Category: Video Poker

Posted on by — 7 Comments

Understanding a Flow Chart in Super Double Bonus

Super Double Bonus is a version of Double Bonus where four jacks, queens, and kings earn 600 coins instead of 250 and the straight flush returns 400 instead of 250. The best-paying version, which returns 45 for the full house and 25 for the flush, returns 99.695% when played well. When combined with a decent slot club and/or set of promotions, this can be a profitable game to play when you find it.

One of the trickiest parts of the strategy is when you are dealt an ace of one suit and a “JT” of another. Depending on the other two cards, sometimes you hold the “JT”, sometimes you hold the ace by itself, and sometimes you hold AJ.

For me to learn this, I created a flow chart which I believe is 100% accurate in this area of the strategy chart — although it presumes you know that a 4-card open-ended straight and a 3-card straight flush with one high card and two insides are both more valuable than the options presented in the flow chart. It follows relatively simple logic — but even relatively simple logic requires more concentration and study than some of my readers wish to endure.

What I thought I’d do is to present my flow chart, give you some sample hands to play, and let you see how you do. Afterwards, I’ll go through the flow chart more slowly and maybe it will be easier to understand.

And if you’re not in the mood for the logic of 9-5 SDB, it’s okay with me if you always play “JT” when you come to these hands. You won’t be giving up a whole lot. For some folks, making these kinds of distinctions cause their heads to hurt. If that’s you, take this column off and come back next week.

A versus “JT”:

 

Is there a flush penalty to the “JT”?

If no, play “JT”  — end

If yes, continue

 

Is the flush penalty to the “JT” a 2-6 and the fifth card suited with the A?

If yes, is it an 8 or 9?

If yes, play AJ — end

If no, play “JT” — end

If no, continue

 

Is the flush penalty to the ”JT” a 2-5 and the fifth card an 8 or 9?

If yes, play A — end

If no, play “JT” — end

 

Is the flush penalty to the ”JT” a 6 and the fifth card a 7, 8 or 9?

If yes, play A — end

If no, play “JT” — end

 

Using the above logic, play these hands:

  1. A♠ J♥ T♥ 2♠ 5♠
  2. A♠ J♥ T♥ 9♠ 7♦
  3. A♠ J♥ T♥ 9♠ 8♥
  4. A♠ J♥ T♥ 3♣ 7♥
  5. A♠ J♥ T♥ 9♣ 5♥
  6. A♠ J♥ T♥ 7♣ 6♥
  7. A♠ J♥ T♥ 7♣ 5♥
  8. A♠ J♥ T♥ 8♣ 2♥
  9. A♠ J♥ T♥ 8♠ 2♥
  10. A♠ J♥ T♥ 7♠ 6♥

Here are the answers. If you easily got them all correct, you don’t need to read any further:

  1. A♠ 2♠ 5♠
  2. J♥ T♥
  3. J♥ T♥ 9♠ 8♥
  4. J♥ T♥ 7♥
  5. A♠
  6. A♠
  7. J♥ T♥
  8. A♠
  9. A♠ J♥
  10. J♥ T♥

If you missed one or more of the above problems, the following explanations may help:

 

Is there a flush penalty to the “JT”?

If no, play “JT”  — end

If yes, continue

This rule is the easiest. Just look for a card suited with the “JT”. If you don’t find one, then “JT” is the play — unless, of course, some higher-ranking combination is in the hand.

 

Is the flush penalty to the “JT” a 2-6 and the fifth card suited with the A?

If yes, is it an 8 or 9?

If yes, play AJ — end

If no, play “JT” — end

If no, continue

We only get to this rule if there is a flush penalty to the “JT” and also a flush penalty to the A. Also, this is the only time we can hold AJ.  Notice that the flush penalty to the J cannot be a 7 or higher as that would make it a higher-ranking 3-card straight flush or 3-card royal flush. Also note that this says that if there is a flush penalty to the A, but it is not an 8 or 9, we hold the “JT”.

 

Is the flush penalty to the ”JT” a 2-5 and the fifth card an 8 or 9?

If yes, play A — end

If no, play “JT” — end

By the time we get here, there is no flush penalty to the ace.

 

Is the flush penalty to the ”JT” a 6 and the fifth card a 7, 8 or 9?

If yes, play A — end

If no, play “JT” — end

By the time we get here, there is no flush penalty to the ace. The only difference in the last two rules is when the fifth card is a 7. If the flush penalty to the J is a 6 (meaning it is not a straight penalty to the A), we hold the A by itself. If the flush penalty to the J is a 2-5 (which are all straight penalties to the A), we hold the J.

 

Do the notes in green help you any? If so, welcome to them.

Posted on by — 24 Comments

The Las Vegas Massacre and Me

Many of us are sick and tired of discussing the terrible events of October 1 and the speculation afterwards of what made this unhinged man do what he did. If that’s where you are and you want to skip this article, I won’t blame you.

Once it was discovered that Stephen Paddock played video poker, I started getting calls from a variety of news outlets. Although I didn’t get nearly as many calls as Anthony Curtis did, when something related to video poker makes the news, my name comes up as someone who might be able to offer some insight.

For each telephone interview, I started it off with the fact that I didn’t know the guy and had never heard his name until after he was dead. I don’t know if he was a winning player or not, but I have my doubts. And in my opinion, there is nothing inherent in the game of video poker that will create such a monster. So, with that said, how can I help you?

Some reporters wanted to know the difference between video poker and regular poker, or video poker and blackjack, and those were easy for me to answer. Some wanted to know why the game was so popular. To my mind it’s because the game is beatable, and even casual players can get relatively inexpensive casino vacations out of the game.

From there, the questions usually evolved to what other casino games were beatable. Years ago, I would have said blackjack, poker, and sports betting and that would have been the end of my list. But since I’ve been hosting the Gambling with an Edge podcast I’ve become aware that there are LOTS of different avenues for profiting in a casino other than just these games.

Some wanted to know how many winning players there are, and I had to say that any number I came up with would be a wild-assed guess.  I don’t know how much any other player nets, let alone how many of the tens of thousands of players (most of whom I have never met) had net scores greater than zero.

One question from the Associated Press was one that I didn’t want to address. The reporter argued that this attack exhibited a great deal of planning and would a successful video poker player have the ability to do such planning? I didn’t want to answer this question because the answer is “Yes!”

What I said was that a successful lawyer would have those planning skills, as would a successful architect, as would a successful chef, as would a successful political advisor, as would a successful reporter, as would basically a successful anything. So yes, you can add successful gambler of any stripe onto that list, but the list is very long.

One reporter told me that CNN reported Paddock was ahead more than $5 million in a recent year. Was this possible? I told them it was very possible that a high-stakes player had more than $5 million in W2G jackpots, but that’s an entirely different matter than being ahead that much. Or even ahead at all! Getting the total of W2Gs from the IRS might be obtainable by the police. But knowing whether he was ahead or behind was a totally different matter.

Four days after the shooting, Bonnie and I left for a long-scheduled two-week cruise from Boston to Quebec City and back again. While in Boston the night before the cruise, I checked my email and found one from Ryan Growney, the general manager of the South Point. He said that an FBI agent wanted to talk with me about the shooting and I should call him back right away to get that FBI agent’s phone numbers. Since I teach classes at the South Point and that casino sponsors the podcast, that casino was a reasonable place for the FBI to start looking for contact information.

Shit!

I’ve heard Bob Nersesian and other attorneys say you NEVER should talk to a police officer without having an attorney present. I figured that went double for talking to the FBI. Still, I was a couple thousand miles away from home and about to sail northwards soon. The $3.99 a minute charge for talking when the ship is actually at sea is relatively small change, of course, but I still didn’t want to pay it. I figured I could handle this, so I found out the number of the FBI special agent and called him.

The agent told me that my name was mentioned by several people when they asked, “Tell us the name of the most likely person you know who might have known Stephen Paddock.” Due to our “video poker connection” and the fact that I play what many would consider high stakes, it didn’t surprise me that my name had come up. When I said I had never heard of him, basically the interview was over.

Except, the agent wanted to fill out the form in front of him and he asked me if my name was Bob, or perhaps Robert? Another question I didn’t want to answer, but I told him that Bob Dancer was a pseudonym used for teaching and writing purposes.

This led to the next question of, “Would you mind telling me your real name?” The truthful (unspoken) answer was of course I minded, but I told him anyway, along with my address and phone number. That information could be easily obtained by the FBI anyway if they really wanted it, but I would prefer I wasn’t in their databases.

Oh well. I wasn’t going to lie to the FBI and making a big stand about something that wouldn’t be difficult for them to find out anyway would just make me look suspicious.

I said at the beginning of this article that I had my doubts that Stephen Paddock was a winning player. Why did I say that? Because articles said he’d been playing for high stakes for more than a decade and he was still allowed to play at a number of the biggest Las Vegas Strip casinos. From both personal experience and talking to many other successful players, I know that these places tend to restrict and/or remove players over whom they do not believe they have an advantage.

So, if he did have an actual advantage, he would have needed to fool several different casinos for more than a decade. And this, I believe, is unlikely. Even more unlikely is that the casinos would have allowed him to be $5 million ahead in one year.

Posted on by — 12 Comments

How Much Does It Cost?

Recently I posted an article concerning winning a Louis Vuitton handbag at an invited-guest event at the M casino. I said that I had played $100,000 in coin-in before the drawing so that I would continue to receive invitations to such events in the future.

Nobody told me that $100,000 in play was required. There is no magic formula that tells me how much to play in such circumstances. It’s done by feel. The better the invitation, EV-wise, the more I play. The nicer the casino, the more I play. If I’ve been winning at a place recently, I tend to play more. If I “have time,” meaning I’m not trying to squeeze several events (including non-casino activities) into a short period of time, I play more. Possibly no other player came up with the $100,000 figure for that event. This doesn’t mean that any of us are necessarily right or wrong. Each player has to work it out for himself.

It also depends on the available games, slot club, and other promotions. If my play will earn entries to one or two additional drawings in which I think I will have decent equity, I’ll tend to play more.

If I lose a lot early in a promotion like this, I tend to quit. Why? Because a major purpose of the play is to keep the invitations coming. If I lose $3,000 for an event with an estimated EV of $500, the casino marketing department is happy. They got what they wanted. Clearly, I’m a desirable customer in their opinion.  (If there were other promotions going on in that casino, as is usually the case, I might continue to play because I’m getting equity elsewhere. Being behind $3,000 or any other number is not a particularly meaningful event.)

Against this background, I received a question on the gamblingwithanedge.com forum that asked how much bankroll would it take to play $100,000 coin-in in Jacks or Better or Deuces Wild? I was vacationing at the time, so I didn’t respond immediately. I’m going to address this now.

This is an important thing to address before you start to play. You don’t want to tell your wife, “They gave us a $150 Dooney and Bourke handbag. We didn’t win the Louis Vuitton bag. Worse, other than the handbag, we’re flat broke now.”

Important though it is, the question isn’t anywhere near specific enough to be able to answer. What pay schedule are you talking about, what denomination, and what kind of game are you playing? That casino has 9/6 Jacks or Better and NSU Deuces Wild for dollar single line. Fairly fast players would take 25 hours to play $100,000 on such machines. These are not appropriate machines to play for such an event.

To get credit for “playing for an event,” pretty much you have to play that day. For a high-roller event where you intend to play $100,000, that probably means on $5 or $10 machines, or maybe $1 Ten Play, or 25¢ Fifty Play. Something like that. Each casino has its own mix of games. You have to check out each one before you decide what game to play. To be invited to this event, you needed to have played $800,000 coin-in over the previous January – June or July – December period. There are a few players who earned that status by grinding it out on dollar single-line games, but not too many. Most of us played larger games.

For a given game and pay schedule, playing it in the $5 version, $10 version, $1 Ten Play, and 25¢ Fifty Play versions required four different bankroll calculations. 9/6 Jacks or Better or NSU Deuces Wild don’t exist for these stakes at this casino. 9/6 Double Double Bonus does. Is that the game you want to know about? That game requires a significantly bigger bankroll than Jacks or Better — for a number of reasons.

The best tools to figure out bankroll are Video Poker for Winners and Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker. They each have their strengths. I use both.

Use them and you’ll see that the bankroll required is a probabilistic number. That is, if you are willing to accept a 10% risk of ruin, you need half the bankroll as if you are only willing to accept a 1% risk of ruin. What level of risk are you comfortable with?

You’ll also see that playing $5 machines is less risky than playing $10 machines. So what denomination do you want to play? On VPW, you’ll see that playing $1 Ten Play requires significantly less bankroll than playing $10 single line.

One person posted on the forum in response to the bankroll question that if you assume you’re not going to get royals, straight flushes, or 4-of-a-kinds, playing 9/6 Jacks will cost you about 9%. Although we might quibble whether it’s closer to 8.5% or 9%, this is basically correct. And, to me, essentially irrelevant.

This looks at bankroll calculations as a worst-case scenario. Assuming you’re talking about a $5 game, you’ll typically get around 9.5 quads per $100,000 coin-in, almost a half of a straight flush, and a tenth of a royal. Assuming you’re going to strike out on all of these is a very small number — on the order of 1/20,000. Could it happen? Sure. Will it happen this weekend? Almost certainly not. Will it ever happen to you? Probably not that either. If you had one of these promotions every week, this would happen once every 400 years. Good chance you’re not going to live that long.

And if you have some sort of a stop loss figure (for me, I indicated that if I lost $3,000 and this was the only promotion I was playing for, I would probably quit for the day) you’re not going to lose 9% of the entire amount.

So, my suggestion is to get one or more of the software products and wallow in the numbers. Over time, you’ll get a sense of what each game costs to play. You can tweak the parameters so that they are appropriate to the actual games you are playing at any particular casino.

I know that wallowing in the numbers is tougher for some than others. Still, that’s what it takes to become proficient in this game. If you can’t, or won’t, do this, getting good at video poker is a pretty difficult goal for you.

Being difficult doesn’t mean impossible. Richard Munchkin has said on the podcast that since he wasn’t particularly good with math, he teamed with others, some of whom were very good with numbers. Richard had a considerable number other strengths.

This is a LOT more useful information than coming up with a specific number and saying THAT’S the amount of bankroll you need. Any such number would need to be qualified twelve ways from Thursday and would be meaningless in real life situations.

Finally, whatever the bankroll calculators say, you need some experience to make sense of them. For example, the M has a senior drawing every Tuesday. (Obviously some of my readers aren’t eligible for a drawing where you must be 50 years of age or older.) Playing $100,000 coin-in improved my equity in that drawing. By how much? Who knows for sure? Possibly $50 or $100 more? Probably more than that, but I don’t have enough information to calculate it exactly. And even if I did, it would only be an average amount. I COULD end up with first prize of $1,500 or strike out altogether. If I calculated an average win of, say, $263.42, it will NEVER come out to be exactly that. And the casino had a couple of other promotions going on as well that are also hard to analyze accurately but playing an extra $100,000 helped my chances in those promotions as well.

And I like the benefits that come from having ICON status there. If I haven’t reached the $800,000 threshold for this six-month period, playing $100,000 is worth more to me than if I’ve already qualified. Things like this aren’t covered by the software analysis but are nonetheless important considerations in the winning process.

Posted on by — 17 Comments

Be Careful What You Wish For  

Say you’re playing 9/6 Jacks or Better and are dealt a hand like A♦ K♣ J♦ T♦ 3♦. The best play, of course, is AJT3. Many players hold the inferior AJT. As I see it, players make the lesser play for one of two reasons:

  1. They simply do not know that AJT3 is worth 3.7¢ more than AJT for the 5-coin dollar player — given that the fifth card dealt was an off-suit king. Holding the flush kicker is a rather advanced play and many players aren’t students of the game. Or maybe they go back and forth between games without understanding the differences between them and make more-or-less the same plays for all games.

 

  1. They know AJT3 is better and they just don’t care. They really love to get royals and 3.7¢ isn’t that big of a cost for a chance to get such an exciting hand.

 

Today I want to address that second group of players, namely the ones who are willing to pay an extra premium in order to get the royal flush. My position is that for most players, this is a costlier move than they realize.

When I spoke of that 3.7¢ difference in value between the two plays, the math included a 1-in-1,081 chance of getting a $4,000 royal flush. The trouble is that the $4,000 royal flush for most people isn’t worth $4,000.

First of all, there’s tipping. When they bring you your money, they usually provide you with 39 $100 bills and five twenties. You’re not required to tip, but many players give away one or more of their twenties to the casino staff. If you’re generous enough to give away all five twenties, you have increased the difference between holding AJT and AJT3 from 3.7¢ to 12.9¢. If you got the best hand available holding AJT3, namely a $30 flush, no casino employee would be there holding his/her hand out expecting a share of it.

Second, and far more importantly, there’s a W2G that comes along with that $4,000. If you’re playing in Mississippi, the state takes away $120 — with no chance of getting it back. Louisiana takes $240, and you can get some or all of that back by filing a Louisiana state income tax form. If you fill out the form yourself, it takes an hour or more and you may not do it correctly. If you hire a tax professional to do it, it can cost more than the $240 you’re hoping to get back. There are a few other states with similar policies. If you shrug off that extra $240 every 1-in-1081 times it occurs when you draw two cards to AJT, that increases the difference in EV between the two plays by an extra 22.2¢.

Possibly different from the state where you’re playing, the state where you reside has tax rules too. Some states let you deduct your gambling losses from your gambling winnings. Some don’t. Some states have a state income tax on gambling winnings. Some don’t. Professional gamblers have different rules than non-professionals. If you itemize your W2Gs, it reduces other benefits you can claim.

I’m not a tax expert by any means, but I can safely say that there are significant costs to getting a $4,000 royal flush for many players.

The third reason royal flushes can be “bad news” is that casinos get excited if you get too many of them. Not so much for $4,000 royals perhaps, but if you play for larger stakes, $20,000 or higher royal flushes end up with you being discussed by casino management. Although exactly how many royals you hit is largely luck, being lucky can get you kicked out. Nobody has everbbeen kicked out for hitting too many flushes.

If players correctly understood the factors discussed today, even on a hand like A♣ 6♥ J♣ T♣ 3♣, where AJT is superior to AJT3 by 5.1¢, these players would intentionally and intelligently go for the flush — simply because ending up with the royal has so many additional costs.

(I understand that the two hands presented today look virtually the same to many players and they cannot see why the correct play is different. That’s a discussion for another day.)

Playing for quarters or less makes you immune from these considerations at most casinos. Some casinos, however, do make a $1,000 jackpot a hand-pay situation. If that’s the case where you play, some of your immunity disappears.

Taking slightly the worst of it to go for a jackpot that creates a financial burden strikes me as similar to paying money to buy heroin. Heroin ends up destroying an individual and to pay money to do this boggles the mind. Most healthy people are disciplined enough to stay away from heroin. Few gamblers are disciplined enough to be willing to pay a small premium in order to stay away from royal flushes.

Posted on by — 14 Comments

Is This Correct?

I get lots of emails from players asking about this or that. If the questions aren’t too frequent from the same player, I usually answer them. I recently got a question which I very much disliked from a player named Gary.

“Bob, I’ve been trying to figure something out that Linda Boyd said on YouTube. She said that when you were dealt the 4♠ 9♣ J♥ Q♥ K♠ that you would hold the J♥ Q♥. Is that true, because to me the 9♣ is a penalty card, not really sure what to think of all this, would you help me out?”

Here are my problems with this question:

  1. It is so easy to look up how to play a hand using software. Any player trying to learn should have one or more video poker software products. This level of information is also available for free online. Emailing me to ask how to play a hand is equivalent to asking me to add 432 to 743. Yes, I know how to do it, but I’m not interested in being a calculator for you. If you are unable or unwilling to look up how to play a hand, playing video poker well is beyond your capabilities.

 

  1. Gary didn’t tell me what game he was talking about. For some games, 9/6 Jacks or Better among them (which is the game most authors write about), J♥ Q♥ is the correct play. For other games, such as the versions of Double Bonus where you receive 5-for-1 for a straight, you play 9♣ J♥ Q♥ K♠. Somehow, I’m supposed to figure out the game that Gary is interested in.

 

  1. Gary mentioned a penalty card, although not in a way that indicates he knows what he’s talking about. Penalty cards are a consideration for advanced players — and many such players think they are more trouble than they’re worth. At the minimum, however, you need to know basic strategy cold before you start messing with penalty cards. And if Gary is asking about this particular hand, he clearly doesn’t have basic strategy mastered.

The fact that Gary is at the intermediate level is neither here nor there. Everybody starts at the beginning and each one of us is at a different point along the learning curve. I’ve had raw beginners in my classes as well as students who are professional video poker players. If Gary were to attend class or discuss private lessons, that would be fine.

But asking me questions that he could answer easily himself is abusing my generosity. I do answer questions via email for free, but not questions like this.

Posted on by — 22 Comments

Something I Didn’t Expect

In early September, there was an invitational event at the M resort for their Icon guests, which is their highest tier level. Perhaps others were invited as well, but I’m not sure.

Just for showing up, you received your choice of nice brand name gifts — there was a Fitbit Watch, Dooney and Burke handbags, some TUMI accessories and some more choices. About 1/3 of the gifts were geared towards men and 2/3 were geared towards women. Since I’m no dummy, I took Bonnie along and let her pick what she wanted. In addition to the free gift, there were some better-than-average hors d’ oeuvres and an open bar.

While you didn’t need to play to get the gift, they had three separate drawings — 9 p.m., 9:30 p.m., and 10 p.m. — for some Louis Vuitton “packages,” consisting of a handbag, sunglasses, and one additional item. And entry tickets for this drawing was based on play.

Bonnie isn’t much into brand names. She took the attitude of, “Don’t play extra for me. Louis Vuitton accessories are way more expensive than what I normally use. Plus, I already have three handbags in closets won in other promotions that I haven’t used yet.”

It’s nice when Bonnie takes this “sensible” attitude. However, this time it would have been nice had she been a bit greedier. I had already decided that I should probably play at least $100,000 in coin-in to justify the invitation. The casino was putting out quite a bit of money for this promotion, and when they put out that kind of money, they expect players to play. If I took their nice gift without playing at all, perhaps I wouldn’t receive the invitation next time.

There was a combination of promotions going on there, so playing that much was probably a decent play — if I valued the Louis Vuitton package at close to retail. Bonnie’s sensible attitude took some of the value away. If she had a “Boy, that would be so special to win that prize!” attitude, clearly winning the package would be more valuable. Dollars and sense is one way to measure value, but how happy something makes Bonnie is also part of the equation for me.

I didn’t know how good of a chance for the Louis Vuitton package playing $100,000 coin-in would get me. I didn’t see a lot of players “going for it.” One lady who typically plays a lot at this kind of event had concert tickets somewhere else, so wasn’t going to play for a “must be there to win” drawing. She went, ordered her gift, and then went to the concert. Like Bonnie, she had a number of unused handbags from other casino promotions.

As luck would have it, my name was called at the 9 p.m. drawing. (Perhaps I had a competitive number of entries. Perhaps it was simply blind luck. I really don’t know.) There was a choice of three Louis Vuitton packages, so Bonnie decided which one suited her best. In addition to the Louis Vuitton package, she picked out a Dooney and Burke bag for her regular gift. So much for having too many handbags!

I checked to see if you could win more than once and found out the answer was “No.” That was the fair way to do it, but in case they didn’t have that rule, I’d make sure to stick around for the last two drawings as well. Since we couldn’t win again, we didn’t stick around.

Just before I left, one of the promotion managers came over and had me sign a $3,000 Tax Form 1099 for the Louis Vuitton package. Whoa! What’s this? I was not expecting this at all.

“That’s the retail price for the prize, so if you want to keep it, you have to sign for it. If you don’t want to keep it, we’ll call somebody else’s name.”

Bonnie had already fallen in love with her new handbag, so there was no way in the world that I would make her give it back. But the tax implications did surprise me some.

Had I known of the $3,000 1099 would I have still played for it? Probably. I get enough W2Gs and 1099s throughout the year that one more would not be a showstopper. It’s just most of the ones I get come with cash (like winning a $3,000 drawing). Having the tax form come with a gift is a bit unusual for me. And, naïve guy that I am about designer things, I was thinking $600 or so was the appropriate price for the gift.

I’m not complaining. Winning this prize was far more good news than bad. It was simply a surprise I wasn’t expecting.

Posted on by — 17 Comments

An Obvious Mistake

Bonnie recently received an email from a local casino that read: “One Day Only, Tuesday, Guaranteed Free Slot Play $20.00” We’ve received variations on this numerous times over the years from this casino. So, we marked it on the calendar and made plans to pick it up. I didn’t get such an offer but I was already scheduled to receive free play that day. Perhaps that was the reason.

At least one player, however, received the same email with one “minor” difference. Instead of guaranteeing $5, $20, or $50, the email guaranteed $512,623. Now what? It said “Guaranteed.” Does guaranteed really mean guaranteed?

The player contacted me about this, wanting to know what he should do. My advice was, first of all, don’t expect to receive half a million dollars. It’s simply not going to happen. Reasonable people will probably agree that this is an obvious mistake.

The mistake probably happened in the computer program that sends out these emails. I have no idea if this casino uses their own employees and computer programs to send these emails or if they contract out the job to someone else.

My second bit of advice, however, was to contact senior management about this. If the casino simply says, “Whoops! Our mistake. We meant to give you $10. Here it is,” then you should scream bloody murder. You made a special trip in for the big money and now you’re insulted for “only” $10. There are times to make a scene and this may well be one of them. I suggest you make it an Oscar-winning performance.

On the other hand, what if they say, “Whoops! Our mistake. Our computer programmer was having a bad day and on some of the emails put the player’s card number in place of the dollar amount. Since your card number is 512623, that’s the amount that actually showed up. With your amount of play, we intended to have given you $10 of free play. What we’re going to do instead is, because of our mix up, give you $500 in free play and comp you a stay here for two nights. Please accept this as our way of apologizing for the mistake.” If they say this, I suggest you take them up on their offer. You might negotiate for $1,000 instead, but generally speaking, take the offer.

There are players that will hire an attorney about this and see if they can make the casino honor the half-a-million-dollar guarantee. I don’t suggest this, but you can do what you want. I strongly doubt that you’ll get either the Gaming Control Board or any court to agree with your position.

There are times to hold the casino’s feet to the fire on their promises, and there are times to let them off easy if there’s an obvious mistake. Players can easily differ in their opinion as to what makes an “obvious mistake” and what you should do about it. Part of the decision-making process involves, “If I do try to make them honor their guarantee, will I succeed?” Since I don’t believe you’d be successful here in trying to legally force them to pay $512,623, then that affects my decision to let them off easy.

But letting them off easy doesn’t mean letting them off completely. They made a mistake. You were inconvenienced. They should be told that, repeatedly if necessary, and let them make you an offer. Do not go to the slot club booth to complain. They have no authority to make things better. Demand to see the vice president of marketing. Or perhaps the general manager. They DO have the power to make things right.

And when they are making things right, part of their decision-making process is to evaluate how upset you are and how many people you are going to complain to if you don’t get a nice offer. So, this is definitely a time to “go Hollywood” and appear to be irate even if you’re not.

Another part of the decision-making process by the casino managers is:  How many times did this error occur? If it only happened to three players, they can afford to be generous with their mea culpa. If it happened to 10,000 players or more, they aren’t going to be so generous to each person, although the total amount of their restitution may be larger.

Still another factor is whether you’re a winning player and the casino has a history of removing winning players. In that case, go easy on them. Why make this the straw that breaks the camel’s back and gets you busted? If you’re a losing player, however, go for it! You don’t get these opportunities very often.

Posted on by — 11 Comments

What Should I Say?

There was a news story recently that 11 years ago, a college professor had told Julian Edelman (currently a New England Patriot wide receiver with two Super Bowl rings) that his goal of playing football professional was unrealistic and he should try something else. The teacher recently sent Edelman an apology for doubting his passion — Good for her! — and Edelman tweeted, “Set your goals high. Do whatever it takes to achieve them. #motivation.”

It turns out that Edelman went far beyond what this teacher thought he could do. But it also might be true that if this same teacher discouraged 25 other men from trying out for the NFL, she may well have been correct the other 25 times. Edelman is an exception — an undersized guy who made it through with a lot of grit and determination — and clearly there was some luck involved. (Not having a debilitating injury has to be a mixture of skill and luck.)

The reason I bring this us is that I also am a teacher. During the first session of my most recent semester of free video poker classes, one young man — I’m guessing 30 years old — “Charlie” — wasn’t very impressive in class. My class is interactive and I ask each student a question in turn. It’s pretty obvious to me if somebody has a knack for the game or not. By listening to how they answer the questions, how fast they grasp concepts, and the questions they ask, it’s not that hard for me to make some sort of an evaluation.

Still, it’s just my opinion. It’s at least possible that someone whom I think has no chance of becoming a decent player ends up being a successful one — in whatever way you wish to define that. It is, however, an educated opinion. I’ve been around successful gamblers for more than 40 years and there are recognizable patterns. Every successful gambler is different from all the others, but things such as apparent intelligence, a curiosity about how things work, and the ability to grasp concepts are pretty common.

Anyway, after the class, Charlie came up and told me he had recently received a settlement. He had $40,000 total, supplemented his living driving for Uber, and wanted to become rich playing video poker. What should I say?

It’s always a guess as to how much to encourage somebody. I really don’t want to give anybody false hope. Yes, I would earn a few extra dollars for each of my books and software that he purchased, but truly that’s small change. Telling somebody they have a great chance to succeed when I believe the opposite is true is not what I’m about.

At the same time, telling him flatly, “You have no chance at all,” isn’t what I’m about either. He might have been having an off day and he might be much smarter and more dedicated than I originally surmised. Although I was pretty sure I was correct in my judgment about him, I’ve been wrong before about many things.

So I told him that percentagewise, very few video poker players can support themselves just by gambling. It’s tough to succeed and a lot of players are competing with each other to do this. There is simply not enough room for everybody to make money at this. When this occasionally happens, casinos tighten up and then all the players struggle to find the next great opportunity.

I told him that the successful ones have some aptitude and work very hard perfecting their craft. And luck plays a role as well. You will likely hit “about” the right number of royals over time, but if you’re playing both quarter and dollars, it makes a big difference whether the royals you hit are quarter royals or dollar royals.

I also told him that while $40,000 sounded like a lot of money, money goes pretty fast when you’re paying rent, automobile expenses, whatever. If you’re using that money for both living and gambling, going through that in a year or two is very possible — even with some extra money coming in from driving. And then what?

Finally, I recommended he practice on the computer rather than in the casino. In-casino practice is very expensive. Playing on the nickel machines to save money isn’t usually a good option because those pay schedules are typically very bad. Even I would be a loser on most nickel pay schedules.

Anyway, that’s what I told him. I tried to balance being realistic with being reasonably supportive. What would you have said?

(Author’s note: After the first class and after this blog was written, Julian Edelman suffered a tear in the ACL of his right knee and will out all season. My reference early in this blog to Edelman being lucky to avoid debilitating injury now seems awkward in light of more recent events. I left the reference in unchanged — as the story was about Charlie, not Edelman. Writing blogs a month in advance means I’m not under big deadline pressure, but also sometimes current events change what I have written.)

Posted on by — 6 Comments

I’m Glad I Didn’t Hit It — Revisited

The Undoing Project is a recent book by Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball, Liar’s Poker, and The Blind Side, among others). It follows the careers of two Israeli psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, as they break new ground and basically invent the field of Behavioral Economics. I’ve written about these guys before and one man they greatly inspired — Dan Ariely.

Today I want to talk about the Undoing Project itself and the psychology of regret. Had I understood these concepts better many years ago, I would have never written a particular article that I now intend to revise.

When somebody wants to “undo” something, they usually think about relatively easy ways it could be accomplished. For example, Andy is driving and reaches an intersection just at the point where it’s a very close call whether to speed up and go through the intersection when the signal is orange or slow to a stop and wait for the next green. Andy’s decision may be the same or different from yours, but all drivers have occasionally experienced this sort of thing.

Regardless of whether Andy sped up or slowed down, let’s assume that at the next intersection, his car was sideswiped by another car which caused considerable damage, although thankfully Andy came out okay.

If Andy wanted to think about how this could have been undone, his mind would naturally go back to the speed-up-or-slow-down decision he had just made and conclude that if he had done the opposite, he would never have been sideswiped. He would not, typically, think that if the other driver had been killed the week before in a drive by shooting, then Andy would have avoided the accident. People just don’t think that way — but frankly, either “solution” would have kept Andy’s car from being crumpled.

When I read about this, I thought back to an article I had written perhaps 20 years ago. Seems like I was playing $1 10-7 Double Bonus at the Orleans and a woman sitting nearby commented, “I’m glad I didn’t hit it.” She was playing only four coins and had been dealt A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 7♦. She threw the 7 away and ended up with a worthless 6♥.

I commented that if she had hit the royal, it would have been worth $1,000 rather than the nothing she received. I thought she was basically an idiot for preferring $0 to $1,000.

The thing is, though, that if she had hit the royal, she would have felt terrible that she hadn’t been playing max coins at that time. She would have seen it as a $3,000 loss rather than a $1,000 gain. The pain of losing $3,000 (even though it’s all in her mind) was bigger than the pleasure of actually winning $1,000.

Since I had studied economics before Kahneman and Tversky came along, I “knew” that having $1,000 was better than having $0. There was just no other way to look at it insofar as I was concerned. This woman was being very foolish.

Now, I realize that this woman isn’t alone in her thought processes. When she wished to “undo” the results of a “mere” $1,000 jackpot, she normally would think that, “I should have been playing five coins.” She “knew better” and now was being punished for only playing four coins. The pain she would feel would be very real to her.

I, of course, would have recommended she play one coin or five — depending on bankroll considerations, but never four. Still, that ship had sailed and she bet four coins. Although I still feel betting four coins per hand was foolish, I have more empathy for her “I’m glad I didn’t hit it” statement.

Posted on by — 26 Comments

How Often Do Things Happen?

Today’s paper is on simple video poker mathematics. Let’s assume you are playing a game where, on average, you hit a quad (i.e., a 4-of-a-kind) every 400 hands. Further, let’s assume you play for a total of 1,200 hands. I’ll arbitrarily say that it takes you two hours to complete the 1,200 hands. How many quads can you expect to end up with over that number of hands?

It appears obvious that the answer should be three, but this is the wrong answer. To get the correct answer, we need to look at the binomial distribution, the results of which appear here:

 

0 5%
1 15%
2 22%
3 22%
4 17%
5 10%
6 5%
7 2%
8 or more 1%

 

What this says is that 5% of the time you won’t hit any quad; 17% of the time you’ll hit four; 2% of the time you’ll hit seven; etc. These numbers don’t tell you WHICH quad you’ll hit. Just how many.

These numbers are accurate, but not really precise. For example, the chance to get exactly three quads could more precisely be written as 22.4322%, but that is far more precision than we need for today’s discussion. It looks like they only add up to 99%, but that’s rounding error and also not important for today.

One of the interesting features of this distribution is that the number of quads that we think we “should” get, namely three, actually occurs less than one time in four. Another typical feature of the distribution is that the probability of getting one fewer quad than typical is virtually the same — actually 22.4135%, which is slightly less.

We could, I suppose, refer to getting either zero or one quad as “bad luck”, getting two, three, or four as “typical luck”, and getting five or more as “good luck”. It doesn’t change anything by assigning terms dealing with luck to the results. When somebody asks me, “How much skill and how much luck was involved?” in describing whatever happened yesterday, my answer is often, “I have no idea.”

Let’s assume that on this particular day in question, we don’t hit any 4-of-a-kind. Definitely worse-than-average luck, but it happens about one day in twenty. Slightly rare, but not extraordinarily so. Now the question is, since you’ve just gone through worse-than-average luck, what will be the distribution of quads for your two-hour session tomorrow? For this, the following distribution will hold:

0 5%
1 15%
2 22%
3 22%
4 17%
5 10%
6 5%
7 2%
8 or more 1%

 

The distribution, of course, is the same as first given. Just because we had a bad day says absolutely nothing about what our score will be the next day. There is no tendency to either, “Once you start running bad you keep running bad because you’re an unlucky player,” or “You’ll get more quads the next day to make up for the shortfall.”

Let’s assume we change machines halfway through. Now the distribution of the quads expected over the 1,200 hands is:

0 5%
1 15%
2 22%
3 22%
4 17%
5 10%
6 5%
7 2%
8 or more 1%

 

Is this distribution beginning to look familiar? It should. Changing machines has nothing to do with changing the distribution.

In this discussion so far, we’ve said nothing about skill. We are assuming players are playing perfectly. If players play imperfectly, the distribution will change. For example, on a hand like K♥ K♠ 4♦ 4♣ 5♦, it is correct in almost every game to hold KK44, although many seat-of-the-pants players playing games where two pair only return even money incorrectly hold just the pair of kings. Making this kind of mistake systematically will IMPROVE your chances for hitting quads, but COST you overall. The increased number of quads you get by holding only one pair rarely compensates for the reduced number of full houses.

The numbers are for three “cycles.” If full houses normally come around every 90 hands on average, the numbers above apply to how many full houses you hit in 270 hands. If royals come about every 40,000 hands, the numbers above apply to how many royals you hit in 120,000 hands. In games where the royal cycle is 45,000 hands, the numbers apply to how many royals you hit in 135,000 hands.