On February 23, my blog addressed the subject of quitting while you’re ahead and other similar strategies that do absolutely nothing to the expected return of a game. I received a number of comments to that blog, including the one I’m going to share with you today:
“I stop when I’ve won a decent jackpot, usually a four-of-a-kind that kicks out $200 or more. I’m good with winning a $200 hand. $200 will buy a nice evening out with my wife, so really, we both win.”
This is so far against my philosophy of gambling successfully that it seems possible that I’m just being trolled. But maybe not. I’ll address it assuming the poster was honestly presenting his view.
The poster didn’t mention what game he was playing. If he was playing quarters, a $200 win is 800 coins — and a fairly rare event. If he was playing dollars in a game like Double Double Bonus, every four of a kind pays out at least $200. I’m going to speculate that he was playing dollar DDB, five coins at a time.
Presumably he means that he quits when he is $200 ahead. It is easy in DDB to be behind $400 before you hit your first $250 quad. I’m guessing that this is not what he meant. He’s still behind $150, and it’s hard to see how spending an additional $200 on a night out with his wife makes it a winning night — at least financially.
So, let’s assume he’s behind $200 and hits a $400 jackpot, putting him $200 ahead. Okay. His rule says to quit and go on a date with his wife. This sounds like it might be a successful marriage, but clearly not successful gambling.
This strategy says that however much he wins (except, perhaps, for the occasional royal), he spends it right away. When he loses, (which happens very often in this game, no matter which pay schedule he’s talking about), presumably he just grins and bears it. This makes video poker a game where he’s financially a significant loser. Few net wins, and plenty of (often large) losses.
This might make sense for somebody who has more money than he knows what to do with and gambles strictly for pleasure. It’s an expensive hobby, to be sure, but if he enjoys it and can afford it, who’s to say he’s wrong?
My entire gambling philosophy is that gambling is a source of wealth. Not income. Wealth. That means that when I win, I set that money aside to guard against the inevitable losses that I know are coming. I don’t know when. But I’ve been at the gambling game long enough to know that another losing streak isn’t too far away. I have a gambling fund, of sorts. When I lose, the fund decreases. When I win, it grows.
Since I only play games where I have an edge, over time the gambling fund tends to grow. If it doubles, I’ll withdraw some of it and invest somewhere. It might take a few weeks, or several years, to double, but it usually does. Sometimes, though, the fund gets down close to zero and I need to add more. That’s the nature of gambling, especially in a heaven-or-hell game like DDB.
Let’s say I have $30,000 in this fund. That might be an appropriate size for a dollar DDB player. It would be overly large for a quarter player. It would be woefully short for a $10 player. Each person has to decide how much should be in this fund.
The individual dollars in it are not time-stamped. That is, the money I earned last week is no more or less important than the money I earned four months ago. If I lose $1,000 and the fund goes down to $29,000, I don’t know when that money was originally earned. Accountants talk about first-in-first-out or last-in-first-out in order to keep track of the dates of various assets. That’s important for tax purposes, but not for what I’m doing, so I don’t worry about that. I don’t care. I care about how much is in the fund.
For me, how much I’m up or down since I got out of bed this morning is a largely irrelevant figure. I write it down in my daily log; — partly for tax purposes; partly to evaluate whether I’m playing a winning game; partly to keep track if I need to add to or subtract money from my gambling fund.
When I spend money on food, housing, dates with my wife, my car, or whatever, the money doesn’t come from the gambling fund. When I receive income from wherever I get it, it doesn’t go into the gambling fund. It’s in my living expenses fund. It’s totally separate, unless I make a distinct transfer one way or the other from the two funds. Or my third fund, which is invested in the stock market and elsewhere.
The idea of taking my wife to an extra dinner because I won $200 today is very alien to me. As would be making her starve if I lost today. Winning and losing at casinos is just a part of my life. I lose more often than I win (although my wins are bigger than my losses, on average.) Keeping Bonnie fed and entertained is a different part of my life. An important part. And it goes on whether I’m ahead or behind since I got out of bed today.
I earlier made a distinction between wealth and income. Income is a flow of money. The opposite of expense. Wealth is however much money you have. It’s the sum of all the income and expenses you’ve experienced since day one. Whether you’ve gotten this wealth from employment, investment, a divorce settlement, the sale of an asset, theft, or any other way, it’s however much you have. In my case, my wealth is divided among gambling fund, living fund, investment fund, and a mad-money fund. Transfers are made in and out of each fund as necessary. As described in this article, gambling wins and losses add or subtract from the gambling fund.
It’s perfectly okay with me that you don’t look at gambling and money the same way I do. I hope the way you look at it works for you.
You’re right, spending 200 on the wife is stupid. She should be back in the room making herself ready for the man!
Mr. Dancer-
Going back to the Feb. 23 blog, if you started a session with a royal flush on the first hand, would you continue playing? Normally, you expect a return of approximately 102%. In this case, you have a return of 80000%. You would have to play $200,000 @2% to achieve the same result of one $5 hand. Are you happy with $4,000 for less than a minute’s work, or do you grind it out all night for an expected profit of 2%?
Mufasa —
I keep going. There have been numerous times i’ve hit more than one royal flush in a day. Once was $100,000 each time. Another time, celebrated in my “Million Dollar Video Poker” autobiography, I hit for $100,000 and my wife hit for $400,000 30 minutes later. The others have not been so large.
I look to whether it’s a good play going forward — not how well I’ve done in the past however many minutes.
I’d like to try to de-polarize things a bit, and try to narrow the gap between Mr. Dancer and the commenter who would celebrate a $200 hit by taking his wife out for a nice dinner. First, and most essential let’s recognize that the commenter likely is an out-of-towner who only visits Las Vegas occasionally and is clearly doing so as recreation, while Mr. Dancer lives in Las Vegas and plays video poker as a business or for a living. Those are diametrically opposed constructs, and thus the vibes and attitudes and decisions that flow from those different constructs will be very different. Commensurate with the level of seriousness of each construct, notice how what the commenter wrote is short and not very specific, while what Mr. Dancer wrote is long and very detailed. They are simply in different worlds, and it would be best if the one did not interpret and comment on the other by using only his own view and feelings. My gut feeling is that the commenter does not incorporate the factor of whether he’s ahead or behind for his entire session before making his decision, but rather truly means merely getting a nice hit of $200+. He and his wife might be like many unserious gamblers who don’t know or care about correct strategy and just assume that he’s going to lose at every session unless he gets a big hit, so it doesn’t matter whether whether the session is a winner or loser overall. Also, Mr. Dancer’s gambling fund (bankroll) is managed in a businesslike way, while that for the commenter is clearly his “mad-money” fund. And finally, gambling and the associated record-keeping is work for Mr. Dancer, while gambling is merely recreation for the commenter. We’re talking “apples and oranges”. [By the way: About the comment “You’re right, spending 200 on the wife is stupid. She should be back in the room making herself ready for the man!” — Did anybody else find this to be a bit chauvinistic and sexist?]
” [By the way: About the comment “You’re right, spending 200 on the wife is stupid. She should be back in the room making herself ready for the man!” — Did anybody else find this to be a bit chauvinistic and sexist?]”
No, because I suspect that the original poster is referring to an incident Mr. Dancer has repeatedly told a story about in which his wife was awaiting for him at a hotel on valentines day whilst he was downstairs playing VP (a very good promotion at that) and he got grief from the wife for not “taking the hint”.
Why “de-polarize”. This whole notion is broken and a reflection of the wussification of America.
2+3=5.
Anyone who claims 2+3=7 is a moron. The guy who locks up $200 and spends the money in an extravagant way is a ploppy who loses his money and manages it poorly. Vegas was built on ploppies. This poster is like a religious person going to a convention for atheists to preach. He is not going to be coddled. If he wants to avoid such challenges to his or her beliefs, then he or she might want to keep going to church and steer clear of the atheist convention.
My opinion on this subject is the following: If somebody is not a winning player, then he’s a loser or a break-even player at best. Many people try to fool themselves by ignorning the fact that they’re simply not winning but trying to plug the holes when they’re losing. Tourists fool themselves in a way that they quit playing as soon as they’re ahead , thus making them feel good and they spend the money on shopping, dining, party etc. A tourist’s bankroll could be compared with the “funds system”, described by Mr Bob Dancer. As a local Las Vegas gambler you know that the situation is completely different as if you’re a tourist who has to pay his rent or mortgage back home , along with all the bills flocking in. Plus the hotel bills, the rental car, airfare etc.
I have big respect if a local pro can make a living out of it and controls himself and his financial situation by using different “funds”. If he can handle it, that’s probably the coolest thing I could imagine. Especially reducing the “gambling fund” percentage wise once it’s grown big enough to make sure that you can put that cash into some investment vehicle for the rainy days or the time you’ll be in retirement.
A lot of so-called “professional poker players” try to make a living by simply winning 150-200 dollars a day and then they hit the road. I don’t think this is the right approach as you can’t be sure that it always works and how good is this strategy if you lose 700 on the 5th day and the next day you lose again 400? Would that player then quit again the day that follows with a 150 dollar profit? To summarize: This hit-and-run strategy may work out for a while but it’s definetely not the trick to winning. People that follow this strategy will probably call me stupid as they have done it for years. Not so sure if they don’t have other sources of income to fill their personal “plugs”.
I took Bob’s advise for granted and have a similar system to manage my life and my finances. I think that’s the best way to do it.
From Switzerland
Boris
To agree with Al, yes there is certainly a difference between an occasional gambler and a gambler like Bob who plays for a living. I suspect that Bob understands that, but he has “lived the life” for too long and therefore cannot write about how a recreational gambler thinks.
As compared to Bob’s podcast sidekick “Richard Munchkin” who consistently dumps on recreational gamblers, calling them “ploppies” and telling stories about doing obnoxious things to get them to leave “his” tables, as if he has more of a right to be there. That’s the attitude that I have a real problem with. “Richard” thinks that
everyone that’s not an “AP” is a “ploppy”, and that’s insulting to all of us that play occasionally for low stakes but strive to play correctly and read articles and listen to podcasts on the topic of correct play and strategy.
I am a recreational gambler. Pre-Covid, I’d visit LV from 1 to 6 times a year for 2-3 days each trip. My approach to money management simply must be different than Bob who gambles all-day, every day. To me every trip is a separate experience and basic math (and 30+ years experience) says that to win or lose $1000 on a trip is going to include 5 or 6 standard deviations. If I’m up $1000, could I go on to win $10K? Yes but it would be very very very unlikely given the time constraints of my trips. I know from experience that if I get up a few hundred on the first day of a trip, I’m not likely to get much farther ahead, so I really ought to stop playing or slow down.
All my trips added together, back to the 1980’s, about 100 trips total, are very close to breakeven. That’s a pretty cheap hobby. Most of my effort goes toward making my overall trips cheap or free with comps and coupons and deals. Which I’m hearing is nearly impossible in this initial post-Covid world, so it may well be a year or two before I gamble again. That’s my money management system.
As a general comment, the +EV in VP is dependent on rare hands (a point BD doesn’t stress). For example, a RF typically accounts for roughly 2% of the return. If you don’t hit your fair share of RF’s, odds are your actual results is less than expectations. The RF is a very elusive hand.
Expectations is one thing. Bird in hand is not expectations (a point lost on BD). You can’t pay bills with +EV.
I cannot tell you the number of times I played a marginal +EV promotion or play and I quit the moment I had a huge hit that was many times my $EV. Why did I quit? Because greed is a terrible disease. I made enough.
A lot of these promotions or plays are very stressful and I am not a machine.
General word: In every forum there are people that like to share their opinion with other readers and perhaps gain informations on a particular subject. That’s the great benefit of today’s technology. And then , at times, there are people that seem to make fun of it it provoce and criticize other people’s opinion. This at times make other people feel uncomfortable and unhappy. People not particularly interested in a person’s opinion are free to put their comment as long as they’re not offending other’s opinion and personality. I feel that if someone is not interested in other people’s opinions then why is that person in a forum, criticizing others and showing that he/she knows it all better than the rest, then it’s probably a better idea to avoid that forum.
Over the past 15 years I’ve been continuously following the entire world of videopoker because I like it. It’s not that I make a living out of it, but I like to play it. Mr Bob Dancer shared us his life experience and gave us precious informations about it, and his work deserves big respect from my side.
I thought that this needed to be said as it seems to me that some people in this small community like to make fun of it and make look others not so smart. If I wouldn’t be interested in this topic and what other people are contributing, then I would visit other forums. My English isn’t as good as my mother language, but I hope that the people of concern are getting the message.
From Switzerland
Boris
I was curious how often the approach would be “successful”, using ‘being ahead by $200’ as the definition of “successful”. Of course it’ll depend on how much the recreational gambler is willing to lose and how long he’s willing to play. If we assume he brings $500 to the game, then it turns out he won’t have to wait terribly long to find out whether his wife gets to eat that night. Before 2 hours (1000 hands) of $1 9/6 DDB, he will almost always have either won $200 or lost $500.
Half the time he will lose his entire $500. 45% of the time, he will reach his goal of being at least $200 ahead and stop playing. 5% of the time, he’ll still have money but he’s never been $200 ahead. If he’s willing to keep playing after 2 hours, then by 4 hours he’ll either have gone broke (54% of the time) or been “successful” (46% of the time.
At first glance it might seem surprising that he would be losing $500 more often than reaching his +$200 goal. But some of the times when he reaches that +200 goal he will have won much more than $200. In fact, his average win when he reaches his +$200 goal is about +$540.
Sadly, though, unless he’s willing to lose more than $500 in the effort, it looks like his wife will only get to enjoy those $200 dinners fewer than half the times he plays.
–Dunbar
I used 9/6 DDB for these calcs. If I’d used 9/5 DDB, the 4-hr results would have been 56% ruin and 44% “success”. (An even hungrier wife.)
I tried a similar strategy but never kept exact score during my mission. I only learned that my personal problem was that I would quit once I meet my target amount but when I would lose I would got deeeeeeeeep 🙁 I later learned that the Mr Bob Dancer strategy seemed to me more goal-focused. I started to concentrate on multiplier days and other promotions that seemed to have a halfway decent value to me and then I realized that the points I got in return for my play actually made up for my losses. If you are over 50 and play during the multiplier days and use these points only during the days when you get half off when paying for your points, have you noticed how much value these points actually have even if you use them in a regular restaurant? That is the true value that I started to appreciate, although I actually lost on my videopoker play most of the times until the Royals came in, I apprectiated the points on my card and the service I get in return for my action. Of course people do not think that the dicounted food in the casino is worth using the points and they want it comped, but that doesn’t always work out. ONce you have 1 million points or more on your card that’s when the real value kicks in. You don’t have to worry that you may starve some day as this score lasts for many meals and from then on it’s only a question of whether or not you can finance your future gaming…. 🙂 Good luck.
There are much easier and less risky ways to win decent money playing video poker.
We are all imperfect human beings, just the fact that we read Bob Dancers posts and comment on them signify that we think hard about our strategies, we care, we want to share and learn. I play a hit and run game for every gambling form I dabble in, it’s what works for me. Except for golf, I just play my three times a week money games for the entire 18 holes, I could not imagine what my buddies would do if I left after a hot run before we finished our round. I say just make sure it’s fun, if it stresses you out take some time off. I need to have good days for my morale, so I set strict limits, my mental health is an important factor, many of you may be able to shrug off losing streaks better than I can…
I think this entry brings up a good topic for a GWAE podcast: Playing for income vs. Source of wealth (Investment of previously earned money, etc).
Personally, up to last year I used my edge for income. Primarily to pay for daily life expenses, freeing up income from my main job to increase investments. When the pandemic hit I ended up switching to sitting on my winnings.
I would think that if one is playing a +EV game and has the means to “re-up” your bankroll, that playing for income, including stopping whenever you’ve hit a certain amount, presumably to pay for whatever it is you use those winnings to pay for, then that would still be overall positive.
I think that would make for an interesting discussion.
“I lose more often than I win (although my wins are bigger than my losses, on average.)”
Every single book on card counting in blackjack that I have ever read has said exactly this same thing.
My theory and personal experience goes like this: While you play your regular game there is no way to avoid losing in Videopoker until you hit the big payout. That is, 4 aces with kicker, the little quads with kicker in DDB, and 4 Deuces in Deuces Wild. The latter is more tricky as you need it several times within a session just to avoid heavy losses. The Royal Flush is so rare and hard to get but whenever you get one you’re way ahead.
The trick is to play perfectly in order to keep your bankroll going as long as possible and losing at the slowest pace possible. The more hands you get for your money, the greater your chance that at some point you will get the big payout.
All the other goodies, such as multiplier points , comps, drawing tickets, that’s the extra plus that you need to reduce your losses on the way to the big payout. Sometimes it’s possible to break even after a long session by hitting several medium ranked hands and maybe one bigger hand. Most of the times, however, it won’t be enough. Once you get used to this concept you learn how important a bankroll is and not spending your winnings for a fancy dinner as soon as you get it.
BorisApril 4, 2021
“My theory and personal experience goes like this: While you play your regular game there is no way to avoid losing in Videopoker until you hit the big payout. That is, 4 aces with kicker, the little quads with kicker in DDB, and 4 Deuces in Deuces Wild.”
This may be true for standard VP, but as I mentioned before, there are other and less risky ways to make decent money at video poker.
Hello LC Larry
I remember you mentioned that a days or weeks ago already. I am always interested what you mean by that. Please be a little more specific or send me a private note if you like to my e-mail adress bradtke2222 at g mail. thanks.