When You’re No Longer Welcome

Let’s assume that your local casino has taken away your player’s card, meaning you can no longer receive most of the benefits from playing there. For the sake of today’s discussion, you are still allowed to play there without a card if you like. Further, assume that you insist on playing with an edge or not at all.

What do you do now?

First, sometimes you can talk your way back into being able to play with the card. Not often. But sometimes. If winning the drawings too many times was the reason for your ouster from the club, for example, perhaps agreeing to not enter certain categories of drawings will be enough. Perhaps agreeing to not play certain machines will work, or not playing on certain point multiplier days. Whatever. Being in the club is better than not being in the club if this option is possible. 

If this is not possible, you need to look closely at whether there are games you ignored before that could be playable at least some of the time. The most likely candidates for this would be progressives. Sometimes a 9/5 Double Double Bonus machine (97.87% at reset) with one or more progressives can be a profitable game to play when the progressives are high enough. Not every day. Certainly not every time you check. But sometimes.

The best book on how to evaluate progressives is Frank Kneeland’s The Secret World of Video Poker Progressives. Some of the information presented in the book is dated, but I don’t know of any better source. If you can find and hook up with other pros playing progressives, perhaps they can show you the ropes. 

In general, you need a bigger bankroll to play progressives than you do playing games with a 4,000-coin royal flush simply because a higher percentage of your return is in the relatively-rare royal flush. You lose much faster between royals than you do at games that start out with a higher return. In addition to the physical bankroll, you need a psychological bankroll to survive at this. Losing streaks will be longer. If you were barely scraping by financially before you got restricted, progressives are likely not a good option for you. 

On the other hand, sometimes progressives get big enough that you’ll have a 2% or larger advantage while playing them. You virtually never get advantages this high playing machines without progressives.

Advantage slots are another possibility. Sometimes it has to do with progressive meters. Sometimes it is a “must hit by” progressive and the meter is very close to the maximum. Sometimes it’s looking for a certain number of a particular kind of symbol, and when you find that condition, the game is beatable. How to recognize the games that are beatable is found on several sites on the Internet. Which of these sites provide the best information is something I can’t share with you simply because this is not an avenue I have pursued. 

There are players being kicked out of casinos for playing advantage slots these days. Since my face is relatively well known as a sharp machine player, I will get extra scrutiny if I play slots. And I expect my welcome will be short-lived. So, I haven’t even gone through the effort of learning which machines to play.

Particularly in Las Vegas, there are a LOT of players seeking out and playing advantage slots — which seriously reduces the likelihood of you coming across a playable game at any particular time. Success requires scouting — and sometimes being in the right place at the right time when someone leaves a machine that is in an advantageous state, but it can be done. In other locales, slot hustlers are less common, and you can do well at this.

Another option is to simply stop visiting this casino and patronize others. If you live in a place where there are a lot of casinos, this is no problem (assuming you haven’t been run off by too many of the other ones as well.) If you live in a place where there aren’t many casinos, this is tougher.

Some high limit players need to resort to playing dollar machines in order to keep playing. They have the bankroll to play higher, but they might not have the welcome or full benefits at the places that have the bigger machines. At a smaller level, some dollar players may need to resort to playing for quarters at other casinos to stay in the game.

Going the other way (meaning formerly playing quarters but being forced to play dollars at another casino in order to have an edge) doesn’t happen as frequently. Comparatively speaking, few quarter players are restricted at casinos. (It absolutely does sometimes happen, however.) If you are forced to move up in stakes, make sure you have the bankroll to do so. You can check bankroll requirements using the Video Poker for Winners software, or Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker. The products yield similar results using very different methods of analysis.

Traveling to play is another option. Players in Las Vegas can travel to several locations in California, Northern Nevada, and elsewhere if they are out of places to play at home. I’m not going to tell you to go to the XYZ casino in such-and-such a city simply because publishing the play will likely kill it. These plays are out there, but you’re going to have to scout and network to find them. Players who have developed networks with other winning players will find out about these possibilities much faster than those who are starting from scratch. Traveling takes time and is not cheap. Some players do not have the time, interest, or resources to pursue this avenue.

A final option is to give up video poker and take up bowling — or any other activity you’re interested in. Some people will not be able to find beatable games within their bankroll. When this happens, some tough decisions need to be made. Using the suggestions in this article, however, will sometimes postpone for another day having to make that decision.