I recently received this email — slightly shortened and lightly edited:
Just got back from my first trip to Mohegan Sun in Connecticut and Foxwoods.
Continue reading Dazed and ConfusedCategory: Video Poker
Comparing Two Different Games at Dotty’s — Part Two of Two
The story from last week continues. If you didn’t catch last week’s blog, you need to read that one first for context. Last week was more about my decision process. This week is more about the actual results when I went to play at my local Dotty’s for $150 a hand.
My first $3,000 was lost in about five minutes. It took a full eight minutes to lose the next $3,000. A half-hour later, still with no W-2Gs, I was down $15,000. This was not the way I envisioned the game!
Continue reading Comparing Two Different Games at Dotty’s — Part Two of TwoComparing Two Different Games at Dotty’s — Part One of Two
Today I’m going to discuss a play that is of limited interest to most of my readers. It includes, however, a “how did I figure it out” discussion that could be useful to many of you.
Long-time readers of mine know I sometimes play at Dotty’s. Dotty’s has numerous (more than 100) locations in Nevada which are mostly 15-machine locations. It does have a few full-blown casinos with several hundred machines each, and at least one intermediate-sized location (at Sunset and Green Valley Parkway) with about 50 machines in it.
Continue reading Comparing Two Different Games at Dotty’s — Part One of TwoWhat Was Your Best Gambling Decision?
Pick your one or two best gambling decisions throughout your life. Pick them before reading on. Take however much time you need. This blogpost will be here when you get back.
This post has been inspired by my recent reading of Annie Duke’s books, “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit.” I wrote about these books last week. I’m not sure which book spoke about this topic. I read them more or less concurrently as audiobooks checked out from the library, and they’ve both been returned.
Continue reading What Was Your Best Gambling Decision?How Much Should I Lose Before I Quit?
I’ve been asked variations of this question more than one hundred times over the years. Sometimes phrased as, “If I lose $100 (or some other number), should I give up for the day?”
My answer usually was some form of the following:
- Only play when you have the advantage. If the house has the edge, don’t play. It’s fairly easy to calculate in video poker whether you have the edge or not. In general, if you don’t know if you’re the favorite or not, you’re not.
- My answer assumes you have sufficient bankroll, actual and psychological, to ride it out. How to calculate how much bankroll you need is a discussion for another day.
- Are you still playing alertly?
Putting Bills Into a Machine
Before playing a video poker machine, I typically load it with $500 or $1,000 in bills or tickets. I do this for a number of reasons:
- I keep records of how much I win or lose each day. It’s easier for me to remember round numbers. If I’m playing a $2 game, ($10 a play), it’s common to be up or down several hundred dollars in a session. If I add another hundred-dollar bill as needed, it can be difficult to remember whether it’s four or five of those so far.
For each additional bill, I could record it on my phone (I use the Notes app on my iPhone), but I can keep thousand-dollar increments straight more easily. If I go in for $3,000 or more in a session, I write each $1,000 play as I go.
Help Me Make Sense of This
I received the following email. It was originally intended for the Gambling with an Edge mailbag, but I felt it was too technical to be discussed over a podcast:
I know video poker has a ton of variance, but I recently endured a hellish series of events on $5 NSU Deuces Wild at a tribal casino.
Continue reading Help Me Make Sense of ThisWhen is a Wild Royal Flush not a Wild Royal Flush?
Using a W for wild card to indicate a deuce, assume you are dealt W W Q♦ J♦ T♦ on a Triple Play version of Deuces Wild. This is not a tough play. You hold all five cards for a wild royal flush. (Other terms for the same hand are royal flush with deuce and dirty royal.) Usually this pays 100 or 125 coins, depending on the pay schedule, and in the specific version you’re playing it returns 100 coins.
Continue reading When is a Wild Royal Flush not a Wild Royal Flush?How Would You Play This One?
I received an email from a player, “Sam,” discussing a promotion that has come and gone, in an unnamed casino in an unnamed state. He wanted to know how I would have analyzed whether or not to play it.
The gist of the promotion was that for two consecutive days, four hours per day, each W-2G received the following free play bonuses:
Continue reading How Would You Play This One?An Interesting Hand in 8/5 ACE$ Bonus Poker
The cards in ACE$ Bonus Poker (ABP) are just like the ones in regular Bonus Poker (BP) except there are superimposed yellow letters on four cards: “A” on the ace of clubs, “C” on the ace of diamonds, “E” on the ace of hearts, and “$” on the ace of spades. The order of the suits is alphabetical and contract bridge players will also be familiar with this order.
If you get four aces in ACE$ order, either in positions 1-4 or 2-5, you get paid 4,000 coins instead of 400. I’ve written about this game numerous times and have usually said the only changes you make to regular 8/5 BP strategy to play 8/5 ABP perfectly are to break aces full when the aces are in proper sequence for the bonus.
Continue reading An Interesting Hand in 8/5 ACE$ Bonus Poker