When to Show ID

Another excellent post by James Grosjean in his Las Vegas Advisor blog called “Beyond Numbers” occurred in mid August.

Grosjean’s articles in his blog are addressed primarily to advantage table game players — or, perhaps mostly, wannabe advantage table game players. These players often play uncarded, or perhaps carded but with a false ID. For many of these players, keeping their real identification secret is of utmost importance.

One reason for this is that if a casino can accurately identify you, they can more efficiently bar you and communicate who you are to other casinos. A flyer sent out about a tall man in a black shirt and a Dodger’s baseball cap is quite a bit harder to act upon than a flyer about John Jones, DOB 5/24/86, 123 Main Street, Las Vegas. Since “staying in the game” is a big part of winning, table game players often work aggressively to hide their identities.

Video poker is a different situation altogether simply because of the W2Gs which are usually not issued for table games. For video poker, you MUST provide ID for jackpots of $1,200 or higher.

It is possible to be a low-level video poker pro in Las Vegas earning $10 per hour or less and playing without a card. Keeping your ID secret is not an option for those video poker players who want the advantages of slot clubs and comps but are not attracted to “profits” of $10 per hour or less.

Make no mistake about it; casinos bribe video poker players well to get their ID. A significant part of winning players’ profits comes from promotions (such as 5x points, or hit four aces and get a 200-coin bonus), mailers, appearance money, and drawings. These benefits can sometimes exceed 2%. Without using a card, a 99.2% Bonus Poker game is unplayable (assuming you insist on having an edge over the house), but with the right combination of promotions it can be very profitable.

And for these profits, we video poker players voluntarily give up our identification. But once it’s given up (like pictures on the Internet), it’s given up forever.

I’m not positive that this is actually true, but let’s assume for now that video poker advantage players are as smart and dedicated as table game advantage players. So other than the “you have to if you’re going to play the game,” argument, are there other reasons why successful table game players refuse to show ID while video poker players do not?

The main reason for this, in my opinion, is that most successful table game players are “sneaky.” That is, they are playing the games in ways that the casino does not want the games to be played. The designers of table games create a built-in edge for the house — whether it’s 1% or 10% or any other number. The casino wants you to come in and play and leave behind whatever percentage the game is designed to hold.

Advantage players are not interested in playing any game where the house has the edge. There are several hundred types of table games out there (only a relatively few in each casino) and many have vulnerabilities. Sometimes counting of some sort can give you the edge. Sometimes dealers are sloppy (flashing a hole card, for example) or are ignorant of the rules (perhaps erroneously turning face up two cards rather than just one.) Sometimes casinos put the game on the wrong table layout, so that a 3-card straight pays 5-1 rather than 3-1. Sometimes the cards aren’t cut squarely. Sometimes an automatic shuffling machine is exploitable. Etc. Taking advantage of these situations is not considered cheating (unless you’re playing in a Native American casino or your name is Phil Ivey).

Knowing the games well enough to recognize these “opportunities,” and having the skill and bankroll to exploit them aren’t trivial accomplishments. Having a team available for when a play requires two or more players isn’t something that “just happens.” Casinos generally don’t welcome players with such abilities and resources, so once those persons are identified, casinos take measures to keep them away. No wonder these players want to keep their IDs secret!

In video poker, for the most part you have to come in through the “front door.” Casinos usually get reasonably accurate information from the manufacturer on what a game will return with a “perfect player.” (One notable exception was Pick’Em Poker where the royal paid 6000 coins. Throughout the 1990s, Bally Gaming told casinos the game was set to return 98% while player software said the game returned 99.95%. Casinos eventually eliminated the game because it didn’t hold as well as Bally said it should.) And the casinos have a rough estimate as to how much less than perfect their players are.

You’d think casinos also should be able to calculate how much their promotions will give away. It’s not all that hard. Fortunately, many casino marketing employees seem to be mathematically challenged.

Most successful video poker players actually “grind it out”. They make fewer mistakes than the casino expects; they look for situations where the casino has multiple promotions and the sum of those promotions is attractive; and they find a way to get more than an average amount of casino benefits. And when some of the advantage players’ profits come out of the slot department budget, some out of the marketing department budget, and some out of special events budget, it’s not so obvious to casinos when we’re beating them.

This means successful video poker players are playing at the same places over and over again. The casino knows who they are. Giving up your ID isn’t such a big deal in this situation.

Table game players, by necessity, must travel around quite a bit. There is no such thing as a successful card counter betting more than the minimum who continues to go back to the same casino every day for months. Dealers who expose hole cards are relatively rare and, depending on the casino, may only work the “good game” a few hours a week. Casinos that pay off using the wrong rules aren’t on every street corner. One game where you’ve found an exploitable situation may only exist in four or five casinos in the United States. And they are NOT next door to each other!

So successful table game players are more “hit and run artists,” than “grind it out players.” Once you realize this, it’s easy to see why the two groups come to very different conclusions about the dangers of producing ID.