{"id":124850,"date":"2023-04-11T09:44:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T16:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=124850"},"modified":"2023-04-11T09:44:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T16:44:07","slug":"she-dont-know-what-shes-doin-but-she-tries-to-do-her-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/she-dont-know-what-shes-doin-but-she-tries-to-do-her-best\/","title":{"rendered":"She Don\u2019t Know What She\u2019s Doin\u2019 but She Tries to Do Her Best"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author\u2019s Note:\u00a0 I wrote a similar blog recently, with some readers requesting more information. I think there\u2019s enough different between that piece and this one to make this one worthwhile.<\/span>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/em>The title of today\u2019s blog comes from a mid-90s song \u201cBaby Likes to Rock It\u201d by the Tractors. I\u2019ve liked that lyric since I first heard it when the song was new, and think that it\u2019s a perfect fit for explaining Bonnie\u2019s gambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie and I had known each other through a square dance club for several years before we got together, but were both married and weren\u2019t more than casual friends. I announced to the square dance club the start of every video poker class semester, and probably half of the more than 100 club members attended one or more of my classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie never attended my classes before we began dating. Although she enjoyed gambling (allowing herself to lose up to $3 during a once-a-month trip), she had no clue as to what advantage gambling was all about. Even though she attended more than 100 class sessions after we hooked up, she can\u2019t tell you what pay schedule to look for or how Deuces Wild strategy is different from playing Jacks or Better correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019ll be 80 years old in a few weeks and I have no illusions that I could teach her to play correctly. If she didn\u2019t learn anything in 100 class sessions, what more could I say?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slightly more than a year ago, I began to study and play advantage slots. This was good for us as a couple because she could help me with this. Within limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without going into a lot of detail, advantage slots are those where some of the time, depending upon some meters, the knowledgeable player has the advantage. Many are like video poker progressives, sometimes with four or more progressives on the same game. But some slot progressives go off every 100 to 300 games or so on average. This is an entirely different experience than a royal flush progressive which goes off every 35,000 hands or so. Plus, once you identify when a machine is in a positive state, it\u2019s simply a matter of hitting the button until the progressive goes off. Bonnie can hit a button as well as I can. Within limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are 30 or so different types of slot machines that I examine. No casino has all of these titles. Some casinos have no such machines or only a few. Some casinos have a lot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scouting is a major part of advantage slot play. This is very different than scouting video poker machines. Once you discover that a particular pay schedule of Deuces Wild, for example, is at a casino, that machine will probably stay there. Next time the casino has a point multiplier or other promotion, you know that machine likely will be available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With slots, it\u2019s not just the existence of the machine that matters — although that is a necessary part of it. It\u2019s how high the progressives are right now. Depending on the type of machine, some games are in a positive state dozens or hundreds of times per day. And if it\u2019s not positive now, maybe it will be in an hour. The more play by slot players who don\u2019t recognize when a machine is or isn\u2019t in an advantage state, the more often a game will become positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often a given machine will have 20 separate stakes at which you can play. You might be able to choose, for example, whether to play for 1\u00a2, 2\u00a2, 5\u00a2, or 10\u00a2 and within each denomination maybe 100 coins, 200 coins, 300 coins, 400 coins, or 500 coins. You can play this machine for several different amounts between $1 and $50 per spin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And each of these combinations might have four jackpots often labeled Mini, Minor, Major, and Mega — although other titles are common as well. If the correct strategy is to play the game when the Mini is at least 15 or the Minor is at least 25 or . . ., you must check a lot of numbers when you come up to a machine. Twenty different combinations of denomination\/coins and four jackpots per combination. It takes a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Bonnie and I come up to a bank of suitable games with two empty machines at it, she is very good at sitting at one of the machines while I go and check the other. This gives me the opportunity to check both machines without another player getting one of them while I\u2019m checking the other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll remind her of what the playable numbers are. Using the previous hypothetical example, if I tell her to look for a Mini at 15 and\/or a Minor at 25 (along with other numbers for the other jackpots), she\u2019ll identify cases where the Minor is 16 and tell me that it\u2019s above 15 so it must be a play. No, I explain. The 15 only applies to the Mini jackpot. The Minor jackpot has its own number. I\u2019ve told her these numbers several times, but they don\u2019t stick in her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I find a playable game, I\u2019ll sit Bonnie down at it, tell her to insert $500 or some other amount of money, make sure her card is inserted, and give her instructions such as \u201cKeep playing until you hit the Minor jackpot.\u201d And then I go off and check nearby machines. Sounds simple enough. Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, a lot can go wrong. On one machine, it\u2019s possible playing for $3 a hand is worth 102% and playing for $1 a hand is worth 84%. If Bonnie sets her water bottle down at the wrong place, she might change denominations. Not on purpose. But it has happened more than once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  By the time she hits the Minor jackpot, she might have forgotten she\u2019s supposed to stop playing and so she continues to hit the button. If she does this, she\u2019s now playing a game worth considerably less than 100%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or if she hits the Mini jackpot before she hits the Minor (a common occurrence), she\u2019s not sure whether she should continue to play or not. To me, this is simple. If I tell her to keep going until the Minor is hit, that means hitting any of the other jackpots does not affect the decision to keep playing. But something frequently gets lost in the translation. If she\u2019s not sure, I strongly encourage her to ask. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes player cards time out. If a game has a long bonus round, at some casinos the card will no longer be registering by the time the bonus round has completed. Bonnie pays no attention to this and continues to play without getting slot club points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these and other reasons, I watch her closely. Even if I\u2019m checking other machines, every two minutes or so I check back to see how she\u2019s doing — if she\u2019s on the right game, if the player card is registering, whatever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie gets bored after a while. There are a number of good games that can take an hour or more to complete once you find them. I avoid these games when she\u2019s with me. At such times, I limit my search to games that typically finish in 15 minutes or less. Yes, I\u2019m giving up considerable EV at such times, but it\u2019s better to keep her interested and happy. Probably 80% of my slot play is without her, and at those times I check a much wider variety of machines than when she\u2019s with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, she doesn\u2019t mind being corrected. And she likes to win. All the wins and losses come out of a gambling bankroll that I control (with part of that money going into the household expenses account), but sometimes when we win, she gets a cash or gift bonus. Which, not surprisingly, she likes very much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I trust her completely financially. I don\u2019t believe she\u2019ll steal from me. She\u2019s had plenty of opportunity to do so and never has. I do not trust her in the sense of her being able to make successful gambling decisions unsupervised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think she\u2019ll ever be a full-fledged decision-making gambling partner. Her mind simply doesn\u2019t work that way. But several hours a week, it\u2019s something enjoyable that we can do with each other. It\u2019s a whole lot more interesting to her than me going off and playing video poker by myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re together for the duration, and I accept who she is and what she can do and can\u2019t do. So, we\u2019ll continue to do what we\u2019re doing. And continue to enjoy it.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author\u2019s Note:\u00a0 I wrote a similar blog recently, with some readers requesting more information. I think there\u2019s enough different between that piece and this one to make this one worthwhile.\u00a0 The title of today\u2019s blog comes from a mid-90s song \u201cBaby Likes to Rock It\u201d by the Tractors. I\u2019ve liked that lyric since I first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"She Don\u2019t Know What She\u2019s Doin\u2019 but She Tries to Do Her Best by Bob Dancer","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2],"tags":[428,196],"yoast_head":"\nShe Don\u2019t Know What She\u2019s Doin\u2019 but She Tries to Do Her Best - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/she-dont-know-what-shes-doin-but-she-tries-to-do-her-best\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"She Don\u2019t Know What She\u2019s Doin\u2019 but She Tries to Do Her Best - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Author\u2019s Note:\u00a0 I wrote a similar blog recently, with some readers requesting more information. I think there\u2019s enough different between that piece and this one to make this one worthwhile.\u00a0 The title of today\u2019s blog comes from a mid-90s song \u201cBaby Likes to Rock It\u201d by the Tractors. 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