Category: Advice for Players

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Another Matter of Perspective

Recently I wrote a column about me growing up gambling-wise at the Cavendish West, which was a gin and backgammon club in the West Hollywood part of greater Los Angeles. If you didn’t read it the first time, it may be found here.

I mentioned that I lost my bankroll and had to get a job — and I didn’t like it. I received this sarcastic response.

” . . . I had to go out and get a job to support myself. It was awful.” Really? What was awful, not being top dog, or having to work for a living? I can dig it, having to support myself and a family really is a drag!

First of all, as Richard says every week on the radio show, we welcome your comments. This particular comment, intentionally or not, brought up some subjects I don’t often write about, so thank you for giving me an idea for another column!

There are not many people who can make it as a professional gambler. For most players, gambling reality is that the house always wins.

If you are bright enough and have studied hard enough and have developed the other habits necessary to succeed at this obscure “profession,” there is a sense of pride about being able to do something that most people can’t.

I don’t believe this type of pride is unique to being a gambler. I believe most people believe they are better at something than are most other people. It could be that you are good enough to play in the National Football League, or have won the blue ribbon for best marinara sauce three years in a row at the county fair, or have never taken a sick day off, or all three of your kids graduated, or . . . something. And whatever this something is that makes you unique, you’re proud of it.

Sometimes it turns out that reality teaches you that you aren’t as good as you thought you were — or perhaps you once were. The football guy loses his job to a younger, stronger player; somebody figures out a more popular recipe for the sauce; you develop a tumor and need to take several sick days off. Something. Whatever it was that you were proud of — that was part of the core of what made you unique — is no longer there.

Coming to grips with this lack of uniqueness isn’t pleasant.

Having somebody who was never in the NFL sneer at you and say it’s no big deal not to be at that level anymore is somebody who simply doesn’t understand. There is a brotherhood among players that just doesn’t exist with non-players. Being forced to give that up sucks. Although I can’t speak from experience about being in the NFL, there is definitely a camaraderie among successful gamblers and I’d rather be on the inside looking out than the outside looking in.

Sometimes when this happens, you see the player work very, very hard to regain his abilities to play at that top level. Occasionally the player makes it back to the league, but eventually Father Time always wins. Sometimes the player shifts positions or becomes a coach to stay in the game.  More often the player tries for a while to make it back and then eventually gives up that dream as unattainable.

In my case, I was able to make it back — sort of. With a great deal of work, my backgammon skills improved — but not enough to support myself against the really good players. I learned blackjack and became proficient enough to make money there — although I was kicked out of enough places that I finally gave up that career.

Eventually I found my niche in video poker. My fame, such as it is, is due more to being a writer and teacher than being a player.  Inarguably, many of my player skills have been honed by helping others learn the game.  The majority of my wealth, however, comes from being a player. I’m almost 70 years old and eventually Father Time is going to win this contest too. The house doesn’t always win, but Father Time does.

I’ve never questioned that I needed to make a living rather than have things handed to me. In Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way,” he’s proud that he got to succeed under his own terms. That’s the way I feel as well.

It’s not a feeling that I’m better than others. It’s a feeling that eventually I was able to find the right small pond where I could be a big fish. It was neither a short nor an easy journey. Perhaps it’s better described as a feeling of relief than a feeling of pride.

For my readers, I wish they can each find their own small pond where they can be a big fish. It’s a good feeling.

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Wrong Conclusion

A square-dancing friend, Sal, was telling me how happy he was that he finally learned to play Full Pay Deuces Wild. He had studied the Winner’s Guide, practiced on Video Poker for Winners, and in the last two months had averaged about $30 per hour in profit on about 5-6 hours of play per week on the quarter game. He had pictures of three $1,000 royals on his cell phone that he wanted to show and have me admire.

Using this source of extra income, he had made a commitment to move his girlfriend, Betty, to Vegas from out-of-state. “I can finally afford it,” Sal told me. “I never realized I had what it takes to be a successful gambler.”

“Hold on,” I told him. “Full Pay Deuces Wild is worth somewhere in the range of $6-$10 per hour, depending on how fast you play and the benefits the casino gives you. There will be periods where your results exceed this for relatively short periods of time and there will be months in a row where you lose, lose, lose.”

“You’ve been going through what we call positive variance for the past few months,” I told Sal. “It won’t last. Guaranteed. It’s even possible you haven’t learned the game sufficiently well to be a favorite at all. Or maybe only a $2 an hour favorite.

“Having a two-month winning streak is no indication of whether you are playing competently or not. On a hand like W W 7♠ 6♥ 8♠, where the W (for wild card) indicates a deuce, good players hold WW78. Had somebody just held the deuces, he might have scored despite the 1-in-360 odds against him and ended up with four deuces this particular time. That would have been profitable in the short run, but over time that play is a costly one. There are numerous examples in this game where the wrong hold can work this time, so just looking at results over the short run gives you the wrong conclusion.

“If you need the extra $150 or so per week to bring your girlfriend to town and have her stay here, you better find an additional source of income, tell her not to come, or let her know that she’s going to have to pitch in financially to make this work.

“Plus, you need a bankroll of probably $4,000 or preferably more on hand just to cover the swings of this game. This is not money you need for rent, food, or anything else. This is money AFTER you’ve paid off all your credit card, any expenses related to her move, and all other debt.  It’s just a reserve because the negative variance times are definitely coming.”

Sal sighed and said that talking to me today had been a real downer. He preferred to think positively and the negative picture I presented was not pleasant at all.

I shrugged. “I’d rather tell you what I think is the truth rather than to paint a rosy picture that won’t come to fruition. I experienced what they call Gambler’s Ruin almost 35 years ago, It was no fun. And now you’re a senior citizen, it’ll be even harder to recoup if it happens to you.”

They were starting another dance and Sal left to find a partner. During the next break between dances he came back to me.

“Betty doesn’t even think gambling is a good idea. I haven’t told her yet that gambling is what allowed me to pay for her ticket.”

“You aren’t going to like my response,” I told Sal, “but if you go out and spend the money right away whenever you hit a royal flush, you will never accumulate the necessary bankroll. There will be times when you go to the casino for 5-6 hours and come back and have to tell Betty you lost $400 or more. That’s merely going to reinforce her general attitude that gambling is bad news. She probably won’t believe that you’re playing a game where you actually have the advantage.”

“So what should I do?” he asked. “You make it sound like it’s going to be a disaster.”

“I can’t make the decisions for you,” I told him. “I’ve never met Betty. I don’t know how flexible she is about staying with you if you continue to gamble. I don’t know how employable either one of you are or how good you are at getting by. I don’t know what your habits are and how expensive they are. All I do know is that if you are expecting Full Pay Deuces Wild for quarters to continue to generate $30 per hour, it simply won’t happen.”

“I guess Betty and I are going to have a long phone call tonight and discuss things” Sal told me.

That’s probably a good start.

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Losing Perspective

As I mentioned last week, Bonnie and I recently cruised the Mexican Riviera. One purpose of the trip was so that Bonnie could rest. She had a fall not so long ago, straining some muscles and tendons in her back, and the doctors have said the best thing for her is to rest and to take Motrin for the pain — preferably the kind in gel caps which dissolve at a slower rate.

While we were in Mazatlán, the second of our two ports of call, on our way back to the ship Bonnie remembered that she was a little low on Motrin. No problem. They had a pharmacy in the port area. Prices would probably be a little higher than in downtown Mazatlán, and a little lower than on the ship.

The kind she wanted cost $3 and were packaged in a box about the size of a pack of cigarettes. We paid, placed her medicine in a black bag, and left.

Five minutes later, while still in the port area, Bonnie asked, “Where’s my Motrin?” It was gone. She hadn’t given it to me, but I still checked all my pockets and my backpack anyway, just in case. It was nowhere around.

Bonnie was really upset. I tried to calm her by reminding her it was only $3 and we could easily go back and buy another package. “This is mildly unfortunate,” I reminded her, “but it’s not a big deal. If you ran out of Motrin in the middle of the night and needed it, a visit to the casino doctor at that hour might cost $100 and it would have been worth it! An extra few dollars now isn’t worth ruining an otherwise nice vacation.”

I didn’t remind her that the stress from worrying wouldn’t help her healing process anyway. Had I mentioned this to Bonnie at that particular moment, she would have likely gotten even more upset — and this time her anger might have been directed at me.

So we went back and bought another pack. As we left the pharmacy, Bonnie wanted to retrace her steps one more time seeing if we could find the black bag.

As it happened, one of the security guards on the way back to the ship asked what she was looking for and sure enough, he had her pills and gave them to her. I tried to tip him a dollar and he waved it off.

This was quite remarkable to us. From about 2010 to 2013, cruise ships refused to stop at this city because of the crimes against tourists. For the health of the city, you now see lots and lots of armed military guards all over the city. We had taken the bare minimum of cash with us and left watches and jewelry locked up on the ship. We were not expecting to run into a Good Samaritan — and were pleasantly surprised when we did.

Now the issue was what to do with the extra box of medicine? I didn’t know the policy of the pharmacy about returns, but I suggested keeping it. “You’ll use it eventually,” I told her, “and even if you can get it back home for maybe $1.50 when you buy in quantity, it’s not worth the hassle of trying to talk them into something that may or may not be against their policy.”

Something else happened that could be called similar, but I see a difference. Our cruise was courtesy of Penn National — or more specifically M Resort. Included on our package was $50 credit for food or beverage only (thank you very much!)

Early in the cruise I went to the front desk and asked them a hypothetical. If I charged a $40 bottle of wine, with a forced 18% gratuity of $7.20 and that was my only charge, would the voucher pick up $40 and I was responsible for the gratuity, or would the voucher pick up the whole $47.20? I could live with it either way but I’ve had enough experience with different ways casinos handle such things that I wanted to check up front. I was told the voucher would cover the entire $47.20.

Armed with this information, I ordered a $42 bottle of wine, which comes out to $49.56 with gratuity. (Okay. It was a $15 bottle of wine at Lee’s Discount Liquor Store, but cruise ship prices are inflated a bit.) When our final bill was delivered to our stateroom at 4:00 a.m. on the morning of departure, the $49.56 charge was still there. So I went to the front desk with my voucher and everything was handled eventually, although it did require speaking to two different people. Had I not gone to the desk, who knows if the charge would have come off?

Bonnie asked me what the difference was between me going to the front desk and “fighting” for the $49.56 and her being upset about the “lost” $3 worth of Motrin?

To me the difference was that I wasn’t upset or out of control. It was a simple matter of checking — and then doing whatever was appropriate. I intentionally set my alarm a half hour early on the last day to leave time for this “if necessary.” (There were two other items I wanted to verify on the bill — but they were done appropriately.) I didn’t see this as a major problem. Just a matter of something that needed to be tended to.

Let’s switch to gambling. We all have imperfect things happen to us from time to time. Maybe we accidentally played a few hands on a worse pay schedule than we intended to. Maybe all four of the “good machines” we thought were best to play were full and we needed to play second-best or go home. Maybe the machine ran out of tickets just as we got there and we had to “waste” five minutes until it was fixed. Whatever.

There are people who can shrug that off and there are others who get really upset. Years ago, we had an expression, “Don’t sweat the small sh*t,” although the folks who used that expression often had marijuana to help them through it. (Bonnie has never used marijuana in her life and hasn’t thought it a good idea for anyone else to use it either.  Recently, however, she has considered trying the medical variety for her back pain. I’m always a bit amused when people who say “never” end up in a personal circumstance that turns that “never” into “maybe.” It’s more amusing, of course, when it happens to somebody else rather than ourselves.)

Getting angry at little things causes undue stress, including high blood pressure and various other real medical problems. Finding ways to not do that makes your life longer and more pleasant. Exercise helps. Yoga, meditation, and other techniques work. For some, religion and/or some type of self-help process also is useful.

In the casino — and out.

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More Information is Required

In my “Waiting for Wednesday” blog a few weeks ago, found here. I was addressing the idea of scheduling when to play. One reader named Steve responded by quoting me first and then stating his “correction.” He wrote: “For me, that includes remembering that chasing every good promotion takes a backseat to doing what Bonnie wants to do. At least some of the time.” “SOME” of the time? For me, “Happy wife, happy life” is at least “MOST” of the time 🙂

Okay, Steve, you are now Bonnie’s new best friend and she sends her regards. And while I don’t disagree with what you said, there are some nuances worth discussing.
In my family, Bonnie isn’t a player — and she knows how I make my living. She knows I play at, among other places, South Point, M, and Dotty’s. She knows they run promotions and I do most of my play during certain promotions.

What she doesn’t know is how valuable the promotions are compared to each other and how flexible the promotions are. If she wants to know how much coin-in I plan to play at South Point in any particular month, I’ll tell her. But usually she doesn’t ask.

For example, I want to play $xxx at Dotty’s during the month to keep mailers and other benefits coming. For certain reasons, I play weekly rather than all at once and since the maximum benefits come after midnight and before noon, it doesn’t matter too much when I do that play subject to those constraints.

Conversely, if I play for the Silverton’s seniors’ drawing, that play MUST be done on Monday’s between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m. and prizes (if any) must be picked up between 4 p.m. on Monday and 4 p.m. on Tuesday.

I rank each promotion on a 1-5 scale, where 1 means it’s okay to skip it entirely and 5 means “I don’t care if your daughter is coming to visit — I’m playing! If you want to take her out to dinner, I’ll get a comp, but I’m not going to eat with you.”

Bonnie trusts my ranking system. If I tell her a promotion is a number 5, she works around that. (If Bonnie or I had a medical emergency, for example, that could definitely trump a number 5. But under normal circumstances, when I declare that a promotion is a number 5, I get my way.) Could I abuse the system and usually get my way? Yeah, probably, but the “happy wife, happy life” motto Steve cited is a good one to keep in mind.

We use the same sort of system near the end of the month when we decide which food coupons we’re going to use — and which ones we’re going to let go. Bonnie has a huge vote in these discussions, but it’s my job to keep track of the offers so I can explain her options.

As I write this I’m on a cruise ship. We use a variation of the same system on deciding when and where to eat, or who gets to use the bathroom first.

There have been occasions where Bonnie has said she really wants to go to a particular square dance event and can I please have some flexibility in my ranking system. When she says this, she usually gets her way. Had she said this about the night of the “mistake” 12x promotion at the Silverton which I wrote about recently, she would not have prevailed. That promotion was worth more than $5,000 in EV and would have been worth more to me than yielding on that particular night.

To be sure, I would have “bargained” with her, saying something like “I really, really can’t do that on Thursday, but what can we do on Wednesday or Friday to make up for it?”

We are both trying to make this relationship work — so almost always we can come up with something that is acceptable to both of us. Winning in casinos is the name of that game. Winning (or getting my way) at home — not so much.

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It Takes More Than a Book

In addition to where my blogs usually appear, starting a few months ago they also have been found at www.gamblingwithanedge.com. This is a site created by the folks at The Las Vegas Advisor and groups together podcasts from the radio show and blogs from a number of successful gamblers.

One feature of that site is it’s a handy place to post your own comments for or against anything written. Today’s blog was inspired by comment written about one of my recent blogs. It wasn’t an unfriendly comment. It wasn’t a personal attack of any sort. It was likely intended as gentle teasing. But nonetheless I disagree strongly with what was written.

The blog in question was dated October 25, 2016 and part of it referred to an incident where I “instructed” my ex-wife Shirley on my way of gambling. More than one reader responded with how they have taught spouses how to gamble.

One reader posed the following:  My wife and I have been married for 44 years. She has just started to play VP. Instead of me teaching her I just gave her a copy of Bob’s book on how to win at JoB…….if she loses there is only one person (other than herself) to blame……sorry Bob.

Thanks for plugging my Winner’s Guide (actually co-written with Liam W. Daily). If I personally were trying to learn a game and someone had already created that kind of a book, it would definitely be part of my learning process. I use all sorts of sources to help myself get better at things.

With that said, tossing someone a Winner’s Guide and telling them they’re now on their own is a lousy way to teach them how to play a winning game.

Why? Because people learn in different ways. Some people learn by reading. Some learn by listening. Some learn by doing and being corrected. Some people are A students and very proficient at comprehending what they read, but more people aren’t.

A Winner’s Guide make a lot more sense if you also are using computer software along with it. I personally use Video Poker for Winners, WinPoker, and Wolf Video Poker to assist me. For learning a new game they all work, and each has small  advantages the others don’t.

Even with a computer and a book, most players can’t tell you when Q♠ T♠ 8♠ is more valuable than a 4-card inside straight with three high cards in the same hand. Studying at that level by themselves is beyond what most players can or will do. A personal tutor (assuming that’s what you call an accomplished player who has already learned the game well) can explain this easily enough, but it will often take several repetitions before the new student has it mastered. And then a few weeks or months later, a review will often be required. And then later, another review.This kind of information doesn’t stick firmly in the minds of many.

Perhaps more fundamentally, even though the Jacks or Better Winner’s Guide can help teach you how to play each hand correctly, it won’t turn you into a winning player. Although there are some exceptions in a few places, the best common version of the game returns 99.54% before including the slot club and other benefits. That means the house has an edge of 0.46% if you can play perfectly — and it takes a while to learn how to play perfectly.

The concepts of free play, mailers, promotions, comps, and other goodies won’t be learned from the Winner’s Guides. These concepts are every bit as important as how to play the hands correctly, and are arguably more difficult to learn.

Plus, they keep changing. Very few slot clubs are the same today as they were three years ago. Similar, yes. Identical, no. And knowing where those differences lie can make or break you.

Although my blogs sometimes address these subjects, I may be talking about casinos and/or stakes which you don’t play. For “local” (to the student) information, that student is going to need local tutoring.

Does every reader of my blog need to be a tutor? No, of course not. But thinking that you’ve done a good job teaching by giving the student a book, even a good book, is fooling yourself. It takes a lot more than a book.

And if you become a teacher to help somebody else, you will become a better player in the process.

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Preparing for Drawings

Last week’s article (found here) discussed the process of getting ready to play for extended hours at “unusual” times. While writing it, I needed to decide whether getting ready for drawings was going to be part of that same article or a later one. It now should be obvious what my decision was.

Drawings are an important part of my success at video poker. Although there are differences between 1099s and W2Gs, it basically doesn’t matter to me if I can find games with an extra $30,000 a year in EV in a universe with no drawings or play in my current universe and receive an extra $30,000 in EV from drawings.

There have been years when the drawings I entered had a much higher EV. That varies from year to year depending on how much casinos are giving away and to whom they are giving it — and whether I’m welcome to play. A few years ago, the Palms would give away $20,000 a week in drawings; they kept drawing until all prizes were given away; and they had relatively high denomination machines where I could earn lots of drawing entries. So, I won my share there. The last two years, they reduced the prizes to $10,000 a week, made it “must claim by midnight” so there was a LOT of “breakage,” (meaning the money wasn’t given away because it wasn’t claimed), and, among other things, the machines I played were declared ineligible for promotions. Plus, they gave away 20 free drawing entries a day Monday thru Friday to anyone who swiped. My drawings EV at the Palms became close enough to $0 that I quit showing up for them. (The Palms changed ownership effective October 1 of this year. I have no idea what their drawings will be like in the future. I have been severely restricted at Station Casinos for several years, as have many hundreds of other players, and so those of us who played at the Palms under the old ownership will need to find another place to play.)

The first rule for drawings is: “Read the rules.” Completely and carefully. Every time. Pay attention to such things as:

  1. How are tickets earned? Only during certain hours? Are certain machines excluded? Do some machines (especially slots) earn more tickets?
  2. Is there a limit on tickets? If it’s a low limit, I might not be interested, but you may be. I do not wish to compete with “everybody.” I want to compete where my willingness to play more and bigger gives me an advantage.
  3. Are the tickets virtual or do you have to fill them out? I generally prefer virtual tickets as it is no fun at all to fill out 2,000 tickets. If you enter a large number of tickets into the drum, people who don’t have that many aren’t happy about it. And that can create problems.
  4. Does anybody get tickets for free? For me, this is often a showstopper, but it doesn’t have to be. At the Silverton senior drawings on Monday, every senior who swipes gets one ticket, while players who play can earn several hundred. Yes, someone who has only one ticket wins some of the time, but overall, you can play enough to still have good chances.
  5. Do I have to activate my entries? If so, when? How? There are two main reasons for this. First, if a casino is going to keep drawing tickets until they have the advertised number of winners, they want people called to be there. Otherwise it can take all night for the drawing to take place. Second, if a casino can get you there two hours before the drawing, often that creates extra play — which is why the casinos hold drawings in the first place.
  6. Do I have to be there to win? If not, how long do I have to claim any prize won? This can affect what else I can do that evening. If three casinos have drawings at 7 p.m. but they are all “must claim before midnight,” I can participate in all three.
  7. Can I win more than one prize? Usually the answer to this is “No,” but it doesn’t have to be. One player winning six times in a 10-winner drawing causes both management and other players to get upset. So even if it’s allowed, it’s often a good idea not to play for it more than once.
  8. Are there periods of time where I can win multiple entries — perhaps 2x, 5x, 10x? This is a way to give players additional value without costing the casino anything! Once the casino has promised to give away the money, it doesn’t much care who wins. But if they can offer a ticket multiplier on, say, Tuesday, which is otherwise their slowest day of the week, players will come in and hammer the machines on that day.

It’s not part of the rules, but I also want to know what other promotions the casino is running during the same period of time I’m earning tickets. If I can “double dip” and earn drawing entries at the same time I’m getting triple points, or possibly earn tickets for both a senior drawing and a regular drawing, so much the better. If my play moves me to a higher tier level, and I believe the extra tier benefits have real value to me, that’s a bonus.

Another important aspect, although not part of the rules, is knowing what machines are available in this casino. If the machines + normal slot club + promotions + drawing + mailer isn’t more than 100%, I’m not playing. To be sure, some of these things need to be estimated.

You want to know whether the casino will enforce the rules. There have been times where casinos say you must have your tickets in the drum by 8 p.m. but they still accept tickets until 8:10 — or maybe cut it off by 7:50. Or maybe have a rule against folding tickets and yet draw a winning ticket that looks like an accordion. It takes time to learn these things.

You might have noticed that everything is figured in terms of EV — Expected Value. Although this is difficult (if not impossible) to figure exactly, it is still very important. Whether you are actually called at a particular drawing or not is relatively unimportant. How often you get called over the course of a year or three is much more important. I’ll address this aspect more in a subsequent column.

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More than Six and a Half Little Words

I recently read a blog by James Grosjean titled Six and a Half Little Words. It reminded me of an incident in my own life. I was debating whether to respond to his blog or to post it as a separate column several weeks later. It turned out to be quite a bit different from Grosjean’s original post so I’m publishing it separately. If you read the original, you’ll see where my title comes from.

I moved to Vegas in 1993 to be blackjack player. In addition to playing a lot of promotions (such as “Play 4 hours for $10 a hand and receive a free buffet, one free hotel night, and $60 in some kind of promotional chips”), I would obtain and cash numerous coupons — lots and lots of coupons — for a number of games.

I had a girlfriend (I called her Ginnie in my Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography and there’s no need to invent a new name now) and between us we’d earn more than $500 weekly from these coupons — in addition to whatever we could make with the blackjack and other promotions. It was subsistence living, but as far as I was concerned, I was “making it in Las Vegas.”

One of the myriad of tricks I learned doing this was that in a single deck game, if a dealer shows an ace on the first hand and you’re playing two hands (either by yourself or one each with a partner), and if all four cards you see in your hands are non-tens, then it’s correct to take insurance.

Eventually Ginnie left and I started seeing Shirley — to whom I would end up being married from 1997 until 2014. In 1996 I had a couple of $10-for-$5 match play coupons at a “one coupon per person per day” single deck place. Shirley didn’t know the first thing about playing blackjack intelligently, so I told her to sit next to me and I would tell her what to do. She picked up her cards with two hands, of course, and bristled a bit when the dealer told her one hand only.

The dealer dealt himself an ace. In my hand I saw a four and a five and looked over at Shirley’s hand. If she had no face cards, I would have asked about insurance.

(The rule I cite is correct when there are no match play coupons in effect. I used the same rule, right or wrong, when I had a coupon. Should they wish, others can address how the variations of rules on match play coupons affects this insurance bet.)

But Shirley was holding her cards close to her chest, preventing me from obtaining the information I needed to make the correct decision.

“Show me your cards! Now!” I whispered urgently.

“No! It’s against the rules to show anybody your cards,” she whispered back. It didn’t seem to matter to her that we were the only players at the table and while the money being wagered wasn’t officially “community property” bankroll yet, clearly it was the next best thing.

“SHOW ME YOUR CARDS!”

Intimidated, she did — showing me a jack nine. We didn’t take insurance and the dealer flipped over a queen, sweeping our nickels and coupons off the table. No big deal to me. You lose hands all the time at blackjack (or at video poker, for that matter). She was upset that I lost my money and I had raised my voice to her.

We had a discussion very shortly afterwards about what it means to be partners…at the gaming table and in life. First of all, whatever rules she learned about card playing with her sisters as a child had no bearing now. And second, for better or worse, when it came to figuring out the strategies to beat the casinos, I was going to be the boss. I was no table games expert by any means, but when the choice was between the two of us, I was light years ahead of her. I was the best we had.

We got through that moment — and it was a good partnership for a long time. But it didn’t have to be that way. That moment could have ended up being a show stopper had she not been willing to accept a “my way or the highway” inflexibility when it came to gambling decisions — including sometimes giving her an order that had to be executed IMMEDIATELY, without discussion until afterwards. She had to be able to accept that losing one hand was just a very minor bump in the road. If she was going to mourn and grieve over every losing session, I wanted no part of that. Finally, she had to believe that I could really win against the house — and I had to prove that again and again.

Clearly I’m not the best guy to be giving marital and relationship advice. Whatever things I think I know in that area have worked well some of the time, but other times not so much. Most of us prefer our experts to have a better batting average than I can boast. I know I do

At the same time, after Shirley and I split and I began seeing Bonnie, I had essentially the same discussion with Bonnie — albeit it “out of the blue” and not triggered by a specific incident. Had Bonnie not been able to agree that in this area of life I was going to be the boss, we would never have gone forward.

For many of my readers, it’s WAY too late to have this discussion before you’ve become serious romantically — because you’re already connected. Some of you have been married for 20 years or more. For others, it’s not so clear which one of you is the gambling expert. Many of you can’t present a convincing argument that you’ve been a winning player over time. And for most, success at gambling is a smaller part of your life than it is mine. All I can do is to share what works for me — and let you decide if there are lessons that you can apply to your life. Clearly, different readers will come to different conclusions and nobody is arguing that one size fits all here.

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New Video Poker Games at G2E from a Player’s Point of View

At this year’s G2E gaming show, I published a discussion of new video poker games — written for casino managers. You can see that here.

Today’s article is addressed to players — but it assumes you have read the previous article. Any phrasing that is exactly the same in the two articles is listed in italics, so you can skip that part if you’ve read the earlier words.

IGT

  1. Magic Deal Poker

This is a 10-coins-per-line game. It plays like regular video poker, except about 3.8% of the time, on the deal, you receive one, two, or (very rarely) three mystery cards.

In general, I liked this game. It is similar to Dream Card poker, except:

Dream Card has one mystery card whose value is determined BEFORE the draw. You can change the dream card if you don’t like the card selected by the machine.

  1. Magic Deal has one, two, or three mystery cards whose value is determined AFTER the draw. You cannot change such mystery cards, although in no cases did I see a hand where the machine picked a less-than-max-value card.
  2. Dream Card has obnoxious sound effects; fortunately, they’re missing from this game.

Another way to phrase the mystery cards occurring 3.8% of the time is to say that they happen 1-in-26 hands. That means you are paying twice what the hands are worth 25 out of 26 hands — and then hopefully you catch up when the multipliers come.

For players who “test the waters” by playing a few hands to see how things are going, this game will very frequently cause your score to drop like a stone. For players who believe that today’s score matters, this game will cause many of you to go away muttering.

The correct plays when you receive one or more mystery cards aren’t always that obvious. Letting an M stand for a mystery card and assuming you were playing a game just like 9/6 Double Double Bonus (except for the 10-coin per line ante and the occasional mystery card(s)), how would you play this hand: K♠ Q♠ Q♦ M M?

Deuces Wild players who see the mystery cards as basically equivalent to wild cards will hold QQMM, which would be correct in Deuces Wild. This is the wrong play here. KQMM is a much better play. Why is the play in this game different from the way you’d play in Deuces Wild? Because if you draw one of the remaining three royal cards in Deuces Wild, you’ll get paid for a wild royal, frequently worth 125 coins. If you draw one of the same cards in Mystery Card, you’ll get paid for a 4,000-coin natural royal.

  1. Ultimate X Spin Poker

Ultimate X and Spin Poker are both popular games — and this game links them well. It should work. Ultimate X is a 10-coins-per-line game and Spin Poker doesn’t require any additional money to play, so this game also costs 10 coins per line — or 90 coins overall.

Players who try to figure the correct strategy on this game will find it a much different problem than figuring out how to play “regular” Ultimate X. In regular Ultimate X, each of the lines deals with its own 47-card pack of cards — which is the original 52 cards minus the five you were dealt.

In the Spin Poker version, you have one 52-card deck in play. If you draw the A♥, for example, in one of the fifteen spaces, you cannot also draw the same card in another place. Additionally, because of the way the lines in Spin Poker cross each other, you’ll usually get each card drawn in three separate lines (although it will be two lines or five lines in the center column.)

What this means is that the variance in the Spin Poker version of Ultimate X will be significantly higher than it is in the Ten Play version of Ultimate X. Those who play regular Ultimate X know it already has a sky-high variance.

I really dislike it that you can’t play off your multipliers at the end of a session by betting five coins. I know there are players who make their living playing off these multipliers, but as a player who plays the game for hours at a time I find the regular stream of players coming in a checking the multipliers on every game of every machine to be annoying.

  1. Bonus Streak Ultimate X

This is a very difficult game to play at 10-coins-per-line. Instead of the usual multipliers you earn on the next hand in regular Ultimate X, here you earn a stream of multipliers over the next several hands. That is, you might earn a stream of 2x, 3x, 4x, 8x,12x over the next five games. If while playing this stream you receive a paying hand big enough to create additional multipliers (at least 3-of-a-kind in most games) all remaining multipliers on that line go to 12x.

The stream of multipliers created by getting certain hands creates a nightmare for players to analyze. “Regular” Ultimate X is tough enough and the games overhold the par sheet values. This game will be much tougher. And the correct strategy will be very different from that of “regular” Ultimate X. I see this game only being successful for low stakes for recreational players.

This game is very difficult to play correctly. There are many, many different possible combinations of multiplier streams. In addition, low paying hands (usually Jacks or Better and Two Pair in games without wild cards) do NOT earn multipliers. This makes basic strategy on this game very different from that of regular Ultimate X.

  1. Color Match Royals

The premise of the game is that the hand A♣ K♠ Q♣ J♠ T♠ is called a Black Royal, paying 2000 coins, and the hand A♦ K♦ 7♥ 4♥ 2♦ is called a Red Flush, which pays a little less than a regular flush. You also have black and red straight flushes.

Although I don’t know the exact strategy, it appears as though you should go for “color flushes” a high percentage of the time. This makes the game very boring as you are generally trying for a hand worth 20 coins when you have to pay 10 coins to play. If you don’t go for the color flushes, you’re giving up a lot of expected value.

Currently on www.videopoker.com there’s a free tutorial on how to play this game.  It is a simplified strategy, but I know of none better out there.

I do not like this game very much. To me, it doesn’t pass the “fun to play” test.

There are streams talking about this game on vpFREE, wizardofvegas, videopoker.com, and possibly other sites as well. I am not alone in my non-appreciation. Check out those discussions if you want more information.

  1. Super Triple Play Jackpots

Generally, I liked this game — but not the name. This is a form of “Wheel Poker.” Possibly there are some patent or royalty issues I don’t understand, but using “Wheel Poker” in the title would tell players what they are getting.

This game combines Super Triple Play, which is a 6-coin-per-line game where you get higher-than-usual payouts on 4-of-a-kinds (usually, depending on the game), and Wheel Poker, where you also pay an extra coin per line and you get to spin the wheel when you receive a 4-of-a-kind. Adding these games together makes this a 7-coins-per-line game.

The strategy is relatively easy to figure out assuming you have an approximately-correct figure for the average wheel spin.

In the original Wheel Poker, the wheel spin was worth about 430 on average. If I were collecting data while playing, I’d start with that number. I’d collect data on at least a few thousand spins before I came up with my “final answer.”

  1. Flip & Pay Poker

This was my favorite new game in this year’s mix. The game is relatively easy to understand without software, and the idea is different and interesting.

This is a 10-coin-per-line game, where the machine will flip at most one card under the following conditions:

  1. One card will be flipped one rank higher or lower, and always the same suit. That is, the 8♣ will only be flipped to a 9♣ or a 7♣.
  2. This is done with a 52-card deck, so if there is an A♦ 2♦ on the deal, the 2♦ will not flip to an A♦ because there aren’t duplicates in a 52-card deck.
  3. The resulting hand must be two pair or higher for flipping to occur.
  4. The flipped hand must be higher in Expected Value than the unflipped hand.

For example, if you were dealt 5♠ 6♥ 7♣ 8♦ 8♠, one of the 8s will flip to a 9, giving you a dealt straight.

If you don’t like the flipping, you can unflip. Sometimes some of the flips may seem strange. For example, in Triple Double Bonus, assume you are dealt A♣ A♦ 5♠ 6♥ 7♣, the machine will flip to AA557 or AA667 or AA577. Whether the machine flips or not, good players are just going to hold the pair of aces and throw away the other three cards.

Most players will not be sure whether it’s better to be dealt AA667 or AA567, given you’re just going to be holding the aces. The machine likes flipping to two pair (correctly!) but which is better is a mystery to most players and many will unflip.

My only problem with the game is the machine makes the choices and many players will be unsure why choices were made. The rules aren’t all that difficult — but they’re a bit tricky until you get used to them. A player dealt A♦ A♠ A♥ K♠ 5♥ REALLY wants that king to be flipped to an ace and may get angry when it doesn’t happen. If a floor person or shift manager is called over, that person MUST be fluent with the reason the K doesn’t flip to an ace (because the player already has an A♠ and the hand can’t contain two of them).

When I first played the game, I didn’t read the help screens. I tried to figure out the rules for myself. I tried to come up with cases where the smart player would unflip — such as K♦ Q♦ J♦ T♦ 8♠. If the 8 flipped to a 9, giving you a straight, you definitely should want to unflip. You’re going to throw the card away anyway, but you want all four 9s still in the pack rather than just three of them. When I read the rules for flipping, they said cards were only flipped when there was an increase in EV — so that should mean the 8 would not be flipped to a 9. But I’m not sure. That’s a fairly rare hand and nobody in the booth was positively sure how the game was programmed.

Scientific Games

The only other company I saw at the show that offered “ready everywhere now” new video poker games was Scientific Games. What they offered is a very close copy of IGT’s Triple Play series of games on which the patent expired not so long ago.

The Scientific Games version includes Single Hand, Triple Hand, Five Hand, Ten Hand, Twenty-Five Hand, Fifty Hand, and Hundred Hand games on the same machine. Players will figure out quickly that Fifty Hand is basically the same game as Fifty Play. The game titles are the same ones used by IGT, namely Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus, etc.

In two of the games, Scientific Games uses a different name than IGT does. It may have been intentional, but both times it struck me as a typographical mistake. They used the name Triple Bonus for a game that IGT calls Triple Double Bonus. Triple Bonus is an older game based on Kings or Better and it’s very different from Triple Double Bonus. Also, Scientific Games has a game called Joker’s Wild rather than Joker Wild.

The pay schedules on the Scientific Games are very similar to the IGT pay schedules, except often the straight flush pays 275 coins rather than 250. This adds about 0.05% to the player and is essentially a type of bribe to induce players to try the Scientific Games version rather than IGT’s.

So far this game hasn’t sold well, so players may never see it.

The game has several features of the latest WMS games (which came out two or three years ago.) WMS has been swallowed up by Scientific Games which is why you see those features here. As I recall, Station Casinos (now Red Rock Resorts) had the Las Vegas locals market monopoly on these games, and Harrah’s (now Caesars) had the national monopoly. These two casino chains never put these machines with good pay schedules so they didn’t take off. Once other casinos saw their results, they didn’t want the games either.

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I Lied to a Little Girl

I was at the elevators which connect the parking garage to the casino at South Point. I held the door open for a family of two adults and three children, the oldest being a girl who was maybe eight years old.

The kids got to the elevators before the adults and the oldest girl was staring at the buttons, not knowing whether to push up or down. When I quietly pushed the down button on the other side of the bank of elevators, she looked disappointed. She wanted to do it but just didn’t know which button to push.

I decided to try to make it up to her. I told her that when she got into the elevator, she should look for the button with the big “C” next to it and push that one. She looked at her father for permission. He nodded yes and she happily pushed the button.

She then asked me what the “C” stood for and I told her it stood for “Can’t wait to get there!” She nodded her understanding because she was being taken to a movie by her folks and indeed, couldn’t wait to get there.

Her parents smiled at what I told her. They appeared to judge me as a friendly, harmless, grandfatherly type of guy and didn’t correct the misinformation I had just disseminated. At least not in my presence.

The little girl, I never did learn her name, was delighted with the new information she had gathered. She appeared to have an insatiable curiosity and she just picked up something new — which made her day. Based on my two minutes of experience with her, she seemed to be the kind of kid who loved to go to school because there was no telling what kind of new stuff she was going to learn today.

It made my day too.

For whatever reason, I enjoy being around people who are excited to learn. In my classes, I’ve probably explained 2,000 times why a suited QJ is more valuable than a suited KQ, or why a suited AK has exactly the same value as a suited AJ. Pretty basic stuff, but every so often this causes a spark to go off in somebody’s head and they really appreciate having these “mysteries” cleared up.

Which is why I enjoy teaching. Which is why I enjoy writing. Which is why I enjoy hosting a radio show. My love for teaching people who want to learn isn’t restricted to gambling. I was the second of five children and often shared what I knew with my younger two brothers and sister. And I’ve taught dancing to thousands of people through the years.

That doesn’t really explain lying to a child, however.

Teaching (and writing and hosting a radio show) is at least partly entertainment. Yes, I’m trying to transmit knowledge, but if people get a laugh or two along the way, they have a better time in the learning process. When people enjoy learning, they’re more likely to want to pay attention and learn more.

My “can’t wait to get there” out-and-out lie was the kind of harmless “clever” joke I regularly share with my typical adult audiences. This one was corny — and most adults would smile at it. The fact that this child and her younger siblings didn’t “get” that it was a joke neither surprises nor bothers me. Often some adults don’t get my jokes, for whatever reason. (At least sometimes it’s because some of my ad lib jokes just aren’t that funny — or maybe miss the mark at times.)

This particular untruth was an obvious lie, recognizable as such to adults of normal intelligence, and didn’t do any harm. When people know you are trying to make a joke — especially when it comes off well — it often makes their day a little brighter too. I think of it as a random act of kindness to strangers rather than a violation of some “thou shalt not lie” commandment.

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A Mistake That Didn’t Cost Me

I happen to believe that mistakes cost you — even when they don’t. Say you were playing 9/6 Double Double Bonus for single line dollars, five coins bet, and were dealt 3♦ K♠ K♥ 3♣ 8♦.  Assume you’re knowledgeable enough and disciplined enough to know that holding KK33 is correct — but you were playing fast and only held KK because you saw the high pair but didn’t see two pair.

Further, assume the three cards you draw are 5♠ A♥ 9♣. Holding the kings only you end up with five credits. Had you held the two pair and ended up with the same draw (specifically only the 5♠), you would still end up with five credits. Many people believe this to be a no harm-no foul “non-event.”

I believe it cost you $1.16 in EV which is the difference in EV between holding KK33 and KK.

While it is true that you can’t take EV to the bank, my decisions in video poker (including which games to play, where, and when) all come down to EV. Over time, my actual results and my EV results will be fairly close.

They will never (okay, extremely rarely) be EXACTLY the same, but close enough. If they happened to be exactly the same and I played one more hand, they would usually be different. (If you want actual results and EV results to be identical all of the time, consider playing a change machine. You insert a hundred-dollar bill and get out five twenties. Put one of them back in and receive four fives. Put one of them back in and receive five ones. Then you take all that to the cashier and receive a $100 bill. Repeat. What fun!)

Each misplay I make costs me EV, and over time, those mistakes add up.

In the last week of August, there was a promotion at the Palms where video poker players received either a 2x or 3x multiplier every day. The base slot club returns 0.25%, so this means you would get either 0.50% or 0.75%. They limited the number of bonus points you could get to 80,000, so this meant if you received a 2x multiplier you could play $80,000 coin-in and if you received a 3x multiplier you could play $40,000 coin-in to max out your bonus points.

If this doesn’t make sense, don’t worry about it. Supposedly on October 1, Red Rock Resorts (formerly called Station Casinos) will be taking over and what is now Palms may be called something like Palms Station and be incorporated into the Boarding Pass system.

Since Station Casino has cut me off from receiving benefits long ago, along with several hundred other players, I do not anticipate playing at this casino once it changes ownership. And before October 1, I will convert my remaining Palms Club points to free play so I don’t have to worry about converting them once the casino changes names. If for some reason the conversion to Palms Station doesn’t go through, I can always start earning Palms Club points all over again.

Anyway, the only “decent” Ultimate X games at Palms that offer slot club points are 15-9-4-4-3 Deuces Wild. In the Ten Play version, this game returns 99.44%. With single or double points, a player is “under water” on the game, although that can possibly be made up with drawings, other promotions, and mailers. With triple points, the player has a slight advantage — with the drawings, other promotions, and mailers still on the table.

So I play this game during triple point days and avoid it otherwise. The machines come in 50¢ and $1 denominations, meaning $50 or $100 per 100-coin max bet. You can play it for Triple Play or Five Play with smaller maximum bets, but when you do the EV on the game is only 99.13% or 99.27% respectively. Not for me.

The strategy I use, which I will teach in my September 28 class at South Point, is broken down by the sum of the multipliers active at any one time. The multipliers may be anywhere between 10x and 120x. In the one-deuce section, for example, I recommend one strategy for multiplier sums between 10x and 31x, another strategy between 32x and 53x, a third strategy between 54x and 75x, and a fourth strategy between 76x and 120x.

So there are four different (but similar) strategies in the zero-deuce section and four more for the two-deuce section. In the three-deuce section, there are only two strategies for multipliers below 96x, and six more for those rare cases where it’s above 96x. For four deuces, there is only one strategy no matter what the multiplier sum is. I’m not going to tell you what it is.

In 2016, I’ve only played this game four times because it’s been rare when the conditions are good enough. So I haven’t committed this strategy to memory. It’s tougher than average to memorize and it’s a long time between opportunities, so I practice maybe a half hour before potential play and bring the strategy sheets with me.

The Palms is fewer than 10 miles from my home, so it’s not terribly inconvenient to go in and check whether my multiplier would be 2x (which means I wouldn’t play) or 3x (which means I would.) Every day I had the strategy with me — in case. I would show up slightly after midnight because there would be less competition for the machines at that hour. I’m not the only one who plays this game on 3x point days.

On Monday, August 29, I received a 2x multiplier. Tuesday, August 30, I received a 3x multiplier, and I sat down and played 40,000 points. I ended up a small winner, which was fortunate. Ultimate X has a VERY high variance and on any particular day, your score can be quite a bit ahead or quite a bit behind.

The last three days of the week, I received 2x multipliers each time and didn’t play. But I didn’t know it before I got there. So I practiced a bit, took my strategy with me, and was well rested when I showed up.

My strategy, which is on three sheets of 8½” x 11” paper is carried in a library book. If it takes awhile to be paid (like, for example, on an “in my dreams” hand of a dealt straight flush followed by a dealt royal which would pay $240,000 or $480,000 depending on which denomination I was dreaming about), I’ll read my book. Also, the sheets of copy paper last longer if they are protected by being in a book rather than carried loosely.

The last time I went to check my multiplier, however, I made a mistake. I had two library books checked out and the book I put my strategy in was not the one I ended up taking to the casino. So had the multiplier been 3x (it wasn’t), I wouldn’t have had the strategy with me.

Had I received the correct multiplier, I would have asked the attendant to lock up the machine, gone home to pick up the strategy, and been back within a half hour or so. It would have been a tad inconvenient, but not an EV loss, unless you want to argue that time is money and gas isn’t free and I wouldn’t have a good rejoinder to that. Still, I need to be more careful and wish I hadn’t made this mistake.

If this machine and opportunity is still available after October 1, you’ll have to find out from somebody else. I don’t expect to be welcome there.