Sam’s Town offered a nice low-roller promotion in September that they are extending through October. On Sundays, earning 1,750 points entitles you to $20 in Rebel gas cards. This is a 1.1% add-on to whatever multiplier you are normally entitled to if you play less-than-100% games. It’s a 0.55% add-on if you play their 100% games. One nice plus is that Sunday is one of the days when you can pick up free play — should you be entitled to it for past play. You can play lesser amounts to earn lesser amounts of gas cards, but why would you? Once you’re there, this is a good promotion worth playing to the max.
I learned about this promotion in late August when I read my Sam’s Town monthly mailer. I shared the information with a buddy, “Ken,” who was looking for another casino to frequent since the changes at Hard Rock make that casino unplayable for him. “You’ve got to play some before they start sending you a mailer, and you’re willing to play more than $1,750 at a time, so you might as well play when they’re giving you $20 to show up and play that much.” I knew Ken was already Emerald from his play at Gold Coast, so he’d be earning 0.30% in cash back/free play in addition to the gas cards.
I know $20 in gas cards doesn’t have all the same options as $20 in cash, but for those of us who pay for our own gas, it’s close enough.
Ken agreed back in August that this sounded like a good plan for him and he thanked me for the information. We didn’t discuss it again for almost a month. On Saturday, September 24, I asked him what time he was going to Sam’s Town the next day. I was thinking maybe we could hook up for lunch.
“I’m probably not going,” he told me. “It’s not a good play for me.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I’ve played it three weeks in a row and gotten my $60 in gas cards. And I’m stuck $400. That strikes me as a lousy trade off.”
“What game were you playing?”
“I was playing the dollar 9/6 Jacks or Better progressive at the bar outside of the sports book. Two of the weeks the progressive was around $4,300 so I was taking slightly the worst of it before the gas cards, including the cash back. One week it was at $5800, so I had a big theoretical advantage. But I didn’t hit the royal and I lost, so it doesn’t matter what my theoretical advantage was.”
Ken’s choice of games was reasonable. There are some quarter games at Sam’s Town that return more percentagewise, but they take longer to get your play done. If he was planning on playing 5,000 or more points (in order to get more than the minimum mailer), he might have been playing the best game. The $5 8/5 Bonus progressive machine wasn’t high enough in September to make that an intelligent option.
The $400 Ken lost was chicken-feed. He has considerable assets and plays a lot and frequently has wins and losses greatly exceeding $400. He also knows that video poker is a long term affair and that most days he’s going to lose. When he hits the royal, it makes up for a lot of those small losses.
Except he’s been on a losing streak. Normally he’s ahead for the year by the time September comes, but not this year. Every loss hurts more than it used to, and the wins don’t bring him as much pleasure as they used to because he’s still behind. Ken is wallowing in self pity.
This losing streak has Ken making some poor choices — and over-reacting to short term losses. He’s had enough classes that he knows better, but when he’s losing it seems like much of his knowledge goes right out the window.
There’s nothing I can say to him that would be effective right now. He’s heard my “today’s score doesn’t matter” speech several dozen times. Repeating it is more likely to tick him off than to enlighten him.
Eventually Ken’s score will turn positive. He’s still (mostly) playing good games at the right times (i.e. on multiple point days or playing enough to get mailers or to have a good chance in drawings.) He still has considerable skill in playing the hands correctly. Losing streaks don’t last forever, and sooner or later he’ll starting getting extra royals and he’ll be positive again. Ken may not believe it at this moment, but it almost always happens this way. (It doesn’t have to. There is a very small chance that Ken’s losing streak will go on forever. But the stakes he plays are so small relative to his total wealth, the chance of him going broke due to a prolonged losing streak is basically infinitesimal.)
But until he starts winning again, he has to continue to make good choices — which includes picking up “free money” when the casinos offer it. It’s this free money that will help pull him out of the hole. If he stops doing this because of silly overreaction to short term losses, his score will remain negative longer than it needs to.
His $400 loss over three short plays is not a good predictor to what is going to happen next time. The best predictor is that he will have “average results” based on the game itself (9/6 Jacks with a 4300 royal returns 99.69% — but who knows what the royal will be next Sunday when he shows up?) and the slot club (0.30% for Emerald, 0.20% for Sapphire, 0.10% for Ruby). Add in future mailers (probably in the range of 0.1% to 0.2% — hard to know for sure) plus drawing equity if he wants to show up for them (again this is hard to know for sure — but probably in the 0.2% range, although it’s zero if he doesn’t show up for the drawings.) We can’t know whether that predictor will end up being high or low until after the play. And after we know whether or not our name was called in the drawing — if we show up. But he’s not an underdog at all. Including everything, he’s a slight favorite even without the gas cards. But we can accurately predict that he’s giving up $20 in gas cards if he doesn’t play each Sunday. And his future mailers will likely be lower as well if he chooses to play less because he’s “running bad.”
When you’re losing, the best cure is to go back to basics. Play when you have the advantage and practice until you can play very close to perfectly. Play within your (reduced) bankroll. Intelligent gambling requires you to take smart risks. Refusing to do this because you lost the last time you made this particular intelligent bet isn’t the right way to go.
Over the same three weeks Ken lost $400, my scores on the same bank of machines as he was playing were -50, +120, and +10, plus $30 in cash back, plus $60 in gas cards. There might have been a small skill difference between us (probably worth a couple of dollars at most of EV), but the primary explanation for him being down and me being up was almost entirely luck — and this particular “three session” span to look at was chosen arbitrarily after the fact. He happened to run slightly bad during those three sessions and I happened to run slightly good. Over many sessions over the course of a year or more, both of us will likely end up with reasonably close-to-average results. We could have found many other three session spans where he did better than me. Sometimes by a little. Sometimes by a lot.