Author: Bob Dancer

Posted on by — 10 Comments

The Value of the Right Partner to a Successful Gambler

There are a couple of possible meanings to the word ‘partner,’ and I want to be clear at the start how I am using the word. I’m talking about a life partner. Male, female, same sex or not, married or not. It’s somebody you are emotionally and financially connected with. 

I’m going to be using the term ‘gambler’ to represent the one who is the player and ‘partner’ to represent the one at home. Sometimes you’re both gamblers of course, and we’ll talk about that some other time. 

Some people prefer the word ‘player’ to ‘gambler,’ because they see the first term as playing with an advantage and the second term as playing without. I’m using the term ‘successful gambler’ as someone who gambles with an edge.

If you want to be successful at gambling, your partner MUST be able to put up with financial and emotional swings. If the gambler loses $xxx and the partner goes on tilt and stays there, the gambler is possibly down to the choice of giving up on the dream of being a professional gambler and/or giving up on that particular partner. If children are involved in the picture, that adds complications to the decision.

It often is the case that the non-gambling partner doesn’t really understand the math and variance of the games. This person is forced, generally, to “have faith” in the gambler. This isn’t easy, and certainly many gamblers aren’t deserving of that faith. Most gamblers are net losers. A whole lot more people would like to be successful gamblers than actually are successful gamblers, and it can be very expensive to find out for sure.

I, for one, would probably not be a good candidate to be a partner for somebody else’s dream, unless I understood it a LOT better than many partners do. As a partner I would be looking at such things as:

  1. What have the results been like so far?
  2. How serious is the gambler going about getting to be a better player and only playing in good situations?
  3. Who is the gambler associating with? If the people around your gambler are generally successful and seem to believe in the future of your gambler, that says a lot. If your gambler surrounds himself with non-successful people, there’s a good chance he’s also going to be unsuccessful.
  4. How bad are the emotional swings of the gambler when he is losing? 
  5. How much of a financial cushion do you have between the two of you?
  6. What kind of marketable skills does the gambler have outside of gambling?
  7. As far as I can tell, is the gambler honest with me? 
  8. Is this gambler, over-all, worth having faith in?
  9. What are my options should I leave?

 

(Please note, I have never expected perfection out of a partner — or anybody, for that matter.)

Even with these questions, however, I could be satisfiable. That is, if the gambler appears to be going about it seriously and intelligently, and I really believed I loved her, well, that might be all right.

Some partners aren’t satisfiable. Every loss causes significant worry and stress — and then the fights start. I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist of any sort, but it appears to me that some people are prone to be worry warts. Some people are so results-oriented that they can’t handle the financial swings. 

In addition to being satisfied with the gambler, the partner must be able to support the partner emotionally and possibly financially through the down periods, which will definitely occur. The partner must be able to share the same goals of the gambler. If, for example, the gambler wants to build up a bankroll and the partner wants to spend all “extra” money on (pick one or more: house, vacations, clothes, jewelry, etc.), the two of them must be able to have a serious discussion that leads to an understanding.

I’m not saying the gambler’s goals should necessarily take precedence. I’m saying that if you’re not on the same page about the goals, it’s very difficult for either party to end up satisfied with the partnership.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Choosing Between Promotions

In playing to win, you need to figure out where to spend your time. I came across such a dilemma recently and tried to figure out how to solve it. The problem was too complex for me to solve completely, but I created a simplified model using “reasonable” assumptions and was able to come up with a solution using the simplified model. 

Let me explain.

On Wednesday evening, July 3 of this year, Bonnie and I were eating at the South Point with friends. On the way into the restaurant at 5:30, I noticed the jackpot level for the $600,000 “Mad Money Madness” casino-wide progressive was at $23,000. When we finished dinner an hour later, it was at $23,250.

This is a jackpot that will go off before it hits $25,000 (at which time it starts over again at $10,000). If you’re the lucky player who hits it, you get the prize, of course. If you’re playing when somebody else hits it, you get $25 in free play. 

It was going up at a rate of $250 per hour, and likely it would go up faster as the evening wore on because evenings generate more slot and video poker players than daytimes do.

Starting at midnight, however, earning double points would begin. This adds 0.30% to the return.

Assume I would commit five hours to play — either before midnight (when the progressive was very likely to hit) or after. Which would have been the play with the higher EV? (Hybrid results of “play until the jackpot goes off and then if you have any more of your five hours left come back after midnight” were not being considered in this model, but might be a reasonable decision in real life.)

The are many combinations of games and denomination I could consider. I’m going to pick two — namely, NSU Deuces Wild for quarters and NSU Deuces Wild for $2.

This game returns 99.728% with perfect play — and for simplification I’m going to assume the return with the normal 0.30% slot club was 100.00% and the return with the double points was 100.30%. 

I’m going to assume a speed of 800 hands per hour. This is playing pretty quickly, but nowhere near a record pace. This speed has the advantage of making the coin-in for the quarter game to be $1,000 per hour and the coin-in for the $2 game, $8,000 per hour. Again, round numbers make the math easier.

My next assumption may or may not be valid, and that is a quarter machine and a $2 machine have equal likelihoods of being selected as the winner. This could be true, and it also could be true that the $2 machine has eight times the likelihood because eight times as much is being wagered. The rules are very vague on this. The phrase “any machine any time” could apply to either way of doing it. 

I’m also going to assume that in the next five hours, the progressive is going to be hit. Not guaranteed, but very, very likely.

Before I go on, take your best guestimate. Is it worth more to sit down now or wait for double points?

Okay. Figuring out how much the games are worth on double point days is easy. A rate of 100.30% means it’s worth $3 per hour on the quarter machine and $24 per hour on the $2 machine.

Figuring how much the game itself is worth before midnight is also easy. A game worth 100.00% is worth $0 per hour, no matter what your stakes.

So, it comes down to estimating how much the chances at the jackpot are worth. Again, to make the math easy, I’m going to assume 1,000 active players, and that each player has an equal probability of hitting the jackpot. So, on a per-person basis, actually hitting the jackpot is worth $25 — although 999 out of 1,000 people will get zero and one person will have a big smile on his/her face.

We are guaranteed to get $25 when the jackpot goes off so long as we’re playing and we don’t hit the big one. Adding these numbers together, the value of the jackpot to us is $50.

Adding $50 in EV to $0 (the amount the game would be worth with a 0.30% slot club) is also easy. Playing five hours before midnight gives us $50, or $10 per hour.

Comparing the $10 per hour to the $3 or $24 hourly rates we’d earn after midnight is also easy. If we’re playing quarters, sit down and play now. If we’re going to be playing a $2 game, wait for double points.

So, it turns out the problem of whether we should play now or later depends on what denomination we’re playing. I suggest denomination is a consideration that many of you didn’t think was a factor.

The third choice of “the game is not worth enough to bother with” is always an option. Different people will come to different conclusions about that.

If you don’t like my simplifying assumptions, make up your own. Your conclusion will likely end up being the same as mine unless you assume the $2 player had eight times the chances to win the jackpot as the quarter player did. (And I don’t know if that’s a true-to-life assumption or not.) If that’s your assumption, the right conclusion might well be for the $2 player to sit down now and start banging away as fast as he/she could.

Posted on by — 19 Comments

Least Favorite Type of Promotion

Casinos have promotions all the time. Some are very useful to the winning player (such as point multipliers) and some are basically useless (such as 2-for-1 Margaritas during happy hour on Tuesdays.)

Today I want to write about what promotions I like the least and invite you to respond. Wherever you originally read this article, it will be posted on www.gamblingwithanedge.com, where comments are welcome and discussed.

To limit the discussion somewhat, I’ll propose the following parameters on the promotions:

     1. You must have an edge of at least a half percent.

    2. The promotion is within your bankroll (which will mean nickel games for some readers and much larger games for others.)

   3. The promotion will last a reasonable length of time. (This will exclude such things as “come in Thursday and pick up $10 in free play,” or “promotion limited to your first $1,000 of coin-in”.)

The promotions may include several things going on at once (i.e. point multiplier, earn tickets for a good drawing or two, and earn tier credits toward a tier whose benefits you desire.) This would be a good thing in my opinion — but opinions vary.

I do most of my gambling as a “local,” so comps such as RFB and airfare do not enter into my considerations. If you are not a local at whatever casino has this promotion, you’re welcome to include such comps in your equation.

So, with these parameters in mind, let me tell you what I like the LEAST. My list could very well expand after reading your responses.

   1. Very few relevant machines, so players must compete with each other for time on device. Sometimes you must show up six or more hours before the promotion starts in order to get a machine. Sometimes you show up six hours early and find that all machines are already taken with players who are planning on sticking around for the duration. Sometimes you can make a deal with a player to get the machine at such and such a time — sometimes you can’t.

   2. A relatively smoky casino. I know I need to tolerate some of this in order to play in casinos, but some have smoke levels that keep me away, no matter what the promotion is.

   3. Very high variance (say, larger volatility than Double Double Bonus) for stakes that are at the high end of my bankroll comfort zone. This is especially true if the casino has the reputation of kicking out players who win more than a certain amount. 

This means you’re either going to lose a considerable amount or get kicked out. Being kicked out usually includes the forfeiture of future free play (which could well have been part of the calculation) and you can lose comps and other valuable things.

   4. It’s at a tribal casino that has a reputation of not paying players. There is one such casino in Southern California where they recently offered a bonus on W2Gs, and a large number of players were kicked out. Understandably when there are a lot of W2Gs, things back up. Many players made “tickets” of, $2,000 or $3,000 to insert into the machines after they were paid in cash. The casino kicked out some of these players and refused to redeem their tickets. That means players were stuck holding worthless paper — which are only valuable if the casino says they are.

This is not an isolated incident. If you are unfamiliar with what can and does happen at these places, check out Bob Nersesian’s book, The Law for Gamblers, especially his chapter entitled, “Indian Gaming: OMG, WTF”

   5. Uncomfortable machines. This could be because the chairs are locked into position and don’t adjust — and the standard height doesn’t fit my body. It could be the screens are very dark and hard to read. It could be the buttons are very sticky and so frequent mistakes are common unless you play extremely slowly.

   6. Some of the benefits are uncollectible. It could be that there is a future drawing where I would have a decent chance at winning something, but I can’t be there. It could be that a large proportion of the benefits must be collected sometime in the future at that casino and it’s difficult or impossible for me to return. If the edge is high enough without these uncollectible benefits, then this doesn’t have to be a showstopper.

   7. I’m already way ahead recently at this place. Even if a casino doesn’t have a reputation for kicking players out, every casino has a limit for what they will tolerate. If I think I might be close, it makes sense to stay away for six months or so.

Okay. That’s my list at the current time. What did I get wrong and what did I forget to mention?

Posted on by — 16 Comments

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. 

Posted on by — 3 Comments

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.

Posted on by — 6 Comments

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.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

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!

Posted on by — 5 Comments

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.)

Posted on by — 9 Comments

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.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

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.