Category: Advanced Strategy

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I Thought About It

Bob Dancer

When you list the financial reasons to intelligently gamble at video poker, it starts with the return on the game itself and the slot club. Promotions get added in, and it’s not too long before you consider mailers.

Mailers aren’t guaranteed, and if a casino decides to reduce or eliminate your mailers, you have no recourse. From the casinos point of view, mailers are a way to encourage you to come and play again — and hopefully lose. From the player’s point of view, mailers are a reward for past play.

If you quit playing, the mailers will stop. If you stiff the casino, meaning you go and pick up goodies but don’t play, the mailers will stop. 

In my case, as regular readers know, I was planning on giving up gambling forever because of the new tax bill. It was only a matter of time before all my mailers disappeared. Still, collecting a few of them before they were cut off seemed to be a potentially lucrative approach. So how would I go about it?

My biggest mailers come from Harrah’s Cherokee, where Bonnie and I make 4-or-5-times-a-year visits. Typically, we stay 10 or 12 days and play considerably more than $1 million in coin-in split between video poker and slots. We get sizeable mailers for doing this — which figures.

Picking up the mailers isn’t easy. It’s a four-hour flight to either Atlanta (three driving hours away from Cherokee) or Ashville (one driving hour away but far fewer flights). Would I be better off coming in and staying a few days without playing, or do a quick hit-and-run and not stay there? Renting a car and a hotel room elsewhere are relatively small costs compared to the size of the mailers.

While the casino offers free rooms, it does so with the expectation that you’ll play. If I don’t play, possibly they’ll charge me for the room — at not-so-friendly prices. To get around that, perhaps it makes sense to book a room somewhere else.

I considered flying in on the last day of a mailer time period, arriving at the casino at 10 p.m. and picking up the expiring mailer money and sticking around for the new mailer time period that begins at midnight. And then leaving.

I could do that, I suppose, but the mailers will be coming in wintertime, and Cherokee is in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Weather can play havoc with airline schedules. A plane delay could remove my chance of getting there before the free play period ends.

I usually get free food “on my card.” Probably I could redeem that while I’m there, but I’m not sure. While I possibly wouldn’t check into the hotel and leave a credit card, I’ve been there enough that there’s one of my credit card numbers “on file.” How much they would charge me, if at all, for eating on the comp without playing is an unknown,

I have a line of credit at that casino. At no time did I consider taking out a marker for, say, $50,000 and then not repaying it. Markers are negotiable instruments. Not only would the casino collect, but my credit score would take a significant hit. No thanks.

Plus (in the hypothetical world where I would be quitting gambling), there’s always a chance that the law would be changed, and I’d want to go back there in the future. They would remember if I had significantly stiffed them before.  

I didn’t reach any conclusions as to what I would do. I have thought about it, but am still not sure what I would do.

I suspect I would do nothing of the kind of things I’ve been discussing here. At the end of the day, my integrity is important to me. Hustling an extra few thousand dollars out of a casino on my way out the door doesn’t feel right to me. I might get away with it, but if I felt bad about doing it, what’s the point?

I understand that not everybody would reach this same conclusion. What would you do?

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Searching for a Reset

Bob Dancer

As part of the Big Beautiful Bill which passed Congress and then signed by the president in July of 2025, the W-2G rules changed effective January 1, 2026. The threshold used to be $1,200 and now it’s $2,000. Most slot and video poker players believe that $2,000 isn’t nearly high enough, but that’s a decision for another Congress to address.

On December 31 there was one set of rules for W-2Gs. On January 1 there was another. The machines had to be reset to lock up at $2,000 instead of $1,200 as soon as possible after the clock on New Year’s Eve struck midnight.

The thing is, this has to be done manually, machine by machine on at least some machines. While most slot machines at reset start off with meter numbers that are much too low to be of interest to advantage players, that’s not always the case. Some games reset in positive territory — meaning that if you’re the first knowledgeable player on such a machine when it gets turned back on — you usually have several games where you have the advantage. 

Often these games will have four or more denominations, and five or more “number of coins” settings for each denomination. Some games have way more than this. There are games where you will have 50 different games, all in positive mode, whenever the machine is reset. This could easily mean $10,000 or more in EV if you have the bankroll to play all of the games, including the ones at $50 a hand or more. 

You aren’t guaranteed to win on these — it is gambling, after all, with variance — but the odds are in your favor. 

So, shortly after midnight (early New Years Day), I planned to be in a major casino looking for slot techs making adjustments to machines. On most machines, resetting the machines won’t create an exploitable situation, but on a few machines they will. I had a list of machines that I thought might qualify — but I’m sure there were others that I didn’t know about.

Once I found a team of slot techs working on games that I thought would turn positive at reset, it would simply be a matter of sitting down and waiting until they finished — and then being the first player there. 

Most players were not aware of this opportunity, but surely some were. The thing is, I believe there were relatively few pros “in on” this deal — and lots of casinos to cover. I figured if I picked a casino with a number of the machines I liked, my chances were pretty good to get one or more of the lucrative resets. 

If at 1 a.m. somebody hit a jackpot for, say, $1,500, and the machines had not been reset yet, the machine would lock up. When an attendant game, they would just pay off the jackpot without issuing a W-2G. There are relatively few jackpots higher than $1,199 and less than $2,000, so not too many players would be inconvenienced by this. And the ones that were would be delighted to not get a tax form with their money.

And there is always a problem with staffing. When are the slot techs scheduled to work? And how many of them partied for New Years Eve? Maybe the casino would want to wait until 8 a.m. or so to start. If these slot techs were making changes to hundreds of machines, the casino certainly would want them to be at their best.

Plus, in the early hours of January 1, casinos are very busy with more-than-the-usual-number-of-inebriated players looking to get lucky. Casinos very well might not want to shut down any machines in order to maximize their profits from this party-like atmosphere.

I decided to go downtown at about 3 a.m. There are lots of casinos within walking distance which would all be affected by the new tax bill. While I don’t have player cards at all of them, if I can get on a reset machine I’ll happily play without a card. Better with a card, of course, because slot club points and mailers are valuable, but a reset machine could potentially be worth more than $10,000 and I wasn’t going to be a stickler about whether I got every slot club point.

On December 31, Bonnie and I went to a quiet NYE shindig at a nearby residence. I had one glass of wine starting about 7 p.m. and cut myself off so I’d be at my best later. We told the hosts we were going to leave at 9 p.m., no matter what state the party was in, and we did. I was in bed by 9:30 — setting my alarm for 2 a.m.

I got up with the alarm, did my morning routine, and was on the road by 2:40. It’s about 15 minutes from our house to the downtown casinos — so I was right on time with my plan.

I started at Circa because that’s the downtown casino with the most suitable slots. I walked around five casinos over the next half hour looking for working slot techs. Nothing! There were relatively few customers at this time of morning, and no slot techs changing machines that I could see.

I was surprised. I thought I had outsmarted most other players — but it turned out that whatever my calculations were, they were wrong. Oh well. Not the first time.

While I was out and about, I checked around for some machines that were in winning position. After all, a whole mess of players went through in the past few hours, and a lot were out-of-towners who were clueless about winning at slots. Maybe they left something!

I found a number of small plays and one “sorta big” play requiring a $10-per-spin input. I loaded it with $1,000 and began to play. I hit three or four $500+ intermediate jackpots, including a final one of $1,100. 

The game ended up showing $3,400 in credits which included the $1,100 final win — and the machine locked up! The attendant came and asked for ID. I told her I didn’t hit any jackpot — the $3,400 was accumulated credits. She “corrected” me, telling me that it was a $3,400 jackpot. I quietly told her that the last score was “only” $1,100 and that there was no taxable event.

She was unsure and said she’d have to talk to her supervisor. She took my player card and told me she’d be back. Five minutes later she correctly paid me the $3,400 that I was owed. 

At first, I thought the machine had been reset incorrectly and instead of the W-2G amount being set for $2,000 they set the machine lockup amount when you tried to cash out for that amount. Other casinos have similar features. I hadn’t experienced it at this casino before. Maybe this was a long-standing policy there. 

Although I did make $2,400 on this particular play, and a bit more on other plays, I didn’t find the reset opportunity I had hoped to get. I had planned my work, worked my plan, and it all came to naught. This happens sometimes.

Over the next few days, I continued to look for working slot tech teams. The change didn’t have to be done in the wee hours of the new year, and it would be just as valuable to me on January 2 or 3 if I could be there when it happened. But no. I failed to find any.

I didn’t have to tell you about this “failure.’ You would have never known had I not written about it. But the winning process, for me anyway, has included a number of these one-of-a-kind situations. When I find one, I try to figure out the best way to exploit it. This one didn’t pan out, but maybe the next one will.

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Before New Year’s Eve

Bob Dancer

Three weeks ago, I addressed end-of-year considerations about emptying your slot club accounts — or not. Today I’m addressing a different, albeit related, subject. And that subject is reaching a specific tier level.

Some casino slot clubs have tier levels — silver, gold, platinum, or whatever. Often these are annual awards earned January 1 through December 31, although they don’t have to be. 

I was prompted to look at this for personal reasons relating to Caesars Rewards. As I wrote this, I was planning one last trip to Harrah’s Cherokee in order to reach some not-well-known goals — and I needed to plan accordingly. It may well be my last trip to Cherokee, ever. The planning I’m doing may be applicable to some of my readers. Some of this is speculation because as I write this, I haven’t received the December mailer yet.

If you play at a Harrah’s or Caesars property, you know that Seven Stars is the highest tier level and that level requires 150,000 Tier Credits (TCs) per year. For slot and video poker players, these TCs are earned in one of three ways: playing the machines, receiving bonuses for reaching predetermined daily levels, and TC multipliers — which are promotions occurring periodically throughout the year. In the last few months of the year, TC multipliers are more common as players strive to reach the next tier.

Making it to Seven Stars is huge — with their $1,200 retreat, five $100 dinners, highly discounted cruises, and some other goodies. Ending the year with slightly less than 150,000 credits is a big mistake. But we’re played a lot of high stakes video poker at several Caesars properties, mostly Reno and Cherokee, and we’re far beyond the 150,000 level. For the past few years, we’ve reached this level before the end of February.

Most players don’t realize that you can earn quite a bit more than the 150,000 TCs required for Seven Stars, and get rewarded for doing so. For every 250,000 TCs earned, you get one Seven Stars Experience Credit (SSEC), which may be redeemed for a variety of things. For Bonnie and me, we redeem each of these SSECs for $450 in free play at either a Las Vegas or Cherokee property.

While the following numbers aren’t exact, they’ll give you an idea of how I went about my decision making — and may well be applicable to you in a similar situation. I planned a 10-day trip. At the start of the trip, Bonnie needed 90,000 TCs to reach the next SSEC and I needed 260,000 TCs. (Actually, I only needed 10,000 but I figured I could complete that and make it all the way through the next one as well.) There was one TC multiplier where you received 5x TCs up to 25,000 points. And I can comfortably play about $180,000 per day, split between Bonnie’s card and mine. At Cherokee, $180,000 played on video poker will result in 18,000 TCs. I play primarily video poker, but also some slots, which accrue TCs twice as fast.

For the TC multiplier, I don’t know if the bonus is 25,000 or only 20,000 and they count the 5,000 I’d earn as part of the 25,000. I’ve seen it both ways at various properties and sometimes the people at the booth don’t understand the difference and so can’t give precise answers. At Harrah’s Cherokee, they usually have one or more high level people at the booth, so I expect to get accurate answers there. But for planning purposes, I’ll assume the “worst case,” which is that I only receive 20,000 extra TCs. I don’t want to assume the best and possibly miss the next SSEC (and my $450 bonus) by 5,000 TCs.

For normal daily play there, earning 5,000 TCs ($50,000 coin-in) per day is pretty standard because doing that earns a 10,000 TC bonus. Here, though, Bonnie only needs 90,000 TCs and the multiplier day she’ll earn 35,000 (the 5,000 played, 20,000 multiplier bonus, and the daily 10,000 bonus). That will leave her needing “only” 55,000 other TCs to accumulate over nine days of play. So, I’ll play on her card 5,000 TCs for four days and skip playing on her card the rest of the trip.

On my card, ten days of 15,000 TCs (earning at least 5,000 daily with the 10,000 per day bonus), plus the 20,000 TC multiplier bonus means 170,000 out of the 260,000 needed. Earning an extra 8,000 TCs per day for the five days I’ll play on Bonnie’s card earns me an extra 40,000, and earning an extra 13,000 on the five days I don’t play on Bonnie’s card gives me an additional 65,000 TCs. This adds up to 285,000 — which is more than the 260,000 needed. Good. I can always play less.

They have Next Day Bounce Back (NDB)at Harrah’s Cherokee, and I think the current rate of free play is earned at 0.375%. I will try to earn my points by the ninth day. I don’t want to earn it for the 10th day I play because our plane leaves before the NDB is available for me to play. Playing $180,000 coin-in on a day when I’m not getting NDB costs about $675 in EV. Doing that to earn $450 in free play doesn’t make sense. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll have met my goals before the 10th day and so I won’t have to play at all that day. It’s also possible that playing $50,000 that last day and earning the 10,000 TC bonus will be required, but that’s only around -$165 in EV so it remains an option. Or, better, maybe $25,000 will be enough earning half the amounts as $50,000. That will only cost $80 in EV for missing out on NDB.

NDB on your card lasts for 30 days there, so if I were a local and planning to come back within a month, I could play right up to the last minute. But since I’m not planning on coming back, I sit out playing on the last day of my trip — other than picking up NDB from the day before and any other free play that might be available. If the mailer has weekly free play starting on Monday, for example, I might well plan my departure for a Monday.

While this trip actually ended the first week of December, and I have three additional weeks to earn the SSEC goals in Las Vegas, there is a Great Gift Wrap Up that ends December 14 where every Reward Credits earned throughout the year at any of the Caesars or Harrah’s properties counts towards gifts (or free play), I want all of my play done before that. 

My lesser play on Bonnie’s card compared to mine will mean she’ll receive lesser offers down the road from Cherokee than I will. But unless the tax law changes, we won’t be going there anymore so how big the offers are is irrelevant.

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I Might Be Losing It

Bob Dancer

My host at Circa called me up to invite me to a promotion in late November. I had actually been napping when she called (I had played graveyard the day before) and was a little fuzzy on the details she told me. I figured out that I’d have to play to earn tickets to a drawing — and while I do play at Circa, it’s mostly slots and I don’t play enough to have a real chance in drawings. 

I started to decline but she prompted that this one was really a good idea for me because only 50 or so people were being invited.  

She texted me a flyer announcing a drawing where 10 people would get $500 each. You could earn one drawing ticket for every 100 points you earned from Thursday noon to Saturday 2 p.m. If 50 people were invited and we all played the same, my EV for the drawing was $50. I didn’t study the text carefully. I would play some, but not a lot. 

I usually study rules carefully but this one was for a giveaway so small, I didn’t figure it was worth it. I couldn’t figure out why my host thought this was a good deal.

When I got there, I found out. They were also giving away a Ford F-150 Raptor truck! And for that, it didn’t matter how much you played — everybody got one ticket! The truck, including with big “Circa” stickers on both sides, was in the lobby of the drawing area. I had seen the truck displayed, but I figured I had no chance to win it, so I paid no attention. And now I had a 1-in-50 chance? Not sure how I got that chance, but here I was.

I’m not a truck guy and had no idea of what an F-150 sold for. I looked it up on my cell phone and learned they went for $85K each when new. I wondered how much they sold for if they had “Circa” logos on the sides? 

Would they offer a cash or free play option instead of the truck? I didn’t know. My host didn’t know. Probably not because it was now “used.”  But surely, I could sell it for $60,000 at least to somebody, couldn’t I? A 1-in-50 chance to get that much was worth $1,200 in EV. Now I understood why my host strongly encouraged me to be here.

They made a pretty big deal out of the drawing. There were only 48 contestants and two of them had two entries, because they had been runner-up in a previous drawing. When they called your name, you walked up to the stage down a big aisle they had set up to pick one of 50 small boxes. One of those boxes had a key fob in it.

They had already had the drawing for 10 $500 winners, and these were announced when you were called up to get your small box. When they called my name, they didn’t say I had won $500 — which was disappointing, but not surprising. I had played considerably more than my weekly average — but not really all that much.

Also surprising was when they called my name, they said I was one of the two people who had two entries! I had been runner-up for a previous Raptor drawing and wasn’t even aware of it!

How could I possibly not know of this? I don’t believe I even entered a previous Raptor drawing. I really must be losing it! Seriously, this doesn’t strike me as something I could forget.

Now I had two chances to get this truck. My EV just shot up to $2,400. When called the second time, I dutifully walked up and picked up my second box. 

Most of the entrants were from out of town. Some flew several friends and family members to witness their 1-in-50 chance. I thought I was doing Bonnie a favor by not inviting her. She’s a good sport and would have come if I had asked, but I was getting downtown at 9 a.m. and staying all day. I checked all three properties (Circa, Golden Gate, the D) twice, looking for games to play. And then Bonnie and I were hosting four family members to a Hugo’s Cellar “Thanksgiving Dinner” later that night because for Thanksgiving Day itself, we’d be in Cherokee.

Bonnie isn’t a slot player — although she’d definitely be willing to hit the buttons should I tell her which ones to hit. I have to watch her, though, because not infrequently she hits a button she shouldn’t and changes it to another game or denomination which isn’t such a good play. But it was going to be a long day and she had packing to arrange for our out-of-town trip, so I suggested she stay at home. Her sister and brother-in-law, invited to dinner, live only a mile from us and were very willing to bring Bonnie along with them. But had I known what a big deal this was, Bonnie would have been there with me.

This is the point in the blog where you’re expecting me to reveal that I actually won the truck. Well, I would if I did — but I didn’t. Some lady from out-of-town had picked the correct box and was quite happy about it. As she should have been!

To me, this story is about my legitimate concern regarding how this snuck up on me. Being on top of drawings and knowing what promotions are going on and how to succeed at them is something I’ve done for more than 30 years. And I’m really good at this part of my “job.” And I totally missed this one. As they said in the 95-year-old movie Little Caesar: “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?”

I’m planning on quitting gambling at the end of the year because of the new tax law. Maybe this was a sign I should quit now!

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Free Money is Always Good — Sort of

Bob Dancer

Derek Stevens, along with his mostly silent brother, Greg, owns Circa, the D, and Golden Gate casinos in downtown Las Vegas. The three properties share a slot club and the same ONE player’s card may be used at all three properties.   

Circa checks everyone’s ID every time using a hand-held device about the size of a cell phone. I assume they capture the information on your Driver’s License in the process, but I don’t know that for a fact. The D checks your ID on weekend nights — but not always all three doors. The Golden Gate, by far the smallest of the three properties, rarely has anybody checking your ID as you enter.

Sometimes the checking is done by regular security officers. Sometimes the checking is done by what appear to be temporary employees.

Strangely, on a midweek day in mid-November, a man in a tuxedo was checking IDs at Golden Gate. I produced mine and he asked if I was there for the promotion. I read mailers fairly closely and was pretty sure that no mid-week promotion was advertised for that casino, so I asked, “What promotion?”

He told me that if I sign up for a card at the players’ club, I’d receive guaranteed free play for some amount between $5 and $1,000. I told him I already had a card, and he replied that all I had to do was to show the card and I’d get the free play.

Free money is always good. 

On the way to the machines I wanted to check, I glanced over at the players’ club. There was a line of about 25 people and it wasn’t moving very fast. I didn’t see how many booth attendants were servicing the front of the line, but clearly not enough to make the line move very fast.

I figured it would take me 30-45 minutes to get to the front of the line. If I knew I was going to get $200 or more, such a wait would be tolerable. While I don’t know the distribution of the free play amounts for this particular promotion, historically in Las Vegas it goes something like 50% of the time it’s $5, 25% of the time it’s $10, 23% of the time it’s $20 or $25, and 2% of the time it’s higher than that. If those percentages held true for this promotion, my EV for standing in line for a long time was less than $10.

When I first moved to Las Vegas and was scrounging to make enough money to be able to stay, I would have stood in line. Not anymore. Today I have a bankroll, and my earning power is more than $10 per 30-45 minutes. So, I passed up the line and checked the machines I wanted to check.

Perhaps I should modify my “Free money is always good” statement to something like, “No money is totally free. Whether it’s good to get depends on what you have to do to obtain it. Correctly evaluating this is part of what makes a gambler successful or not.”

Also, please note that in no way am I criticizing the Golden Gate for their promotion. Clearly a lot of people were capitalizing on it and I would have done the same 30 years ago. It’s just that for me at this time in my life, no thank you.

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Winding Things Down

Bob Dancer

Every end of year presents decisions tax-wise. If you have accumulated cash back or free play at casinos and withdraw it, it’s a taxable event and is hence reportable. Many players, possibly most, don’t report such income, but that’s tax evasion — which is a crime. My goal is tax avoidance, which is different.

Usually, my decision comes down to whether I am ahead or behind for the year. While I’ve usually had positive annual results, there have been exceptions. In 2024, for example, I had a seriously-negative year. In December of that year, I emptied most of my slot club accounts.  This reduced my loss for the year and since losses aren’t carried over year to year, was a better strategy than if I collected the money from the slot club accounts in a year I was ahead and would have to pay taxes on it.

In 2025, I’m ahead and will not be clearing out accounts before December 31. Because of the new tax law that is going into effect January 1, I’ll be quitting most of my gambling at that time, so my slot club accounts will be cleaned out in January of 2026.

There are some cases, however, where I will not clear out my slot club accounts, because of the idiosyncrasies of the particular slot clubs. Some of my readers have accounts at these exact casinos, but many of you have accounts elsewhere where the same logic might apply.

South Point — When the South Point reduced its slot club from a 0.30% return to 0.15%, I quit playing. All video poker there now has a house advantage. The mailers competent video poker players receive are pretty paltry, so there’s no reason for me to play there anymore.

Telling people that I’ll no longer be playing at South Point (knowing that others might follow my example and also quit playing there) is not easy for me to do. Over the years, I’ve been a very strong advocate for that casino.

 Michael Gaughan and the South Point have been very good to my career and to me personally. The South Point was the major sponsor of my Gambling with an Edge podcast, and I taught classes there for many years. When Shirley, out of the blue, decided our marriage was over back in 2012, the South Point gave me a free room there for a few weeks until I got my feet on the ground again. Many competent players have been removed from the South Point slot club, but I was allowed to stay because of my relationship with Michael Gaughan.

 But the policies of that casino have changed. The slot club has been cut in half, and many monthly promotions are smaller now than they used to be. While I’ll always be grateful to Michael Gaughan, I won’t be a player there any longer. So why not close my slot club account there?

Because on Mondays, the South Point offers 50% discounts to seniors for food and other things if you use your accumulated points — and for about two weeks before Christmas every year everybody gets the 50% discounts using points. Since spending my points like this isn’t taxable, and I get twice as much in food as I’d get in cash, it makes sense to me not to clear out the account at this time.

Caesars Sports Book — I am not a significant sports bettor, but Caesars Sports Book offers monthly promotions if you have Caesars Seven Stars status. My current Seven Stars status remains in effect until January 2027, so I’ll continue to opt into the monthly promotion until then.

Although the promotion has changed before and can change again at any time, currently it goes like this: If you make a monthly $100 or higher bet using real money (which includes money deposited or earned and not withdrawn), you get a $150 free bet. Free bets do not return as much as regular bets, but they are free and, obviously, I win some of them.

While I generally make my $100 bets at around -200 (meaning I will win approximately 2/3 of them), I lose some of them. My free bets are made on underdogs, so I lose more than half of them. So, it is possible that my overall balance decreases periodically and I’ll need some money in the account so I can continue to make my required $100 monthly bets. I’ll probably leave $500 in it and clean out the rest in January. Over time, though, I’m a huge favorite to win during this promotion.

Four Queens — I have a current comp dollar balance of several thousand dollars. Bonnie and I like to take people to Hugo’s Cellar periodically, so I want to keep that balance active. That means I will continue to play a little at that casino to keep the food comps from expiring. So while I’m “giving up gambling” in the main, there are a few exceptions, like this one.

I will not be receiving meal comps at casinos in 2026 because I’ve stopped playing, so in addition to going to Hugo’s Cellar sometimes, we’ll probably eat at their Magnolia’s coffee shop much more often than we do today. The casino has an accumulated points balance, separate from comp dollars, and we’ll probably zero that in January.

There are other year-end things I will do. Bonnie and I each get five $100 meals at Caesars properties because of our Seven Stars status. We still have some that won’t expire until January 31. We’ll spend those in January — because we have other “free food” until then. It’s possible we’ll get more meals at Caesars next year simply because we’re still Seven Stars. We’ll see.

It’s possible that the new tax law will be reversed sometime in the future — and depending on when that happens, I might start gambling again. I will certainly look at what casinos are offering and make a judgment as to whether I can get up to speed again and how long that will take me. 

If this happens in, for example, 2030, I’ll be 83 years old by then and will not have played for five years. It’s fair to assume my skills will have greatly deteriorated in that time period. And who knows if there will be any games worth playing by then? 

While presumably I’ll be able to get up to speed again in video poker, if there are any games worth playing, I’ll have to start over again at advantage slots. While I know how to beat several dozen different kinds of slot machines today, new games will continue to be invented and any of the games I know today will likely either be non-existent or perhaps “everybody” will know how to play them so my information today will be worthless then.

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New Promotion on Norwegian Cruise Lines

Bob Dancer

As I write this, Bonnie and I are spending two weeks aboard the NCL Bliss having set sail Sunday, October 26. We tour the Mexican Riviera (Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán) on back-to-back cruises. This is our “go to” itinerary for three reasons.

First, I have extended family near our departure port, so after a 200-mile drive from Las Vegas, we get to have a place to spend the night before, a place to park the car while we’re cruising, transportation to and from the port itself, and a chance to visit family I don’t see very often. In exchange, I buy everybody dinner Saturday night — and many of my family members accept this bribe.

Second, the Bliss has a Texas barbeque specialty dining option. While Bonnie and I are not barbeque fans, Texas-style or otherwise, the venue also has a country-western band playing every night next to a nice dance floor. And we are fans of that. We are better than average dancers and Bonnie never tires of compliments we receive from other passengers.

Our third reason will resonate with more of my readers than the first two. The last time we were on the Bliss, in the fall of 2024, the casino offered a sizeable number of persistence slot machines, many of which I knew how to beat. There are many fewer of these slots than there were a year ago, but there are still 11 Super Star machines which include Ultimate X (UX). 

These UX machines have three games (Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Deuces Wild), in Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play configurations. Each of these come in five different denominations, yielding 45 different combinations per machine.

Since cruise ship gamblers tend to be less sophisticated gaming-wise than those found in Las Vegas, these UX machines may frequently be found with unplayed multipliers. I don’t seek unplayed UX multipliers in most casinos I frequent because several casinos remove players who do so. I do look for those unplayed multipliers aboard the Bliss because it is both lucrative and if I get kicked out of the casino, it’s relatively small potatoes. Especially since I plan to give up gambling in a few months anyway.

Plus, the casino’s smoking section is behind sealed glass which makes the rest of the casino relatively smoke-free. Not completely, because some smoke escapes whenever one of the doors between the smoking and non-smoking areas is opened, but it is far less smoky than many casinos. Which is a huge plus for me.

In the casino, you earn points for your play. One point for every $5 coin-in for slots and one for $10 coin-in for video poker. The points are redeemable for free play, at a miniscule yet non-zero rate. As near as I can tell, it’s 0.01% for video poker and twice that for slots.

Starting in early October, they began a fairly lucrative promotion called “Points to Paradise.” According to the slot club boothling I spoke to, this promotion is valid on most NCL ships, and they plan to run it indefinitely. 

If you earn 500 points, you receive $250 off your next cruise. One thousand points gets you $500 off, and 2,000 points earns you a free cruise. After you earn these benefits, you must book a cruise within 60 days and sail within a year or the benefits evaporate. If you stay on the ship for two or more weeks back-to-back, insofar as this promotion is concerned, and you end up with, say, 450 points on the first week, those points do not carry over until the following week.

For the mathematically challenged, if you are planning on, or at least willing to, cruise again on NCL within a year, playing on slots gives you a 10% rebate, and playing video poker gives you a 5% rebate — assuming you stop playing when you reach exactly 500, 1,000, or 2,000 points.

If you play nothing other than vulturing UX machines, it’s unlikely that you’ll earn 500 points. You are, after all, only playing one hand at a time whenever you find a good situation. And the number of good situations you find largely depends on how many other UX vultures there are on the cruise. There are some persistence slots which earn points much faster than vulturing UX, simply because you often play a lot of hands on such machines until it becomes unplayable, so I’ll end up with close to 1,000 points each week. I’m writing this in the middle of our first week of cruising, so I’m not sure what my balance will be.

The best non-UX video poker I found was single-line 8/5 Jacks or Better in denominations between 50 cents and $10 — which returns 97.3% if played correctly. I don’t think I’ve ever played 8/5 Jacks or Better before, but I know 8/5 Bonus Poker perfectly and that strategy is “close enough” to play for a few hands. A a machine with a casino edge of 2.7% paired with a promotion that returns 5% is definitely playable. If I end up with, say 800 points by the time the cruise ends, I’ll earn the remaining 200 points by playing $2,000 coin-in worth of 8/5 Jacks or Better, with an expected loss of $54. This will allow me to receive my second $250 discount for the week. I plan to do this for both weeks. If the competition for unplayed UX multipliers during the second week of our cruising is greater than it is the first week, I might end up with only $250 in cruise discounts for the second week.

Bonnie and I have already qualified for our highly discounted NCL cruises for 2026 that we’ve earned by maintaining Seven Stars status. I may well not be gambling after January 2026, but I will be cashing what I earned prior to that. We’ll probably reserve two back-to-back Mexican Riviera cruises on the Bliss again next fall.

While we won’t have the casino as a reason to go on the cruise, I’ll still have family in Southern California and there will still be country-western dancing on the ship (we hope). Those two reasons are sufficient.

I won’t make the mistake of picking dates during the World Series like I unwittingly did this year. I’ve been a Dodger fan since the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958, and if they’re in it again next year I’ll want to watch the games at night in preference to going dancing. Which won’t be to Bonnie’s liking.

While the Dodgers are longshots to make it back again to the 2026 World Series, they probably have better odds than any other team. And we can just as easily go the week after the Series.

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A Look at Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness, by Tim Grover

Bob Dancer

The book Winning was recommended to me by a friend. Since I think of myself as a winner, at least in my most confident moments, I thought I knew most of what the book was about. I was wrong. Whatever winning I do is junior varsity stuff. The winning this book talks about is World Championships!

Tim Grover is an athletic trainer, trained in kinesiology, who, when he was 25 years old, sent letters to all the Chicago Bulls except Michael Jordan applying to be their personal trainer — an uncommon position in 1985. Jordan saw the letter in the locker room, had Grover checked out, and hired him for 30 days as a sort of tryout. 

Jordan had played one year in the NBA at that point, done really well, but was bullied by the bigger, stronger players. He knew he needed to bulk up without losing his speed, quickness, and other skills, and was willing to give Grover a chance to help him.

Grover was with Jordan for 15 years, through six world championships, and a not-so-successful two-year stint trying to be a professional baseball player. After Jordan retired, Grover helped a number of other players, including Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Charles Barkley, and others. Most of you know these were top basketball players of their era, and Michael Jordan is largely considered to be the GOAT – Greatest of All Time. Today Grover mostly consults with business CEOs.

This book doesn’t tell you what to do. It tells you how to think and how to approach winning. If you’re not already motivated to succeed, this book won’t help you. The book is about adding that critical extra edge to people who are already successful.

Grover lists 13 steps to winning — all of which he labels number 1 because they are all necessary. I’m not going to go through all 13, but I will mention a few.

  1. Winning is not a marathon — it’s a sprint with no finish line.
  1. Winning takes you through hell — and if you quit, that’s where you end up.
  1. Winning makes you different, and different scares people.
  1. Winning makes war on the battlefield of your mind.
  1. Winning is selfish.

I could discuss what Grover says about any of these points, but I’ll just look at the last. If you’re going to win, you have to go all in. This often means lack of balance in such things as family and relationships. We’ve all heard of people who work too many hours, and their marriage suffers. Grover says that if you want to be a winner, this is par for the course. 

Grover strongly dislikes motivational cliches such as “You’ve got this!”, “You’re crushing it!”, and “Play hard until the final whistle blows!” These are junior high expressions, in his mind, and every competitor already knows these things without having them yelled at by a coach. True winning is much different.

There are lots of anecdotes in the book, especially about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, on how their will to succeed was far beyond that of most people. But this will to succeed is what it takes to be a winner.

Grover says four things are needed to be a winner: talent, intelligence, competitiveness, and resilience — and the most important of these is resilience. This is what makes you get up and keep going after you’ve fallen on your face. 

And falling on your face is definitely going to happen. Nobody has clear sailing to championships over and over again. It’s very hard work and there are always setbacks.

Nobody wins all the time and when you do win, as soon as it’s over you start from scratch and have to work hard to make it happen again. You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect to succeed. You have to come back better because your competition will have analyzed what you have done and will make adjustments to counter what you did before.

I found this book inspiring. Perhaps I would have had more success in my life had I come across this book earlier.

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A New Book?

Bob Dancer

I’ve written recently about retiring from gambling when the new IRS rules for gambling become effective on January 1, 2026. While I’m a senior citizen and retirement is what many people my age dream about, that doesn’t sound very attractive to me. I’ve always taken great pleasure in using my brain and figuring things out. So, what am I to do?

My current best guess is that I’ll write my second autobiography, tentatively entitled Million Dollar Video Poker — The Next 25 Years. The story from my original Million Dollar Video Poker ended in 2001, with me getting kicked out of MGM Grand and Venetian after having a lucky six-month period when I netted more than $1 million.

In 2001, I had my 54th birthday and was still in my prime gambling-wise. While there is no doubt that gambling at video poker was much more lucrative in the 1990s than it has been since, I have still found numerous opportunities every year since then, and have made more money from gambling after 2001 than I made up to that point.

Most of the opportunities I found are no longer around. Do players really want to learn about this history? Do they want to know what kind of mistakes casinos were making in 2004 and 2015 and 2023? I think yes. While there are an infinite number of ways for promotions to be structured, the same types of mistakes by casino marketing people keep happening over and over again. At a minimum, the book will give players examples that just might be relevant down the road.

Good games remain today. After the pandemic. I had good years along with an expensive 2024 — but they added up to more than a half-million dollars net win for me. Some of the games I profited from are gone, but many remain.

I think, though, that the most useful thing I can write about is how I attacked whatever came along. The actual solutions I came up with may not be relevant in a changed environment, but the approach I used to come up with those solutions is still relevant.

Would Anthony Curtis publish this book? Probably. Depending on how good it is. And part of his role as a publisher is to help make the book better. If the first draft weren’t quite good enough, that wouldn’t necessarily be a showstopper.

Part of the problem is my memory isn’t as good today as it was during my first book. And the events I would describe would be 20 years ago, whereas most of the action in MDVP was from two or three years prior to when I wrote about it. We may have to include a disclaimer like what is found at the front of many movies, “Based on a true story.”

Another problem is that some of the juicy promotions are still going on today, and writing about them and how to beat them would be tantamount to killing the deal. That’s probably not a showstopper because it’ll take three or four years to work through the Huntington Press queue, and by that time the promotions would be killed off by others.

Before announcing this project, I wanted to be certain I could see it through. So, beginning in August of this year, I began drafting several chapters for the new book and also making a list of things I wanted to talk about that I haven’t written yet. While it is nowhere near completed, perhaps the first draft of 20% of the final book has been finished. I’m convinced it’s a worthwhile project and I can keep going.

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What Will Casinos Do?

Bob Dancer

I’ve written a few times that starting January 1, 2026, the tax law will be changed drastically for professional gamblers — especially those who get W-2Gs or have a significant paper trail, such as those who bet big amounts in sportsbooks or play in large casino tournaments of any kind.

Blackjack players and poker players who don’t play in tournaments have largely been on the “honor system” to report their wins and losses. These players can apply a “fudge factor” to their scores and generally be all right, despite the new tax law. 

I’m neither suggesting nor condoning they do this, nor am I happy with the fact that they can do this to their taxes and I can’t, but I’m sure it will be done in several cases.

Players who receive W-2Gs and the casinos which send this information to the IRS are hard pressed to find a way around the extra tax. While the IRS threshold for issuing a W-2G is said to be increasing from $1,200 to $2,500 or some other number, and maybe 1099s also (nobody is too sure), these will have a minor effect. A large percentage of W-2Gs are for bigger amounts.

If you’re a big sports bettor with one of the major U.S. books, each sportsbook can report your wins and losses there to the IRS. Whether they will or not, I’m not too sure. My sports betting is very “small time,” and I don’t know how these books treat their bigger customers.

I, for one, announced a few months ago that I will quit gambling on January 1, 2026. Nothing has changed in the meantime to make me change my mind. How many other players will quit, or at least cut back drastically, is an open question. I have no way to estimate how much business in high limit slot rooms will evaporate, but I believe it will be a significant percentage.

There will be players who don’t know about the new law, or don’t think it will apply to them, or basically don’t care. While the profit motive is a major reason I gamble, and when the profit disappears, I disappear, many gamblers don’t care all that much about that. They want to win, but expect to lose, and if it turns out to be an extra $250,000 lost, well that’s too bad. No big for them, perhaps, but it would be for me and most others.

Some though, will put up with the extra loss for one year, and decide they can’t do it anymore, and by calendar 2027, the high limit slot rooms will be largely empty. We’ll see.

I expect casinos to come up with dollar video poker games where the royal flush returns $2,495. We’ve seen “tax free” quarter royals for $1,199, for the same purpose. Or maybe $5 games requiring three or four coins. You still get a W-2G for a royal, but you won’t for most 4-of-a-kinds.

If casinos lose a lot of their high limit slot revenue, you can assume they will tighten up pay schedules and promotions to make up for it. What they’ll actually do is unknown. But my prediction is that most readers of my writings will not like it.