I share a weekly radio show with Frank Kneeland — a friend, and one of my favorite crazy people. (KLAV 1230 a.m. Thursday nights 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time — listen live at www.klav1230am.com — archived on www.bobdancer.com and www.progressivevp.com )
Recently Frank posted the following on vpFREE: “I believe pro gambling should be a 0% stress job, or get a different job. I have failed in keeping it 0%, but it has still been FAR less stressful than anything else I’ve done.” When I read this, I realized that I disagreed with it completely — for several different reasons. I will take two weeks to explain why I disagree with it, and then Frank will be a guest columnist on April 5 giving his rebuttal.
Frank’s primary gambling experience is with managing teams a couple of decades ago. It was possible to regularly find 4% or higher edges. Under these conditions, if a team could lock up an entire bank of progressive machines, the profit was essentially guaranteed. It was possible to lose on a particular play, but there were so many good plays that losing weeks were rare for the team and losing months unheard of.
Under these conditions, the money would come rolling in. It was never stress-free (you always had personnel problems, potential theft, conniving competitors, unfriendly casino employees, etc.), but it was close to it.
While I am not a video poker historian, there were several reasons for success in that era that are no longer valid today.
- 1.Gamblers as a whole did not know that video poker was a beatable game. Personally I was a blackjack counter in those days. I would have played video poker if I knew it was so lucrative, but I just didn’t know. Stanford Wong’s Professional Video Poker was an eye-opener for me and others, and the game had been profitable for years prior to Wong’s book. Today, if a dollar 8-5 Jacks or Better progressive reaches $10,000, there are hundreds of players passing it every day who know that it would be profitable to sit down and invest. Back then, not nearly so many and it was possible for the games to get to $15,000 or higher.
- 2.Computer programs for figuring out the return on the game and for figuring out strategies were not readily available. Frank and his team figured out this stuff by hand — armed with a pencil and a calculator. This was an impressive feat. I now know enough that I could probably do it with a calculator, but this is after being “shown the way” while using software for several years and through interaction with several others. This lack of software both provided Frank’s team with limited competition, plus it kept team players from leaving because they weren’t able to figure out this stuff by themselves. Today players could earn a guaranteed $15 an hour playing on a team or $30 an hour average playing by themselves. Some will still go for the guarantee, but after being trained, a lot of players would leave and go off on their own.
- 3.The IRS rules have changed significantly — which changes the dynamics of teams.
The idea that gambling today could be stress-free appears ludicrous to me — AND highly undesirable. Players are more knowledgeable today than they were in Frank’s day as are casino managers. A 4% advantage today is very rare, and is usually only found in out-of-the-way places after a LOT of scouting. And the players who find them are pretty expert at the math of MANY different gambling games — video poker, slots, blackjack, craps, keno, bingo, 3-card poker, roulette, etc., etc. To find one such 4% nugget, you have to read the rules of about 1,000 different promotions and look in hundreds of casinos. Casinos don’t WANT to support professional players. If a casino makes such a mistake, it often ends the promotion as soon as it figures out they are losing big time.
Witness the Jerry’s Nugget double royal promotion last year. The casino was giving up less than 2% — and the promotion lasted about 30 hours — but the owner went ballistic over losing $50,000 (or whatever it was) and 86’d dozens of players. Think about how it would go down if a casino actually figured out it was losing 4%.
If you want a game with a 1% advantage, you can find it 24/7 at the Palms with their 25¢ Full Pay Deuces Wild machines. You’ll win on this (about $10 an hour, if you’re fast and accurate) but you’ll have several losing sessions along the way. For many players, losing is stressful. And sometimes players who only play the loosest game in the house get booted. That’s stressful as well.
If you want to play for larger dollar-per-hour amounts in expected profit, you’ll find you frequently are playing for higher stakes with a half percent advantage or less. ($5 and higher players would KILL to regularly receive a half percent advantage. Often a quarter percent edge is higher than we can find.) Now you’re going to have losing months regularly. Losing years are not out of the question. This is a VERY small edge.
Losing creates different levels of stress for different people. Some of this is bankroll-related. Seriously risking going broke is highly stressful. Many people overbet their bankroll. Or even if they bet appropriately, run bad.
Much of it is personality related. A friend of mine has a $60,000 gambling bankroll, with reserves that aren’t officially part of his bankroll but would serve as a buffer if he actually lost the official bankroll. He whines today when he loses $200. It is very stressful for him. He seriously fears losing this much 300 days in a row, which would bust him, sort of, even though he has enough experience to know he has winning days and losing days.
Next week I’ll address other forms of stress in the gambling life.