{"id":36415,"date":"2018-02-21T09:35:19","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T17:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=36415"},"modified":"2018-02-21T09:35:19","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T17:35:19","slug":"dont-want-lose-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/dont-want-lose-much\/","title":{"rendered":"I Don\u2019t Want to Lose That Much!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This particular incident happened at the Gold Coast casino in Las Vegas maybe ten years ago, on games that are long gone. The fact that these individual games are no longer available doesn\u2019t change the thought processes of the players involved.<\/span><\/p>\n

My game of choice at that casino back then was a $2 single line 99.81% version of Double Bonus Deuces Wild (DBDW). With a 0.30% slot club 24\/7 (if you had achieved the highest tier level — called \u201cEmerald\u201d), the game provided a very small edge to the competent player. They would regularly have days where you could earn 0.50% or 0.60% on play up to $10,000 coin-in per day. If you played more than that, you reverted to the 0.30% slot club.<\/span><\/p>\n

They had drawings. They had mailers. They had other promotions. Overall it was a modestly profitable place to play — at least on a $10,000-a-day coin-in basis.<\/span><\/p>\n

This game came with a variance of 40.4 — which is very comparable to that of Double Double Bonus (42.0). These variances are moderately high, especially when compared with Jacks or Better (19.5) or NSU Deuces Wild (25.7). <\/span><\/p>\n

A typical session of $10,000 coin-in (1,000 hands) ends up a thousand or more dollars to the red unless you connect on one or more hands of $1,600 five aces (every 2,565 hands on average), $2,000 four deuces (6,766 hands), $4,000 four deuces with an ace kicker (38,088 hands) or an $8,000 royal flush (44,211 hands). The \u201caverage loss\u201d of $19 (based on a 99.81% return played for $10,000 coin-in) before you collected your $30, $50, or $60 dollars in free play from the slot club was a score you never saw. Over hundreds of sessions, your score would approach a $19 loss per session, but individual sessions varied wildly from that. Hitting three or more jackpots in one 1,000-hand session wasn\u2019t that rare. Not hitting anything at all for several sessions in a row wasn\u2019t that rare either.<\/span><\/p>\n

Until they told me not to do it, I played on both my card and that of Shirley (my wife at the time). I would play through $20,000 each time I played and that would take 2\u00bd hours or so. Since the casino is across the street from the Palms, and I played a lot there before it was purchased by Station Casinos, the Gold Coast was a fairly convenient place to drop in and drop out of for these small plays.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I started each play, I would feed in ten $100 bills. When this went down to zero, I would feed in ten more bills. When I hit for $1,600 or $2,000 (which was paid in cash), I would frequently create a ticket for that amount. <\/span><\/p>\n

There was nothing sacred about the way I did this, but there was some method. It was done to simplify record-keeping. For tax and other reasons, I need accurate records. Adding an additional $1,000 per time is easy accounting for me. If I were playing for smaller stakes, perhaps adding $100 or $200 at a time would make sense. But on this game, you could go through $200 in five minutes if you ran bad and continually reaching into my pocket and making sure to record each bill was tedious and I would have worried that I\u2019d occasionally forget to record a Benjamin or two. I could have easily inserted $2,000 at a time, but I settled on $1,000 and it worked for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were perhaps six of these machines and I\u2019d see the same faces seated at them over and over again. A few dozen players had analyzed the game similarly to the way I did and played more or less the same amount (although several played for $1 or 50 cent stakes for which the odds were the same but the amount you could lose was less. It would also take you two or four times as long to play the 10,000 points if you played for the lesser stakes.) If all the machines were taken, it was common to be asked, \u201cHow long do you intend to play?\u201d We all were pretty civil about sharing because it was obvious that the guy who had the machine this time may well be the one wanting a machine next time. <\/span><\/p>\n

One day, a lady I knew sitting next to me, Helen, had 9,400 points when her credits went down to zero. She needed to play $600 more though the machine to get the maximum slot club benefits that day — or she could have used that as a good time to quit for the day. <\/span><\/p>\n

She was debating whether she should put in $100, $200, or $300. Helen only had 60 hands to play and was trying to predict how much it would cost. The simple answer is: Who knows? I\u2019m pretty good at predicting how the next 6,000,000 hands will go, but really bad at predicting the same about the next 60 hands. <\/span><\/p>\n

Helen asked me how much I would put in. I was basically concentrating on my game but told her, \u201cI always put in $1,000.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut I only need to play $600 more,\u201d she responded.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would put in a grand.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m not going to do that,\u201d she told me. \u201cI don\u2019t want to lose that much!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I gave her a \u201cDo whatever you want\u201d shrug and we didn\u2019t talk anymore about it. But I went away thinking that how much I wanted to lose didn\u2019t have anything to do with the equation. I would be planning on stopping at 10,000 points, as she was, and I also wanted to keep good records. Cashing out at whatever amount I had on the ticket when I had reached 10,000 points was no problem at all. I could either turn it into cash or save it until tomorrow when I was going to play again.<\/span><\/p>\n

There could be exceptions to this, of course. If I had 9,980 points when my machine ran out of money, I would either have put in $100 or maybe quit for the day. If I had a $20 bill on me, it\u2019s even possible I would have put that in instead of $100. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each player must work out for himself what technique works on this. For nickel players, obviously $1,000 at a time is way too much. For $5 Ten Play players ($250 per pull), $1,000 is probably too small. Inserting large amounts of money into a machine doesn\u2019t cause me any kind of anxiety. I know players who agonize over every $20 bill. <\/span><\/p>\n

Many modern casinos create tickets for you which allow you to put substantial amounts of money into the machine more easily. The Gold Coast didn\u2019t have that at the time. Probably they still don\u2019t, but I\u2019m not sure. When I was restricted from receiving mailers there, I decided the casino was \u201ctoo smoky\u201d and haven\u2019t been back.<\/span><\/p>\n

You have to do what works for you. Since Helen had a different \u201cdefault\u201d than I did, it should be no surprise to anyone that she found my advice totally unworkable.<\/span><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This particular incident happened at the Gold Coast casino in Las Vegas maybe ten years ago, on games that are long gone. The fact that these individual games are no longer available doesn\u2019t change the thought processes of the players involved. My game of choice at that casino back then was a $2 single line […]<\/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":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2],"tags":[428,1664,196],"yoast_head":"\nI Don\u2019t Want to Lose That Much! - 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\/dont-want-lose-much\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Don\u2019t Want to Lose That Much! - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This particular incident happened at the Gold Coast casino in Las Vegas maybe ten years ago, on games that are long gone. 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