Author: Bob Dancer

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What’s Your Take?

Bonnie and I were recently returning from a cruise and were waiting in the Fort Lauderdale airport for our flight home. We were sitting next to some Vegas friends who were on the same cruise — a man and his wife, their 13-year-old son and their 11-year-old daughter.

I was absorbed in a book and wasn’t following what was going on, but all of a sudden, the girl, Kelly, asked me if I wanted her to get me a free drink from a vending machine? There were sodas, water, and a few types of energy drinks available. Maybe other choices as well. It was across the room and I didn’t look closely at it.

“And just how are you going to get me a free drink?” I asked. “They are usually sold at a premium in an airport and not given away.”

“Daddy found this code on the Internet. You enter the code into the vending machine, and it thinks you’re an employee. You then get whatever you want.”

“Have you tried it?” I asked.

“Well, we tried it and got to the last step and then we chickened out. I’m not a thief and couldn’t bring myself to do it for me. But to give to somebody else, that’s different. And I really want to see if it works. So, what do you want?”

“I want to pass on this,” I replied. 

Kelly then asked Bonnie, who didn’t really understand what Kelly was suggesting, so she looked at me for guidance. I told her it looked like a scam that may or may not work. But if it does work, it’s clearly stealing from the vending machine company. When I phrased it that way, Bonnie wanted no part of it either. Kelly got a similar response from both her parents.

Since none of the adults wanted to do this, Kelly concluded that it wasn’t the right thing to do — so she let it go. Had she taken the free drink, I would hope one of her parents would instruct her otherwise. For me to do so would be hypocritical, as I’ve done far worse. Some of those instances readers of my columns have heard about. Some they haven’t.

This is something I might have said yes to 25 years ago. I was new in Vegas and desperately trying to make it. Three dollars saved is three dollars earned.

Even then, however, I wouldn’t have done it in front of five people who knew me and looked up to me. It would have been something I did by myself or with at most one accomplice.

This time there was a dome on the ceiling housing a security camera — which may or may not be active. They didn’t have those 25 years ago. You could just look around and see whether anybody was watching. Not anymore. Although it is doubtful the security system was there to protect against this kind of scam, you never know. The chance of being caught definitely enters into the equation when you’re considering crossing a line.

Would you have taken the free soda?

In casinos, there are numerous situations not so different from this one. When they unexpectedly arise, you need to make a decision. Those with a strong moral compass have no trouble at all with these decisions. The same is true for those with no moral compass at all, although they make the opposite decisions from the ones in the previous category. Where it presents problems are for those of us who look at each situation as a new problem to consider.

I’ve heard it said that the difference between an advantage player (which I consider myself to be) and a cheat (which I do not consider myself to be) is that the advantage player always does things in a casino legally. I wonder. Temptations arise and we make decisions. Even on the decisions we can justify to ourselves, others may decide we have “crossed the line.”

I chatted about this article a bit with a friend and he listed a couple of cases that would be taboo for him that I thought would have been acceptable for me. And vice versa. He was amazed that I considered something off limits.

Dan Ariely is a professor at Duke University and the author of many books and articles including “Ask Ariely,” an advice column in The Wall Street Journal. One thing I’ve learned from reading Dr. Ariely’s works is that the decision we make now (when temptation is far away and just a theoretical concept) can be different than what we decide in the heat of the moment. Although Ariely’s conclusions are often about sexual matters, I believe they also apply to financial matters. Getting “more money” is one of the major things that inspire those who gamble — whether it’s gambling with or without the advantage. 

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Which Game Should I Play?

Bonnie and I were attending a square dance convention where we had to stay for two nights. Close to the dancing venue was a Harrah’s Casino. Having Seven Stars status within the Caesars Entertainment system gets me a room “for free,” but a certain amount of play is expected. I don’t have to play every time I stay at one of these casino/hotels, but a certain percentage of time I do. And it’s a guess as to what that percentage is.

I decided to give them a minimum amount of play, which I arbitrarily defined to be 1,000 Reward Credits a day.

For their “regular” video poker, which takes $10 to earn a Reward Credit (meaning I would need to play $10,000 coin-in daily to earn the minimum I decided upon), the loosest game I found was 9/5 Jacks or Better, returning 98.45%.

For their “premium” video poker, which takes $25 to earn one Reward Credit (meaning I would need to play $25,000 coin-in for the same benefits), the loosest game I found was 9/6 Jacks or Better, returning 99.54%. 

For both games, they had $1 and $2, Triple Play and Five Play. Playing this much for these stakes is acceptable to me.

So, the primary choices are:

  1. Play $25,000 daily at 9/6 Jacks?
  2. Play $10,000 daily at 9/5 Jacks?
  3. Avoid the problem by paying retail at another hotel where no play is expected?

They had a full array of games in each category, so if you’re a Double Double Bonus person, or a Deuces Wild player, or perhaps some other particular game satisfies your itch, you could find a tighter version to play at $10 per Reward Credit or a looser version to play for $25 per Reward Credit. The same technique I describe below may be used for these games as well, but since they all return less than the Jacks or Better games at this casino, I’m personally not interested.

First the math: For 9/6 Jacks, $25,000 * (1-99.54%) = $115 daily expected loss. For 9/5 Jacks, $10,000 * (1-98.45%) = $155 daily loss. The other hotel, $80 + tax + $15 daily resort fee, but you get a free continental breakfast.

For me, the other hotel is not a good option. The dollars came out to be similar, but I receive extra benefits at Harrah’s. Access to the Diamond Lounge, which offers snacks and free drinks, easily offsets most free continental breakfasts. For every Reward Credit you earn, you also earn a Tier Credit, which go towards your tier level One thousand Reward Credits in a day earns you a bonus of another 1,000 Tier Credits.  Consequently, for each day I earn 1,000 Tier Credits, I reduce my annual Tier Credit requirement to stay at Seven Stars by 2,000. (It takes 150,000 Tier Credits annually to remain Seven Stars and I’ve made the decision that it’s worth getting.)

So, between the two games, the looser game is the better choice, even though it requires 150% more coin-in to earn the same number of Reward Credits. This is a conclusion that was for these particular games only. For specific games at other casinos, the “lesser” game may well turn out to be less expensive.

Another consideration is how much time it takes to play. Clearly it takes longer to play $25,000 than $10,000. If I were a single-line quarter player, that would be a showstopper. I could play $10,000 per day for quarters if I basically played all day, not but $25,000. (But even then, I wasn’t in town to gamble but to participate in several hours a day of a square dance convention. Playing quarters was simply not an option.) But someone willing to play, say, $2 Triple Play is going to be finished in less than an hour, so that wasn’t a consideration for me this time.

Another consideration is the variance. Even though playing $25,000 at the better game has a lower expected loss than $10,000 coin-in at the lesser game, if things go badly, you can lose a lot more playing $25,000 than you can $10,000. 

Another consideration is the theoretical (i.e., “theoretical” is the percentage of coin-in the casino expects to win from all play on a particular machine or game). Very possibly, you’ll receive better offers down the road playing $10,000 at a 98.45% game than $25,000 at a 99.54% game. Will those offers be $90 better? Who knows for sure? 

Also, it depends on whether you’re planning on coming back or not. If you regularly visit a casino, the size of your offers is important. For Bonnie and me at this particular casino, probably not so much. One reason we attend this location is Bonnie’s daughter lives somewhat close to here and that’s an attraction. But Bonnie’s daughter is moving in a few months, so it’s very possible we will not be coming back to this casino again. Building up offers here, then, isn’t that useful. Where Bonnie’s daughter lives doesn’t matter to my readers, but adding personal considerations into a decision makes a lot of sense.

Still, Caesars has local offers and national offers. Even if we won’t be back to this casino, we will likely remain in the Caesars system for several years and we don’t want to leave dirty footprints behind us.

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How Good Am I Today Compared to the Way I Was in 2001?

In 2001, I had my only year ever where my video poker net score exceeded $1 million. Much of that was taking advantage of a few casinos whose managers were arithmetically challenged, combined with being over-royaled on big denomination machines.

In 2019, I have relatively few places that welcome my action. Casinos are faster at pulling the trigger, with respect to kicking players out, than they used to be and, if you’ve been a winning player long enough, being booted from casinos is simply a fact of life. I can still find games where I have the edge, but not nearly as big of an edge as before or as many places to play.

So far, I’ve been talking about my video poker opportunities being less than they were before. But how about my skill level? How does that compare?

On the plus side, experience teaches you many things. Once you’ve learned several games at the professional level, learning new ones is much easier. Plus, the tools to study video poker are much superior today than they were earlier.

On the minus side, I am 72 years old now. I can still memorize things, but it’s harder to memorize than it was before and things don’t stay memorized as easily today. If I haven’t played a game recently, I’ll have to go and relearn it. From everything I’ve learned, this mental deterioration is a progressive “disease” and however bad it is now, it will be worse when I’m 82 and worse yet when I’m 92.

A big factor in my skill level is my hunger to succeed. In years past I scouted much more than I do today. I was more willing to “drop everything” and travel out of state if I heard about a great play. I was able and willing to play 12 or more hours straight for the right promotion. I’m neither as able nor as willing to do that today.

My hunger previously was fueled by the fear of financial failure. Gambling was my main source of income. Even though I tend to be thriftier than many others, I do have some things I willingly spend money on.

Disregarding for now doomsday scenarios where the entire world economy collapses and wipes us all out, I have no fear of financial failure. Bonnie and I have accumulated enough, our life expectancies are short enough, and we have insurance to cover many of the bad financial things that could happen. And I play for stakes low enough that my bankroll isn’t threatened. So, I don’t need to worry.

Assume there were some written tests on “How do you play these hands?” for a large variety of games — some I’ve studied, some I haven’t. It’s possible I would have done better in 2001 because I could play more games at the 99.9%+ accuracy level then than I do now. It’s possible I would do better now because I’ve been exposed to more games and can play more games at the 99% accuracy level now than I did then. (Especially if you include games like Ultimate X or Quick Quads which weren’t around in 2001.)

Although many of my technical skills have decreased, I’m probably better today at figuring out how slot clubs and promotions work than I was then. Back in 2001, more of the value of video poker was in the game itself (e.g. 99.54% for 9/6 Jacks or Better) and in the slot club. Free play mailers were not as prevalent. Promotions were often all gravy on top of games that were already positive.

Today, much more of the return of the game is in promotions and mailers, and the value of the total package of benefits is much lower than it used to be. This means you need to be better at analyzing these things — or you’ll end up playing a game where you do not actually have the advantage. Playing such games is of no interest to me whatsoever. So, by necessity, I’ve gotten better at this evaluation.

It’s an educated guess as to the precise number, but I’ve played 20 million or more base games since 2001. (By “base game,” I mean counting a Fifty Play deal as one hand, not fifty.) Fortunately, boredom hasn’t set in yet. A wild variety of scenarios have happened, and I have learned from this experience.

Bottom line: I don’t know exactly whether I’m a better player or not than I was in 2001. If I had to bet on it, I’d say the younger me was stronger. The benefits of youth in this case outweigh the benefits of experience. But it’s a close call.

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Reasonably Ready

A little more than two years ago, I wrote an article called “You’re Not Ready Yet” which may be found here. The article described “Joe,” a player who wished to hire me as a mentor.

In the article, I told him that he didn’t have enough experience yet. He should go and study the Winner’s Guide for two separate games and master them at the advanced level. If he did that, and gained considerable experience in the casino, I would happily consider entering into a mentoring relationship with him.

But until then, I believed Joe was in love with the idea of being a gambler without going through the effort of actually becoming good at it. My best guess at the time was that Joe wouldn’t go through the necessary work to “qualify.”

Joe is someone who periodically emails a question suitable for the Gambling with an Edge podcast, so we’ve been in touch. About a month ago, I asked him how his gambling career progressed after that article. Here is his response, slightly edited for his anonymity:

I took your advice and studied the Video Poker Winners Guides and practiced on Video Poker for Winners for jacks or better and also NSU deuces wild. I probably spent at least 100 hours each doing both of these. I was able to play about 600-700 hands per hour at the “advanced” level with very few errors. By playing video poker in 2017 at a Caesars property, I achieved 7-star status.

Since I got 7-star status, I had been receiving lots of comps (at both Caesars and non-Caesars casinos). The non-Caesars casinos think that I am a “gambler” based on my 7-star status, so they tend to extend me comps just to get me there to try them out. I might have been able to take advantage of even more comps if I had not gotten injured on military duty – that slowed me down a little.

Some of the comps that I have gotten include: free flights to casino locations; free hotel stays; free food; free shows; free box seats at sporting events – football and baseball (basketball and hockey have been offered but not accepted yet); free tours; cruises on various cruise lines where I only have to pay for port fees and government taxes; and of course free bets, match plays, and free slot play.

Since my 7-star was valid through January 2019, I decided that I wouldn’t re-establish my 7-star until sometime in 2019 (in order to extend it through January 2021). I have not re-established my 7-star status since I have something else in my life that keeps me very busy, and I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the benefits. Since I don’t live in Las Vegas or even anywhere near a casino, when I do go to a casino, I tend to play blackjack (when I can get away with it). I do NOT play blackjack at the same places that I play video poker.

Consequently, I would definitely have to restudy, and re-practice with the software to get back to “advanced” level whereas blackjack is kind of second nature since I have been doing that for almost 10 years.

When I get closer to retiring from what it is that I am doing now (probably in about two more years), I plan to move to Vegas. Besides the opportunities to use the 7-star and other gambling related benefits, I am a veteran and there are a lot of entertainment related benefits given to military members.

When I do move to Vegas, I plan to restudy and re-practice the video poker so that I can get mentoring from you.

Joe has progressed considerably further than I would have predicted. Good for him! There are dues to be paid and he has shown the willingness and ability to pay them! My prediction that he wouldn’t do this wasn’t based on him individually, but rather that a pretty low percentage of people in his position would have put in the work he did.

Whether or not we actually enter into a mentoring relationship down the road remains to be seen. But he has done what it takes to “qualify” and he will definitely get more bang for his buck now than he would have earlier when he didn’t have the knowledge or experience to put the information I can share with him to good use.

Way to go, Joe!

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Counting it Once or Twice

In June, the South Point is having a “Half Price Gas & Goods” promotion. This is a promotion that, with slight variations, is run there one month a year.

The way it works is that you play enough to earn $25 in cash or free play, namely $8,334 of coin-in because the cash or free play is redeemed at a rate of 0.30%, and redeem those points for a $50 Chevron or Walmart gift card. The points must be earned in June and redeemed before July 4.

This is not a “you keep your points” promotion. You must give up your points to get the card. Each person is limited to 10 gift cards, in any mix between Chevron and Walmart, for the month. If you consider these cards as good as cash, this is a form of double points for the first $83,340 you play in June. Since most people play less than that, it basically means double points all month.

To wallow in this a bit more, let’s assume you decide to play NSU Deuces Wild for this promotion. This is a game that returns 99.728% with perfect play, but to make the math easier, we’ll call it 99.70%. Virtually nobody plays perfectly, and calling it worth 99.70% makes it a dead-even game with the 0.30% slot club.

Playing to get the maximum, you play $83,340 and receive $500 worth of gift cards. With normal luck, you’re going to lose $250 playing that much. We’ve all been around enough to know that it’s very unlikely that we’ll lose exactly $250 on the play, but it’s the best estimate we have before we actually sit down and play.

On your records (you DO keep records, don’t you?), recording the actual loss is appropriate. Most players do NOT record the $500 worth of gift cards as a “win.”

So, are you scheduled to lose $250 (which is the average cash loss you can expect) or make $250 (because you received $500 in gift cards that only cost you $250)?

There is no unique answer to this question, just like there is no unique way to keep records.

As for me, my records will not reflect the gift cards as a win, so I will likely lose on the play. That said, I consider it a play worth $250 and the gift cards are the major reason I’ll be playing. (I also get a small monthly mailer, and playing $83,340 in a month will slightly increase the mailer.)

Once I have the cards, I’ll treat them as “regular Walmart money.” We go there periodically, and so the cards will be used. I do not see the cards as “free money” to be splurged, any more than the money received from a royal flush is immediately spendable. You know the swings go up and down, so you need to keep a bankroll “buffer.”

Part of my buffer is gift cards. Spending gift cards instead of cash allows my cash to last longer.

Some people keep “bankroll money” and “regular money” in two distinctly different categories. I don’t do that. It’s all in one pot. And gift cards are in that pot too.

A Walmart gift card isn’t really as good as cash — because I can spend cash at more places than I can spend Walmart gift cards. But it’s “close enough.” I’ll be glad to get them.

(In actual fact, this past weekend the $2 9/5 Double Double Bonus game with three progressives, got up to $22,500 before it was hit. I got on it at about the $15,000 level, where the two lesser progressives also chipped in to make it a lucrative play. Although I collected few W2Gs along the way, somebody else hit the big one. The $1,000 worth of gift cards cost me considerably more than $1,000.

(Still, if I found the progressive in a similar state again, I would jump right on it again. It was a far higher EV than other games I could play, albeit one with a higher variance.)

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I Can’t Help

I keep strange hours. Sometimes I’m up all night. Sometimes I’m up all day. Overall, I get my sleep, but nobody knows at any given time of day whether I’ll be awake or not.

At about 2 a.m. on a recent night, I was writing an article when I received a text message from a friend, George. The message showed two jackpots. One was for deuces with an ace kicker for $3,400 on a $1 13-4-3-3 Deuces Bonus game with two progressives, and the second was for the royal itself — $8,000. By looking at the numbers for the screen shots, they must have hit almost back to back.

I responded with “Congratulations,” but didn’t say more. This is not a friend who sends me pictures of every W2G he gets, and I don’t want to turn him into one.

As soon as I sent off the congrats, he texted “Can we talk?” I didn’t know what it was about, but I called him right away.

It turned out that he hit the aces jackpot and his sometimes-partner, Cliff, hit the royal. He said this time they were partners on all of the scores.

Cliff, it turns out, is a Canadian citizen in the United States on a permanent work visa. He has a temporary driver’s license, which gets renewed one year at a time, because he is not a United States citizen.

The floor person noticed the temporary license and asked about it. When she found that Cliff was a Canadian citizen, she said the casino was required to withhold 30% of the W2G — $2,400. Cliff has previously earned hundreds of W2Gs and this is only the second time money has been withheld.

When the money is withheld, it is sent to the appropriate taxation department in Canada. To retrieve any or all of it, Cliff would need to file a Canadian tax return. Right now, he only files United States returns.

The slot supervisor showed up and told Cliff that the 30% would be withheld, period. It would be withheld temporarily if Cliff said he could bring in a United States passport or a non-temporary driver’s license. If Cliff didn’t think he could produce one of those in the very near future, the money would be sent to Canada.

So, George asked my advice as to what to do.

I told him that my read was that the casino was acting appropriately. That’s the law. The $2,400 they were withholding wasn’t doing the casino any good because they had to forward it to Canada, but refusing to do it could get them into trouble if it was discovered.

I suggested that Cliff’s options were to become a United States citizen (which I understand is his intention, but it is sometimes a lengthy process), accept that losing 30% of jackpots occasionally was just an expense of doing business, or, perhaps, find another way to earn money.

I had no advice about filing a Canadian tax return. I don’t know the rules and can’t speak to the advantages and disadvantages of going that route.

Although I’ve met Cliff and like him, George is my friend. I suggested that if George and Cliff are going to continue to be occasional progressive-chasing partners who share some or all of jackpots, then this potential of 30% being withheld should be explicitly discussed. Right now, George and Cliff are sharing that 30% “penalty.” It probably hadn’t been discussed because it hadn’t happened recently, but now that it’s out in the open, it needs to be discussed.

I don’t particularly care how they resolve it. It could be that Cliff is the dominant partner and George is lucky to be allowed to tag along. In that case, sharing in the 30% is probably correct. If Cliff is the more knowledgeable partner, a different arrangement would be appropriate.

There are privileges that are associated with being a U. S. citizen. This particular one has been agreed to by treaty and is not likely to be changed in the near future. The fact that this particular one affects some of my gambling friends is unfortunate, but that’s the law and we all must live with it.

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A Look at In the Game Until the End: Winning in Ace-Point Endgames by Robert Wachtel

From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, I played backgammon regularly at the Cavendish West Club in greater Los Angeles. Through much of that period, a man named Bob Wachtel also frequented the club.

I got to be a strong intermediate backgammon player. I learned to stay out of the same games that Wachtel played in because he was a considerably stronger player than I was.

He still is. He’s top ten in the world, according to some rankings. I haven’t played competitively since 1993 and wasn’t all that great then.

While we didn’t compete against each other, we had many friendly conversations about any number of things. He was one of the “good guys” I remembered from the Cavendish.

I dropped out of backgammon in 1993 when I moved to Las Vegas. I wasn’t able to rise to the expert level in Los Angeles and the Las Vegas Backgammon Club had members reputed to be every bit as strong as those in L.A. One player who played in Vegas that was stronger than me was Richard Munchkin, whose brother actually roomed with Wachtel for a while in the mid-80s. I wanted to support myself gambling, and playing against superior players was not the key to success. (That’s equivalent to gambling at video poker when the house has the edge.)

While I was fluent in the backgammon literature prior to 1993, the only books I’ve read on the subject since then have been to prepare for Gambling with an Edge interviews. This got me to read books by Bill Robertie, Kent Goulding, Jake Jacobs, and Kit Wolsey, all very knowledgeable players and writers.

I can now add Robert Wachtel to that list, although he’s still “Bob” to me.

I recently came across a reference to his 2000 volume, In the Game Until the End: Winning in Ace-Point Endgames. I emailed his publisher, Bill Robertie, for contact information and we hooked up. Wachtel remembered me, of course.

We chatted on the phone. I picked up some new information about a few players I hadn’t seen for 30 or more years. He agreed to send me some of what he’s written and will be a guest on the show, possibly several times, in the near future.

An ace-point game in backgammon is where you are behind, usually own the doubling cube, and have two or more checkers on your opponent’s ace point. Your opponent must bear off his checkers past your checkers.

These are not positions where your equity is very high, but they can be won. To win, your opponent must leave one or more shots, you must hit one or more of them, and you must then win from there. This parlay takes some doing, but when you find yourself in one of these positions, this parlay is your only chance. So, you need to know how to pull it off.

The book starts with ace-point games at their best. You have a full-prime (e.g. twelve checkers, two each on six consecutive spots), two checkers behind the prime so you are in no danger of needing to break the prime immediately, one remaining checker on the ace point, and your opponent with between two and five checkers left. Most ace-point games are actually worse than this, but it’s still useful to start with these given positions as a benchmark.

Your choice in each case is whether you remain on the ace point or run. If all of your checkers are out of your opponent’s home court (which consists of six spaces), you will lose a gammon — which is a double loss. Should one or more of your checkers remain in the home court or on the bar at the game’s end, you will lose a backgammon — which is a triple loss. The only way to lose a single game (for a single loss) is to hit one of your opponent’s men. The way these positions are set up, you are too far back to get off the gammon by running.

Since you are assumed to own the doubling cube at a value of 2, a gammon will cost you 4 points. If remaining costs you 3.5 points on average, clearly it’s right to stay. Conversely, if sticking around costs you 4.5 points on average, you should run.

The problems are discussed recursively. That is, the simplest positions are analyzed, and a value is calculated (such as -3.5 or -4.5, to use the examples in the previous paragraph). If this position is reached on one or more branches from a more complex starting position, the value is not recalculated, because we already know what it is.

One of the positions studied at length is the Coup Classique, where your opponent’s three remaining checkers are all on his two point and you have one checker on his ace point. If he rolls 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, or 6-1 (which happens 10 out of 36 rolls), he will leave a double blot, meaning if you roll an ace or a deuce (which happens 20 times out of 36 rolls) you will hit at least one of his checkers. If you can hit one checker, you almost always can hit the second one as well. If you can close your board with both of these men on the bar, you have real winning chances.

Were I still someone who played backgammon for money, I would memorize the results of this analysis — and would also memorize the techniques Wachtel used to analyze these positions. These positions happen often enough that strong players should know these things.

When I was a player, the only way to know these things for sure was through playing them over and over again against yourself or other players — and keeping track of what the results were. This is often an expensive way to obtain knowledge because there was often betting on what was the correct play.

There is one position in the book that a famous Australian player would play either side against any player in the world for as much as they wanted. This meant the position was roughly even, but the position required a lot of skill to play correctly. He had studied the position more than anybody else and made lots of money playing this proposition.

If you are someone who plays backgammon for money, you should strongly consider purchasing Wachtel’s book. It has information you need to know. The book is published by the Gammon Press.

You might want to check out his tribute to Paul Magriel, one of backgammon’s shining lights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsjCQxvtB8&feature=youtu.be There are dozens of pictures of players from the 70s and later. I recognized all of them and it was a pleasant stroll down memory lane.

In addition to said stroll, it was also an authoritative recap of the history of backgammon in New York and elsewhere in these years. The last several pictures show Magriel’s deterioration as he approached death. I saw Magriel a year or so before his death. He didn’t look good, but he was still optimistic and charismatic. I’m glad Wachtel produced this tribute.

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Games I Prefer

Generally, I’m going to play the game that returns the most — including slot club, promotions, and mailer. Sometimes, however, I have a choice between a few different games that return about the same amount.  Here is my approximate ranking — your mileage may vary.

Hundred Play > Fifty Play > Ten Play > Five Play > Triple Play > single line games. Assuming the same return, the more lines the better. This increases the fun and decreases the variance.

I prefer these over Double Super Times Pay and Super Times Pay. Keep in mind, though, that if it’s the same pay schedule, the DSTP version adds about 0.5% and the STP versions adds half that. These additions more than make up for the fact that these aren’t my favorite games. The reason for my lack of excitement on these games is the speed. Whenever you get a multiplier, it takes five seconds or so for the exact multiplier to be “squeezed” out and made visible. I’d prefer to have that five seconds to play another hand.

Quick Quads > Ultimate X. Since neither game regularly comes in good pay schedules (other than at the South Point), the choice is moot for most people who seriously value winning. Quick Quads has a different strategy — but not a greatly different one. The sound Quick Quads makes when you get a Quick Quads (namely three of a kind where the ranks of the other two cards add up to the rank of the trips) strikes the right level of excitement and non-annoyingness. Ultimate X is a game with a sky-high variance and the strategy for the game is quite a bit different than regular video poker games. You have to be in the mood to play and willing to lose a great amount today, even with a good pay schedule.

Spin Poker is okay, but not nearly as attractive to me as Ten Play.

I usually avoid Dream Card as I find the sound effects annoying.

Multi Strike is an interesting game, but it’s slow. Keeping four strategies straight requires some effort, although it’s not impossible. If I’m playing while tired, though, I’ll sometimes make mistakes on this game.

I prefer slant tops to uprights to bar tops. Bar-top machines, even with good pay schedules, have stickier than average buttons due to drinks being spilled on them. I can play longer on slant tops than I can on uprights.

I prefer adjustable seats to non-adjustable. I am taller than average and prefer a higher chair than average.

Each of these game-types come with several different games.  That is, you can find Double Double Bonus, Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, etc., in most of these game types.

Deuces Wild is generally my favorite game. (It doesn’t exist in Quick Quads.) What makes it interesting to me is you never know what you will get. Start with two deuces and you can end up with anything from 3-of-a-kind to four deuces — meaning anywhere from five coins to 1,000 — per line.

Jacks or Better — This game is arguably the simplest and has the lowest variance. Some people get bored with the variance, but not me. Since I’m playing games where the slot club and other goodies give me an advantage, it’s plenty okay just to grind it out.

Double Double Bonus — This is the most popular video poker game in the country. I generally avoid it because it rarely returns more than 99%. When found in a better version, or with a GREAT promotion, this game is fun. Better have your seat belt on though. It has a lot of variance.

I will play other games, of course, if they happen to be the best game at a casino. Exactly which one it is doesn’t matter much to me. If I can learn the strategy, I can play it. If learning additional games doesn’t come easily to you, you might limit your selection to the games you already know.

There are games like Ultimate X Bonus Streak and others where the correct strategy is unknown — at least by me. I do not have the computer programming skills to work it out, and commercially available software does not contain these games. To get good at a game I need a computer to correct me when I make a mistake.

As I said at the beginning, the total return of the game is the most important thing to me. It matters to me not at all if your favorite games are different than mine.

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If Bob Dancer is Playing . . .

A few years ago, for several days in a row, I was hammering a $5 Five Play 9/6 Double Double Bonus game. This game returns 98.98% and it is very un-Dancer-like to play so much on a game that bad.

I received an email from somebody I didn’t know asking me why I was playing the game. While I generally respond to polite emails, this time I didn’t bother. I share a lot of information, but I’m not required to share everything. I had figured something out, I believed, and I wasn’t talking except to a very few players who also sometimes share juicy things with me.

After it was over, one of our guests on the Gambling with an Edge podcast, Sam, who I hadn’t known previously, told me he was approached by somebody who saw me playing and figured that if it was good for me, it was probably good for others as well. The person asking didn’t have the bankroll to do it himself, which is why he approached Sam. Sam asked me if it would have been a good idea for him to bankroll the other player.

I knew the incident Sam was talking about. I’m still not talking about the details because parts of it are still alive and friends are still playing it on occasion.

I told Sam that in general, just seeing me there wasn’t sufficient to have an edge.

  1. This might have been an invited guest situation where some players have an offer that others don’t. If Sam didn’t know why I was playing, he didn’t get the offer.
  2. There could have been point multipliers available to players who get regular mailers and would not be available to Sam, who wasn’t an established player there. Even players who do get multipliers don’t always get the same multiplier.
  3. Maybe I had to play a certain amount quickly in order to be eligible for something juicy.
  4. Possibly there was a loss rebate promotion going on.
  5. There could have been one or more drawings included in the EV, some of which Sam didn’t know about and/or for which he wasn’t eligible. As an example, Sam wouldn’t qualify for a senior drawing, but I would. Or even if he did know about and was eligible for a drawing, possibly he would have had something else to do on the night(s) of the must-be-there-to-win drawing(s).
  6. There could be annual tier levels to which I aspired, but Sam didn’t care about. Several casinos, for example, offer cruises if you reach their highest tier level. Bonnie and I enjoy these. I know several players who are bored out of their minds on a cruise and playing extra to earn one isn’t something they would consider.
  7. I might have been playing extra to earn additional comps for some reason.
  8. There was more than one seemingly identical machine at this casino. I might have known one of them was superior for some reason.
  9. There were higher-EV machines available at this casino, but knowing what I knew, I believed they were actually lower-EV when you considered everything. If Sam played a higher-EV machine so he could “improve” on the way I was playing the game, his results would have been worse.
  10. I could possibly have had a deal with the casino that if I played $1 million on this game, I would get a $5,000 rebate — or something. That’s a half-percent in equity. That could easily change a “not playable” game into being playable. Perhaps it was a deal I negotiated individually. Perhaps it was one open to all players who played $1 million coin-in a month.
  11. It’s possible I screwed up and this play wasn’t as good as I thought it was. This doesn’t happen a whole lot for me, but I am 72 years old and it happens more than it used to. Sam couldn’t know if it was happening “this time.”
  12. There are bankroll issues on plays. Five-dollar five play 9/6 DDB takes more bankroll than most players are used to. Let’s say it went bad this time and the player (either me or Sam) lost $30,000. I understand the swings and am used to that. I wouldn’t be delighted by that result, but it really isn’t a big deal. It’s part of my world. How would Sam feel about that?

Did all of these things happen? No, of course not. Not on that one occasion, but they all have happened at least once to me. Were some of them in effect this time? Absolutely.
Seeing me (or another knowledgeable player) at a casino definitely provides some useful information for you. And sometimes you are also a regular at that casino and you know what promotions are going on — and can easily figure out why that game is being played today.

But if it’s not obvious to you why I’m playing, it’s probably not a good game for you. There are so many possible reasons why I might be playing, and without knowing which reasons are in effect at this time, it could very well be that it’s not a good play for you at all.

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Chasing a Progressive

There are hundreds of video poker progressives in greater Las Vegas. As a general rule, I avoid these games. Progressives are not my bread and butter. Still, I occasionally do sit down at a progressive that catches my eye, and recently there was such a case.

A $2 9/5 DDB progressive at the South Point was at more than $16,000 for the royal, with additional progressives for aces with a kicker and 2s, 3s, and 4s with a kicker. Putting all the numbers into computer software showed the game was currently worth about 100.80%, plus a 0.30% slot club. Additionally, in general the more coin-in you have, the better your mailers are. So, I sat down.

I had enough cash on hand, I thought, including the availability of markers. I was used to DDB itself, which has a variance of a bit more than 40. Doubling the royal jacks up the variance to around 100. Although I have the tools to figure out bankroll for this, I wasn’t near my computer and I had to wing it. I figured I was up to playing for four or five hours. If the royal hadn’t been hit by then, I’d reevaluate whether or not I wanted to continue.

There are 20 machines connected to this progressive and perhaps a third of the seats were taken when I got there at 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening. At midnight, half of the machines were taken, and the progressive was more than $18,000. The 2s, 3s, and 4s, with a kicker progressive had been hit a few times. It started out at $1,600 and was usually hit by $1,700. The difference between this jackpot at $1,600 and the same jackpot at $1,700 is 0.14%. Not chopped liver, but it’s not the primary prize.

Aces with a kicker were worth more than $5,000. That added more than 0.6%, but even without that, the royal progressive was high enough that the game was worth playing. When the aces were knocked off, the royal progressive was more than $19,000, which is worth about 101% even without the lesser jackpots.

At about 2 a.m., the royal reached $20,000. About 2/3 of the seats were full and at that point, somebody hit the royal. Time to go home.

I had run $40,000 coin-in through the machine. I failed to hit any W2G (regular aces are worth $1,600, in addition to the other jackpots already discussed.) My score was $7,100 in the soup. No fun. But not really a big deal. DDB is a heaven-or-hell game, and special quads and the royals add a lot to the EV. Blanking on those is expensive in the short run.

Generally speaking, when playing a progressive, the person hitting the royal comes out way ahead and the others lose. In this case, the guy who knocked off the aces with a kicker was also probably ahead, but most of the rest of us lost. Such is the nature of playing DDB progressives. Play the game enough and you’ll get your share.

I recognized more than half of the players when the royal was finally hit. Some I hadn’t seen for several years. I assume most of them knew who I was, as I’m well-known in the Las Vegas video poker community, although not in the video poker progressive-playing community. I don’t know this for a fact, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a few phone calls had been made in the nature of, “You better come down here. It is so juicy even Bob Dancer is playing it.”

Am I going to do this again soon? Doubtful. But maybe. It’s a positive play, albeit one with large swings. Between casinos restricting players and the general tightening of machines, it’s hard to find good video poker opportunities in Las Vegas these days. This is one avenue to stay in the game, although it’s not my first choice.

We’ll see.