More than a decade before I started playing video poker, I was doing my best to make it as a backgammon player. In the 1980s, I regularly played at the Cavendish West, located in West Hollywood, California, right where the Sunset Strip met Beverly Hills.
I mostly played in a $5 chouette, which is a form of the game played by more than two players. Usually this game consisted of somewhere between three and eight players at any one time, often with the game lasting from before 5 p.m. until the place closed at 2 a.m. — with some players remaining for the entire time and others rotating in and out. At these stakes, wins and losses in excess of $1,000 in a night were possible. Not extremely likely. But not that rare either.
There were also bigger games at the club. And there were also some very strong professional players who played in them. I was probably appropriately classified as a strong intermediate player. I was a favorite in the game I was in, but would have been an underdog in the bigger game.
Occasionally one of the strong players from the big game would come down and play the $5 chouette. One player, I’ll call him Jim, was very strong. His very pretty fiance watched the game as he played, and since we enjoyed having her around, we welcomed his action. He also was a net donator in our game.
Although Jim was a favorite in the bigger game, he was an underdog in our game. Why? Because he didn’t take the game, or us, seriously. He regularly “gambled it up,” making plays and bets he wouldn’t make in the bigger game against his peers. He would sneer at his competition because many players in the $5 chouette made plays that would be considered hopeless in the bigger game. (If Jim actually crushed our game, which he was very capable of doing, his sneering would likely have been sufficient excuse for the group to forbid him from playing with us. But he lost. So his bad manners were tolerated.) He regularly made fast, not-well-thought-out moves that ended up costing him.
In backgammon, proper action concerning the doubling cube is as important as checker play. If Jim and I are playing, and I have an advantage of less than 3-1, under most conditions Jim should accept a double I offer him. (No need to go into that math here.) But if I waited until I was 4-1 or 5-1 before doubling Jim, he would still gobble it up immediately because he didn’t respect his opposition. In most positions, even though he was better than me, he was not enough better than me to make up for taking such bad cubes. In his regular game, he wouldn’t make these decisions.
Now let’s switch to video poker. I’ve seen dollar players sometimes play for quarters just to goof around. When you’re used to playing for dollars, quarters seem like “play money.” With real play money, of course, nothing you do can hurt you. So they aren’t as selective in their choice of games. Or they have an extra couple of shots of whiskey because, after all, quarters don’t matter.
But doing poorly at quarters can add up to a score that can hurt a dollar player’s bankroll. Maybe not all at once, but eventually.
My suggestion is that if you can’t properly concentrate, don’t play.
I play for higher stakes when I can find good games. At one casino I play dollar single line games. These stakes are boring for me. (Why I play this particular game at this particular casino is a discussion that I’ll address some other day — maybe.) I believe I am still playing accurately, but I find I can’t concentrate for more than a couple of hours at a time. Playing the same game somewhere else for $25 instead of $1, I can concentrate for quite a long time. But not for the lower stakes.
So how do I deal with this lack of ability to maintain concentration? I play shorter sessions there. If it means miniscule or nonexistent mailers, so be it. Even though the results of playing this small create only a minor amount of “noise” on my annual score sheet compared to my results when I play the same game 25 times as large, I’m unwilling to just throw my money away in a casino. So even for the “boring” low stakes game, I still concentrate and play the best that I can.