In last week’s blog I described a loss rebate promotion at Molly’s, a chain of local 15-machine pubs in Las Vegas. I know many of my readers aren’t Vegas locals. While the specifics of today’s enhancement concern Molly’s, I’m hoping to make the discussion general enough so that it might be useful elsewhere as well.
Assume you take my advice of playing $2 8/5 Double Double Bonus Poker (DDB) until you’ve either lost $20 or have won $160 or more. If you do lose $20 (which will happen most of the time), you collect your $20 rebate and play it off on 25 cent 7/5 Bonus Poker (BP).
When you go to Molly’s, however, you might find a situation not described last week. On your first hand, you are dealt a pair of jacks, hold it, and after the draw it doesn’t improve. This is worth the $10 you spent playing the hand.
But instead of receiving $10, the machine asks if you want to double up. That is, risk the $10 you’ve already earned to receive equal chances of turning this into $20 or $0.
The three questions are: Do you double up? Would your answer change if you had received a full house (worth $80)? Or how about four kings (worth $500)?
Asking more questions before I give you my answers: How about after you’ve lost your initial $20 (which will usually but not always happen) and have received $20 free play, would you use the double up feature then?
I’ll tell how I answer these questions. I’m not positive that I’m correct, but I am putting my money where my mouth is! This is what I’m doing at Molly’s, when I go.
When I’m playing the $2 DDB game, my goal is to reach at least $160 or to lose $20. I know that over time I’m going to reach both of those goals several times — although the number of times I lose $20 will greatly exceed the number of times I reach $160.
If I’m still in the range of not having lost $20 nor having won $160, I’m doubling up every chance I get! If I exceed the $160, I’m no longer doubling up.
So when I receive a $10 “jackpot,” I’m definitely doubling. If I win and it goes up to $20. I’m doubling again. Same with $40. When it’s up to $80, I’m doubling one last time.
This will leave me with $160 (actually $150 because I had to pay a $10 ante to get started), but being $150 ahead is “close enough.” A successful double up from there will put me far over my goal, so it is mostly inefficient.
I will have had to win four 50-50 bets in a row (assuming I “won” $10 on my initial bet), which I’ll only do 1-in-16 times, but this way of gambling is much more efficient than playing this DDB game $10 at a time.
If I received a straight on my initial hand (worth $40), I would have doubled it and then doubled it again if I won the first time. One time in four, I’d reach my goal and quit.
If I received a $500 quad, I’m taking the money and stopping. I will have reached my “win at least $160” goal.
When I wrote the above, I was assuming the stopping point didn’t change whether or not you used the double up feature. I was wrong. A better strategy is to keep doubling until you get a W-2G, assuming you’re a professional and can write them off. If you can’t write them off, keep doubling until you’re just short of a W-2G. That is, double a $500 jackpot. If it wins, double it if you file as a professional gambler and don’t if you don’t.
Now let’s say I’ve lost my $20 on the $2 DDB game and am playing 25 cent BP. I win a hand and am presented with the double up option. Now what do I do?
I don’t double up. My goal is to play 16 hands of BP until I have used up my $20 in free play. Doubling up doesn’t reduce that number of hands I need to play. Doubling up doesn’t require an additional bet. It just gives you a 50-50 gamble on the winnings of a hand already completed.
If you want to double up more than I do, it’s not terrible. After all, it’s a 100% bet. But I spend my time gambling at games returning in excess of 100% (including everything), so betting at a mere 100% doesn’t interest me at all.
Keep in mind, that doubling up again and again greatly increases the chances of you losing today — although the occasional winning sessions will be much larger than if you didn’t double up. This takes a certain type of personality to tolerate. The suggestion to consider doubling up came from Filius Bruce (www.blog.vidpoke.com). I didn’t see the logic of it immediately, but upon reflection, I now believe it’s correct to do so as presented in this blog.
Hey Bob, for this promotion, i like to play 7/5 Bonus at $5 a hand. What do you suggest should be my stopping point?
Tito, it depends on if the machine has a double up feature or not. Does it?
It does, but I’m not interested in using that feature.
The Front Door
Why would professionals stop at a W2G rather than picking a particular $ limit? I wouldn’t think that $1200 would coincidentally be the optimal number on which to stop. Unless, double-ups aren’t allowed once the W2G limit is reached?
New2vp, yes, it’s more complicated than that. In doing the math, we assumed the machine doesn’t let you up double up anymore after hitting the W2G limit. We don’t know the actual limit on the machine, and there’s no cheap way to find out.
Tito, if you only want to play 7/5 Bonus Poker at $5 a hand, your stopping point should be when you are $120 ahead.
I file as an amateur but my itemized deductions before gambling losses are well above the standard deduction. Even though I still have to track winning sessions and losing sessions separately, I’ve found in my experience it’s close to if I was able to net my wins and losses. Would it be to my advantage to still double to the w2g limit?
After all the double feature is at true odds but some slot clubs still count it for points. Also remember the IRS allows netting in one session, so if I started with $600 in the machine, played to my last dollar, and won a $1,200 jackpot with my last bet, that’s a session win of roughly $600. Likewise if I double up 600 100 unique sessions I’d expect 50 losing sessions of losing $600 and 50 sessions winning $600 that’s reported as a $1,200 w2g win.
Addy, it really depends on your very specific tax situation, how much your winning and losing sessions for the year already are, how much you expect either of them to grow, and your other income (which determines your marginal tax rate). Even your health insurance may matter (the marginal tax rate changes depending on if you buy your health insurance through ACA marketplaces or not). The math for the interaction of loss rebates and taxes is very complex, and I can’t claim I understand all of it. I understand Bob Dancer’s advice to double-up-until-just-short-of-W2G was for people who want to minimize the number of W2Gs.
For some general ideas, I recommend reading my article on how video poker interacts with taxes at . I am also working on an article on how I calculated the loss rebate stopping points for the Molly’s loss rebate, which I will post on .
But basically, one needs to write complex code in order to come up with the right answer for specific tax situations. Even simpler advantage gambling situations interact with tax situations in a very complex way.
Looks like the comment system removed the links in my last post. You can find the tax article under the title “Taxes changed everything” in my blog that Bob Dancer linked to. I will post the loss rebate article in same blog, probabaly later this month.
Isn’t it a little too much of discussion about a 20 dollar promotion? How fast is somebody down 20 dollars while playing 2 dollar denom on a 5 coin-game? Usually the dance is over within the first 2 minutes, if you happen to catch up trips or whatever on your first hand….
From Switzerland
Boris
Boris:
Yes, at $2 denom ($10 per hand), you lose $20 sometimes in two hands.
I’ve played it about 10 times so far. My usual net result is a small loss — where I don’t recoup my full $20 with the 25 cent $20 in free play. I have not yet hit a quad on $2 denom — which range from $500 to $4,000 — or higher. Eventually I will. My expected win of $15 or so per hand trip has a significant variance — but as you mention, you usually lose. And as I have mentioned, I’m not going more than one mile out of my way to play this promo.
Also, at the Molly’s I go to, some of the machines do not have the double up feature activated. During the original two articles, I gave Filius Bruce’s estimates of stopping points with and without doubling up being activated.
is it possible to play the Molly’s promotion several times within a short period of time? Could one drive from one location to the next one and play it? Anybody’s tried it out? I will be there soon and consider trying out this promotion.
And thanks.
From Switzerland
Boris
Boris:
Mostly they have the same card — and the card keeps track if you’ve played it on a particular day. One location (I haven’t been there) is standalone with its own card — so maybe. But these places are not really close to each other. I would not drive five miles to play the promo — and these places are more than five miles apart from each other.
Bob
Yes, you can play the 20 for 20 promotion at multiple locations on the same day. I’ve done this every week.
thanks for that info, TITO. in this case it’s just a little driving around but that’s ok considering the fact that it’s only a question of time until you get dealt 4 aces and that would pay you off big time for your effort. I will also try it out but of course with my limited knowledge of the city I probably can’t find all good locations so easily.
From Switzerland
Boris