reach the winning long term, simply because they didn’t realistically face the huge bankroll they need to play with a very low edge.
Unless you have a good basic-play advantage (game return plus extras) every time you play in a casino, play very accurately, and chase promotions and extra benefits tirelessly, you don’t have a hope of being a long-term winner. And if you play at 100%-plus just “”most of the time,”” just “”kind of sort of”” study the strategies, jump from game to game in one session, and can’t be bothered to run around using coupons or doing promotions, then I can predict you will be a long-term loser.
You’re really just a recreational casino player and that’s perfectly all right, if you’re happy to lose only what you can afford and count it as entertainment. And if you do even some of the things that a good advantage player does, you’ll lose less and that’s always a good thing.
Being a long-term winning VP player is very hard
10/27/2006
I Was Reading
Have you seen the brochures in many casinos these days, containing all kinds of print about responsible gaming? Many list the danger signals of a problem. Some tell you how you can request to remove your name, address, and phone number from casino mailing lists. Some actually provide figures for the casino house advantage and your expected loss. All give numbers you can call if you think you have a gamblng problem.
If you wonder about all the surprising detail in the brochures, as opposed to the short slogans of yersteryears (“When it’s no longer fun…”), go to http://tinyurl.com/6en63. There you’ll learn about the “Code of Conduct for Responsible Gaming,” promoted by the American Gaming Association for the last couple of years.
And here’s an idea one recovering problem gambler has for casinos, which, he says would help stem the flood of gambling addiction: require them to send monthly win/loss statements to all customers. See the whole story at http://tinyurl.com/zd3ol.
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Every 30 minutes a car is stolen in Las Vegas.” From The Dealers News, which you can read free every month at www.thedealersnews.com.
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It always blows my mind that more people come to Vegas to shop, eat at fancy restaurants, and go to nightclubs than to gamble. But the profit statistics prove this point. Harrah’s is always on the cutting edge of any trend, and they’re now thinking of folding into their Total Rewards program the tracking of the non-casino spending of their customers. Read about it in the Las Vegas Sun column with this headline: “A Twist on Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes,” at http://tinyurl.com/ejkk6.
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An interesting story on the vpFree forum (subscribe at [email protected]) showed up around the time that the Klondike Casino closed last June. It was interesting to Brad and me, because back in our early Vegas scrambler days, the spaghetti coupon dinners there were one of our favorite dirt-cheap meals.
“The part I’ll miss is the pasta sauce on the spaghetti, best in Vegas. I was eating it one day and the head chef, Frank, walked by. I yelled, ‘Frank, you make the best pasta sauce in all of Las Vegas!’
“Frank yelled back, ‘It’s out of a can!’”
Oh well, another memory smashed. I see the same coupons are still in our newspaper inserts for the Klondike Casino on Sunset. I wonder if their spaghetti is any good. We’ve never stopped by there; we don’t scramble so much these days!
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Also on vpFree: I read that people don’t hide money in hotel Gideon Bibles like they used to. I guess the decline of religion in the U.S. is hurting the scramblers who’ll look anywhere in a casino for a slight edge!
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Last, an only-in-Vegas item: This P.S. was attached to an obituary in the Las Vegas newspaper, telling of the death of an 88-year-old lady.
“P.S. Gracie’s new bingo caller is St. Peter in heaven. With luck, she’ll hit the jackpot!”