We sent this one to Bob Dancer and he responded:
In the 1970s, my gambling game of choice was backgammon. At the time it was a very fashionable game -- played in discos, bars, and other gathering places. I played mostly at LA's Cavendish West, which was located at the boundary of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
For players who'd studied the game, as I had, it was real easy pickings for a while. But by the late '70s, things had changed. The problem was there wasn't much new blood in the backgammon world -- after a while, most of the players were regulars, which is a bad thing.
Backgammon is a game with a fascinating and frustrating mixture of luck and skill. Everyone wins some of the time. Everyone loses some of the time. That means that, at least for a while, everyone comes back. But the games weren't provided for free. Similar to hosted poker games, the players had to pay the house a "rake." Hence, to succeed over time, you had to gamble against players whose skills were inferior to yours. Even if you could find a game where you broke even over time, the house rake would eat you up. On top of everything, you also needed social skills to keep the lesser players coming back for more once reality set in.
Succeeding in that arena required a skill set that I didn't possess, and I eventually went broke.
Was it traumatic? Extremely. For someone who considered himself a "professional gambler," coming to the conclusion that I "wasn't good enough to make it" was very disheartening. But I had to bite the bullet, and in 1980 I went out and got a job.
I don't have a fear of going broke again, mostly because for more than 20 years I've played only games in which I've had the advantage. Back in the '70s, I considered gambling to be "play" and "games." I had a lot of fun. Now I consider gambling to be serious business with a risky downside. I still enjoy myself in the casinos, but that enjoyment is always within the context of making intelligent bets within my bankroll.
Editor's Note: More about this subject and the blueprint for Bob's success playing video poker are detailed in his book Million Dollar Video Poker.
