It’s been more than a year since Shirley and I parted ways, and this past April I began seeing a lady named Bonnie. That relationship is going very well and we plan to marry this coming May. Prior to our wedding, Bonnie and I have had to arrive at a financial understanding regarding my gambling profession. I’m certain that other couples have had to deal with similar situations.
In financial terms, both Bonnie and I are reasonably comfortable. Although her relatives like me well enough, it scares them to death that she could actually be sharing her estate with a professional gambler who might need her to bail him out from bankruptcy. Although I feel that I’m at the top of my craft and believe that there is essentially a zero chance of me ever losing all of my assets, her relatives don’t understand that. In their mind ‘gambler’ means ‘loser in the long run.’
This is not an unreasonable assumption on their part because it is certainly true for most gamblers. Trying to explain the concept of ‘advantage player’ to someone who is convinced that the casino always wins is something I’ve been unable to do with her family.
Although Bonnie wants to marry me (there’s no accounting for taste, I suppose!), she loves her family and doesn’t want to upset them. So what to do?
We’ve come up with a formula that we think will work — complete with pre-nuptials and other legal documents that we’ve basically decided on but which have not yet been drafted. She and I will each consider our current assets and our incomes going forward to be “separate property” rather than “community property.” We will each put an agreed on amount into the “family operating account” which will be used to pay for our combined living expenses. If the family operating account runs out of money, we have a formula for each of us contributing additional funds from our separate accounts. If there’s money left over in our family operating account when one of us dies or we divorce, we have a formula for that as well. And partly to see how it works and to iron out the kinks, we’ve already started our family operating account and are agreeing, as we go, what gets paid from that account and what doesn’t.
Although we’ve divided our family operating account into a number of categories, gambling results, both plus and minus, are mine alone to absorb. This works fine in theory, but in practice we’ve had a tricky situation to unravel.
As I write this, we’re aboard the Norwegian Epic on an Eastern Caribbean cruise. They have a (usual for them) special that if we pay $250 while on board, we get to use the $250 toward the cost of a future cruise, plus we get $100 onboard credit to spend now. That $100 may be used toward the cost of any gratuities, liquor, excursions, etc. on this cruise. Since Bonnie and I are planning some European cruises next spring, the $250 is a joint expense, coming out of the family operating account.
In the casino, however, they would turn that $100 shipboard credit into $125 in free play. Even playing $1 7-5 Jacks (96.15%) for $125 yields an expected return of $120 — which is considerably better than the guaranteed $100. Bonnie agreed that I could use this $100 credit in the casino.
The problem was that to get this yield some gambling was required, and Bonnie wanted to be sheltered from gambling wins and losses. So I gave her the following two choices:
1. I would give her $50 cash as her share of the $100 onboard credit we received for buying the $250 future-cruise package and I would absorb all of the gambling results, or
2. She could be my full partner in the $125 gambling and get half the final results. Her final expectation would be $60 (instead of the guaranteed $50), but it could be lower or much higher than $50 once these particular 25 hands at $5 each were played.
There were other possible deals I could have offered, but these two options struck me as fair to both sides without getting too complicated.
Bonnie’s gambling budget before she met me was $3 a day, twice a month. Playing $125 through the machines $5 at a time involved quite a bit more risk than she was used to. Since she doesn’t understand the math of video poker, she asked me how much she could lose.
I explained that the guaranteed $50 each was a bonus given to us for signing up for this package. It was conceivable, but extremely unlikely, that I could lose all 25 hands. If that rare event happened, she would receive no bonus but still get her share of the $250 prepaid for our honeymoon cruise. I told her she would get at least $50 back more than half of the time although I didn’t have the tools handy to figure out exactly how often.
She wasn’t sure what to do but finally asked me what I recommended. I told her that I thought her best choice was to take the gamble with me playing video poker, but I reiterated that there was a bit of risk involved. She decided to trust me and take a full share of the gambling.
Readers of this column know that the result of the gambling was essentially irrelevant. Whether the score came out to be $4,000 plus (if I hit a royal), $0 (if I lost on every hand), or anywhere in between, the key decision was whether or not to take the gamble. But Bonnie didn’t know this. As far as she was concerned, if the score ended up more than $100 (so her share would be over $50), I would be her hero. If it ended up less than $100, she would always wonder whether or not I gave her good advice. Over time, Bonnie will probably come to better understand gambling swings.
As I was able to turn the $125 into $145, Bonnie viewed me as her hero (at least for the moment). Money-wise, the fact that I won on this occasion isn’t particularly important. At the same time, however, the fact that Bonnie is extra happy certainly makes my life a little bit better.