Category: Advanced Strategy

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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.

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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.