Jean Scott's Frugal Vegas

2/6/2003

Are you frustrated by all the changes at your favorite casino? Why not “run Sin City from the ground up” — your own way? Go to http://casinoempire.sierra.com/casino.htm and “amass your own empire in this casino-simulation game that delivers the sights and sounds of Vegas! In the demo, you’ll manage the Poseidon, one of the game’s eight unique casinos. To win, you must quickly adjust the stakes, decor, and amenities to suit your clientele.” Now there’s a way to relieve the stress of casino change!

Fred Renzey has spent thousand of hours at the blackjack tables in the Chicago area, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Tunica, Foxwoods, and elsewhere. Along the way he’s noticed that most blackjack players consistently misplay a cluster of 7 hands. Be sure to find out which hands they are and the right way to play them. Read Fred Renzey’s full article at www.casino.com/blackjack/article.asp?id=1986.

This sad news from Billhere (www.billhere.com): “The 99-cent Westward Ho hot dog is no more. It’s now $1.49, plus 11-cents tax or $1.60. There is nothing sacred in this world!”

In the you-think-you’ve-had-bad-luck-in-a-casino department: “A newspaper investigation has revealed that one of the world’s big gamblers, George Lu, lost $93 million last year playing baccarat at Crown Casino in Australia” (www.casinowire.com/news.asp?id=4439). Somehow I have a hard time identifying with or empathizing with gamblers like this. Too far from frugal maybe? Or perhaps because he wasn’t playing video poker?

A note for people who have already bought or are planning to buy the Frugal Video Poker software: There’s an update now available. Go to www.FrugalGambler.biz, click on Frugal Video Poker, then click on Updates for a free download. And good news for all you Pick ’Em players, Jim is working on an update to include that good (99.9% EV when you find the full-pay schedule) game that’s popping up frequently now in many parts of the country. You’ll be able to download it for free in the same place within a few weeks.

We’re getting good reports from all over the country from those who are now using FVP. Beginners are finding it very easy to use to choose the best games in the casinos where they play and they like the feature that figures the slot club point percentage for cashback or comps that boosts the total value of the play. A frequent comment is that they can practice with a simplified penalty-card-free strategy that doesn’t “ding” them for minor rule exceptions that are worth only pennies per hour to the casual recreational player. (Brad loves this feature; he hates to be “gigged.” It reminds him of when he was in Air Force basic training.) And for those who are motivated to wring every single bit of value out of a game, they can use the perfect-play mode that includes all the penalty-card situations.

Many users also mention the advantage of being able to print out, in color or black and white, those same simplified strategy charts to take to the casino and use when they have a puzzling hand. And experienced players find the advanced features of the software helpful, such as analyzing sequential royal games or defining the payoffs for natural and wild hands independent of each other.

If you have any questions and/or have any suggestions for the next version of Frugal Video Poker, you can subscribe to our support group at
[email protected]. You can order the software at www.FrugalGambler.BIZ or at www.greatstuff4gamblers.com.

Q. What’s the difference between a poker player and a dog?
A. In about ten years, the dog quits whining. (CasinoWire.com)

2/13/2003

This week I’m going to share some e-mail I’ve received from my readers, who are forever educating me, either with new frugal ideas or a different way to look at old ones.

The first one comes from John Zaroff, who says that having a frugal attitude is one of the most important standards for video poker players: “We all play video poker as best we can and will argue long and strong about .1% difference in plays. But we neglect matchplay coupons, discounted or free rooms, cheaper rental-car options, etc.

“Let’s say I can call a host and get a room for $59 (casino rate) instead of $99 (rack rate). That $45 saved (including the taxes) is the same as the average theoretical return of three hours of dollar 10/7 Double Bonus with 0.33% cashback played perfectly. (I’ve ignored the comps in this example — that would make the savings figure even larger.) The guiding principle should be that every dollar you avoid spending is the same as making a dollar at the VP game you play. They both affect the bottom line the same way.”

Tom Jackson gave me one of his frugal hints: “I wanted to let you know of something that I read in your book back in ’99 that’s still proving useful to me today.

“You mentioned to always have a frequent flyer account no matter which airline you fly, because you never know if you’ll rack up more miles and can actually use them. Well, I took that advice and flew America West a few times when they had the best fare prices. I racked up about 8,000 miles, but didn’t know what to do with them, because that wasn’t enough for a free flight.

“One day I registered at Milepoint.com and realized I could get free magazine subscriptions for my points. Today, I used up the last of those miles on three months of the Wall Street Journal, my favorite paper. And to think I did this with airline miles I thought I’d never use.”

And here’s a warning for frugal freebie hunters from Edie of Santa Barbara: “Since we’re lovers of freebies, we went to the Plaza to earn a free jacket. We read about this offer in the papers and heard frequent ads over the radio. So we went, signed up, and played our little hearts out. When we had a $200 handpay that qualified us for this promo, we asked for the jacket. But alas, we were told in no uncertain terms that they had been out of jackets for auite awhile. We felt that we got burned and that their continuous ads for jackets long after they were no longer available was really unethical.”

My comment here: I understand their disappointment. Casinos should pull ads when they’re no longer valid. But since they don’t always do so and are notorious for changing rules and policies, I suggest that you always check at the slot club before beginning to play a promotion.

Do you have a new or unusual way to be frugal? Why don’t you send a short report to [email protected]. It might appear in a future Frugal Fridays column! Don’t worry about spelling and grammar. We have good editors here. Include your real name only if you want it used. If you want to remain anonymous, give yourself a nice-sounding nom de plume.

2/25/2003

Good news for Macintosh users, from my computer-savvy friend Jerry: “For two months now, I’ve been running your Frugal Video Poker software on both my Powerbook G4 & iMac (flat panel screen first generation) with Jaguar (OS X) and Virtual PC 5.0, together with Windows 98 SE. It has run flawlessly without one crash. Anyone who wants to use a PC-based video poker training program with an emulator will not regret working with this program.” Jim Wolf and I certainly appreciate the extensive testing Jerry has done with our software. A big thank-you, Jerry.

I will never cease to be amazed at the news out of my former “not-as-sinful-as-Nevada” home state of Indiana. This just in from casinowire.com: “Do kids play the lottery? They do in Indiana. A few years ago, Louisiana State University surveyed 3,270 adolescents in grades 6-12 and found that kids in Indiana played the lottery at much higher rates than kids nationally. Of those studied, 68.2% of Hoosier youth said they have played the lottery or scratch-off games, compared with 34.8% nationally. What does that mean? Maybe Hoosier kids are a little more honest on their survey answers, or maybe they’re a little naughtier! In any case, instant lottery ticket machines are everywhere. And Indiana plans to place 500 additional machines around the state.”

“”Nutmeg State (Connecticut) legislators win the You’re-Not-Gonna-Believe-This-One Award for a bill that would — are you ready? — put tollbooths at the exits of the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos. They would charge $10 to leave, the Norwich Bulletin reported. This is not only nutty, but also dumb, as not everyone will have $10 heading out. The bill is unlikely to pass, the newspaper reported.”” From Fantini’s Gaming Morning Report at www.gaminginvestments.com. (Maybe they’ll have to change their state nickname to the Nutty State?)

And how about this next story, from the Las Vegas Sun in the “VegasBeat” column by Timothy McDarrah: “Police responded to an unusual incident at McCarran International Airport on Sunday afternoon. According to both airport and police officials, a couple waiting for their flight to board decided to practice for inclusion in the Mile High Club before the plane took off. They were given summonses for having sex in a very public place, on some chairs on the esplanade in the main terminal.”

Although in my younger days, when I had more energy and was hungrier, I sometimes took couponing to a gray area, I would never think of cheating in a casino. However, I do find reading about gambling scams interesting. Here are a couple of stories with some fascinating details about how people try to get an edge, albeit illegally, in their play: A baccarat scam at www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,5942832%255E2702,00.html and a British betting scam at http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=374454.

This will be my last item this week — I think I’ve well plumbed the depths of bizarre! In Bangladesh, police said they were looking for a man who allegedly allowed two neighbors to rape his new wife instead of paying a gambling debt. Read the details, if you care, at www.online.ie/news/latest_world/viewer.adp?article=1774892.

2/27/2003

A belated Valentine’s Day item, from VegasBeat in the Las Vegas Sun:
“Perhaps the funniest souvenirs offered to mark the day are a pair of commemorative chips being issued by the Riviera. On Friday it [issued] 1,000 $5 marriage chips, featuring a Claddagh-type wedding band with a pink satin background on one side and “”We Tied the Knot in 2003″” inscribed on the other. On Feb. 25 it [issued] a divorce chip, mainly black, with an inscription suitable for the occasion.”

An e-mail note from a player who laments the change in one casino’s mailed room offer: “”Until recently, the Flamingo Casino allowed flexible use of Sunday-Thursday complimentary nights. Recipients could check in on Friday or Saturday at a rate based on play and delay use of the comped nights until Sunday. Not anymore. Buried in a very long paragraph, printed in by far the smallest print I have ever seen, is a requirement that the three comped nights room offer will run the first three nights of your stay. Accordingly, check in on Friday and your three nights suddenly become one
night.”” (More proof that you should always read the fine print on any casino offer!)

News of the Weird, from Dan Paymar’s Video Poker Times, which you can subscribe to at http://www.vegasplayer.com/vp. “”In the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the slot machines tell gamblers when the politicians think they’ve had enough. Pop-up screens that halt play for up to a minute advise players how long they’ve been at it after 60, 90, and 120 minutes. After 150 minutes, the machine shuts down and automatically cashes them out.”

A good post from John Kelly (a.k.a. Lodestone) on Skip’s VP List (http://vphomepage.com), illustrating some of the differences between Vegas visitors and locals:

A couple of themes I’ve seen in the various forums over the years:

1) LV locals are often puzzled over the attraction of the Vegas Strip casinos to seemingly knowledgeable visitors.

2) Visitors can’t understand how pros/semi-pros make decent money playing VP. On face value, for example, quarter FPDW is only worth about
$7/hour.

Having been both a visitor and LV local, maybe I can shed some light.

The answer to both can be found in the mailbox.

When I was a visitor, the overriding factor on choosing where to play was room offers. Visitors get much better mailings from strip casinos than LV locals usually see — the total value of these are often staggering, adding up to 4% to the EV of the play. Granted, this is mostly comps, not cash, but to visitors, comps are often just as good as cash. We would often play just enough to trigger Strip room offers, then head over to a local’s casino for better VP. Conversely, most locals casinos make weak room offers to visitors. Hence, the decision as to where to play isn’t as simple as it might seem. Throw in the spouse/kids/friends factor and it’s no wonder that many knowledgeable visitors will wind up on the Strip.

As a LV local “”advantage”” player (semi-pro? weekend warrior?), I get locals mailings that add up to 1% (sometimes more) of my total EV. Of course, you have to be disciplined enough to chase down each of the coupons. (I sometimes wonder if LV would have traffic jams if locals mailings were banned!) And you need play the minimum necessary to get these offers in order to maximize EV. Also, we play much faster than most newbies might imagine possible — often more than 1,000 hands per hour. Practice makes perfect.””

Clipped from the comic strip “”B.C.””: “”You know you’ve checked into a really frugal hotel when they leave a Cheerio on your pillow each night.”

1/3/2003

Editor’s Note: This week’s Frugal Fridays is written by Marissa Chien, EA, owner of AdvantageTax+, a Las Vegas tax and financial consulting firm, contributor to the Las Vegas Advisor, and video poker player. One of her clients is Jean Scott, the Frugal Gambler. She’s an expert in the tax ramifications of gambling, especially for video poker players. She can be contacted at 702/207-1040 or [email protected].

With the new year upon us, many video poker players and other gamblers are asking themselves, “”Should I file as a professional gambler?”” Unfortunately, the answer to this question is not a simple one as there are many considerations to take into account.

Some of the advantages of filing as a non-professional are as follows. First, it’s simpler. Second, you get to fully offset your losses on Schedule A as long as you have enough itemized deductions such as mortgage interest, property taxes, and charitable contributions.

The disadvantages? First, you don’t get to deduct expenses like travel, mileage, etc. Second, if you have a large amount of “”gambling income,”” it could wreak havoc with the other areas of your tax return that are AGI (adjusted gross income) dependent. Finally, if you live in a state like Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin that doesn’t take into account gambling losses, you’ll be paying additional tax.

On the other side of the equation, some of the advantages of filing as a professional gambler include getting to directly offset “”wins”” against “”losses.”” You can also write off expenses, such as travel. If you show a net profit, you can also put up to $40,000 into a personal tax-sheltered retirement account and be able to deduct it off of your income taxes. Most importantly, it doesn’t wreak havoc with other parts of the tax return that are dependent on the AGI (i.e., medical deductions, Schedule A deductions, rental real-estate losses, etc.).

The disadvantages of filing as a professional: You pay FICA tax on net income. You’re also subject to hobby rules — you need to show a profit three out of five years or you could lose the status. Finally, the IRS treats gamblers who claim they do it as a business differently from others who are sole proprietors. The IRS’ position is that in order to qualify as a professional gambler, you have to engage in this activity in a manner that’s of a full-time nature. One thing that will help your case is not having a regular job, though there have been cases where people have successfully claimed professional gambler status even though they had other employment. In those cases, the individual still had to demonstrate that he put in as much effort as if he was working a second full-time job. The IRS in the past has applied the elements to qualify as a professional trader to substantiating one’s claim as a professional gambler.

One bright spot is that IRS in Nov. 2002 issued a regulation stating that husband/wife partners in a business can be considered a “”disregarded entity”” in community-property states, such as California and Nevada. This effectively allows husband/wife pros to offset their gambling wins/losses against each other. Therefore, spouses are no longer penalized if one is really lucky and the other one isn’t.

At the end of the day, if you choose to claim to be a professional gambler, you’re probably taking the ultimate gamble. Some people have successfully filed as a professional without challenge for many years, while others get their return kicked out by the computer. At that point, each decision is based on the “”facts and circumstances”” of the case. With luck, you get an examiner who understands the tax issues regarding gambling.

What does one do? Best thing is probably to talk to a tax professional who is knowledgeable about the intricacies of gambling and the impact that it can have on the different parts of a tax return. If you go it alone, at least have a tax pro on speed dial so you can call him or her when you get the d”
1/10/2003 “Editor’s Note: As some of us suspected, it’s been a bit tough for Jean Scott to relax to the extent that she can refrain from expressing herself when she has something to say! The following is her comment on last week’s tax article by Marissa Chien. Jean and Marissa are friends and Jean’s a client of Marissa’s, so we thought it might be instructive and entertaining to listen in on one of their friendly discussions. Marissa should offer up her response next week; meanwhile, she can be contacted at 702/207-1040 or [email protected].

Dear Marissa,

Okay, I know you are the tax expert — and I’m trying to retire — but I just had to ask you about some of the things you wrote here in your guest column last week. As you well know, since you went over the rough draft, I have a long chapter about taxes and gambling in my new book, More Frugal Gambling, coming out soon. I researched this chapter until my eyes were crossing so that it would be accurate.

However, the problem is that there is no consensus among tax experts, or even among IRS agents themselves, about all the issues. Although the IRS has finally accepted the fact that there actually can be such a creature as a “”professional gambler,”” old moral prejudices still rule and it seems that gambling as a business must be “”punished”” by not being allowed the same tax benefits that any other business enjoys.

One big gray area is the matter of what makes someone a “”professional gambler”” so they can file as a business. Obviously, one’s intent must be to make a profit or it falls under a hobby, which has different rules. Marissa, you seem to be pretty clear that you must work at it full-time. I read about one Supreme Court case that defined a professional gambler as one who gambles “”with regularity, continuity, and with an expectation of profit.”” That didn’t say “”full-time.”” Lots of people have part-time businesses. I’ve known of quite a few people down through the years who have a normal full-time job, but gamble extensively and regularly and keep books in a professional manner, i.e., a Vegas local advantage player who plays 20-25 hours a week, who’ve been able to survive an audit as a professional gambler.

Are you saying a person should never try to file as a professional gambler if he has another full-time job?

Jean

1/16/2003

Editor’s Note: This week’s Frugal Fridays is the third in a series of articles about gambling and taxes. The first (1/3/03) was penned by Marissa Chien, EA, owner of AdvantageTax+. The second (1/10/03) was a response from Jean Scott, one of Marissa’s client’s. This is Marissa’s answer to Jean’s queries. (Marissa can be contacted at 702/207-1040 or [email protected].)

Jean,

You raise some excellent points, which illustrate the difficulty of being in “the trade or business” of gambling. Although the phrase “trade or business” is used in the IRS code more than 600 times, there is no formal definition of it! With respect to gambling, the authority that provides guidance is the decision of Commissioner v. Groetzinger 480 US 23 (S. Ct 1987). In that case, Robert Groetzinger claimed to be a professional gambler for 1978. He had spent between 60-80 hours a week studying and betting on the horses. He had no other full-time employment. His only other income was some interest and dividends. Although he ended up a net loser for the year, due to the tax laws back then, he got hit with a minimum tax adjustment. He claimed that he was in the trade or business of gambling and therefore not subject to those rules.

In the Supreme Court ruling, Justice Blackmun. writing for the majority. stated, “We accept the fact that to be engaged in a trade or business, the taxpayer must be involved in the activity with continuity and regularity and that the taxpayer’s primary purpose for engaging in the activity must be for income or profit.” However, he further stated, “If one’s gambling activity is pursued full time, in good faith, and with regularity, to the production of income for a livelihood, and is not a mere hobby, it is a trade or business within the meaning of the statutes with which we are here concerned.”

What does this all mean? To me, it means that professional gambling is not a black-and-white issue. If you were to gamble for many hours a week and that was your only means of livelihood, then in my opinion, you have a very strong position in being in the business or trade of gambling. If you just come to Las Vegas four times a year to gamble, you’d have a very weak position. Everything else falls in between.

A good example would be the local advantage player you mentioned. Since I know who you’re talking about, in my opinion, there is more to his situation than him playing 20-25 hours a week. And I would use those elements to bolster his case as I’m sure he did.

Although it may not be very satisfying, the best advice that I can give is that each gambler needs to examine his or her own situation and proceed accordingly.

1/24/2003

Darn those Coast properties — they’re keeping me from staying retired. Like a former lover who just won’t stay away!

Back in this space on Dec. 6, I talked about some of the new policies of the Coast properties. I mentioned that although I didn’t like them all, I understood that they had to protect their bottom line. Then I came back on Dec. 20 and gave some suggestions to both casinos and players that might help the situation. (If you didn’t read those two columns, go back and find them in the archives so you’ll know what’s going on.)

Well, the Coast properties didn’t get the message — although I know for a fact that some of the executives follow this column — and they’re continuing on their slash-and-burn march to the sea. Now they’ve abruptly changed the earning period for their monthly mailers, with no notice so that loyal customers can adjust their playing times to fit the new requirements. (You used to have three months to earn a particular mailing; suddenly it’s now one month. And if you happened not to play that month, it didn’t matter how much you played the other two months.)

Well, most loyal customers, who love playing at the Coast properties, could have adjusted if they’d just been given a couple of months’ notice of this major change of a policy that has been in effect at the Orleans and the Suncoast since they each opened — and at the Gold Coast since they joined the new slot club system. I must ask you, Coast properties: Why the rush to be sure you do something that will make EVERY customer mad and decide to go play somewhere else?

Is there anything we can do to convince the Coast properties we still really want to play there?

I’ve received all sorts of suggestions. Here’s a post (slightly edited) from a local wag and friend of mine with his take on the situation

1) All Coast Properties have survey cards available in the slot club. Fill them out! Tell management what you think (without getting nasty) about the changes that have been implemented. If you’re a winning player, fill them out anonymously. If you’re a losing player, give your name and card number. Encourage others to fill out the cards; they are all read. Make a point to mention that you’ll be switching your play to (fill in the name of your favorite Station or other local casino) unless the changes are undone.

2) Don’t play the games with the short pay schedules. Tell your friends, especially those who don’t want to study proper strategy, not to play them.

3) Tell your host, floor people, change people, slot supervisors, slot club personnel, slot club supervisors, and anyone else who will listen how unhappy you are with the policy changes. Tell them all that you’ll be taking your business elsewhere, unless these changes are reversed. Tell them nicely; none of these folks had anything to do with instituting the changes. However, the more people who know the reasons why you’re leaving, the better. Word will get around. If/when business suffers, management will know why.

4) Follow through. If you say you’re taking your business elsewhere, do so. If you just threaten to, but continue to play at Coast, anything you say to them is meaningless, as their bottom line will not be adversely affected. Walk around your ex-favorite Coast Casino, pointedly NOT playing, wearing your Green Valley Ranch Station T-shirt or Palms baseball cap, and tell all the employees who know you how much fun you’re having playing at a place that still values customers who are loyal.””

My friend’s suggestions don’t all necessarily mirror my attitude exactly, but they’re typical of the many messages I’ve received on this subject. And this one thing is a fact: Most casinos DO take suggestions from their customers seriously. You may be just one person, but if every one person conveys his feelings, this can turn into a powerful group force that could achieve some changes for the positive.

1/31/2003

Editor’s Note: Jean Scott’s back this week. We had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to remain fully retired for long — especially when it comes to Frugal Fridays, her favorite writing assignment.

Jim and Janie Wolf and Brad and I want to thank everyone who visited our booth and attended my presentations at the “”Beat the House”” weekend at Sunset Station. It was a long three-day weekend and we were exhausted at the end, but it was such a pleasure to talk to old friends and make so many new ones. I was glad I was asked to autograph so many well-worn dog-eared copies of The Frugal Gambler; I wrote that book to be studied, not to collect dust. And I was glad that Jim and Janie were there to demonstrate the Frugal VP software Jim developed. I tried to do my best when filling in when they were on break, but it turned into a comedy routine. I learned on and have always used a laptop computer, so I’ve never used a mouse. Like my grandchildren who are skilled “”mouseketeers,”” the crowds were amused at my awkward efforts to gain this new skill!

BRIEFS

License plate seen at Green Valley Ranch Station: LA2VEGAS. License Plate Holder: VP Players Know How to Hold Hands.

The morality police are at it in New Zealand. The Warehouse retail chain there has been ordered to immediately withdraw toy pokie machines from their shelves. ( In Australia and New Zealand, video poker machines are called pokies.) HYPERLINK “”http://www.casinowire.com/news.asp?id=4547″” http://www.casinowire.com/news.asp?id=4547

Well, we’ve survived another year of crossing the Strip many times a week, even though Flamingo and Las Vegas Blvd., near our condo, continues to top the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s annual list of the most dangerous intersections, not to mention that we often cross the next four most dangerous corners as well. I always say that “getting lucky in Las Vegas” has nothing to do with being in a casino; it’s more about gambling that a crazy driver won’t take out your vehicle as you tool along to get to the casino.

One of the best reasons I’ve ever heard for vacationing in Las Vegas, from a friend on the Internet: “What sold me on gambling was that, on average, I never spend as much on gambling trips as I did on trips elsewhere.”

Smile for the Day: (I love “religious” humor.) A few years ago, a conservative Maryland minister, who fervently opposed gambling (especially the state lottery) was surprised to learn that his wife had won a top prize in the lottery. She’d secretly been buying tickets, even though listening to the minister’s anti-gambling sermons. When the couple was interviewed by a television reporter, the wife looked slightly embarrassed as the reporter asked the minister what he thought about his wife playing the lottery and winning big money. “”The Lord moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform,”” he said.

12/6/2002

Boy, do I dread writing this column today. I’ve known for many months I probably would have to do it eventually, but have been putting it off, hoping that there would be a miracle and circumstances would change. However, although the holiday season is here, I don’t see any miracles appearing in the sky — or, more to the point, appearing in casinos.

What am I talking about? I now must discuss the subject of casinos targeting skillful video players and taking away many of their advantages.

Although there have been rumblings about this practice for many years, most of the targets have been video poker teams or lone gamblers here and there who caught the attention of casino management for one reason or another. At first, most casinos took extreme measures by totally banning these players. More recently, they decided they didn’t need to make such extreme moves; they simply eliminated comps and other benefits. The players moved on when they no longer had an advantage.

I got caught up in this practice at the Orleans casino. As I described several months ago in this column, the circumstances were particularly frustrating, because I was taken off the mailing list for their very valuable coupons due to utterly false information a charlatan wrote on the Internet under the guise of reviewing my book. However, the Orleans chose not to accept my explanations and proofs of these falsehoods. I was puzzled and hurt. The Orleans is the closest casino to our home and we had been faithful customers since it opened. We were invited to all of their VIP activities, showered with gifts, treated like valued guests by the hosts, and received monthly mailings like clockwork. When a TV crew came to town and wanted to film Brad and me in one of our favorite casinos, we often suggested the Orleans — and Brad’s Orleans Millionaire jacket is probably the most photographed jacket on the Travel Channel.

Only later did I understand the reason for this surprising turn-around treatment: I’d stumbled into the beginning of a complete change of policy by the Coast properties, especially the Orleans. Although they’re decreasing discretionary comps for everyone (comps written by the host and not coming off your slot club points), the Orleans is particularly trying to target skilled video poker players and completely eliminate their discretionary comps and direct-mail coupons.

Right here I want to stop and explain something. I realize casinos are profit-making businesses — at least they hope to be. I realize they must watch their bottom line when they make all their decisions as to type of machines, player incentives, etc. I realize their main product is entertainment and they don’t exist so that people can make a living playing their games. Even though I’m an avid player, I always try to look at both sides of casino/player issues. And although I may not like all of the changes the Orleans (and other Coast properties) have made, I believe they have every right to run their casinos as they see fit.

What I do have to criticize casinos severely for is the Sherman-slash-and-burn-march-to-the-sea implementation of new policies.

Well, I knew that one column would never hold all my thoughts on this subject. So, I’ll close down for this week. But I’ll continue on this same subject next week and I’ll have some hard-hitting revelations for casino executives (I know some read this column because they’ve told me so) and some advice for players on how to cope with casino changes.

12/13/2002

Jean Scott is on hiatus till further notice. She’s been trying to retire ever since she retired, nearly 15 years ago. But her life just kept getting more and more hectic and pressured and stressful and she finally threw her hands up and said, “Stop the world! I want to get off!”

Jean, as you might know, has already curtailed most of her writing obligations; Frugal Fridays was her last hold-out — until now.

She also tells us that the silver lining in the restriction of her benefits at the Orleans is that she now doesn’t have to feel under the gun to show up and play during double-point sessions, or guilty if she didn’t happen to make it to one.

She assures us that she’ll do whatever’s necessary to bring out More Frugal Gambling in a timely manner; she’ll also do her best to attend to the flood of e-mail that this announcement will probably prompt. But beyond that, she’s officially on extended leave. Semi-permanent vacation. Actual factual retirement: the gold-watch, golf-clubs, soap-opera, and long-baths time of life.

Of course, she might be back, and if that happens, we’ll welcome her with open arms. But if it doesn’t, we’re sure we speak for everyone who has ever profited from her advice, benefited from her generosity, or basked in her personal glow when we say, “Go with a clear conscience, the satisfaction of a job well done, and joy in your heart. You’ve earned your retirement and you deserve it.”

And luckily for Jean and all of us who love her, she has Brad to prop her up along the way!

12/20/2002

Okay, okay, my Inbox is flooded — an explanation is needed, I see.

First, thanks to everyone for the kind words you’ve posted on the forums and in private e-mails, far too many for me to answer personally, I’m afraid. It’s extremely gratifying to know that my writings over the years have helped so many people stretch their fun time in a casino. There’s not much I like better than helping people save money!

There is nothing mysterious going on here — no conspiracy — about my retirement. I had no pressure from any casinos or from Anthony. Actually, the pressure came from gremlins in my digestive system. I’ve had fibromyalgia for 25+ years and digestive difficulties are often part of this problem. They have grown worse in the last year and the doctor finally “ordered” me to slow down — many months ago. I tried! I stopped writing my monthly column for Strictly Slots; I gave up projects and cut back on others. But it seemed that, as long as a day didn’t stretch beyond 24 hours, I still couldn’t get everything done. Last week my body simply gave me some pain messages I couldn’t ignore and I just had to stop.

But no, I’m not bedridden. I’m not in the hospital. I’m not terminal. I’m spending a lot of time sitting in my easy chair, catching up on reading that has nothing to do with casinos. Brad and I are swimming almost nightly in our heated condo pool, then relaxing in the spa. We still go out and around — to the movies, shopping, dancing, even the casinos. But when we do, it’s totally relaxed; we play video poker purely for personal entertainment. I don’t put myself under the constant pressure of thinking about collecting ideas for a Web column or a magazine story or, Lord help me, a book.

I did not mean to play a “dirty trick” on you by writing a Part I of a column, then not giving you the promised ending. I just didn’t have the strength to write Part II when it was due and I still don’t. If I did, I’d go into great detail, but here’s the nutshell.

CASINO EXECUTIVES: Do what you have to do to keep your casinos making a profit, but remember your customers are human beings with feelings. Don’t woo them for years with promotions and benefits, encouraging them to give their loyalty to you rather than to the casino down the street, only to jerk your own loyalty rug out from under them with no advance notice. Maybe you made a mistake by giving too much for too long, but a bigger mistake is to turn on a dime and not trust your customers to accept a kind letter of explanation about the necessary changes. It’s not just the big spenders you treated like VIPs for many years who are shattered by suddenly being treated like slime. The “little guys” are wandering around the city in a daze, wondering what happened to the warm friendly casinos that now drip icicles onto the desert sand.

PLAYERS: Some of you have brought a lot of casino problems on yourself. You find a good playing opportunity and you pound away at it morning, noon, and night, day after day. You play two machines; you hire people to play for you. You form teams to monopolize progressives in casinos you don’t step inside ordinarily, keeping off the regular customers who were contributing to the progressive back when the jackpot wasn’t so big. The casinos wouldn’t fear skilled players nearly so much if so many of them weren’t so greedy. Spread your action around so you aren’t beating any one casino or one promotion to death. Treat your gambling the way the casino intends it to be — a form of entertainment, not a way to make a living. Study as much as you want to; your entertainment doesn’t have to cost you so much. If you work very very hard, the entertainment might not cost you at all. The casinos know that most people will not want to work this hard — and those people can cover the cost of the neon lights.

Okay? Now I’m going back into the peace and quiet of retirement. Who knows how long I’ll last there? Not me.

12/27/2002

Editor’s Note: In Jean Scott’s absence, Frugal Friday’s will, of necessity, change shape a little. We’re not exactly sure what the final shape will look like, but we do know that for now, we’re striving to maintain the Queen’s favorite theme: frugality. This week’s post is an excerpt from Million Dollar Video Poker by Bob Dancer, which is now available. It touches on how he managed to build his bankroll so that he was in a position to play the big machines and make the big score.

Reducing the Outflow

When I first moved to Vegas, I had about $6,000. At various times in my life I had more. Much more. Turns out that getting to Vegas was the easy part. Earning enough to stay here and enjoy the good things this place has to offer was going to be much harder.

My goal was to increase my gambling bankroll and I was very serious about it. Think of a gambling bankroll as a lake of money. We want to make this a bigger lake than it is now. The river of money coming in is from gambling jackpots and whatever other sources of income we have—i.e. employment, investment, interest, pension, inheritance, Social Security, etc. Everyone has a slightly different income stream.

But there are also many rivers of money going out. In addition to the obvious one, gambling losses, we need to spend money on rent, food, clothes, transportation, insurance, recreation, and whatever else there is. Everyone has a slightly different outgoing stream too.

Whether the income stream is $10,000, $100,000 or $1,000,000, you can’t know if the bankroll is increasing or decreasing until you know how large the expense stream is. If you make $10,000 and spend $5,000 the bankroll is growing. If you make $100,000 and spend $120,000, the bankroll is shrinking.

Expenses are something I can look to reduce. Being thrifty is a mindset. Devising a way to spend less money (while maintaining perfect credit) is just as valuable as finding a way to earn more money. Take care of the pennies and the nickels and dollars will take care of themselves.

My first gambling goal was $100,000, with a promise to myself that I would reevaluate things when I reached it. This was the amount I believed that I would need to play $5 machines forever and ever, amen. And until I reached this goal, virtually as many expenses as possible needed to be put on hold. I never paid for food. I could get all I needed at the casinos for free. Alcohol, tobacco, and drugs were thousands-of-dollars-a-year money sewers that I was better off without. Cars work just fine for at least eight years. Being a nice dresser isn’t that important. Tips for jackpots can be modest if you’re friendly. Haircuts once every two months are enough. I never spent money on valet parking or bellmen. And I’ve been using casino soap, shampoo and other toiletries for years. Cable TV was not worth paying for. There was plenty to see on free TV.

You get the idea. I wanted my bankroll lake to keep filling by minimizing the outflow. And I was successful at this. Meanwhile, the results from my video poker play were better than average (because most people didn’t work at it as hard as I did), but not exceptional. Several other players hit just as many royals and 4-of-a-kinds as I did. The reason my bankroll increased faster than theirs was because I could live extremely frugally.

I was extremely tight until I got $100,000, and that tightness has paid dividends ever since. The money is invested and grows without me doing anything extra. My miserliness softened somewhat over the next few years. The bankroll kept expanding, but not at the same rate it would have if I’d continued to pinch pennies. And today, after earning a million dollars over a six-month period, Shirley and I still haven’t decided what the acceptable level of spending-versus-saving should be. It’s a nice problem to have, to be sure, but we’re still working on it.

11/1/2002

You might think I need my head examined — and I might agree. But crazy as it sounds, we’re leaving sunny and warm Las Vegas tomorrow for a week deep in the Minnesota woods, where they’ve already had a major snowfall. Fortunately, we’re spending this week in a luxurious casino-hotel — with an indoor pool and spa — the Grand Casino Hinckley.

I’m speaking at two conferences for casino executives being held here, the first the Raving’s 4th Indian Gaming National Conference and the second, one for casino hosts in the area. I love this chance to tell casinos executives what I like — and don’t like — about players club procedures and systems and comp and host policies.

Fortunately, it’s not all work and no play for the week. I won’t have Internet access on my computer (I’m on cable in Vegas) and I’m not sure I’m close enough to civilization for my cell phone to work. That alone is my idea of a vacation! Plus, the Wednesday between the two conferences is free and we plan to hit the Mall of America down in Minneapolis for some major shopping. And then, of course, there is the casino — although my idea of a vacation these days is to enjoy non-casino activities I don’t have time for in busy Las Vegas.

Brad and I are especially looking forward to one event: On Sunday November 3, the casino is sponsoring an informal meet-and-greet session for us from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Gold Card Lounge, adjacent to the hotel lobby. I’ll be glad to autograph books and Brad is always willing to spin a gambling yarn or two. It will be a pleasure to meet in person many we have known only from the Internet lists and to make new acquaintances of people who have been following our frugal gambling ways for a long time. Everyone in that area of the country is invited!

BRIEFS
Good news for everyone who hates to pay the exorbitant prices at casino-hotel sundry shops: CVS has opened a 24-hour pharmacy between the Monte Carlo and the Boardwalk on the west side of the Strip, across the street from a Walgreen’s Pharmacy. There’s also a Walgreen’s at the other end of the Strip, across from the Stardust, and one a little north of the Stratosphere, on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard. These all are good places to buy inexpensive souvenirs, as well as to pick up aspirin and antacids when your losses are making you feel ill!

In the Did-You-Know? Department: The European roulette wheel was invented in America, and the American wheel was invented in Europe. House edge on the American wheel (using numbers 0 and 00) is 5.26%; the European wheel, with one 0, has a 2.7% house edge. Which one do you want to play? –CasinoWire.com

Here’s a scenario: You walk into your favorite casino and head for the table games. You sit down at the poker table and get ready for some heated action. You probably expect the dealer to go about his usual task of dealing the cards and handling the bets, but to your surprise, your dealer is quite the entertainer! It’s like being at a Broadway show, and the casino floor is the stage. Your dealer is outgoing, stylish — with personality-plus. Your dealer is the actor! According to Vic Taucer, professor of casino management for the University & Community College Systems of Nevada, “”The casino dealer of the new millennium is expected not only to deal and protect the game, but also to keep the customers entertained and happy.”” The concept is called “”player entertainment”” and is considered to be the casino dealer’s upcoming new role. But is this concept something a card player will relish? The idea could work well — so long as the dealer isn’t wearing a tutu and playing a ukulele while dancing on the table. That would be a little distracting, especially if you’re a card counter! –CasinoWire.com

Smile for the day, from an Internet bookmaker: “”Gambling is the future on the Internet. You can only look at so many dirty pictures.””
”

11/8/2002

“SPIRITUALITY IN GAMING? YOU BET!” is an amazing online article by Sudhir Kale, an article that really made me think and I wanted to share it with you. His quote that “spirituality is not about religion; rather, it subsumes all religions” goes to the very heart of my beliefs. You can read this article at
www.urbino.net/bright.cfm?specificBright=SPIRITUALITY%20IN%20GAMING%3F%20YOU%20BET%21.

An interesting and amusing article about an online casino:
www.msnbc.com/news/822523.asp?pne=msn

From a good friend of mine and a bit of a wag, on Skip’s VP List: “A security guard at Texas Station told us that he knew the ultra-secret name of the new (Station) casino to be built at 215 and Charleston. This name is so imaginative, I can hardly believe it. The new casino will supposedly be named Charleston Station.”

From the Rampart Casino on Rampart Avenue (hey, I see a pattern here) on the far west side of Vegas, here are some November freebies, with only small betting required and you don’t have to redeem the points, thereby saving them for cashback. On November 11th, earn 5 points and get a free Veteran’s Day T-shirt. And too bad Brad (a notorious sweets-lover) and I will be in Reno on Nov. 26 and 27, because if you earn 15 points on that first day, you can claim a free apple pie; earn 15 points on the second day and take home a pumpkin pie. I suggest you snap up any of these you want early in the day — the fine print warns that, besides having a limit of one per customer, the promotion only continues “while supplies last.”

The lure of the new nickel slots: “Iowa’s riverboat casinos have been quietly, and legally, tipping the odds on slot machines in their favor, and casino officials say gamblers have been helping… There was no plan to make the odds worse for players… Rather, the worse odds reflect player demand for new multi-coin nickel slot machines, even though players are less likely to win. The players have voted with every pull on the arm or push of a button on nickel slots… We look at all slot machines like voting machines… We put out the machines that get the most votes.”” Read the whole story at www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/gaming/2002/sep/03/513935165.html.

One solution for people who don’t get to gamble as much as they’d like.
Move to Vegas or someplace where you can gamble anytime you want. And after just a month or two, you’ll find you don’t want to as much. I know that seems unbelievable to you all who don’t live in Vegas, but I would imagine that everyone (or at least most everyone) who moves here notices this tendency. In fact, Brad and I sometimes complain to each other about having to run around and collect bounce-back cash!

When you look at a die (that’s English-teacher-speak for one of the little cubes — dice is the plural form), notice that every number when added to the
number opposite it on the die will always total 7. For instance, the 5
is opposite the 2; the 1 is opposite the 6; and so on. Crooked dice do
not match. This is the first thing a boxman or player will look for if
he doubts the dice are on the up and up. — K.I.S.S. Guide to Gambling by John Marchel

“”I play… like crazy in Vegas.””
–Britney Spears

Okay, like, I am out of here.

11/15/2002

Help! I’m flooded with e-mails asking when More Frugal Gambling is coming out!

Here’s the down and dirty: I cornered Anthony in the Huntington Press parking lot and told him that the delay of the book was making a wreck of thousands of holiday gift-giving lists. I held him up against the wall and said I wouldn’t let him go until he gave me a release date I could give out. He sheepishly apologized for the delay. I told him I was not only well aware of his perfectionism, but I also understood, because I’m that way too. I said I appreciated his very careful editing, but we all really needed a realistic date.

“Super Bowl time,” he then told me. “I’m hoping to finish the editing and send to the printer by Christmas and be able to start shipping by the end of January.”

There you have it, straight from the mouth of the HP head honcho.

As soon as More Frugal hits the printer, I’ll start offering a special frugal price for pre-publication orders on my website, http://www.frugalgambler.biz. An added perk is that I’ll personally autograph all books ordered from the frugalgambler Web site. Pre-pub orders will also be shipped immediately after the book arrives at HP; I’m hoping to meet the truck that comes from the printer!

What to do about your holiday gift list that included copies of More Frugal? I suggest you make creative IOUs, with the promise that this delayed gift is worth waiting for; it may be the only gift that will eventually save them money!

Now on to another Huntington Press item: Did you miss the three new Travel Channel shows about Vegas that aired last Sunday evening, the ones that “starred” Anthony Curtis and many of the HP authors, including Bob Dancer, Jeff Compton, Michael Shackleford, and yours truly? Well, don’t despair. All three shows will be repeated TWICE this Saturday night, November 16. Check your local TV schedule for times.

The first show is called “Vegas Cheaters Exposed.” The second one is “Top Ten Ways to Win in Vegas.” For everyone who has commented that Brad never gets enough camera time when we’re on TV together, watch for the #7 segment on Couponing in this show. Brad finally gets a chance to shine, on the casino floor and in a casino bowling alley! The third show is “High Rollers.”

All of these Travel Channel shows on Vegas get repeated often. (I say that Brad and I and Gomer Pyle will live forever in reruns!) You can check the Frugal Calendar page at my Web site if you’ve missed some. I try to update this page every Monday and list both new and repeated shows where we’ve appeared.

This same calendar page also lists our public appearances. We’re ALWAYS so happy to meet fellow frugal enthusiasts. Whether you see us at one of the events listed or just playing video poker in a casino, please feel free to stop and introduce yourself and say hi. We’re always happy to take a break from playing and chat awhile.

We had a great time in Minnesota last week. Tune in next week for a trip report.

11/22/2002

Last week I promised you a trip report on our stay in Minnesota. Brad and I really enjoyed our week-long stay at the Grand Casino Hinckley. It’s always fun for us to take a break from the busy pace in Las Vegas — and for me, to be able to unlock the chain that has me a slave to my cable-service computer. In fact, we were so far from the hustle and bustle of civilization that even the Verizon nationwide plan on my cell phone couldn’t give me a connection! We were pleasantly surprised at the nice weather, allaying our fears of the terrible shock from leaving our warm and sunny home. All signs of a big snowfall the previous week had disappeared and the crisp air was refreshing, especially during the abundant daytime sunshine.

A large Indian gaming conference took up the first part of the week — attended by executives, supervisory employees, and tribal members from Native American casinos from all over the country, particularly in the Midwest. The second part of the week was a smaller conference for hosts and other departmental supervisors from the two Grand Casinos in the area. I was impressed by the intense desire of so many of these attendees to give good customer service and make sure their slot clubs, comp systems, and other departments were doing it right. So it was gratifying when they listened to my presentations with keen interest — and I felt that some of my suggestions would actually end up being implemented in some casinos. It’s always great when you feel your energies are not in vain!

This week was not all work and no play, however. On the first day, Sunday, we had the pleasure of meeting a lot of fellow frugal players from the area for an informal meet-and-greet book-signing session in the Grand’s Gold Card Lounge. We also looked forward each day to getting our exercise swimming in the indoor pool and each evening to relaxing in the spa. And a very frugal LVA forum regular, JokerEddie, a bus driver in the area for years, was kind enough to give us, on the way to the airport, an interesting tour of Minneapolis/St. Paul, including the giant Mall of America.

And what about video poker, you might ask? I’d told everyone that I hoped there wouldn’t be any good VP anywhere near us, so we could have a break. One of my “problems” in Vegas is that there’s so much good VP and so many good promotions connected with it, we almost feel lazy when we stay at home. Well, there was to be no rest in this area. We found a new-to-us and extremely fun-to-play VP game called One-Eyed Jacks. There’s no published strategy for this game or software that can analyze it, so we weren’t sure of its return. But a friend had told me that it was similar to a Double Joker game; with a simplified strategy he figured out that was probably close to 100%, we decided to try it out, mainly on a nickel progressive. With a .25% cashback slot club, we felt it was an acceptable recreational play. We didn’t come out winners for the week, but it provided some fun hours of small-risk play when we didn’t have anything else we needed to do.

We had time to visit only three casinos in the area, Mystic Lake and the two Grands, Hinckley and Mille Lacs. Although they’re among the largest and most established in the state, we were in awe of how similar they are to Vegas resorts. And we heard from executives in smaller casinos who have big plans to expand. We said we no longer felt sorry for people who were stuck in a Minnesota winter. They have some great choices nearby where they can enjoy the excitement of the bright lights and continuous action of a modern casino.

Next week we’ll be jetting out of Vegas again, spending Monday through Friday of Turkey Week in Reno and Tahoe. We just had to plan this trip; we have more than $2,000 in bounce-back cash, free play, and coupons to collect. Do we love the holiday time of year only because casinos dangle in front of players all sorts of juicy promotional carrots in order to get warm bodies in their casinos?

11/29/2002

While we are in Reno and Tahoe I will leave you some interesting links to keep you surfing:

For all of you who drive back and forth between California and Las Vegas on I-15: http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208%7E12588%7E996085,00.html.
Please be careful!

For residents of Las Vegas who are proud to be that: http://www.dmvstat.com/platescharitable.htm#Centennial. For locals who would like to be proud of something else in Nevada, there are other specialty license plates offered on that page. Or, get creative and order a personalized plate — but sorry — FRUGAL is already taken — at least in Nevada. Someone else can have it in another state!

If you’re looking for hints about promotions, especially drawings — and can’t wait until More Frugal Gambling comes out in January or February, with a huge chapter on the subject — check out http://makeashorterlink.com/?K20A31072. Although this article is talking about the Chicago area, many of the suggestions could be used anywhere.

Salmonella, e-Coli, Staphylococcus, tiny insect eggs. This is not a pretty list — and it’s downright gagging when you read the article at http://www.msnbc.com/news/829189.asp?cp1=1#BODY and find out this could be in water you drink on an airplane. Take it seriously if you want to arrive at your casino destination in good health, ready to tackle the slots and/or the tables.

Got a complaint about a Nevada casino doin’ you wrong. Then check out this website and learn how to complain: http://gaming.state.nv.us/inv_main.htm.

Want to read reviews of gambling books before you buy them? Of course you can always go to www.amazon.com and check a particular title, but the following links will give you some thoughtful opinions on a long list of books on gambling:
http://www.jetcafe.org/~npc/reviews/gambling/ and http://www.thewizardofodds.com/game/books.html

When you plan a trip to Vegas and call or go online to reserve a rental car, do you take the first price you are given? Go to http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/gaming/2002/jul/22/513746959.html to see how much it could cost you for not shopping around. You might not be surprised too much if you’ve had similar experiences comparing airfares.

Okay, so you didn’t like the picture of me at my desk on www.frugalgambler.biz. I didn’t either — plus Brad gets left out too often when he is an integral part of everything I do. So I hope you like the new picture better.

And for our smile of the week, go to http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,5483665%255E13762,00.html. It seems like everyone wants to get into the lucrative gambling business these days!

10/4/2002

During the Gaming Expo, I had an interesting conversation with Ernie Moody, the creator of and patent-holder for most multi-line video poker games. After taking me around and explaining all the new variations, he asked if I could write about a current problem he’s having with casinos. I know (because they’ve told me) that quite a few casino executives read this column, so I promised him I would.

Ernie says that many casinos are putting the worst video poker paytables in their multi-line games. And even if they’re very low-denomination machines (like 1- or 2-centers), because of the many lines played, people lose their money too fast and, even though they love multi-lines, won’t play them again. So the casinos take them out and replace them with gimmicky new slot machines.

Ernie is not talking about putting in the best paytables that would attract the skilled players who’d have an advantage over the casino. He’s talking about pay schedules that would allow average players to play long enough to feel they’d received good entertainment value, even if they eventually lose the bankroll they brought to that session. People love the Fifty and Hundred Play machines. But they just can’t last for very long on 6/5 Jacks or Better; they might as well feed their bills to a Shop Vac.

This is a problem with the multi-line slot machines as well. Traditionally, nickel machines have had the lowest overall payback of any of the machines in a casino. But these new multi-lines aren’t “just nickel machines” when you can load them up to the max and be playing more money per hand than in some dollar machines.

Smart casino executives know that what they call “time on device” is of prime importance to customers. I expect that increasing the multi-game payback schedules will be on the agenda of many casino executive meetings in the days to come — and it will be a welcome development for all machine players.

BRIEFS
“It’s hip to be square.” Did you know that there are 11 square-dance clubs in Las Vegas, Boulder City, Pahrump, and Northwest Arizona?

If you watch sports at the ESPN Zone in the New York-New York casino, watch for food and beverage hourly minimums that will be imposed during popular games.

Last week I discussed a series of gambling seminars called “Beat the House” that I thought would be interesting for many to attend. Right after I wrote about it, the event had a change of date and venue. It’s now scheduled for January 17-19 at Sunset Station. (I just went out and bought a 2003 calendar. It seems like I just bought the one for 2002. Time flies so fast as you get older!) I will keep you posted on the details of this convention on the calendar page at www.frugalgambler.biz.

A joke from CasinoWire: Two friends were discussing their favorite Vegas casino and one said, “”I prefer Circus Circus because any place that has a name worth repeating has got to be good.””

The other friend said, “”I prefer Aladdin. I’d rather trust a genie than two clowns any day!”

10/11/2002

I had to laugh when I read this in Lenny’s column on lasvegas.com: “Getting a lot of calls about the newest strip joint in town, called Jaguars. First of all, let me tell you where it is. It’s on a street called Procyon, which will mean absolutely nothing to you.”

Actually, I bet a lot of readers DO know this street and have been at one of its more famous numbers, the famous headquarters of Huntington Press and the Las Vegas Advisor. Now, whether Anthony thinks the addition of ANOTHER strip joint (there’s already one between Jaguar’s and the HP office) lends class to this street name, well, I’ll leave for him to discuss — if he’d like to be a guest writer in this spot.

I think I’ll continue on an I-think-this-is-funny theme this week. I’m tired of being serious about video poker percentages, the decrease of comps, the long term, and casinos that drive me crazy by constantly changing their policies.

From CasinoWire: An outraged Italian mother has gone to court after her husband furtively named their newborn son after a prizewinning horse while she was still in the hospital!

“”He said his wife agreed,”” retorted an official at the records office in Boscotrecase, Italy.

The boy’s first and middle name, as registered, is Varenne Giampaolo. The “”real”” Varenne is a seven-year-old horse: a national hero and Italy’s 2001 athlete of the year. The “”real”” Giampaolo is the jockey’s name! When the mom discovered that she couldn’t change the baby’s name to Christian, she went to court. A ruling is pending. Do you think dad has been “”scratched”” from mom’s “”favorites”” list?

From The Guardian: If you’re going to Greece, leave your child’s Gameboy or other portable console behind, or you may be jailed, because all electronic games — even the most innocuous — have been banned in an attempt to stem the Greek passion for gambling. The penalties for being caught at it, in public or in private, are steep fines and 12 months in jail. “”It’s laughable,”” said Yiannis Markopoulos, the owner of an Internet cafe in Athens. “”Every game in the world has been prohibited. I’m not taking any chances. Even children are now criminally liable.”” The Socialist government adopted the measure after numerous bar and arcade owners were found to have converted slot machines into illegal gambling machines. www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,786133,00.html

Fantini Gambling Report: RENO may be getting a little desperate. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, city officials are considering an Arizona promoter’s proposal to conduct a “Running of the Bulls” on North Virginia Street downtown. He currently runs them in Mesquite and Scottsdale, AZ. He believes he has outgrown Mesquite. Is Reno the city that looks down at Las Vegas as tacky and classless?

“”I used to be a gambler. I quit gambling. I quit yesterday. I quit this morning, and I’ll lay six-to-one, I’ll probably quit again tonight.”” –The late Walter Mathau

There. I feel light-hearted again — and ready to tackle more serious subjects next week.

10/18/2002

I promised I would be more serious this week, although a lot of people said they enjoyed the casino and gambling humor.

BRIEFS
Something interesting I learned from an article on the history of craps by Basil Nestor in the January Casino Player: “Crabs” was a slang expression used during the Crusades to describe a roll of 2, a loser even then, in a game that was the forerunner of craps. Nestor figures maybe people thought it looked like a crab’s pincers and gamblers felt their wallets were pinched when they lost. When the Europeans brought to the New World their dice game called hazard, the sailors and slaves on the French docks of New Orleans modified the rules and called it “crabs.” The Americans on the Mississippi riverboats thought it sounded like “craps,” so that has been the name of the game ever since. Nestor also goes on to dispense with the famous but wrong notion that craps was named after Thomas Crapper, inventor of the modern toilet.

Go to www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/business-casino/092002SMOKESEP20.html for a good article by Joe Weinert. He says that “the biggest threat to growth in the U.S. casino industry comes not from antigambling interests, but from health-conscious public officials. A group that sets the country’s indoor air-quality standards is under ‘enormous’ pressure to make casinos and other hospitality venues smoke-free, an expert warned attendees at the Global Gaming Expo.” He gives this interesting statistic: “Forty percent to 50 percent of casino gamblers are smokers, about double the percentage of the U.S. population as a whole.”

I read the following on an Internet VP bulletin board in a discussion about the frustration in changing denominations and games: “You’ve become trapped in the insidious hell of winning on small, losing on big. This particular hell is across the hall from ‘aces while playing deuces.’”

NEAT FACT OF THE DAY, from the Fantini Gaming Report: “In Missouri, a gambler maxes out after losing $500. In Nevada, entry into a private gaming salon requires a minimum $500 bet.”

A warning from an article in USA Today: “Hotels are cracking down on no-shows by requiring guests to give more notice — as much as 72 hours in some cases — when canceling reservations… One reason is that hotels are seeing more customers canceling their reservations after finding cheaper rates on the Internet.” Be sure to check this out at casino hotels, even if you make a reservation for a comped room. You may still have to leave a credit card number. Read the fine print on your mailed free offer and question the reservation clerk about the cancellation policy.

In the what-were-the-executives-thinking department, Belterra Casino and Resort in Vevay, a tiny Indiana town on the Ohio River, were found to have arranged for prostitutes to entertain wealthy gamblers. http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/08/19/fin_new_hotel_big_gamble.html”” gives the whole sordid story. Geesh! And our conservative friends in Indiana think we’ve moved to a wild and wicked town!

——-

Here we go again, one of my biggest pet peeves: “”It didn’t dawn on me that I had won $5 million. I thought a couple of thousand maybe, and somebody said ‘You won $5 million’ and I said, ‘You’re kidding.'”” Casino Magic (MS), $5 million slot winner

Wait, now here’s a new one, a reaction I’ve been looking for for a long time: “”I’ve been after this Megabucks for three years.”” Palace Station (NV) slot player winner.

Finally, someone who tells it like it really is! None of this I-only-had-12-dollars-in-the-machine!

10/25/2002

Halloween activities in Las Vegas show the pull back and forth between its conflicting images of Sin City and Family Destination.

An “adult attraction” called “Little Demons Dungeon” in 3-D opened beside the Little Darlings strip club for the haunted-holiday season. An X-rated haunted house? Brad offered to go check it out, but I said, “Naw, that won’t be necessary — my readers wouldn’t be interested anyway!”

On the other hand, listed in the local newspaper are more than a dozen strictly G-rated haunted houses around town: scary, but good clean fun.

The Las Vegas Fetish and Fantasy Halloween Ball and the Club Rubber Halloween Costume Ball are held on different nights, so you can be weird twice, dressed — or mostly undressed — in costumes that are only limited by your imagination.

Meanwhile, the Coffee Bean in the Palms casino Food Court is offering free drinks to costumed kiddies under 12 with parents — on the same date as the above-mentioned rubber affair, which is also being held at the Palms. I hope none of the rubber-clad (or unclad) decide to come early and pick up a snack in the food court before the 9 p.m. rubber revelry. Maybe the best plan for parents is to bring the kiddies for their free drink early!

From a poster on Skip Hughes’ Internet VP list (http://vphomepage.com): “This story is about an online casino, but I thought it would be worthwhile as a general cautionary tale as well:

“I was paying video poker online recently and had to download a software upgrade. The upgrade included multi-hand video poker and a better interface, and the Jacks or Better paytable was still 9/6, so it seemed like a good change.

“After playing awhile I got 4-of-a-kind and got only 100 instead of 125 credits for it!

“On closer examination I saw the paytable had decreased the usual payoff for a straight flush from 250 to 200. I was playing a 98.2% game instead of the 99.5% game I was used to.

“Now, whether at land-based casinos or Internet casinos, I’m going to look at the whole pay table, not just the bottom six places!”

Good lesson to learn for all video poker players.

I usually keep this column to Vegas and casino-related subjects, but I wanted to share this next item, because most of us can relate to this computer-related smile-of-the-day that was sent to me by a friend.

In Japan, they’ve replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages. Haiku poetry has strict construction rules – each poem has only 17 syllables; 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second, 5 in the third. They’re used to communicate a timeless message, often achieving a wistful, yearning, and powerful insight through extreme brevity. Here are 16 actual error messages from Japan.

The Web site you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist.

Chaos reigns within.Reflect, repent, and reboot.Order shall return.

Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.You ask far too much.

Windows NT crashed.I am the Blue Screen of Death.No one hears your screams.

Yesterday it worked.Today it is not working.Windows is like that.

Stay the patient course.Of little worth is your ire.The network is down.

A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone.

Three things are certain: Death, taxes, and lost data. Guess which has occurred.

Having been erased, The document you’re seeking Must now be retyped.

Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Aren’t those better than “”Your computer has performed an illegal operation”?

9/12/2002

My file of notes is bulging after several weeks of philosophizing about the long-term, so I’ll put that subject on the back-burner for now. Besides, I got this note from a friend after he read one of those discussions: “”I want to commend you on a VERY SCARY Frugal Fridays this morning. My losing streak is now officially one year old.”” I happen to know that this player had several very good winning years before now, so I’m not feeling too sorry for scaring him. However, Halloween’s impending arrival or no, my purpose is not to write scary columns — at least not too often!

BRIEFS
Deuces Wild players, did you ever wonder, usually after a long losing streak with no royals and few quad deuces, what the math says about this subject? Go to Michael Shackleford’s great Web site whenever you want some good math answers. At www.thewizardofodds.com/game/vidpokapx5.html, he gives some charts showing all the numbers for Deuces Wild. He shows that 54% of royals will come after holding 3 to a royal, and 32% after holding 4 to a royal. Four deuces will come along 34% of the time holding 3 deuces and 37% holding 2 deuces. Oops, I should mention that this is for the
long-term — even though I promised to hold off on any more discussions on that!

It’s so hot that (from an Internet trip report) “”One good improvement at Harrah’s Laughlin is that they replaced the brass outside door handles with wood. It used to be that you needed welders gloves to open the door.”

Interesting Website at www.justgambleforfree.com. I can’t actually recommend all of the techniques he covers because I haven’t tried them all myself, but many of them look reasonable. He does recommend The Frugal Gambler and Huntington Press, so I can vouch for those two!

“”Racing and the casino business have a lot of similarities. Both are highly competitive, and there is excitement, a rush, an edge involved in the competition. But maybe the biggest similarity is that every race driver, like every gambler, is convinced he is going to win every time, no matter what the odds are against it.”” From CasinoWire, quoting Brendan Gaughan, NASCAR race driver and son of the Gaughan family, prominent Las Vegas casinos owners.

Beginning Sept. 8, the Travel Channel will air “”Gambler’s Paradise Week!””
You can see the complete schedule at travel.discovery.com/schedule/series.jsp?series=10244. Brad and I were filmed at the Palms for the episode titled WORLD’S BEST: TOP TEN LAS VEGAS CASINOS. It airs four different times that week, on the 8th, 9th, 14th, and 15th. Check your TV schedules for local times.

Thank goodness this is a new episode — we don’t ride scooters in this one, although I forget just what we do. We have filmed five other Travel Channel segments besides the ones that have already been shown — plus one for Quebec TV with French/English subtitles — and they’re all starting to run together in my mind. I don’t know what’s happening in my mind; it isn’t as organized as it used to be. I blame it on being too busy. I couldn’t be getting old, could I?

9/13/2002

Okay, it’s Friday the 13th. How can I counter a “bad luck day””? I have an idea — I’ll interview someone who thinks he’s the luckiest person in the world. It will be fast and convenient, because he’s just in the room next to my office, lying on a couch watching TV, the only person in the world who does that with his eyes closed and snoring.

Jean: Brad? BRAD, can you wake up and grant me an interview?

Brad: You don’t have to shout. I wasn’t asleep. I was meditating. But what do you want to interview me about?

Jean: Well, I think people are tired of hearing me chatter all the time about positive expectation, the long term, coupons, promotions, comps. Can you think of some gambling subjects that aren’t so tedious? Maybe you could talk about the more fun part of it.

Brad: I can do that. Jackets… casino logo jackets… now that’s a fun subject.

Jean: I think the whole world already knows about your obsession with logo jackets. Which reminds me, will you please take some of those jackets you will never wear to the garage? I’m tired of catching six jacket sleeves every time I close the closet door.

Brad: Well, I did help things by losing the bulkiest one, my treasured Hard Rock leather jacket you won for me in a drawing on my birthday a couple of years ago. I’m always leaving my jacket on the back of a chair when I leave a VP machine. But I sure miss that one.

Jean: I don’t know why. It was only cold enough here in Vegas last winter to wear it a couple of times and you have more than 35 others to choose from.

Brad: Yes, but a loud red jacket that says Terrible’s just doesn’t have the same class about it.

Jean: Okay, enough about jackets. What other fun things do you like about casinos?

Brad: Well, you could tell them you forced me to go to a movie premiere at the Palms last night, one that starred a Playboy centerfold — who was also in the crowd, with clothes on, though not too many — which I thought was pretty fun.

Jean: You would.

Brad: Speaking of the Palms, I had another fun thing happen to me there recently I could tell about.

Jean (sarcastically): I’m sure you aren’t referring to the $4,000 we lost there last night.

Brad: No, this story took place in the gift shop a few days earlier. I decided that I wanted a shirt that had the Palms logo on it. I had a logo T-shirt from some giveaway, but I wanted a dressier shirt with a collar, one I could wear at the Gaming Writers Mixer you’re organizing for next week at the Ghostbar. I picked out a nice black shirt (you’re always saying I need to dress more hip and I know black is hip at the Palms) and started toward the register where I could “buy” it for free with my points.

Suddenly George Maloof, the Palms owner, appears in a bit of a rush. “I need a shirt fast. Hey, Brad, that’s a good-looking one you’ve picked out. I’ll take one just like it.” He grabbed one off the hanger, motioned toward me, and said I didn’t need to pay for mine either. Then off we went out the door together. Now, I have enough points at the Palms to get thirty-three shirts, but they wouldn’t mean the same as this special one.

Jean: See, you aren’t so different from me after all — there’s nothing like something free!

9/20/2002

You’ve probably already read in LVA Lite and on some Internet forums about Frugal Video Poker, new software by Jim Wolf. This is a program that impressed me so strongly when I first saw it that I agreed to give it a “Frugal” name and help market it. A number of video players, including myself, gave Jim a wish-list of things to add. Then we decided to add a short video (12 minutes) right on the software, one that would show me in a casino explaining some of the video poker basics. For inspiration the camera also went to our Vegas condo and filmed our garage full of casino comps and Brad and me enjoying the good life that video poker has helped us achieve.

There are other good VP software programs (in fact, many of the developers are my good friends) and I have used several of them continually over the years. FVP, however, has many improvements that I think many people will appreciate. First, if you don’t have any VP software and you want to play VP with the biggest advantage you can, FVP is definitely your one-stop resource. It’s not only a tutoring program, but it generates strategy charts too. To be able to do both of these functions in the past, you had to buy two separate programs.

In addition, FVP has many other features that no other VP software has. One that’s especially helpful to many recreational players is a function that figures out the value of cashback, a calculation that puzzles many people when they try to do it manually. Another feature I personally like is the ability to sprinkle error hands from the past into my present play at any frequency I choose, even mixing up the positions and suits of the cards in those problem hands.

Advanced VP students will appreciate the feature for forwards, backwards, and both-direction sequential-royal analysis. You can define the payoffs for a natural and wild hand independent of each other. You can rearrange (tweak) the rankings in a strategy chart, then analyze the chart for its return. Some players do this so they can learn the cost of a play, like always going for a royal. Some do this to see if they can improve on the chart. There’s even an “inheriting-charts” feature. For example, the strategy for 9/6 Jacks or Better can be loaded into 10/7 Double Bonus, then analyzed for the resultant EV. This helps to determine how your skills on one machine would transfer to another.

I’ve mentioned only a few of the many features of this software. Frugal Video Poker is making its way to the market, and will soon be available from all fine gambling-product retail outlets. But you can buy it now from two sources: right here at www.greatstuff4gamblers.com, and at our new Web site, www.frugalgambler.biz (remember dot-biz, not dot-com!), where you can also read more about the features. (For those who feel better ordering from a human, call the Huntington Press toll-free number, 800/244-2224.)

Our Web site has several other features now, besides the FVP software (and we’ll be adding more later). There’s a calendar where I will put details of TV shows in which we appear (when I can get the information in advance) and where we’ll be speaking or attending casino get-togethers. Brad and I are always happy to meet my readers at these public events and answer any questions or autograph books. And Brad is always happy to entertain you with his gambling stories!

At this site you’re able to order any frugal products, including FVP software, an audio cassette I made on comps, and my book The Frugal Gambler. This is the only place, besides seeing me personally, where you can get your book autographed. And when my new book More Frugal Gambling comes out later this fall, it’ll also be the place to order an autographed copy. (This is possible because I have a very close relationship to the “head of shipping!” Brad says it isn’t terrible having a “job” again.)

9/27/2002

I hope you like the new feature in the Slot Club Bonus Points listing. After the third day of the month, anything we add, subtract, or change, we put in BOLD print. That way you can just scan the list every couple of days and easily pick out the new information in the bold type. But be sure to read the whole list on the first, second, and third of the month, because it usually takes that long for all the casinos to get around to setting their current-month promotions, so there’s usually quite a bit of new information.

Brad and I had a fun but grueling schedule last week during the Gaming Expo. As usual, our feet cried out in pain as we tried to cover all the exhibits and booths on a huge convention floor. Slot machine manufacturers ruled the roost with over-the-top exhibits, including all kinds of skimpily clad rent-a-babes cavorting to get the attention of an overwhelmingly male majority of casino executives.

My favorite gimmick, however, was a modestly dressed 50’s Lucy Ricardo look-alike, the spittin’ image of the “I Love Lucy” star. I’m still in shock over the slot machine shaped like a huge bottle of Budweiser — what ARE the manufacturers thinking when they hand the gambling-is-sin bunch a ready-made criticism. (You can see one at the Fiesta Rancho.) But I didn’t spend too much time in the slot area; I was more interested in the new video poker offerings. Although lots of new games look interesting, with many multi-line variations, I’ll wait to see if they are “good” for us by observing what paytables the casinos choose to put on them when they come on the floor.

As well as covering all the exhibits, we attended four parties in three nights. Brad and I are sociable types, but we can’t keep up that kind of pace as easily as we used to!

One of the parties was extra special. I thought it would be a good idea if something could be planned in order that all the gaming writers could get together; so many come in for the Gaming Expo that it would be the best chance to have so many in one place at the same time. I took on the job of planning this party and came up with the idea of holding it at the coolest place in town, the Ghost Bar at the Palms. Then I took my own advice — and asked. Palms owner George Maloof not only said yes, but he generously provided an open bar and hors d’oeuvres!

Being at this party was like turning the pages of a huge book that included authors photos of the best writers in the gambling field: Max Rubin, Stanford Wong, Frank Scoblete, Henry Tamburin, John Grochowski, Anthony Curtis, Jeff Compton, Frank Legato, Dan Paymar, Michael Shackleford, Barney Vinson — to name only a few of the 80-plus attendees. Many of the newer and up-and-coming authors walked around in total awe to see so many of their heroes, models, and mentors. It was a party that none of us will ever forget.

If YOU would like to meet some of your favorite gambling writers, there’s a good opportunity for everyone to do this in Vegas November 22-24 at a gaming seminar series at Palace Station. Go to www.frugalgambler.biz/ and click on the “Frugal Calendar” for details about this fascinating casino offering called “How to Beat the House.” (This event has been postponed and the venue changed. It is now rescheduled for January 17-19 at Sunset Station.)

Important announcement: For many months now I’ve known there’s a race horse named Queen Jean, but I didn’t give it much thought (and Brad didn’t put any money down in the race book), because she could never win a race. A friend who was listening to a race a couple of weeks ago sent me this report:

“Queen Jean ran the mile and 70 yards in 1:47:4 and paid $18.40 to win. Way to go, Jean — you’re no longer a maiden!”

Sometimes this filly thinks she’s getting closer to the glue factory.

8/3/2002

Believe it or not, sales tax is an issue for many people who eat lots of comped meals in Nevada. Does the comp (or coupon) cover sales tax? If you have the slot club booth write you a comp for the exact cost of the meal, do you have to factor in sales tax? Although there’s a statute covering this subject in the NRS (Nevada Revised Statutes), this question can get pretty arcane.

For example, should a casino restaurant charge tax on a comp at all? If you’re issued a comp by the casino to an independently owned restaurant (such as Emeril Lagasse’s eateries at MGM and the Venetian), who pays the sales tax — the casino, the restaurant, or you? And if your food bill exceeds the value of the comp, do you pay sales tax on the entire amount or just the amount that you have to pay in cash? To further complicate matters, many cashiers, wait people, and restaurant managers don’t know the law, so you get conflicting opinions about whether you owe sales tax and if so, how much.

The following is the part of NRS 372.065 that applies to sales tax. It reads: “”Value of coupon issued to customer by retailer, without reimbursement from outside source, is properly excluded from sales price. Where retailer issues coupon, which allows customer to buy at discount or grants customer a price concession in form of rebate and is not reimbursed from outside source, coupon or rebate represents ‘cash discount allowed and taken on sales’ within meaning of sections 11 and 12 of sales and use tax act enacted as ch. 397, stats. 1955 (see NRS 372.025 and 372.065) and is properly excluded from measure of sales tax.”

Whew! No wonder casino food and beverage workers — and everyone else — are confused!

Over the years, from experience and with the help of friends, Romans, and lawyers, we’ve figured out a few things about comps and sales tax. First, the statute seems to say that if the casino issues an in-house comp, it must first be used to reduce the bill. Then, any LEFTOVER amount is subject to sales tax. If your comp is for $10 and your bill before tax is $11, sales tax should only be charged on the $1 remaining, not the whole bill. So you’d owe $1.07 (assuming a 7% sales tax), based on the unpaid $1, rather than $1.70, based on the whole bill.

However, if the restaurant is independently owned and the comp doesn’t cover the tax, then you have to pay the whole tax bill. If your comp is for $100 and your food bill is for $101, you’ll owe $8 ($1 overage, plus $7 in sales tax), not $1.07.

At one casino, which sends you monthly coupons for so much off on a meal, the procedure seems entirely dependent on the whim of the cashier. Twice, I had a coupon for $25 and got a comp from the slot club for what I knew to be the balance of three buffets before tax, which I knew I wouldn’t owe. The first time I didn’t have to pony up any tax money. The second time, a different cashier told me the coupon wasn’t like a comp and I had to pay sales tax!

One player avoids a hassle by getting the server involved financially. For example, if he has a comp for $100 and the charge is $100 plus about $7 tax, he explains to the waiter that comps are not taxable at a casino-owned or casino-run restaurant, then leaves him an appropriate amount intended as their tip, unless he decides to use part of it to pay a tax the restuarant’s not liable for. The only problem with this solution is that a server might be punished for the lack of knowledge of a superior.

I used to get hyper with cashiers and managers who insisted on charging sales tax on our comps or coupons. However, after 18 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in comped food, I figure life is too short to worry about a few dollars here and there. I do politely question the employee when I believe a mistake has been made, but I let the issue go when it becomes too much of a hassle and I can’t change the mind of the probably under-paid employee.

See? I knew this was more than you wanted to know about this su

8/9/2002

Our week-long road trip to northern Nevada provided us a cool break from the heat of Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the video poker machines we played in Reno and Tahoe were also cool — actually, ice-cold might be a better term.

It’s never as much fun to lose as to win, no matter how many years you’ve been visiting casinos and how “experienced” you feel. This is one of the problems of being a human being, rather than a robot! However, whenever we feel a bit down during a losing spell, when it’s hard for the got-it-straight-in-the-head to get through to those human emotions, we run to our gambling logs of years past. And when we see how well we’ve done overall, we realize that this losing period is just a blip in the long-term results and will eventually be swallowed up by the positive total that dominates.

This ability to look back at your detailed past playing history is one of the best aids a gambler can have. First, a gambling log provides most of the information the IRS might require in case you’re audited. (I talk at length — in a VERY long chapter — about taxes and the gambler in More Frugal Gambling, which is still on track to come out in the fall.) But even more important, a log keeps you from fooling yourself about your gambling.

Gamblers are noted for selective memory; they have a strong tendency to remember only what is good and forget the bad. It’s so easy to recall the time you hit a big jackpot on that so-much-more-fun VP machine you played, even though you knew it had a terribly low pay-out schedule, so you want to play that “lucky” machine all the time. Somehow, however, your brain just doesn’t seem to remember all those times you played that machine and lost your kazoo. You figure it doesn’t really matter which table game or machine you choose; it’s all a matter of luck and you don’t remember the exact figures to prove or disprove this.

I may surprise you by this comment: Yes, in the very short term, luck does play a VERY strong role in all gambling endeavors.

STOP! I just realized that I have gotten wound up on this subject. I have a lot more to say, but I think I’ll leave it for next week. Not a real cliff-hanger, I know, but I hope that many of you who read this column are looking for practical help to make your casino experiences more fun — by winning more, or at least losing less. So I’ll be giving more helpful information on this same subject next week.

In the meantime, I want to finish up in a little lighter tone with one of my favorite famous-person quotes:

Referring to his mother’s visit to Las Vegas the weekend before she died, former president Bill Clinton said. “”She got to go to heaven four days early.”

8/16/2002

August 16 — Frugal Fridays

Last week I promised that I would give you some more reasons why it’s important for a gambler to keep a gambling log, and not just for the IRS, but as a way to “keep you honest” in your evaluation of your past gambling activities, with an eye toward helping you do better in the future.

Many players dismiss the concept of long-term results based on sound math principles: “I don’t play enough to ever reach the long term, so it doesn’t matter what game I play; luck is more important than math.” And perhaps you do play so rarely that luck IS the main element.

However, I’m guessing that most people who read this column gamble in a casino more than just a few hours a year. And it’s true that no one can tell you when you will reach the “long-term” results that the math promises, but I can say with certainty when that long-term STARTS: the first time you make a bet.

If you have already been keeping a log for a long time as we have, you’ve probably, albeit slowly perhaps and with lots of ups and downs along the way, seen your long-term bottom line gravitate toward the expected mathematical results of the games you play. Since we play almost entirely in positive situations and have been doing so for many years, our results long-term are in the black. If you haven’t been tracking your gambling action, I challenge you to start doing so today. Even if you always play positive games, I can’t guarantee that your bottom line will be positive early on; there isn’t a level path to the long term. There will be the fun hills and mountains when you’re winning, but there will be short AND long dips and valleys when you have the hard-to-take losses. But the TREND will eventually be to positive results.

The opposite is just as true. If you play negative games, you may have a positive bottom line for a little while. But just as sure as the sun sets in the west, you’ll be heading south — toward a negative bottom line — sooner or later.

If all these references to positive and negative playing situations are Greek to you, you need to do some studying. I wrote the book The Frugal Gambler for this very purpose: to give players enough information and a list of resources that they could choose better games and play them better. Once you’re knowledgeable about the odds of various games, keeping a log will help you to eventually judge which playing choices are leading you to better overall results. I always suggest that players who are really serious about losing less and winning more in a casino keep a log that tracks each type of game separately, so they can easily see how they’re doing on each.

I leave you with this quote from an unknown source: “If you ain’t just a little scared when you enter a casino, you’re either very rich or you haven’t studied the games enough.”

8/23/2002

My discussion in the last two columns about the short term and long term and the role of luck in positive-play video poker has brought some e-mails. One came from a friend of mine who plays VP for a living, averaging seven to eight hours every day, seven days a week. (As Bob Dancer often says, “A hard way to make an easy living.”) I want to share his letter with you, not because a lot of people will want to approach VP his way — very few do — but because he plays an extremely large number of hours and what he says about the long term is sobering.

My friend starts out quoting from my column: “”I may surprise you by this comment: Yes, in the very short term, luck does play a VERY strong role in all gambling endeavors.”” Then he gives his thoughts:

“I think you should strike ‘in the very short term.’ Just talk to Mr. X [a fellow professional]! Over his last three million hands, he is .65% below ‘expectation.’ If that were I, playing with (most of the time) an advantage of .3% to .4%, I would have gone broke years ago. Since Mr. X has been playing with a .7% to a 1.1% advantage (full-pay Jokers Wild with .5% cashback and full-pay Deuces Wild), he’s winning just a little bit, instead of making a good living. Unfortunately, his expenses far outweigh his earnings during that period (two-plus years). He has calculated that his current Deuces Wild streak is just over three standard deviations below ‘normal,’ or just under a .1% chance of occurring. For more than three million hands, luck is still a BIG factor! Most people will not play that many hands in their lifetime!

“And look at me. This year, I have played more than a million hands. I should be averaging about $40/hour. Instead, I’m averaging $70/hour, 75% ABOVE expectation. For more than a million hands! ‘Very short term’? I don’t think so.

“Don’t sugarcoat it! You can play the best games with close to perfect strategy and an ‘adequate’ bankroll (less than 1% risk of ruin) and still lose money for several million hands, or at least a year or two or three of full-time play. It can and does happen. And, of course, the opposite is true. You can make much more than ‘expectation’ would indicate you should!

“I have run dozens of computer simulations of 100 million hands, or more than 50 years of full-time play. Many of these have varied from ‘expectation’ by over .1%. That is quite a significant amount, when you’re playing with an advantage of less than .5% most of the time. And these simulations don’t consider strategy errors and tipping, both of which tend to skew the results toward the negative.

“Bottom line. In any person’s lifetime, even if they were to play video poker full time for 50 years, luck IS a factor! The more hands they play, the less of a factor it is, but it is ALWAYS a factor!”

I have some comments on this e-mail and on the whole subject of long-term expectation. We will continue this discussion here next week. In the meantime, here’s the light-hearted ending you have come to expect.

Bravery or foolishness? Reported by “The Dealer’s News,” a monthly newsletter dedicated to gaming employees: A couple of years ago a robber showed a gun to a change person at Nevada Palace and demanded money.

She said, “No way,” and he ran out the back door.

8/30/2002

This week, I’m going to finish up the topic of losing and the long term we’ve been discussing for the past three posts — and I imagine that some of you will be happy to hear that. The truth is, long-term results are of extreme interest only to those players who gamble when they have the advantage. This includes a VERY SMALL percentage of casino gamblers, a group made up mainly of skilled and experienced live poker players, blackjack card counters, and video poker students. There are a very few niche betters who can make a profit in a casino race or sports book, or by looking for bonusing and/or progressive slot machines, or by utilizing special promotions, tournaments, or coupons on usually negative games.

As for the full-time professional gambler we quoted at length last week, there are so few of these that the percentage would have to have several decimal places in it. Gamblers who make their complete living in a casino are rare birds indeed.

However, for the video player who is trying to make a profit in a casino — whether one who plays every day for a living or just a few days a year on vacation, our friend’s words must be taken very seriously.

On the other hand, these words and statistics were not given to discourage anyone. Most serious video poker players who choose the best pay tables, study and practice to play a very accurate strategy, and who have an adequate bankroll will see a trend toward the their goal: profit. It’s not a straight road up, by any means, but the longer you play the better the chance you have to reach that goal.

If you play only negative games (or positive games without the necessary accuracy), the longer you play the surer you can be of reaching the LOSING long term. Luck can make you a temporary winner, but you can only depend on math for long-term profit.

I’m pounding on the same drum I have for years; I’m not saying that making a financial profit is the only “”good”” goal in a casino. Actually, I believe that having fun is the most important one, and it’s certainly the most common one among casino visitors. And I think the casinos do a bang-up job in providing entertainment.

My wish for everyone is that they take advantage of all the great gambling resources that are available today — in the bookstores, on the Internet, in the magazines you can have delivered to your home. Almost everyone (well, maybe except for the Warren Buffetts of the world) has a limit to the amount of money they’re able or wish to spend having fun in a casino. The smarter you gamble, the longer you can extend this time of fun. Information is power — an old cliche. But old doesn’t necessarily mean worn-out or out-of-date. Being informed will bring you wealth in a casino — if not wealth in the financial sense, at least a wealthy amount of pleasure.

I wish you all casino wealth.

7/5/2002

ADVICE BRIEFS

Keep track of your slot club points carefully, recording numbers at the beginning and end of each session. A rash of casino computer problems has been reported lately, with players losing substantial numbers of points. Most have been able to straighten out the problem by talking to casino personnel. However, valuable benefits, including cashback, would have been lost if the players hadn’t been keeping track of the numbers and couldn’t have shown good records for proof.

Watch for hidden charges when you stay in a hotel-casino (or any hotel, for that matter). There are ways to avoid many of them. Read the eye-opening article at www.msnbc.com/news/597206.asp about the way hotels can nickel-and-dime you — and with inflation, this can add up to many dollars!

Do you have a lot of points accumulated at a casino where they cannot be redeemed for cashback, but only for merchandise, comps, and services? Are you finding that you have a hard time using them up for your own personal needs and wants, but they’re not directly transferable to another person? Investigate whether you can use them to get gift certificates, which you then could give to someone else. I have used such certificates — from restaurants, hair salons, and spas, for example — as gifts for friends, family, and hosts.

You might want to consider the air quality if you’re planning to move to Las Vegas. Brad was just diagnosed with asthma, a surprise to us because we thought of asthma as a problem of young people. His doctor says that it’s quite common for older people to develop it when they move to Las Vegas. Air pollution, caused by a concentration of heavy auto fumes in the valley, and the dust of the desert stirred up by constant construction are the culprits. Fortunately, daily bronchial-dialator medication is controlling Brad’s problem. He has also been diagnosed with severe osteoarthritis of the lower back, sometimes causing severe leg and hip pain, but we can’t blame that on Las Vegas — just the consequences of getting older!

Mark July 16 (and the third Tuesday of every month) on your calendar if you will be in Las Vegas and you’re one of these “”heroes”” that the Station Casinos would like to honor: firemen, police, nurses, EMT workers, medical technicians, teachers, and veterans. You can eat free at any Station casino on that day. The fine print: You must present valid proof of occupation prior to ordering. Hero offer good for one complimentary meal per person, per day. Does not apply to more than one individual unless qualified. Independent security personnel and military dependents are not included in this offer. Gratuity not included. My fine print: plan for a long wait. Brad and I were there at an off time, and the line was extremely long.

If you haven’t got a new player’s card since the Barbary Coast went to a new slot club system (like the one at the other Coast properties), be sure to do so before you start playing. The old cards will not work. Also comp dollars leftover from the old system will expire at the end of this year — so use before you lose!

A final brief — and pardon the pun! At Caesars Palace, European-style topless sunbathing is allowed at the Venus Pool.

7/12/2002

Back when we lived in Indiana, Brad would say he’d never want to move to Las Vegas, because then where would we go on vacation? Now — would you believe it? We actually look forward to LEAVING Las Vegas once in awhile. No, we haven’t stopped loving our life here, but a vacation to us means a change. And we occasionally like a change — in the weather, in our daily schedule, in the scenery. Brad enjoys not having to compete with the computer for my attention and I enjoy a brief escape from a heavy e-mail load. We even enjoy the “freedom” from having to run around town collecting bounce-back cash. (I never thought I would ever type THAT sentence!)

As you read this, we’re on vacation — on a cruise ship in the Pacific Ocean, the Carnival Elation, stopping at some Mexican ports before we return to L.A. on July 13 and drive back to Las Vegas. With Brad and me are my daughter, Angela, the Frugal Princess, and her Army Ranger hubby, Steve, just back from Kosovo, safe and sound. And to make my life complete, my two much-beloved grandchildren are on board too — Zachary, now a grown-up nine, and Kaitlynn, seven, going on 17. How can they be this old? They were just babies a short time ago! The worst thing about aging — even worse than all the aches and pains — is that time is flying past so very very quickly.

ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS

Question: My husband plays 10-quarter Deuces Wild every chance he gets. I only play 5-quarter machines. Though he spends more than twice the dollars I do, he’s hit no royals on those machines this year and only a few quad deuces. I’m trying to convince him he would be better off playing the 5-quarter machines, because he has twice the chance of scoring. Also, a $2K royal means a W-2G. I’ve had 5 royals this year. What are your thoughts?

Answer: There’s no one simple answer here; a lot of factors must be considered. First, I must state the legality issue — all wins are SUPPOSED to be reported to the IRS, so the W-2G factor shouldn’t matter. However, in practice, most recreational gamblers do not report wins unless they do get a W-2G. Therefore, if you’re going to report only W-2G wins and don’t keep the required log to also record losses, your royals on the 10-quarter machines will, depending on your tax bracket, not help your bottom line nearly as much because of the tax bite.

Leaving tax considerations out, your husband playing twice the coin-in on the same over-100% pay schedule at the same accurate skill level will IN THE LONG TERM have an expected return that will be twice as much as yours. However, in the short term, as you can see from your experience so far, it can be very choppy, since royals and other jackpots come in no regular fashion. If they come more often at the higher denomination, you’ll be in a nice winning streak; however, the opposite is just as likely to happen. The long term might be a very LONG time away! In the meantime, you and he have to decide whether you have the bankroll AND the temperament to ride out the possibly longer losing periods, while you’re on the way to that more profitable long term.

Smile of the Week, from CasinoWire (www.casinowire.com/newsletter/). A man coming out of a Las Vegas post office warned another just entering, “”Don’t play their slots. They’re loose, but they only pay off in stamps.”

7/19/2002

We’re home from a Mexican cruise that Brad and I took with my daughter and her family. They’re now back at their home at Fort Drum in upstate New York, where they hope they can ALL stay awhile. The Army has promised that Steve will not be deployed overseas the rest of this year, but after that there are no guarantees — it depends on the world situation. I pray for world peace all the time, but in my heart I’m afraid there’s no real hope for it.

Before I left on vacation, the news was that the Western casino on the edge of downtown Las Vegas would close, unable to meet the demands of the Culinary Union. An interesting “requiem” for the casino was written on an Internet bulletin board and I asked the author, Stuart Resnick, for permission to quote it here in this column. However, when I got back home, I found out that the owner had decided not to close the casino after all. But I decided this piece was so interesting that I would still include it. The Western WILL close someday and it never hurts to have a requiem on file! Here it is.

“When I worked in Vegas in 1990, my ‘break-in’ job was dealing blackjack & roulette at the Western. It was also the site of my first jackpot: hitting 4 deuces on the FPDW quarter machine.

“They had penny slot machines; if you played 5 pennies, you could win a car as the jackpot. There were occasionally stories of people who’d hit the jackpot but with less than 5 pennies played, so the payoff was something less than $100. When someone actually did hit the jackpot, I remember the casino manager appeared in the publicity photo, but had a look on his face like his dog just died.

“Roulette was played with 10-cent chips, so it was very challenging to deal. Low-level gamblers would buy 400 chips or whatever and spread them in stacks around the board, feeling like high rollers.

“Blackjack was a $1 minimum, so many of our customers were just there to get their free beer with an absolute minimum of risk.

“The drug dealers were among my favorite customers. Not only did they tip OK, but if they lost a few hundred dollars, they just shrugged and left, without bitching & moaning like our usual clientelle.

“Because of that one jackpot I hit, the Western for years sent me deals for 3-night stays with food (such as it was) for $16 total. I took advantage of it once or twice, till I got old enough to want something just a LITTLE classier.

“My favorite factoid to share with people to give them a sense for what it was like to work at the Western: It wasn’t uncommon for players to sit down at the blackjack tables with the band-aids still on their forearms from the plasma they’d donated to get their bankroll.”

6/6/2002

Time again to clean out all the “briefs” in my file.

Useful to know: “Walgreens now lets you get $100 cash back using your ATM card when you make a purchase, even a small one. This way you can avoid paying twice to use the ATM, the site and network fees. For example, if you’re staying at the Stardust there’s a Walgreens across the street. Buying something for yourself that you’ll use anyway and then asking for up to $100 cash back bypasses the fees. There’s also a Walgreens near Sam’s Town.” From an Internet bulletin board.

A report in a journal for casino executives said that although most scientific research finds that about 1%-2% of adults are pathological gamblers, a poll by Harrah’s shows the public BELIEVES that the number is more like 16%. Whatever the number, it’s definitely a cause for concern — and I applaud any casino action that addresses the problem. And I encourage everyone to stop frequently, consider their own gambling habits, and look for any that might in the future lead to problems for you or your loved ones. Most bad habits are easier to break in their early stages.

A sign I like, seen on a popular progressive at Ellis Island: “1 machine per person when waiting customers.” I’d like to see this sign in more casinos. AND, if there is a sign, I would like to see employees enforce it.

Read in a good article by I. Nelson Rose about government and laws pertaining to online gambling, in Card Player: “Federal governments may be interested only in organized crime, but states are often interested in saving your souls. Every state has what is known as ‘police power.’ This is the right to protect the health, safety, welfare, and morals of its citizens. Of course, one man’s moral outrage is another man’s hobby.”

Henry Tamburin, on table games, in Casino Player: “There’s not a single side-bet paytable out there that doesn’t carry a high house edge, so skip the side bets and save those dollars for the main game.”

If you find an Orleans flyer that advertises “Blackjack Match Play — 2 for 1 on Blackjack, up to $50,” pitch it. Whoever made up the flyer obviously wasn’t a gambler — it’s a jumble of two entirely different BJ promotions. A pit boss told me that they were not honoring the flyer — actually they couldn’t, because it didn’t make any sense.

Seen on a T-shirt worn by a woman playing Wheel of Fortune: “If there are no slot machines in heaven, I ain’t going there.”

The New Jersey governor has proposed a new tax for the Atlantic City casinos on the comps they give out. Casino officials said they would then have to cut back on comps. Hey, I don’t like to hear talk like this. I might be demoted from Queen to Lady-in-Waiting!

“Laughter, the Best Medicine”: Our Joke-of-the-Week comes from that Reader’s Digest department: “”Las Vegas is loaded with all kinds of gambling devices,”” says Joey Adams. “”Dice tables, slot machines, wedding chapels.”

6/13/2002

BRIEFS

1. It happened again: A lady hit Megabucks and said initially she misread the meter and thought she’d won $2 million. Oops, make that $22,621,229.74. The casinos need to start a class for people who play big progressives. Hey, I’m not very good at math, but I could teach it well enough so people could count the number of places in their jackpot amounts! At least this newest winner admitted to putting more than $20 in the machine before it hit. She invested a whopping $170!

2. A deregulation bill making its way through the New Jersey Legislature would allow casino cocktail servers to say “”cocktail”” or use other words connoting alcoholic beverages.
www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/gaming/2002/jun/12/513570655.html””

3. The vpFREE video poker Internet group has recently elected five charter members to the vpFREE VIDEO POKER HALL OF FAME. The five charter inductees include Gary Catlin, the inventor of VP TUTOR software; the late Lenny Frome, who was a video poker pioneer; Si Redd who introduced and marketed the first video poker machines in 1978; Stanford Wong, the blackjack and sports betting guru who developed VPEXACT software; and Dean Zamzow, who created WINPOKER, the most advanced video poker software to date.

The five charter inductees are honored on the Hall of Fame Web site at: www.west-point.org/users/usma1955/20228/VP/HOF.html.

The vpFREE video poker group consists of 700 plus video poker enthusiasts who exchange video poker information via individual and Internet-based e-mail messages. The home page site for vpFREE is at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vpFREE””

The vpFREE VIDEO POKER HALL OF FAME was established to recognize and honor significant contributions to the playing, understanding and popularity of video poker. Future elections will be held annually every spring to induct others who have made or continue to make significant contributions to the world of video poker.

4. An interesting Web site: www.prairienet.org/~scruffy/e.htm. This is a map of past, present, and future casinos that are on, or fairly close to, the Strip (Las Vegas Blvd.) south of downtown. A list of the casinos, with some comments, is below the map. Other interesting links are below the list of casinos.

5. There seems to be a joker in the blackjack world these days. Watch for his tricks in the casino, especially tempting you with everyone-knows-a-single-deck-is-best foolers. How about a game called Fun 21, that’s only fun for people who want to give the casino a bigger edge with only even money given on blackjacks, more than wiping out the advantage of some extra good rules? How about games with nice big letters: SINGLE-DECK BLACKJACK? Watch for the kick-in-the-pants fine print: 6-for-5 for blackjacks.

6. I quoted myself, from More Frugal Gambling, on an Internet bulletin board: “Many players, myself included early on, are just too intimidated by the whole system or have the perception that you have to be a high roller to qualify for host treatment.”

Someone replied: “It boggles the mind to think that Jean Scott was ever intimidated!”

I’m still trying to figure out if I should be flattered or insulted.

6/21/2002

Physician, Heal Thyself — A Story

For several months after the Palms opened, Brad and I got frequent e-mail offers from them for “Free Play” cash on specified days. A neat high-tech way to promote, we thought. Then, a couple of months ago, these e-mails stopped. We figured that they must have stopped that form of promotion.

Wrong!

We started hearing that others were getting e-mail offers — plus we’d be at the slot club desk for other transactions and the boothlings would remind us that we had Free Play that had to be claimed that day — Free Play we didn’t know about. I was puzzled, but for several months just chalked it up to the usual mysterious vagaries of casino marketing departments.

Finally, remembering that some gambling writer continually recommended questioning casino employees about matter of consequence or curiosity, I thought to ask if the boothling would check my e-mail address in their computer. Duh! Some computer gremlin had removed the dot before the com — on both Brad’s and my accounts. A missing dot — and lost money! That hurts!

I tried to excuse myself on the grounds that if the Palms had my correct e-mail address for several months, I couldn’t be expected to know that their computers were invaded by dot-eating bugs. But I’ve been dealing with casinos for 18 years, so I should know that a glitch is possible — actually, probable — whether there are computers or humans involved.

We haven’t received any e-mails yet; there seems to be an on-going computer problem. But now Brad checks every day to see if we have any Free Play on our card. This is no bother for him, since he visits the Palms almost every morning anyway, routinely getting a $3 comp from the slot club (he’s at the “HotShot” level, so he can use the special “express” line), taking it to the Coffee Bean for a cup of coffee and one of his favorite foods, a raisin bran muffin.

If you aren’t getting any e-mail offers from the Palms, first you need to check, by phone or in person, if they have your EXACT e-mail address, including the proper dots. Then, if you don’t live close to the Palms as we do and a daily personal check on your card would be inconvenient, I suggest you make a quick phone call every few days until the computers start working correctly.

There’s a lesson here for everyone, whether you’re a local Palms customer or a player in ANY casino anywhere in the U.S. You must keep on your toes at all times to be sure you’re digging out as much casino information as possible so you can maximize your slot club benefits.

By the way, Brad read over the rough draft of this column and wanted me to add his two-cents worth: “For all those people who might think that my getting such a small comp every day is a lot of bother, especially since I always have money in my pocket and could easily afford to pay cash for my daily snack break, all I can say is that association brings assimilation. After 18 years around Jean, in spite of my best efforts to resist, I’m afraid that sometimes I’m starting to ENJOY getting frugally nutty myself.”

6/28/2002

Although I’m known primarily for encouraging smarter gambling, I want to make it clear that my goal is not to promote gambling to people who do not already visit casinos. I never encourage people to start gambling; my purpose is to help those who do gamble to do it smarter so they won’t lose as much money.

But some people should never enter a casino, those for whom gambling stops being entertainment and becomes an obsession and wreaks havoc in their lives. If you find that gambling is causing you problems and you cannot control it on your own, there’s help. Call the National Council on Problem and Compulsive Gambling’s toll-free hot line (800/522-4700) and they will point you to a help program in your area.

Recently I saw an ad in the newspaper that might interest a local Vegas resident who’s having gambling problems:

Problem gambling can:
* cause you to lie
* cause financial ruin
* cause distortions in thinking
* cause restlessness and irritability
* cause you to obsess about gambling
* jeopardize relationships, career, and education

If this sounds like you or someone you know, Dr. Howard Mason with Trimeridian Gambling Treatment Program is offering screenings for participation in a research study for individuals experiencing problems with gambling. Participants will receive a comprehensive psychiatric examination and study medication at no cost. Call for more information 7 days a week, 702/369-8491

Gambling should be fun whether you do it for profit or entertainment or a combination of the two.

BRIEFS
There’s finally a way in Las Vegas to get rid of all those pennies you have been collecting in a jar, without the tedious work of putting them in coin wrappers, which banks require. Most casinos have a sign up that says they do not take pennies or dimes. This post from Skip’s VP List (subscribe at www.vphomepage.com) gave welcome information: “Success! While I was in L.V., I went with my mother (during daylight hours) to the downtown Gold Spike and I can now confirm that they do accept and will cash in pennies. She ended up turning in over $32 worth of them.””

One advantage of casino loyalty: Many casinos send better offers to their long-term customers even if their play per day is less than the play of a newer customer.

From vpFree (subscribe at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vpFREE), this interesting exchange:

First poster: “I always wonder why guys jump people in the casino garages who are on their way HOME. Half of them are probably broke. I guess that’s why they’re pulling robberies instead of working a real job.”

Second poster: “Last year I shared a house with an Atlantic County prosecutor. I said that I thought that her job must be interesting. She replied that 99% of her cases were easy. To quote her: ‘Most of the criminals here in Atlantic County are pretty stupid.’

5/3/2002

One of the most frequent questions I get is, “When should I change machines?” This is the major conundrum of most slot and video poker players. Should I change after I hit a big hand? (Maybe the machine isn’t likely to give me another jackpot anytime soon.) Should I change after I’ve lost a lot of money? (Maybe a new machine will treat me better.) Should I pause after winning hands to let the machine get some losing ones out of its system? (Maybe I should go play a machine just like this one, but in a “looser” casino across the street.)

Here are a few facts that will answer most of those questions.

The RNG (random number generator) doesn’t have regular cycles in the sense we sometimes use that word. It doesn’t go through every possible combination before repeating the same cycle. ANY result can come up on ANY hand, even the same hand back to back, even the same jackpot back to back. You have the same odds of hitting a royal flush on every hand, for example. The result of one hand has nothing to do with the result of the last hand, or the last 100,000 hands.

Two VIDEO POKER machines with the same paytable, IF they’re in a regulated jurisdiction that ensures that they’re random, will have the same long-term average payout, wherever you find them. But they’ll give you different hands and different results in the short-term — and there’s NO way to tell which is going to be “good” to you in the next minute or next hour.

Two SLOT MACHINES that look the same, even in the same casino, will not necessarily have the same long-term average payout. The reason for this is that a casino can legally order the same machines from a manufacturer with a variety of chips that control the long-term results. However, since the constantly running RNG makes each hand a random event, you can’t tell what any one machine will do for you in the short term.

I like the way a friend of mine addressed this question in a recent post to a VP Internet group.

“You might want to consider changing machines if:

* The person next to you is emitting noxious fumes (smoke, body odor, perfume, cologne, or use your imagination).
* Your machine insists on holding a 3 when you pressed the hold button for that ace.
* Your machine’s screen is blurry enough that 33366 is a “”Full Mouse.””
* The person next to you has just poured gasoline on himself and is reaching for his lighter.
* The sound level on your machine has caused everyone near you to move away or insert earplugs.
* Your machine is slow. You have time to “”root in”” that fourth ace (double bonus) or deuce (deuces wild).
* The bill acceptor on your machine is apparently waiting for that one special serial number.
* The person next to you is so attractive you can’t concentrate on playing — video poker, that is.
* The person next to you WILL NOT SHUT UP!
* Your machine says “”Out of Service”” on the screen.

If you want to improve your chances of winning, play the best game available within your bankroll, play correct strategy, and play as fast as you can accurately. You can’t play fast if you keep wasting time changing machines!””

Thanks, my friend, and a hearty “amen” to your advice!

5/10/2002

First up, a clarification for something I wrote in last week’s column, from a friend of mine who keeps me on my toes about math and technical details.
I said:

“”Two VIDEO POKER machines with the same paytable, IF they’re in a regulated jurisdiction that ensures that they’re random, will have the same long-term average payout, wherever you find them. But they’ll give you different hands and different results in the short-term — and there’s NO way to tell which is going to be “”good”” to you in the next minute or next hour.”

My friend’s so-true observation:

“”I think you should have mentioned that the two VP machines will have the same long-term average payout ONLY if identical strategies are played on each! The novice might be led to believe that he will only have to choose the “”good”” machines, and the payoffs will take care of themselves, at least in the long-term.””

I’ve discussed this very subject in More Frugal Gambling (coming out in the fall). It’s true that choosing the best VP pay schedule is the FIRST consideration. There’s no strategy that will make you a long-term winner on a schedule that has an expected average long-term payback below 100%, as calculated on innumerable computer trials.

However, even on “”good”” (100%+) machines, you have to know the accurate computer-derived strategy rules to come close to the expected payout over the long term. (Note that I said accurate, not perfect. No one can play computer-perfect VP strategy for any length of time. But the more accurate you can be, the faster you’ll get to those all-important long-term results.)

Interesting Surfing
The Nevada Gaming Control Board Black Book http://gaming.state.nv.us/loep_main.htm. Click on Francis Citro. “”Citro appeared at his Black Book hearing wearing a tuxedo, telling commissioners,
‘I’ve never been invited to join anything in my life; I just wanted to show the proper respect.'””

The Nevada Gaming Control Board Most Wanted List http://gaming.state.nv.us/wanted_main.htm

Thanx to vpFREE for suggesting the two links above. This is a new VP website you can subscribe to at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vpFREE

Go to www.thewizardofodds.com/ if you want to find out the math for most casino games. Excellent Web site just full of “”good stuff”” for the gambling student.

My Vote for the Best Gambling Quote of the Year Someone on an Internet gambling bulletin board wrote about a friend who had been playing blackjack at Harrah’s Laughlin when two motorcycle gangs
showed up. The pit boss came around to the dealer of the blackjack table and warned the dealer that there was some trouble coming and that the police were on their way. Soon after, fighting broke out, including shootings and stabbings. The blackjack player ended up spending 10 hours in the buffet, while police tried to sort out the good guys from the bad guys.

The Internet poster asked his friend why he didn’t leave when he heard that early warning.

The friend said, “”I was winning and had a drink on the way.””

5/16/2002

I’m writing this on the road, where Brad and I have been much of the time since April 1, speaking at various conferences and seminars for casino employees from Indiana to Laughlin to Gulfport, Mississippi. It’s kind of funny, actually. After 18 years of trying to figure out how to understand the often-convoluted systems that casinos use to give their customers benefits, after several years of writing explanations to help other players understand the systems so they could use them to easier gain those benefits, and, yes, after a lot of years of complaining about many of the practices and policies of casinos that aggravate me — at last I can do something to vent my frustrations. And maybe I can do at least a little bit to help make things better for the player in the future.

Many of my friends have asked what I’m telling these casinos executives, so I thought I’d share some of the notes from my talks, which mainly have been to groups of hosts, player-development supervisors, and top casino management.

Although I emphasize that, on the personal level, I count most of our hosts as good friends, I find the whole host system extremely difficult to use. Here are some of the problem areas (and most of these I discuss at length in More Frugal Gambling):

1. Why do the details of the comp system have to so often be so secret? If the comp system is put in place to reward customers so they’ll continue to be loyal to the casino, why don’t the casinos want the customers to know what they need to do to reach these rewards?

Why does the casino make people “beg” for benefits? If they reach a certain level, why doesn’t the casino offer them the benefits more often?

Why does the casino change its rules so often? Don’t they know this frustrates customers, after which many decide to go play in another casino?

Why do they make us go to another casino to play the day we check out of their casino to go home? We would play an hour or two in their casino before our plane left, but that would incur the wrath of the God of the Trip Average — and we would get fewer comps our next trip.

Why can a casino comp you hundreds of dollars in rooms, meals, and shows — and so many times won’t pick up a local phone call charge of $1?

Why do they send us a mail offer for a free room, which we find out when we check in really wasn’t “free” at all? Why do we have to learn the hard way that the slot club has already docked our comp account for the room and now we’re in the red — so we can’t get any meal comps until we play enough to make up the deficit?

If you don’t use a host, you may not have experienced some of these problems. When we were strictly quarter players, we mostly used slot club benefits and direct-mail offers for our comps. We had very few dealings with the host system — although we certainly could have used it more: It would have saved me a lot of organizational effort.

However, tune in next week; I’ll have some information for all levels of players. We’re in Palm Springs, California, right now, at a conference for all kinds of casino management involved in Indian gaming. My talks here have been on slot club operations — and you can be sure that’s a subject about which I’ll never run out of material! The amount of advice I can give for the “perfect” slot club is a never-ending stream.

5/25/2002

Last week I promised to tell you more about my talks at conferences for casino executives. But first, I need to clarify some things. I got some e-mails this week expressing high hopes that my talks will result in better VP games being put into casinos in these areas where I’ve been.

That is not the purpose of my speaking at any of these conferences! I’m not there to advise casinos about the games they offer. The reason I’m put on the schedule is that I can represent both the savvy player (that’s me) as well as the purely recreational one — thanks to all the e-mail and personal input I get from this latter group — thus giving the casinos some input about how customers view their systems and policies. I talk about customer service matters and casino methods and actions that confuse more than they help.

While I’d personally like to see more good VP games in every casino, I also know that casinos are not non-profit organizations — at least they try not to be! But there’s much I can tell casinos that will help their bottom line AND also make our casino visits more profitable and enjoyable.

A perfect example of what I try to accomplish: At the last conference, in Palm Springs, California, I was speaking about slot clubs to Indian gaming marketing executives. Many tribal casinos are just beginning to establish slot clubs and the Palm Springs attendees were very interested in hearing about customer reactions to more established clubs in other places.

I told them some of the things we customers like: a booth that’s easy to find and open whenever the casino is open; a printed list of club benefits and how to get them, written in plain English, available without standing in line; friendly and knowledgeable club employees; a simple point system for earning benefits, where you don’t have to be a mathematician to figure it out; and a system that shows your point countdown and point balance right on the machine.

I hit them hard with some of things we customers do NOT like: frequent major changes in benefits; long lines; card readers that “time out” after just a minute or two; coin-out systems; “free” offers that aren’t really free, with too many strings attached; coupons and vouchers that are more trouble than they’re worth; and promotions that involve too much waiting-around time.

I talked for an hour — and I talk fast — but I could have talked for another hour. I never run out of ideas on how casinos could be more customer-friendly!

If you haven’t been to a Indian casino recently, you’d be really surprised, as Brad and I were, how much so many have changed — from the small, often shabby, bingo-hall image to a Vegas glitzy appearance. And you might be surprised how many there are all over the country. One report said that last year 212 tribes operated 340 “”gaming facilities”” (of varying size and gaming options) in 30 states. The facilities paid $5.5 billion in wages to 298,000 employees out of $11.9 billion in gaming revenue and $1.2 billion in nongaming revenue. “”The (combined) revenue was $13 billion. However, when you look at the multipliers and indirect effects, it comes to $32 billion, so a large portion of the whole business is benefiting not just the tribes, but also benefiting the whole economy,”” said Alan Meister, author of The Economic Impact of Indian Gaming in the United States. Read more at www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/business-casino/051702INDIANGAMING.html.

Many Indian casinos, no matter how big and luxurious they become, still have bingo. And that brings me to this important fact (from SurfingthePlanet.com) that I’m sure you’ve been wondering about for a long time: According to suppliers, purple is overwhelmingly the favorite ink color in daubers used by bingo players.

5/30/2002

This week I want to take the opportunity to warn you not to believe everything you read on the Internet. I’m sure most of you are experienced enough in the cyberspace arena, that you already know this — and you dismiss any information that “doesn’t seem right.”

The reason I mention this is that I’ve had a rather ugly experience with this problem recently. One Web site (I won’t give them any publicity by mentioning their name) decided, without permission from Anthony or me, to “summarize” The Frugal Gambler, chapter by chapter. Although that is legally a very gray area — copyrights are routinely and roundly ignored on the Internet — we could have probably lived with that, figuring it was good publicity and would sell some books.

However, whoever did these summaries must have gotten tired of reading the book, because they decided to put some of their own ideas in these summaries. Worse, they’re not very knowledgeable about gambling, because they not only used terms no gambler would ever use, but it was obvious that they subscribed to a lot of gambling myths.

They say that no publicity is bad publicity. But in this case, bad reporting HAS hurt me personally. One casino has taken away some of my slot club benefits (a monthly coupon sheet that included cash and other good stuff) because of something erroneous that was put up on this Web site. I’ll quote one part that upset the casino in question:

Under the section the Web site summary called “Extending Your Gambling Dollar with Comps,” they give number one: “Join the casino slot club.” So far so good — I’ve said that hundreds of times.

But then comes number two: “Ask for extra comp cards. If the casino asks why, just say that you are forgetful. Once you get your cards, leave one or two of them in a slot and/or video poker machine in the hopes that someone will walk up to the machine unaware and start playing. Take your leftover card and use that to play the games you play.”

I can forgive writing errors and bad sentence structure, but I’m furious about them stating something that I have NEVER said. First of all, I wouldn’t call a slot card a comp card — no gambler I know calls them that. Second of all, even if I did advocate this, I would have to point out that it isn’t a tactic you can use in most casinos, because your card “times out” after a short period of inactivity.

However, not only have I never suggested this idea, I have specifically written about this several times as being an abuse of the system! In fact, I have chided even some of my good friends when they played on other people’s cards to qualify them for a tournament or some other promotion.

I guess now is a good time to repeat some of the ideas I first wrote about in Frugal’s Chapter 11, “Ethics and Gambling, Odd Bedfellows” and that you will see that I continue to discuss in More Frugal Gambling. I try very hard to keep my same high standard of ethics IN the casino as I do outside of it. Sometimes it’s hard when it seems the casinos have everything on their side, with no recourse by customers who have been treat unfairly. We lose slot club points because computers are not working correctly. We try to follow the rules — and then they change rules. We find promotions have been discontinued mid-stream, with no public notification. Slot clubs change their system and we aren’t given enough time to use the benefits we had earned before they expire. Coupons and promotions have so much fine print, full of “outs” for the casino to invoke.

It’s no wonder that some players feel they are in a war zone and that “anything is fair in love and war.” I’m not judging anyone here — and I understand why the temptation is strong to use any weapon possible to win. But everyone has to draw his own line in the sand.

I find that the older I get the less I enjoy being close to any gray area of action. Ah, the blessings of advancing years!!