Category: Advanced Strategy

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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.

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Apples and Oranges

I’ve written before how I sometimes play at various Dotty’s outlets. My usual pattern is to play about $100,000 coin-in each time I go.

In January, I received an offer from Dotty’s that was the first ever of its kind, in my experience anyway. They sent me a two-night stay at either the Hoover Dam Lodge or Laughlin River Lodge. The offer included $1,100 in free play and $150 in resort credit.

The Hoover Dam Lodge is about 25 miles away from where we live. I told Bonnie that for $1,100 I planned on going.  If she wanted to go too, after we paid for dinner, she could spend the rest of the resort credit in the gift shop. She decided she had time to do this.

I assumed that the games and promotions would be the same at HDL as they were at regular Dotty’s outlets. Based on this assumption (which turned out to be correct), my plan was to invest $150,000 – $200,000 coin-in on the play. Dotty’s was making this offer in the hopes of generating additional play and, if I ever want to receive another offer like that, I had better play. Nobody told me to play that much. It’s just the amount that “felt right,” given the parameters of the offer.

I ended up losing $4,800 on the play. If you count the free play earned, future mailers, promotional entries earned, my loss was reduced to maybe $4,100, meaning the promotion cost me $3,000 (minus the hotel room night, dinner, and two blouses and set of earrings that Bonnie brought home.)

I told someone about this and they told me that I was confused about how to play these promotions. I was told that if they send you $1,100 the basic rule is stop before you lose it all. Maybe lose $1,000 and keep $100. Maybe donate $900 and keep $200. Something like that. I was told it is just plain idiotic to get such a generous offer and give it all back and then some.

Apples and oranges.

Remember, Dotty’s has games that I would play anyway that week even without receiving the extra $1,100. My daily scores are sometimes plus and sometimes minus, depending on the luck factor on that particular day. I took $10,000 with me and was willing to spend all of that plus the $1,100 they gave me. There have been days at Dotty’s that I’ve lost that much. There have been days I’ve won more than that. I truly have no idea of what my score will be “this time.”

The $1,100 was, basically, a gift to my bankroll, both short term and long term. It changed my short-term bankroll (i.e. cash on hand) from $10,000 to $11,100 and my long-term bankroll (however much it is) was increased by the same amount. This gift was given to me as a reward for past play and as an incentive to get me to play more on this particular trip.

Once that money becomes part of my bankroll, it has no more special significance. The number is entered on my daily log and then I go from there.

I actually could have stiffed the Hoover Dam Lodge. Because of a glitch in their player tracking system on the day I got there, I received $1,100 in cash and a gift card for $150. Bonnie and I could have eaten, gone to the gift shop, and then gone home immediately. I’m sure some people have done that, but not me.

Monthly mailers are a part of the Dotty’s system. Any month my play drops down, my future mailers are affected as well. I had no reason to expect this offer would be treated any differently. Collect money without playing and your future offers decrease. Many players have learned this the hard way.

If I had to do it over again, I would have played it exactly the same way. Except on the do-over, I’d have hit a royal flush!

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I Don’t Want to Lose That Much!

This particular incident happened at the Gold Coast casino in Las Vegas maybe ten years ago, on games that are long gone. The fact that these individual games are no longer available doesn’t change the thought processes of the players involved.

My game of choice at that casino back then was a $2 single line 99.81% version of Double Bonus Deuces Wild (DBDW). With a 0.30% slot club 24/7 (if you had achieved the highest tier level — called “Emerald”), the game provided a very small edge to the competent player. They would regularly have days where you could earn 0.50% or 0.60% on play up to $10,000 coin-in per day. If you played more than that, you reverted to the 0.30% slot club.

They had drawings. They had mailers. They had other promotions. Overall it was a modestly profitable place to play — at least on a $10,000-a-day coin-in basis.

This game came with a variance of 40.4 — which is very comparable to that of Double Double Bonus (42.0). These variances are moderately high, especially when compared with Jacks or Better (19.5) or NSU Deuces Wild (25.7).

A typical session of $10,000 coin-in (1,000 hands) ends up a thousand or more dollars to the red unless you connect on one or more hands of $1,600 five aces (every 2,565 hands on average), $2,000 four deuces (6,766 hands), $4,000 four deuces with an ace kicker (38,088 hands) or an $8,000 royal flush (44,211 hands). The “average loss” of $19 (based on a 99.81% return played for $10,000 coin-in) before you collected your $30, $50, or $60 dollars in free play from the slot club was a score you never saw. Over hundreds of sessions, your score would approach a $19 loss per session, but individual sessions varied wildly from that. Hitting three or more jackpots in one 1,000-hand session wasn’t that rare. Not hitting anything at all for several sessions in a row wasn’t that rare either.

Until they told me not to do it, I played on both my card and that of Shirley (my wife at the time). I would play through $20,000 each time I played and that would take 2½ hours or so. Since the casino is across the street from the Palms, and I played a lot there before it was purchased by Station Casinos, the Gold Coast was a fairly convenient place to drop in and drop out of for these small plays.

When I started each play, I would feed in ten $100 bills. When this went down to zero, I would feed in ten more bills. When I hit for $1,600 or $2,000 (which was paid in cash), I would frequently create a ticket for that amount.

There was nothing sacred about the way I did this, but there was some method. It was done to simplify record-keeping. For tax and other reasons, I need accurate records. Adding an additional $1,000 per time is easy accounting for me. If I were playing for smaller stakes, perhaps adding $100 or $200 at a time would make sense. But on this game, you could go through $200 in five minutes if you ran bad and continually reaching into my pocket and making sure to record each bill was tedious and I would have worried that I’d occasionally forget to record a Benjamin or two. I could have easily inserted $2,000 at a time, but I settled on $1,000 and it worked for me.

There were perhaps six of these machines and I’d see the same faces seated at them over and over again. A few dozen players had analyzed the game similarly to the way I did and played more or less the same amount (although several played for $1 or 50 cent stakes for which the odds were the same but the amount you could lose was less. It would also take you two or four times as long to play the 10,000 points if you played for the lesser stakes.) If all the machines were taken, it was common to be asked, “How long do you intend to play?” We all were pretty civil about sharing because it was obvious that the guy who had the machine this time may well be the one wanting a machine next time.

One day, a lady I knew sitting next to me, Helen, had 9,400 points when her credits went down to zero. She needed to play $600 more though the machine to get the maximum slot club benefits that day — or she could have used that as a good time to quit for the day.

She was debating whether she should put in $100, $200, or $300. Helen only had 60 hands to play and was trying to predict how much it would cost. The simple answer is: Who knows? I’m pretty good at predicting how the next 6,000,000 hands will go, but really bad at predicting the same about the next 60 hands.

Helen asked me how much I would put in. I was basically concentrating on my game but told her, “I always put in $1,000.”

“But I only need to play $600 more,” she responded.

“I would put in a grand.”

“Well, I’m not going to do that,” she told me. “I don’t want to lose that much!”

I gave her a “Do whatever you want” shrug and we didn’t talk anymore about it. But I went away thinking that how much I wanted to lose didn’t have anything to do with the equation. I would be planning on stopping at 10,000 points, as she was, and I also wanted to keep good records. Cashing out at whatever amount I had on the ticket when I had reached 10,000 points was no problem at all. I could either turn it into cash or save it until tomorrow when I was going to play again.

There could be exceptions to this, of course. If I had 9,980 points when my machine ran out of money, I would either have put in $100 or maybe quit for the day. If I had a $20 bill on me, it’s even possible I would have put that in instead of $100.  

Each player must work out for himself what technique works on this. For nickel players, obviously $1,000 at a time is way too much. For $5 Ten Play players ($250 per pull), $1,000 is probably too small. Inserting large amounts of money into a machine doesn’t cause me any kind of anxiety. I know players who agonize over every $20 bill.

Many modern casinos create tickets for you which allow you to put substantial amounts of money into the machine more easily. The Gold Coast didn’t have that at the time. Probably they still don’t, but I’m not sure. When I was restricted from receiving mailers there, I decided the casino was “too smoky” and haven’t been back.

You have to do what works for you. Since Helen had a different “default” than I did, it should be no surprise to anyone that she found my advice totally unworkable.

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A Reason to Leave

In many jurisdictions, including Las Vegas, casinos can restrict players from competing. The restrictions can be complete or partial — permanent or reviewable. For many players, including myself, being restricted is a state of being with which we are quite familiar.

I was waiting for a drawing at a casino in December and a friend, “Charlie,” stopped by to chat until the winners were announced. He started by telling me of the new luxury automobile he had just purchased. Eventually the conversation diverged into casinos at which he (and his wife) and I were or were not allowed to play. I mentioned that in February I was going to apply to Casino A for reinstatement.

When I was restricted from Casino A I met with the General Manager and argued why I thought I should be allowed to continue to play. The GM listened to me but said that my restriction would remain. It was a partial “no mail” restriction, and I was still welcome to play, but without the mailers the edge was too skinny to make it worthwhile in my opinion. It was clear he wasn’t going to budge. I then asked if we could revisit it in 2018, and he agreed.

Although I wasn’t successful in 2017 when I spoke with him, I’m going to try again a year later. I was glad I was able to meet and talk with him and present my case. Every restriction is a negotiation. Some players roll over and play dead with every restriction. They accept the first verdict and that’s that. I treat a restriction as a starting place for a negotiation.

If you ever wondered why some player ended up being restricted at a particular place and some other player with a similar record wasn’t, reread the last four sentences of the preceding paragraph.

I try to find a way that the casino can get basically what it wants and I still get to play. Perhaps I was restricted because I won the Senior Drawing too many times. Okay. What if I agree that whenever I earn at least $500 in such a drawing I don’t participate in them for three months? That way, the casino isn’t bombarded with “that guy always wins” complaints, which in this case might have been the underlying reason for the restriction.

Or perhaps they want me to limit my play on point multiplier days to such and such an amount, rather than being unlimited. Whatever. There are a zillion ways to reach a compromise.

It’s very possible that there’s a happy meeting ground where they can allow my play and I still feel I have a decent-enough edge. We won’t know this until we talk about it. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t. But, for me anyway, it works enough of the time that it’s worthwhile to go through the process.

Although the discussion with that casino’s GM will probably happen before this article is published, the particular results of that discussion will be for a later time — or most likely never. Let’s go back to my conversation with Charlie.

Charlie told me that he thought it was ironic that I was trying to get back into Casino A because he had just decided to stop playing there. I asked him why?

“Because,” he told me, “I’ve been playing $2 8/5 Bonus Poker there (which is the best game at that casino) and I’m down more than $40,000 for the year.”

“Okay,” I replied, “you’ve been unlucky there. Five cycles behind is no fun. But why did you decide you should quit playing there?”

“If I can’t win there,” he told me, “why should I keep throwing good money after bad?”

Before we could continue the discussion, they held the drawing, neither of us were called, and then we each left to do whatever else rather than keep chatting. But I thought this was a good subject to write about. Charlie is certainly not alone in the way he thinks. But I believe that such thinking is incorrect for intelligent gamblers.

Charlie’s logic was basically: I’ve run bad. The future will be like the past. Therefore, I should cut my losses and get out.

My thinking is: This is a 99.2% game. The slot club pays 0.30% there. If you play $xxx a month you generally receive weekly mailers of $yyy, plus food vouchers and other non-cash items. They regularly have promotions and drawings that add considerable equity. Reaching their highest tier level is obtainable for me and it offers benefits I value. Over a year, I expect to have an advantage of $zzz there.

Notice that in my thinking, the fact that I was ahead or behind any given amount in the past year was not part of the equation at all. My assumption going forward is that things will be “average” in the future. The fact that I’ve had non-average results so far this year is largely an irrelevant, albeit sometimes exciting and sometimes frustrating, piece of data.

For many people, being behind $40,000 would create bankroll issues.  In Charlie’s case, I don’t believe this is an issue. (Although clearly it was at least somewhat of a psychological issue if not an actual financial issue.)

I know that things in the future won’t end up being average. Every gambling situation turns out being better or worse than I calculated. Those folks who want guarantees should pick a different hobby. But just because I know things won’t end up being average doesn’t mean that being average isn’t the best assumption to make at this point. If the $zzz I’ve calculated is big enough to meet my needs, and the variance is reasonable enough given my bankroll, and I have time to fit it into my schedule given my other gambling and non-gambling activities, then it’s full speed ahead. Being behind five royals in a year is just so much “noise.” There have definitely been years I’ve been ahead more than that. There will be good and bad streaks in the future.

In my calculation, I mentioned xxx, yyy, and zzz. These are numbers you’re going to have to estimate for yourself for every casino you’re considering. The numbers I get may not be the same as the ones you get. You may or may not like the food at the restaurants in any particular place. If you play at a lot of other casinos, you may already have more food available to you than you can possibly consume. Some promotions make more sense for bigger players — or just for seniors — or just for locals who can come in every day if the situation warrants — or whatever. Estimating these things is something you can get better at over time.

Since I’m writing this before I actually know whether I’ll be re-welcomed at Casino A and, if so, under which conditions, my 2018 “prediction” is that I will be reinstated and Charlie will decide to return. As all gamblers know, sometimes your predictions come true and sometimes they don’t.

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A Different Way to Look at It

In Week 2 of my free video poker classes at the South Point, I usually teach beginning 9/6 Double Double Bonus Poker. Many of my readers wouldn’t be caught dead playing such a game. It returns only 98.98% when played well and there are plenty of better games around, at least in Las Vegas.

Still, players DO play this game regularly, so they might as well learn how to play it correctly. It might surprise you to know that in 2017, I played more coin-in on this game than any other! (It sure surprises me! If somebody would have bet me this five years ago, I would have bet against it. Of course, had I made a big enough bet, that would have affected the odds and I wouldn’t have played it more than any other!) While DDB is the most popular video poker game in the country, I didn’t play it because I particularly liked it. I played because with certain combinations of slot club benefits and promotions, this was the game that made the most sense to play.

In the class a few weeks ago, I was explaining that you NEVER hold a suited ace-ten in this game. One lady, who apparently goes for the royal every chance she gets, wanted to know how I could justify not going for the royal. The hand in question was A♠ T♠ 8♥ 7♣ 6♦.

As is my practice, I put this hand on Video Poker for Winners and displayed the results on the screen in front of the class. The display showed in Table 1:

 

[table “74” not found /]

 

After class I wondered if I could display these numbers in a way that would make more sense.I said holding the ace by itself was worth 21¢ more to the five-coin dollar player, and I pointed to the column that said holding the ace was worth $2.346 and holding the AT was worth $2.133. The lady nodded blankly, which told me she believed what I said, but these were just numbers. The numbers didn’t mean anything to her.
[table “73” not found /]

In this table, you have the value of each combination in dollars and cents (and tenths of cents.) That is, the chance you get a high pair (most frequently AA, but you can get JJ, QQ, or KK as well) is worth $1.274 when you hold the ace by itself but only $0.911 when you hold AT. This is a difference of $0.363. When you think about it, it’s not too surprising that you get fewer high pairs when you hold a ten in the hand. It both makes fewer “empty spaces” with which to make a high pair and when you pair up the ten, it’s not a high pair.

If you go through the differences on the bottom line, you’ll see that the two biggest advantages of holding AT (namely you can get a royal flush and you have a better chance of getting a flush) are worth almost a quarter apiece. But you lose in most of the other categories.

This chart is a little surprising to many players. After all, did you really think that the amount you get from high pairs is worth about half of the value of holding either the ace or AT? When you see these starting positions, you’re thinking four aces or maybe a royal flush. You’re not thinking of a measly high pair.

Don’t even think about trying to memorize these numbers. They are highly dependent on the exact five cards chosen. If one of the other cards is a spade, it greatly affects how much the flush draw is worth. If one of the other cards is a 2, 3, or 4, it affects both the chances for a straight, the chances for four aces with a kicker, and four 2s, 3s, and 4s with a kicker.

Is it useful to see how much each combination is worth in dollars and cents rather than in the number of occurrences? Maybe. Opinions will vary.

But if you think it’s useful, it’s already included in the Video Poker for Winners software. When you analyze a hand, you have a choice between “Show Possible Outcomes,” which gives you the information in Table 1, and “Show Coins Out,” which gives you the information in Table 2.

I didn’t know this was already included in the software until I looked while writing this article. I’m sure many of you didn’t know it either.

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Video Poker’s Participation Awards   

A ‘participation award’ is one you get just for being there — whether you win or lose. There are people who believe that when raising children, winning and losing isn’t so important, but participation is. With that in mind, there are some sports leagues for children where every player gets a trophy at the end of the year.

I’m not here to argue the merits of such a program and I’m not here to tell you how to raise your kids or grandkids.

What I want to talk about today are video poker’s participation awards. It’s possible you didn’t know there are any such things. But there are!

They are called jackpots!

A royal flush, which is the top award in most video poker games, is really a participation award. Show me a player who has hit 20 royal flushes in the past two months and I’ll show you someone who has played a LOT. Show me someone who hasn’t ever hit a royal flush, and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t played very much at all.

If you want to change the discussion to four aces, or maybe four deuces depending on the game, or dealt quads, or some other hand that pays well, be my guest. If you play long enough, you’re going to get these hands. If you don’t, you won’t.

But, do I hear you say, in the sports league for children that awards trophies to everybody, your skill level doesn’t matter. Surely, it’s different in video poker where you need to make skillful choices.

Well, yeah, sort of. On a hand like K♦ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 4♦, there are games where you should hold the kings and others where you should hold the spades. If you hold the spades, rightly or wrongly, on average you’re going to end up with a royal flush once every 1,081 of these hands. If you hold the kings, you’re never going to get a royal flush on this hand.

So, if the computer says to hold the kings on this hand but you actually held the spades and the 1,080-to-1 shot came in, would you consider that skillful? If you take a picture of the royal flush and show it to your friends, do they ever ask what cards you threw away? Or what game you were playing? Doubtful. Mostly they congratulate you on your good fortune and wonder what it’s like to be such a winner as you!

I participate on several Internet forums related to gambling. On some forums, you’ll see players posting pictures of dealt royals when they’re playing 8/5 Double Double Bonus, which is a game that returns less than 97%. There are other games shown in the pictures as well, yielding approximately the same thing.

Other posters on the forum line up and immediately congratulate the poster on the good fortune. My personal feeling is that anyone who plays a 97% game is clueless about the winning process. Clearly this is a losing player who got a participation award to briefly provide them with some ammunition to play more. To me, posting jackpots on such a bad game announces to the world that you are not a knowledgeable player. Why not keep this secret?

If I actually post such a comment, I get my head handed to me. People want to celebrate their participation awards. People want to be praised for how good they are. They tell me (correctly!) that it’s okay to be a recreational player and rejoice in their successes when they come.

So, I generally don’t comment on these jackpot pictures anymore. But I take note of who posted them. When that person enters into a later debate on some matter on the forum, I’ll understand going in that their opinion does not carry the same weight with me as the people who are actually knowledgeable players.

In my own case, I’ve hit more than 500 jackpots of $20,000 and larger. Are they all participation awards? Absolutely! Every last one of them! The only thing that number of jackpots tell you is that I’ve been playing a long time for higher stakes than many others play. It doesn’t tell you anything about how good a player I am.

Until you know why a player was playing a particular machine on a given day, what slot club benefits and promotions were available, and the accuracy of the strategy used, you have no idea how good that player is. You cannot say with confidence that someone who has hit 200 royal flushes is a better player than one who has hit four — although you CAN say the former has participated a lot more than the latter.

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If You Weren’t Such a Hypocrite . . .

Periodically I receive a version of the following email:

Mr. Dancer:

I have read your books and practiced on Video Poker for Winners. I’m a really good player. I live in Las Vegas and can see there are good games to play — except I simply do not have the bankroll to play at the stakes necessary to succeed.

But you do! So why don’t you bankroll me? I’ll share the results with you 50-50 of course and we can both do well!

If you weren’t such a hypocrite, you’d see the wisdom of this! This is a chance for you to put your money where your mouth is. If what you’re writing is just a bunch of lies in order to sell books, I could see why you’d pass this up. But you’re not doing that at all, are you?

So, when can we start?

Eve

 

Dear Eve:

I’m not interested. For a lot of reasons.

First, even if you are a player with the same (or better) abilities that I have, playing 100% honestly, you’re asking me to receive half of the wins and bear 100% of the losses — on a game where only a tiny advantage is possible. That would not be an intelligent gamble on my part.

Second, Eve, I don’t know you from Adam. Even if you tested out really well when I was watching, who’s to say what you will do when I’m not around watching you?  I’m not saying you’re a cheater. What I AM saying, though, is that some people do cheat and I’m not proficient at detecting beforehand who’s going to cheat me and who’s not. Since I’m not very good at this, I believe it is better for me is to stay away from it.

Third, this is not my business model. I have no desire to form some type of insurance company. Maybe somebody else can see the opportunity here and prosper at this sort of thing, but I’m 70 years old now and that’s not how I want to spend the rest of my life.

Fourth, there’s a big difference between investing in myself and investing in somebody else. Those are very different mindsets. Those involve very different risks.

Lastly, I don’t respond well to “If you’re not a hypocrite then you’ll do what I want you to do” types of arguments. It’s reminiscent of grade school challenges like, “I double dare you to jump off of that building!” No thanks. Go try and manipulate somebody else!

I have bankrolled two players in the past. One went pretty much as expected and I won a bit. The other player lost at a very high rate — possible, but unlikely. It’s been more than 20 years and I still think I was cheated — but I couldn’t prove it at the time and certainly can’t prove it now. I promised myself “never again” at the time and see no reason to break that promise to myself now.

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Is There a Different Strategy and How Can I Be Sure? — Part I of II

One of the casinos I play at is Dotty’s, which is a chain of more than 100 15-machine outlets all across Nevada, plus a few larger ones. There are perhaps 10 of them within 10 miles of my home.

One of the promotions that attracts me relates to W2Gs. Every week, 10% of the W2Gs earned company-wide earn a 10% bonus. That is, if you receive a $4,000 royal flush, 10% of the time you receive an additional $400 in cash. I estimate the value of that by assuming I’ll get an extra $40 for every such jackpot. (in other words, $40 every time adds up to the same number as $400 10% of the time.)  I’ll end up with the same EV, although I’ll be underestimating the variance a little.

My game of choice currently is 9/5 Super Double Bonus. If I play that game for at least $25 per hand, I’ll get W2Gs for all quads as well as for each straight flush and royal flush.

I’ve known the strategy for that game for some time and I’ve written about it periodically. The question I’m looking at today and next week is: Does the strategy change with the Dotty’s promotion? And if so, what are those changes? Further, assume that I’m not a computer programmer and I don’t have access to computer software that you don’t. So how do I go about this?

I wish to learn to play the game perfectly. I understand that this may not be your goal. Still, learning how to do it is what this week’s and next week’s columns are all about. Someday there may well be a promotion that you wish to figure out.

The software I’m going to use for this analysis is the Wizard of Odds (WOO) Video Poker Strategy Calculator. It will give you a perfect strategy and it’s available for free online. Although I’m not a huge fan of the notation used on that product, it’s hard to complain too loudly when it’s free and completely accurate.

For the base game, the pay schedule is 800, 80, 160, 120, 80, 50, 9, 5, 4, 3, 1, 1   Adding 1% to each of the top six figures will make the return on one of them 50.5. Although the WOO software does accept decimal points, I prefer to multiply all of the amounts by 10. That is 8000, 800, 1600, etc. Since the strategy is calculated using relative values, multiplying all pay schedule categories by a fixed amount has no effect whatsoever on the strategy.

For the Dotty’s version, I enter the payout amounts as 8080, 808, 1616, 1212, 808, 505, 90, 50, 40, 30, 10, 10. The lowest six pay schedule categories don’t receive the 1% increase because they don’t result in W2Gs. If I wanted to bet $134 or more per single-line hand, I could get W2Gs on full houses as well. For today we can ignore that refinement.

In the chart below, the numbers in red indicate numbers for the base 9/5 SDB game. The numbers in green represent the numbers for the Dotty’s version.

The actual chart created by the WOO software has several more columns to it that I’ve omitted here. If you duplicate either the red or green Payoff numbers in the WOO Video Poker Strategy Calculator, you’ll see the omitted columns. Those columns include useful information, but not information we’re using today. If you don’t duplicate this information yourself, how do you know if you can do it? It’s not difficult, but “practice makes perfect.” If you don’t know how to use a tool, it’s the same as not having the tool at all.

In the red section of the chart, find the number 490,732,320. That’s the number of occurrences for royal flushes out of 19,933,230,517,200. (In a recent Gambling with an Edge episode, Michael Shackleford explained where this number comes from.) In the green section, the corresponding number is 491,575,464.

That means that when you change strategies to take advantage of these W2G bonuses, you get more royals. You should be able to see you also get more straight flushes, more aces, more 2s-4s, and more 5s-Ts. For some reason I’ll explain next week, you get fewer Js-Ks.

Okay. Now I know there are strategy changes. This is the first part of what I wanted to know. I now need to find out what these changes are.

I’m going to tell you what those changes are — next week. I’m going to use the WOO Video Poker Strategy Calculator to do this. What I strongly recommend is that you work this out yourself. All the information you need is in the software which is online and free. As I said before, if you don’t know how to use a tool, it’s the same as not having the tool at all.

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You’re Upsetting Our Players

In 1999, I started communicating with “Richard,” the marketing director of the Laughlin Flamingo hotel. (Today the same property is called the Aquarius, and it may change names again because the parent company is in the process of changing owners.) Richard knew my name because I wrote columns for Strictly Slots and Casino Player, both of which were distributed for free in that casino.

He wanted to use my “fame,” such as it was, to draw in customers, but he didn’t really want me to teach his players how to beat him. Was there any middle ground?

I suggested he hold a video poker tournament, giving away whatever amount he wanted, and I could teach a class on “How to Succeed in a Video Poker Tournament.” His players would get real value because tournament play definitely has some skill elements to it (in addition to a considerable amount of luck) and most of the lessons for tournament play don’t translate into regular casino play. We reached a deal for me to host two events over the next year.

The only tournament software they had was for Jacks or Better.  An unusual choice for a video poker tournament, but I could adjust my class accordingly.

One of the major points in tournament strategy is that on the last hand, if you aren’t “in the money,” you should go for broke. If a tournament had 250 entrants and paid out 50 places, then being in 51st place was tied with 250th place. Zero is zero. This is very different from casino play, where 51st place might represent a profit of $100 and 250th place might be a loss of $500. These aren’t the same at all.

Players are used to the concept that a higher score is better than a lower score, but this is only true in tournaments if you’re above the “bubble.” If you’re below the bubble, all scores are equal.

Since it was a Jacks or Better tournament, the example hand I used was being dealt AAAAT on the last hand where you weren’t already in the money. Assuming 125 coins (the payout for four aces in this game) wouldn’t be enough to move you into pay dirt, you should throw away three of the aces and just hold the suited AT. Your only chance was to get a royal flush. You didn’t have a big chance — actually 1-in-16,215, but a small chance was better than no chance at all.

If this were the more standard Double Double Bonus tournament, I would have picked a different hand. Four aces pay at least 800 credits, maybe 2,000, and just that score would usually be enough to move you into the money.

The following year I received a call from “Cheryl” who was Richard’s assistant. She said Richard was busy, but she was asked to call and see if they could get me to Laughlin again for two more events. But there would have to be a few changes in the contract.

First, they wanted to lower my fee by $100 each time. Since I had already prepared my notes, it would be easier on me and that should be reflected in the price. I told Cheryl that I wasn’t crazy about this change. At that same time, there was a casino in Las Vegas that was giving away the store (I didn’t tell her this was the MGM Grand).  To induce me to come down to Laughlin for two days at a time would take more money, not less. But what was the other change you were talking about? Maybe that would offset the money.

She told me there were complaints from some of the seniors that I was telling them to throw away four aces! They didn’t get such a good hand very often and they just KNEW this couldn’t be right. Since the complaints went through her, it would be making her life easier if I never told them to throw away four aces.

I asked her if she understood the context behind sometimes throwing away the aces. She didn’t. She didn’t care. She never gambled anyway so she paid no attention to somebody else’s silly ideas about gambling. She really only cared about getting fewer complaints from the players.

I asked her if Richard knew about the changes she was requesting. She said no, but she was sure he would be proud of her for reducing the costs and not making the players angry.

I told her “No thanks,” but if they wished to increase my fee and allow me to teach the class as I saw fit, she knew how to get in touch with me. She never did.

I never taught there again, but as I recall things worked out pretty well for me at the MGM Grand.

 

Author’s Note:  The next semester of classes at the South Point will begin Tuesday January 9. The original schedule of classes on bobdancer.com accidentally said Sunday January 7. The schedule has been repaired, but I want to make sure everybody has gotten the word.

Should anyone be worried about the classes upsetting them, I promise that this semester I will never tell you to throw away four aces!