Category: Advanced Strategy

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But Wouldn’t I Get My Money Back More Often?

I was teaching beginner 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe in my Tuesday noon class at the South Point. (The semester will continue every Tuesday until September 4.) The hand we were discussing was 3♦4♦5♦Q♣J♣.

The class is taught using a top-down strategy where you select the rule that comes first. Holding 3♦4♦5♦ (along with certain other 3-card straight flushes) was covered by Rule 8. Holding Q♣J♣ (along with the other two suited high card combinations) was covered by Rule 9. Since Rule 8 comes before Rule 9, the correct play is to hold the 3♦4♦5♦.

One student asked the question: “But wouldn’t I at least get my money back more often if I held the clubs?”

My answer was: “Absolutely. But the system we use to determine the correct play maximizes Expected Value. With Expected Value, it is the frequency of the win multiplied by the value of the win – not just the frequency.”

The following chart shows this. To make the numbers big enough to read easily, I had to split the chart in half.

The Expected Value of 3♦4♦5♦ is shown to be 3.025. Since you are drawing two cards, there are 1,081 different combinations you could draw. About 87% of the time (actually 937 out of 1,081) you end up with no win at all.
But of the times you do score, most of them are straights and flushes, paying four and six times the value of high pairs respectively.

All the numbers in the preceding paragraph came from either the pay schedule or the chart below — which was copied directly from the Video Poker for Winners software. If you wish to be able to understand simple video poker mathematics, this is a good chance for you to practice.

 

Holding EV Total No Win High Pair 2 Pair 3K ST
3♦4♦5♦ 3.025 1,081 937 18 27 9 45
Q♣J♣ 2.9374 16,215 9,827 5,022 711 281 189

 

Holding EV Total FL FH 4K SF RF
3♦4♦5♦ 3.025 1,081 42 0 0 3 0
Q♣J♣ 2.9374 16,215 162 18 2 2 1

When you start from Q♣J♣ and draw three cards, there are 16,215 possible draws. This number is exactly 15 times as large as the 1,081 possible draws when you only draw two cards.

You get a high pair or two pair 5,733 times out of the 16,215 (which is about 35% of the time), but these are only 5-coin wins. You score something about 40% of the time, but most of the wins are small.

Other players use the logic that holding clubs gives them a chance at a royal flush and holding the diamonds doesn’t. But a 1-in-16,215 chance at 4,000 coins is only worth about 0.24 coins. The 3-in-1,081 chance of getting a straight flush holding 3♦4♦5♦ is worth 0.69 coins and that is something usually omitted by seat-of-the-pants players thinking, “It seems to me.”

A lot of players try to reason correct plays out in their heads. While this is certainly an appropriate avenue to address the problem if you don’t have a strategy handy, correct strategies are fairly easy to come by and figuring out how many times in 1,081 or 16,215 (or even bigger numbers when you draw four or five cards) is a tedious, error-prone process and basically impossible for most people to do by themselves.

A computer program, however, can figure this out almost instantaneously and very accurately. It’s one of the tools of the trade that makes it possible to play well.

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A Look at The Confidence Game – Part 1 of 2

For our May 31 Gambling with an Edge podcast, we interviewed Maria Konnikova, a journalist with a Ph.D. in psychology who worked with Eric Seidel to become more knowledgeable about poker and ended up winning several tournaments. Maria impressed both Richard Munchkin and me.

Preparing for the interview, I learned that one of Konnikova’s books, The Confidence Game, is a study of the men and women who are con artists.  She also created a podcast called “The Grift” where she has 10 half-hour episodes of extended studies discussing the con artists she wrote about in the book.

I started to l listen to the first podcast episode, and five hours later I had listened to them all. I was hooked. I ordered The Confidence Game to read what else she said on the subject.

Today’s blog is primarily about why I decided to study what Konnikova wrote. Next week’s blog is about the book itself.

It is arguably self-centered to describe my thought process on why I chose to read a particular book. Still, when I’ve studied other professional gamblers, it was always important to me to know the “why” of their actions rather than just the “what.” So that’s where I’m going to start.

I’ve been conned more than once. I was never suckered in a three-card Monte game or sent money to help a Nigerian prince, but I’ve been conned just the same.

I started playing backgammon for real money in 1994. I was 27 years old at the time. At least twice I was successfully conned — but didn’t know it at the time. Months later I was reading Danny Kleinman and read about the very hustles I fell for. I would have possibly never known had I not read about it.

I’m “older and wiser” now, but a few years ago I still found myself trusting a player not deserving that trust. At that time, it felt appropriate. Afterwards, there were plenty of signs I missed. I wrote here about me being conned, but in exchange for being paid most of what I was owed, I took down the articles and promised never to re-post them.

In reading The Confidence Game, I hoped to learn about many schemes that have already been pulled on others — so hopefully I can recognize them when someone tries to pull them on me. As we will see in next week’s blog, the book is chock full of examples.

I have no idea what con is coming my way next. Even though I am smarter than many and not completely naïve in this area, I do not presume I am immune from being victimized. It’s happened before and possibly could happen again. I’m hoping that the more I know about the methodology of how it is done, I’ll be able to safely dodge the bullet next time.

The second, totally unrelated, reason I wanted to study this book is as a “how to” primer. I do not consider myself a grifter or con artist at all. At the same time, sometimes a bit of subterfuge is critical to being an AP — and even to success in everyday life. It’s nice to learn some of the principles of how it’s done.

If you listen to the Kelly Sun interview on GWAE, you’ll see she and Phil Ivey incorporated many elements of the con in what they did. Both Richard and I believe that what they did was completely legal and they should prevail in court. So far, the courts have disagreed with these beliefs.

In my Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography, I described how the MGM Grand was giving away the store because their slot management department was arithmetically challenged. I gave them all sorts of plausible reasons why I was playing so many hours and never once explained that they were idiots for offering such a lucrative $500/hour game for players with a bankroll who could play 9/6 Jacks or Better well. Was this conning them? Maybe. Maybe not. As I said, a bit of subterfuge is critical to being a successful AP.

I’ve used “seat of the pants” methodology in this regard, with moderate success. According to the book, some of the things I’ve been doing are well executed, and some are not. Learning how to be more successful is always part of my agenda.

We asked Maria Konnikova on the air whether her book was meant to be an instructional manual on how to be a con artist. She said that certainly wasn’t her intention, but she might have accomplished that nonetheless.

I found many of her pointers quite useful. I’ll tell you more about them next week.

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Lessons from Backgammon, Part 2 of 2

(Editor’s Note) We’ve just discovered that, due to a technical glitch, last-week’s Bob Dancer blog wasn’t posted. We’re putting it up now and will resume the usual schedule this week.

Last week, I began a two-part article where I described important gambling lessons that I learned years ago while playing backgammon and that are still applicable today playing video poker. I suspect those same lessons would be applicable at most gambling games, as well as with other endeavors.

Continuing those lessons I learned at the Cavendish West:

6. Many players played too fast.
In backgammon, many rolls have one obvious play. Many other rolls offer several “reasonable” plays, each with pluses and minuses. It takes time to correctly evaluate which one is better. Often, you have a choice between two or more ways to play an ace (one). They might be equally safe on this particular play, but they differ in their effectiveness on the next roll or two.

You frequently must make a “pay me now or pay me later” kind of decision about when to take a chance. Sometimes you have to decide whether it is better to make a play that helps your offense or another one that helps your defense.

Sometimes, of course, players just plain don’t understand why one play is superior to another. But often they can figure it out if they spend some time. But spending a lot of time studying moves is hard work, and even harder if you’re tired.

A lot of players, including myself, played faster than was appropriate and paid the consequences.

7. Mind-altering substances didn’t help play. Whether we’re talking about legal or illegal substances, when you played someone a lot you could tell the difference in their moves when they were high compared to when they weren’t.

8. People could and did go broke.

It’s not some theoretical possibility that is pretty rare. If you don’t have a safety net (i.e. parents who will bail you out, a couple of million dollars in the bank, someone who is willing and able to support your gambling losses, etc.), you need to take bankroll considerations into account. Bankroll calculations are easier to make in video poker because the value of a game and the value of slot club are more easily figured out than they are in backgammon.

9. It was easy to forget when gambling that we were dealing with real money. In backgammon, we would deal with “points,” where each point was worth $1, $5, $20, etc. Psychologically being down 60 points wasn’t that much better than being down 90. You tried very hard to “get even,” even though how much you started with that day was a pretty meaningless number.

10. Losing streaks brought out the worst of people’s personality. If someone had any tendency to lie, cheat, steal, or a number of other negative habits, you’d likely see them do it more when they were losing. They might have been 100% trustworthy during normal times, but put them on a losing streak and they were different people.

11. People were crazy (and still are)!

In backgammon, the game is played against live opponents, many of whom have strong personalities that may or may not mesh with mine. I have my own personality quirks that don’t appeal to everybody.

Consequently, I concluded that to be a contented player, I needed a gambling game with less human interaction than backgammon. For that reason, I shunned live poker. I would NOT enjoy being across the table from a Mike Matusow or a Phil Hellmuth. It’s possible I could develop the technical skills to compete with them. (Possible — not certain. They both are VERY good.) But I don’t have the temperament to deal with yelling and screaming they bring to the table.

Compared to backgammon, the human interaction in video poker, although sometimes important, is minor.

This is one observation that fits into the “your mileage may vary” category. Other players do just fine in poker and backgammon and can deal with the personalities involved. This is not my strength, and a key part of success is figuring out what your strengths are and going with them.

12. Finally, a good memory and keeping records was very important. You needed to know whether a particular player was better or worse than you. If you had good records of his or her results when you played together, you had a pretty strong indicator.

There are players whose leaks are exploitable. Some passed doubles more than they should, so you doubled them early compared to the theoretically optimal point. Others took doubles much later than was advised. Against those players, it was never a good idea to double early.

Over time you played a lot of different players and you needed to have notes about all of them. A good memory is good — but written notes last longer and are better.

Keeping records for tax purposes is done in video poker but is largely not done in backgammon. There are no official records or W-2Gs in backgammon — save for the occasional tournament — and the majority of successful players “forget” to declare any gambling income.

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Lessons from Backgammon, Part 1 of 2

From 1974 through 1980, I averaged 80-100 hours per week playing or studying backgammon. For the next 12 years, I had a job (because I lost my bankroll playing backgammon) and reduced my backgammon time to an average of about 15 hours per week. In 1994, I began playing video poker and haven’t played significant backgammon since that time.

The success I’ve experienced at video poker is at least partly due to what I learned as a backgammon player.

I addressed this subject in my autobiography, Million Dollar Video Poker, in the chapter called “Lessons from the Cavendish West.” The Cavendish West was a bridge/gin/backgammon club in the West Hollywood part of Los Angeles. That was where most of my play took place.

That book was written more than 10 years ago, and I haven’t reread it recently. I won’t reread the chapter I mentioned until after these two articles are completed. I’m sure there will be a lot of overlap, but my perspective has changed over the last decade.

Video poker and backgammon are played quite differently. But in such things as preparation, looking for an advantage, and dealing with winning and losing, I was able to apply my backgammon skills to video poker.  The following are some of the things I learned from backgammon that continue to serve me well today:

     1.  Everybody won some of the time. Everybody lost some of the time. But one group of players won most of the time and another group of players lost most of the time. The losing players would explain to whomever listened that it was their bad luck that caused them to be losers. The winning players would pretend to agree with them. After all, without losing players there could be no winning players.

 

     2.  The strong players regularly played “propositions.” A proposition is when you place the checkers in an agreed upon position and play it out over and over again. Sometimes odds were offered. Sometimes not. Although there were some who did this because they were hustling, usually it was done in order to better understand the position.

Backgammon, at the time, had no computer programs that could tell you that this play was the best from this particular position. So, players had to figure it out, and playing propositions repeatedly was one way to do that. This was one way they studied, and if you put a gambling element into it, it was more interesting.

Today they have a number of computerized backgammon programs primarily developed by artificial intelligence. From a particular position, the program will tell you that this move gives you an EV of 51.2% and this other move gives you an EV of 48.1%. The program “knows” this because it plays each position over and over again until it comes up with an estimate. If you accept this particular program as being best, clearly the first move is superior to the second. Usually a play this close could not be determined with certainty by players at the table, but good players would often sense that the first play was better.

Players who play a lot against computer programs today get much better much faster than we did back when I played. Even though I had thousands of hours of experience and was a pretty fair player back in the early 90s, I would not stand a chance against today’s players. The computer programs have increased knowledge about the game considerably.

     3.  The biggest enemy of many players was their emotions. Backgammon has frequent situations where you can be way ahead and then a few rolls later you are hopelessly behind. Some players were devastated when this happened against them — and it happened several times every day.

Going “on tilt,” or “steaming,” were frequent results of that lack of emotional control. In backgammon there is a doubling cube, where stakes can be doubled mid-game, and then doubled again, and again, at later times. At each of these doubling occurrences, emotional control is necessary to correctly evaluate whether or not the doubling should be offered by one player and accepted or rejected by the other.

When players were steaming, frequently they doubled too early and/or accepted too late. It was a very expensive way to play.

     4.  It was important to evaluate your “opponent.” In video poker this is relatively easy, as your opponent is a game, such as 9/6 Jacks or Better or perhaps 7/5 Bonus Poker, which has a well-known return for perfect play. Perfect play is relatively simple given today’s software products.

In backgammon, your opponents are human beings — who have different skill sets and different emotional strengths and weaknesses. In addition, these opponents, like all humans, have good days and bad days.

Evaluating one person is difficult enough, but often backgammon is played in a version called a “chouette,” which means a game with three or more players in it. To properly evaluate a chouette, you need to know the strengths of each player — which is often an impossible task to do precisely.

Equally important was accurately evaluating your own skill level relative to others.

     5.  Hand in hand with opponent evaluation was game selection. To be a winning player you had to play in games where you had the advantage. In video poker it’s fairly easy to figure that out. In backgammon, it’s much more difficult.

If you were playing another player heads up, and you were better than him, it would have been fairly unusual for him to continue to want to play you. Social skills were important here. I observed charming players who could always find excellent games because they were so much fun to play around. I observed crabby people where the opposite was true.

I will continue this discussion next week.

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Can You Do Everything Correctly in Video Poker and Still Go Broke?

The “system” I promote for winning at video poker has two main steps to it:

  1. Only play when you have the advantage over the house. This includes the base return on the game, the slot club, promotions, mailers, drawing entries, and possibly other things.
  2. Play for small enough stakes that your bankroll isn’t overly endangered. (Some simplify this to only play for what you can afford to lose.)

Do this, I tell gamblers, and in the long run you’ll very likely prosper.

Calling this an actual “system,” or suggesting that I invented it, is ludicrous. It is, however, the methodology I suggest is the best way to win at the game.

In last week’s column, I wrote that it’s conceivable that even when I think I have the advantage over the house, I’m actually the underdog. I don’t believe that happens very often, perhaps never, but it’s conceivable.

If you’re playing a game for stakes where your bankroll is going to be safe 99.99% of the time, one in 10,000 people who does this is going to end up broke. That’s what 99.99% means. It’s like when certain polls said Donald Trump had a 25% chance of winning the presidency at a certain point a few years ago, the polls weren’t wrong. A 25% chance means that there’s a 1-in-4 chance for it to happen, and in that election, the 1-in-4 “longshot” came in.

In truth, calculating exact bankroll requirements is essentially impossible. The two best programs for this, Video Poker for Winners and Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker, will tell you that if you play a particular game with a particular slot club forever and ever, your required bankroll for a 1% (or 0.1% or 0.001% or whatever) is such-and-such.

The thing is, available video poker games change over time. Slot clubs change over time. Many of us play a variety of different games at a variety of different casinos — and next year will have a new set of games to play as things evolve. Calculating exact bankroll calculations in this environment is essentially impossible — partly because we don’t know what games and slot club conditions will be available next year.

To work with this, many competent players (including me) take this approach: “Play with an advantage, with what seems like an appropriate bankroll, and hope for the best.” We all know that “hope for the best” isn’t a strategy, but in the face of such an insolvable mathematical problem, sometimes that’s the best we have. Under-betting your bankroll is safer than over-betting.

There are those who talk about Kelly betting, which is a system of bet-sizing that will grow your bankroll at the maximum rate while essentially reducing to zero your chances of going broke. I’m not going to go there because bet-sizing in video poker is often very limited (as in such-and-such a pay schedule is only available for quarters and this other pay schedule is only available for $5 Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play) and your actual edge has some guesswork in there since you’re never positive what your mailer is going to be next month. You can make an educated guess — but sometimes you get surprised.

So, occasionally, somebody can do everything right and still go broke. It’s fairly rare, but it does happen. And if it does happen, they can correctly call it bad luck. A 1-in-10,000 (or whatever it was) case of bad luck.

Those people who do go broke playing video poker, however, usually aren’t victims of this kind of very unusual bad luck. It’s far more likely that some or all of their play was on games where they didn’t have the advantage. Or when they had an advantage if they played every hand perfectly, but they made too many playing errors.  Or sometimes they played while under the influence of one thing or another and they didn’t actually have the advantage during those times. It’s far more likely that even if they did have an edge, the edge was too small relative to their bankroll and the stakes they were playing.

Let’s say we have heard that “Joe,” a guy we thought was a pretty good player, actually went broke while playing video poker. What we will almost certainly never know for sure is:

  1. Exactly what games was he playing?
  2. With exactly what slot club?
  3. With exactly what other promotions going on at the time?
  4. Under what state of sobriety, alertness, and psychological readiness?
  5. What was his starting bankroll?
  6. Did he make any major withdrawals from his gambling bankroll for anything else (perhaps a car, house, vacation, medical bills, helping out relatives, a mistress, drugs, etc.)?
  7. How close to perfectly did he play?

Not knowing this kind of information (in addition to the fact that this particular Joe is hypothetical, so the information is even more unknowable), my personal conclusion would be that it is far more likely Joe violated one of the two numbered conditions at the start of this article than it would be he just got unlucky.

Knowing about a few such people doesn’t shake me from my belief that the “system” works. Call it a Bayesian probability approach, if you will.

I know others who take the approach that “If it could happen to Joe, it could happen to anybody. There’s no guarantee. It’s all random luck.” To those who believe that, I say I believe the math is on my side, but I understand that you are inconvincible.

Some people are more comfortable investing in the stock market rather than gambling. That’s a good bet. A considerable portion of my bankroll is in the stock market. But there’s risk there too. Ten years ago, the market took a 50% dump. For people who owned stocks on margin, it could have been a 100% or 200% dump or even bigger. If you’ve held on since then, the market has recovered and then some. But many people didn’t have the nerve or the wherewithal to hang on.

This column is not about politics, but with the chances of a trade war and/or nuclear war are arguably higher than they were two years ago.  Who knows what the prognosis of the stock market is over the next few years? With video poker, you can know before you make each bet.

(One anecdote isn’t proof of anything, but this one is close to home for me. My father, born in 1915, was 92 years old when the 2007 stock market crash happened. He had about $60 million invested in the market in 2007 — a considerable lifetime achievement — much of it on margin — because he was obsessed with making $100 million before he died. Everyone told him that what he was doing wasn’t prudent at all — but he wouldn’t listen. He felt that he had built up all that money, we hadn’t, and that proved he was smarter than us. He ended up losing everything — and the shock of going from a multi-millionaire to penniless and depending on his children for support was devasting. He ended up losing his mind and dying a few years later.)

Owning your own home has traditionally been a good investment. Many parts of the country, including Las Vegas, had a huge real estate recession 15 or so years ago. Some home owners are still upside down. Long term, if they can hold on, the prices will probably come back. But there will always be people who couldn’t hold on and lost everything with this “good” investment.

Any other investment vehicle you can name has had some ups and downs. I’m somebody who believes the ups and downs of video poker are lower than those of other investments — IF you follow the two rules set out at the beginning. Most people who fail at video poker broke one or both of those rules.  

I’ve been told that I’m responsible when somebody goes broke playing video poker because I encouraged them to play. To that I say I’ve been issuing the same caveats for years. I strongly recommend that if you don’t have the edge, don’t play. If you choose to play anyway, I don’t see how that is my responsibility at all.

On my father’s bookshelf when he died were numerous publications on making money in the stock market. The authors of those publications didn’t suggest he invest the way he did at all. Was it their fault that he went broke? Not in my opinion.

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Is It Even Possible to Play Perfectly?

In a recent comment posted on www.gamblingwithanedge.com about my March 27 “He Screwed Me!” column, Liz wrote, in part,

“And, mathematically speaking, we can never be 100% sure that even Dancer always has the edge. I’m willing to believe he knows all the maxEV strategies cold including penalty cards, but that’s not the same thing as playing in a casino environment and never making a mistake.”

To that I respond: “Apples and oranges!”

If Liz wants to suggest that sometimes I don’t know strategies perfectly or sometimes mis-key or not carefully examine all the options before I make a play, I’ll plead guilty. I still play at a 99.9% accuracy level, probably higher, but that number is gradually lowering as I advance more into my senior years.

But not playing with the maximum possible edge is not the same as not playing with an edge. Let’s say I calculate a play is worth 100.4% but I only play at the 99.9% accuracy level. That lowers the return to 100.3% — but it’s still an edge.

A far more likely source of possibly playing without an edge is making the wrong assumptions. If I assume a drawing is worth 0.5% and it’s actually worth only 0.05%, that could turn what I think is a play-with-an-edge into one where the house has the advantage.

Usually, I won’t ever know for sure what a drawing is worth. Estimating how many actual tickets are in a drum is tough. Estimating how many virtual tickets are in a virtual drum is tougher. All I will know is whether or not I got called THIS TIME. That’s not really useful information insofar as what the drawing is worth.

Over time, if I learn that when I’ve played $100,000 coin-in at this casino I’ve been called 40% of the time, then it’s easier to make a reasonable estimate. But you need a lot of data points. Having friends who play at about the same level as you and who share information with you is useful.

But since it takes time to gather this information, for some period you’re “flying blind.” You can make a “best guess” without a whole lot of confidence in that number. This can lead to you playing a game where you think you have the edge, but after you collect more data, you’ll find out you don’t.

How much is a slot tournament worth? You can get some idea based on the number of entrants and the total prize pool — but you frequently don’t know until you’re already there. A video poker tournament is different. I’ll triple or quadruple the average prize simply because I can play faster and make better decisions than many of the other entrants. I’m still going to need to hit some hands to win, but I have a better chance of doing that than many other players.

Inherent in most plays is the assumption that you’re going to be getting so much cash or free play in the mail. If you play the same amount every month and get the same mailer each month, it’s easy to put that into percentages. If your play varies and your mailers do too, it’s tougher. You usually don’t know if your mailer is based on three months, six months, or who-knows-what.

Sometimes there’s a “win too much and you get cut off” factor in the mailers. If you think you might be approaching that limit you basically have too choices — play like hell until it’s over or stop playing for three months or so which will dilute your wins-per-month.

When the SLS opened, they had way-too-loose high limit video poker. I played $25 10-6-40 Double Double Bonus, which is a 99.96% game, plus slot club, plus comps, plus mailers, and I got $3,500 show-up money because I had an offer that size from Caesars Entertainment and SLS was matching offers. My score went up and down, of course. When I was behind $30,000, I felt as though I should keep playing because I was likely to get great mailers. Then I hit two $20,000 jackpots and two $10,000 jackpots in short order and I was now up. Still, the score was close enough to even, given I was playing a volatile game at $125 per hand. When the royal came, putting me ahead $120,000, I knew it was time to quit. I figured I wasn’t going to get any mailer — so why continue to play? Even with a 0.2% slot club, the edge was pretty small for such a volatile game. I still had an edge in this game, but the edge was too small to interest me.

Sometimes you just plain have no way to guestimate how much each item is worth.  But if you’re close enough to 100%, have a couple of drawings, some mailers, and maybe reach a higher tier level, you can make a reasonable assumption that you have the edge. Will you always be correct? No. But usually. There’s a lot to be said for the feel that experienced players obtain over time.

So, when Liz says sometimes I’m not positive I’m playing with an edge, I’d have to agree that could occasionally happen when one of my guesstimates is way off. But it’s extremely unlikely that I’m playing at a disadvantage because I’m making significant playing errors. If my total edge were small enough so that a 0.01% playing error could take me from positive to negative, I would have considered that unplayable to begin with. There are quarter Deuces Wild players in Las Vegas who play long hours for a game that is worth less than $10 per hour to them. Good for them. But I need a bigger hourly potential to jump in.

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Do APs Cheat?

Internet forums, by their nature, are filled with disparate opinions. Recently, another blogger in the LVA stable wrote a comment in response to a blog I posted in late March. He disagreed with me. And, as you’ll see, I disagree with his disagreement.

The distinction you’re missing is that advantage play almost never violates the casino’s rules, written or implied. A player playing a VP machine or blackjack well is not playing it any differently from anyone else, except he/she is making better decisions. There’s no rule against that.

It must be nice to live in such a world where everybody in the group you identify with is a good guy! Especially when you’re a quarter player and have no idea of what goes on at higher stakes

Advantage play consists of regularly beating the casino. The players who do this tend to be smarter than average, sneakier than average, and more knowledgeable than average about casino games. Each player goes about being an AP in a slightly different way.

Such players see the casino as their adversary. It’s not a huge stretch for them to see the casino as their enemy — and against whom all sorts of things are fair game.

Some of us attempt to play fair. I do, at least at this point in my life. Years ago, when I was hungrier and had less to lose, I cut some corners that I wouldn’t cut today. I cannot say I always walked the straight and narrow. Can you?

Let’s look at some areas where APs haven’t been known to have the highest integrity.
At some casinos, it’s okay to play on your spouse’s player’s card, and some where even that is frowned upon. There are players who shuffle 30 or more cards at a casino.

If you receive comped tickets and give them away to family members, surely it’s well within the spirit with which they were given. But if you receive comped tickets and sell them, then that’s considered over-the-line. Same with extra hotel rooms.

In some table games, it’s against the rules to show others your cards. Some players do. Some players develop elaborate systems to reveal their cards to teammates at the same table.

What if you’re playing two machines, telling others that you’re holding the second machine for your wife who is upstairs. What if she is actually nowhere nearby, but you say the same thing?

One casino has drawings where you do not have to be present, but you need to claim before midnight or the prize is forfeited. Players form groups and text the winning numbers to each other. This may not be illegal, but it is certainly against what the casino had in mind.

If you’re on vacation and cannot pick up your free play, the casino wants you to forfeit it. Many players allow their friends to pick it up for them.

An AP will at least consider all of these things. Many everyday players won’t even think of them. Some of these things are perfectly legal; some are gray areas; some are definitely over-the-line. Whatever line the courts decide is the right one, there will always be players stepping over that line.

I believe APs are better than lesser players at figuring out these things. Once figured out, some APs cross the lines and some don’t. There is no way to say that “All APs xxxxx” and be accurate. Different players use different tactics.

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Farewell to Dotty’s — Part II of II

In last week’s blog, I discussed the W-2G promotion at Dotty’s and how they have removed the best games for playing that promotion. I suggest you read that blog before you look at today’s, because today I’ll continue the discussion without much review.

Compare this promotion on 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe with 9/6 Jacks or Better:

 

9/6 BONUS POKER DELUXE
Hand Name Payout Frequency % Prob. Occurs Every % of Ret. Promo min bet
ROYAL FLUSH 4000 61.767093 0.00% 42076.77 1.90% 0.019% $5
STRAIGHT FLUSH 250 283.32655 0.01% 9173.02 0.55% 0.006% $24
4 OF A KIND 400 6132.7776 0.24% 423.7819 18.88% 0.189% $15
FULL HOUSE 45 29861.008 1.15% 87.03524 10.34% 0.103% $135
FLUSH 30 28901.832 1.11% 89.92371 6.67% 0.067% $200
STRAIGHT 20 33213.804 1.28% 78.24939 5.11% 0.000%
3 OF A KIND 15 192559.08 7.41% 13.49695 22.23% 0.000%
TWO PAIR 5 333687.73 12.84% 7.788599 12.84% 0.000%
JACKS OR BETTER 5 549065.74 21.13% 4.733422 21.13% 0.000%
NOTHING 0 1425192.9 54.84% 1.823585 0.00% 0.000%
Total Return 99.642%

 

9/6 JACKS OR BETTER
Hand Name Payout Frequency % Prob. Occurs Every % of Ret. Promo min bet
ROYAL FLUSH 4000 64.345748 0.00% 40390.55 1.980% 0.020% $5
STRAIGHT FLUSH 250 284.08995 0.01% 9148.37 0.550% 0.006% $24
4 OF A KIND 125 6140.1617 0.24% 423.2722 5.910% 0.059% $48
FULL HOUSE 45 29919.766 1.15% 86.86431 10.360% 0.104% $135
FLUSH 30 28626.273 1.10% 90.78932 6.610% 0.066% $200
STRAIGHT 20 29184.676 1.12% 89.05221 4.490% 0.000%
3 OF A KIND 15 193489.19 7.45% 13.43207 22.330% 0.000%
TWO PAIR 10 335990.7 12.93% 7.735214 25.860% 0.000%
JACKS OR BETTER 5 557697.91 21.46% 4.660157 21.460% 0.000%
NOTHING 0 1417562.9 54.54% 1.8334 0.000% 0.000%
Total Return 99.544%

 

For me, the critical numbers are highlighted in red. JoB returns 0.098% less than BPD, and the W-2G promo is worth 0.130% more on BPD. That’s a 0.228 “shortfall” on a game that already had a “too skinny for comfort” edge. The reason for the greater value of the promo on BPD is that this game returns 80-for-1 for quads while JoB only returns 25-for-1. JoB “makes up” for this by giving more for two pair, but two pair isn’t part of the W-2G promo and quads are.

For other players, the numbers in green might be significant. Because BPD returns 80-for-1 for quads, you could get a $1,200 W-2G by betting $15 per hand. You’d need to give up the 0.006% for straight flushes, but that’s not such a big deal. In JoB, because of the paltry 25-for-1 for quads, you need to bet $48 per hand to get the same $1,200 W-2G. There are players for whom $15 per hand is within their comfort zone and $48 per hand isn’t.

I could, I suppose, undertake a “scorched earth” tactic and play $200 per hand on 40-coin $5 JoB until this game is gone as well. The W-2Gs I’d earn for flushes and full houses would make up for a lot of the missing EV. Still, I’d be getting W-2Gs every 40 or so hands and it takes five minutes to be paid. Each place would run out of $100 bills after a while. I could move on to the next Dotty’s, and the next, and the next. While most Dotty’s have 9/6 JoB, not all of them have it in $5 denominations, which would be required to get up to $200 per hand.

My tactic would last a day or two and then those games would be gone as well. I wouldn’t be getting many hands played because of the lengthy W-2G process and my edge would be very small. Playing with large stakes for only a small edge strikes me as way too much gambling for my taste. I prefer the plays where I grind out the advantage over time.

In addition, this would burn out the 9/6 JoB game while I would only be gaining a small, short-term edge. There will be players who want to play this game in the future whether I think the game is playable or not. If I were gaining a sizeable edge, say $20,000 or more, I wouldn’t care much whether the game remained for others. Since my expected win is significantly less than that, the “saving it for others” consideration rises in my list of priorities.

There was another tactic to play the W-2G promotion, also now obsolete, that some players used. In many Dotty’s, there were machines that would offer the double up option on every win. These players would continue to double up until they either got to $1,200 or lost.

The best stakes to play this for was $75 per hand. Doubling $75 became $150, and then $300, and then $600, and then $1,200. If the game paid you 4-for-1 for a straight, this was $300 which only had to be doubled twice. If you were playing this option, JoB was much superior to BPD because in JoB you ended up with two pair every 7.7 hands which “only” had to be doubled three times to reach $1,200 — which happened 1-in-8 times. Two pair on BPD had to be doubled four times for the same W-2G, which was only successful 1-in-16 tries.

Since the bonus on $1,200 W-2Gs was worth $12, a 1-in-8 shot at this was worth $1.50 and a 1-in-16 shot at this was worth $0.75. That means JoB led to a $0.75 higher bonus every 7.7 hands. This is a significant amount to me. Maybe not so much for others.

If you played the double up game, you basically never got any mailers. That’s the way Dotty’s punished you for playing that way. Still, although it varied depending on the game you played, any game that returned more than 99% was a positive play when you played this way.

Today they still have signs on machines that says the double up option is enabled, but the signs are incorrect. The feature is turned off and the bartenders are not allowed to turn it on.

I enjoyed my run at Dotty’s. But as most successful players know, good things never last indefinitely.

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Digging for the Holes

Someone associated with a gambling site called casinoguru.com posted on gamblingwithanedge.com in response to one of my blogs:

You can’t really win money unless you bet everything at once during the first play and win. These games are somehow set to give casinos a certain advantage in the long-run. Otherwise, the owners of the casino would be losing money by running those games.

I strongly disagree with that and today I’m going to explain why.

The post presumes the house has a built-in edge “somehow.” Were that the case, every bet the player made would be negative EV. The more such bets the player made, the more EV he would lose, which over time equates to the more money he would lose.   

My whole philosophy of gambling is that sometimes the casino does NOT have the edge. I search for those times and only play when I believe I have the advantage. The slot departments and marketing departments of casinos are run by humans, and sometimes humans make mistakes of various sorts.

There are unlimited ways that casinos can make mistakes. Here, in no particular order, are areas where mistakes are made:

  1. Stacking Promotions — Most casinos have a number of promotions going on simultaneously. If your play can receive multipliers for one or more things, be eligible for three drawings, receive a free buffet, and earn bonus tier credits, plus there’s a hot seat promotion going on, it’s possible that no one promotion is enough to put you over the 100% threshold, but the sum is.

 

  1. New Promotions — If the casino has run the same promotion every April for the past seven years, there’s a good chance the bugs have been worked out and this is indeed a money maker for the house. But sometimes a new promotion is introduced into the mix. Players have one or two times seeing this promotion and finding errors before those errors are corrected. Now is the time to study the rules carefully.

 

  1. Change in Management — The new guy has some new ideas. Sometimes those ideas aren’t so well thought out. The old guy did it a particular way for a reason. If the new guy doesn’t understand those reasons, opportunities for the player can exist.

 

  1. Grand Openings — This is related to the previous paragraph. Some of my best results over the years have been when new casinos open — and the employees in charge were second-in-command at other places previously. Every second-in-command believes he is qualified to be first-in-command if only given the chance. Not all of them are correct.

 

  1. Assuming All Machines are the Same — Let’s say a casino’s average hold on video poker is 4%. It’s easy to conclude that if they offer a 2% promotion they will be okay, especially if they get a lot more business. The actual machine mix, however, includes some machines that hold 1% and some that hold 7%. Although the average is 4%, the players who receive a 2% promotion on a 1% game are going to come in and hammer those machines. It’s possible to lose money on this promotion even though they added a 2% promotion to a 4% floor.

 

  1. Assuming All Players are the Same — The original poster made this kind of mistake. He assumed all players were the same so that a casino could not make money by offering games that were “too loose.” In games based on skill, it is quite possible for the smartest players to have an advantage while overall the house makes money on a game.

 

  1. Different Times — Let’s say the casino day goes from 3 a.m. to 3 a.m. It could easily be that some promotions are geared to the casino day and some are geared to the midnight-to-midnight day. Between midnight and 3 a.m. promotions could be doubled up that the casino did not intend to be doubled up.

 

  1. Slot Department is Arguing with the Marketing Department — At the best-run casinos, video poker promotions are designed with the slot department and marketing department both having input. This isn’t always the case at every casino. If the slot director is shut out from those meetings, for one reason or another, this can lead to opportunities for the player. The player must know the floor and know which machines will best benefit from particular promotions. Befriending the slot director and listening to his problems some of the time can give you insight into this.

 

  1. Errors in the Rules — Writing accurate rules with no holes in them is not easy. Winning players study rules and look for things that can work in their favor. If you’re not reading the rules for every promotion carefully and more than once, you are leaving money on the table. Part of the preceding sentence includes being able to recognize an error when you see one. Not everybody can do this, but the ones who can do better than the ones who can’t.

 

  1. Player Tracking System Idiosyncrasies — Let’s say Wednesday is a point multiplier day and Thursday isn’t but has some other promotion going on. If your card remains inserted after Wednesday becomes Thursday, are you still getting the multiplier? Some systems yes. Some systems no. You have to figure this out for yourself.

 

  1. Extra Benefits for Free Play — Let’s say you earned $250 in free play on January 25 in a drawing and the free play is good for a month, and when you play off your free play you do not earn points. In February at this casino, if you hit a royal flush you get a logo jacket. It makes sense to wait until February to play off that free play. It’s the same amount of play either way but waiting gives you an extra opportunity to get that jacket.

 

  1. Wrong Pay Schedules — Every now and then you see an outlier in a casino where the casino has inserted a game that is a percent or so looser than every other similar machine on the floor. Probably a mistake. Probably won’t last long. But it can be an opportunity while it lasts.

 

  1. Video Poker Machines Set as Slot Machines — Many casinos pay different amount of player club points for video poker than they do for slot machines. (Hypothetically, video poker gets a 0.2% rebate while slots get a 1% rebate.) When the MGM Grand in Las Vegas made this mistake back in 2000, I played a lot and was awarded an extra $75,000 in free play along with two P.T Cruisers.

 

  1. The Promotion is Too Complicated for the Casino Employees to Administer Correctly — If one or more employee gives you more benefits because of misreading the rules, you keep going back to those employees.

 

  1. The Correction Mechanism is not Symmetrical — If employees make mistakes in the houses favor, players speak right up. If employees make mistakes in the players’ favor, players tend to keep quiet about it.

 

  1. Be Smarter than the Casino Decision Makers — It’s helpful if you are. Casino promotions are often a battle of wits between the casinos and the players. Playing video poker well certainly doesn’t require being a genius. Exploiting casino promotions to their utmost probably does.

 

  1. Sometimes It’s Better to Not Ask Questions — If you find a hole in the rules, it is usually a bad idea to ask questions about it beforehand. If it’s indeed a hole, the casino will say thank you very much, fix the hole, and you receive no benefit from finding that error.

 

If you go ahead and exploit that hole and then discuss it with them afterwards, you have a much better chance of getting paid. And you also have a much better chance of getting kicked out of the casino if they aren’t “good losers.” You need to make a calculation beforehand as to the likelihood of collecting how much money compared to the likelihood of being thrown out. If the error is big enough, go for it!

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How Do You Figure?

Let me describe a hypothetical situation that is based in reality.

Let’s say the two best games for you at a casino are 25¢ Ten Play 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe (99.64%) and 25¢ Spin Poker 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%). Let’s also assume the slot club plus the various promotions adds a half percent.

You have a miniscule edge at JoB (namely 0.04% — 99.54% + 0.50% = 100.04%) and a slightly-less-miniscule edge at BPD (0.14%). In addition, the Ten Play game requires $12.50 per play while the Spin Poker game requires $11.25 per play.

The reason the difference in amount per “pull” matters is calculated by the advantage times the amount bet. In our example, the bet size for BPD is 11% greater than that for JoB, so that increases your edge.

Further, let’s assume you know both games well, like them both equally, bankroll is not an issue, and want to play the game where you have the bigger advantage. So far, that’s going to be BPD in the Ten Play version.

If that’s all there was to it, there would be no discussion worthy of a column. To make things interesting, assume that when you play the Ten Play machine rapidly, one out of ten hands doesn’t register. That is, for every ten hands played, instead of earning the 125 points (at $1 coin-in per point) you deserve, you only receive 112.5 points. Now what? Which game is better? The lesser game gets full points and the better game awards only 90% of the points you are supposed to get.

Go ahead and work out your answer. I’ll be happy to wait for you.

Since the JoB game works exactly like it’s supposed to, we know that has a 100.04% yield. The only game we need to work on is BPD.

For BPD, the game itself is still worth 99.64%, as it would be if you didn’t use your slot club at all. That number isn’t affected by the player tracking system and the slot club. It’s only the 0.5% slot club that’s reduced to 0.45% when you only get credit for 90% of your coin-in. So, 99.64% + 0.45% = 100.09%.

As I mentioned earlier, it isn’t the raw percentages we wish to compare, but rather the raw percentages multiplied by the coin-in. But since 90% of $12.50 per hand comes out to be $11.25, which is the same as you’re betting for Spin Poker, no adjustment needs to be done here to compare the two games.

The best play is still BPD. Is that what you deduced? This isn’t that difficult, although figuring out exactly how to calculate this is a bit tricky to some players.

The guy who told me about this had a totally different take on it. He argued, “The casino player tracking system shouldn’t be making this mistake. It’s like they’re cheating me. And since I don’t like being cheated, I’m going to avoid the game I’m being cheated on and go with the other game. That’ll teach them!”

Well, I don’t like being cheated either. The word “cheated” implies the casino is doing this on purpose. I doubt this is the case here. If you bring it to the slot director’s attention, in most casinos he will attempt to fix the problem.

Personally, even though I’m not afraid to address mistakes to slot directors when I think it appropriate, in this case I would likely keep quiet. In our example, we’re assuming this is the loosest game in the house. Those games make slot directors nervous. Since the fix to this problem would cause the casino to pay out more money for the same amount of play, the slot director might well decide to fix the problem but downgrade the game to 8/6 rather than 9/6. That wouldn’t be to my liking at all.

What I would do is play the BPD, even though the machine had a malfunction. Or maybe avoid the casino altogether because a 0.09% edge is just too skinny. But going all the way down to a 0.04% edge would never be my solution.

Just because there’s a malfunction doesn’t mean that the game should necessarily be avoided. You need to estimate the cost of the malfunction and proceed accordingly.