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Twenty-First Annual Blackjack Ball

Recently, at some mysterious location in greater Las Vegas, almost 100 of the world’s best blackjack players and other gaming professionals, along with dates for some of the guests, met for the Twenty-First Annual Blackjack Ball. I’m always grateful that host Max Rubin allows one video poker pro to attend, and this year Bonnie was allowed to be there as well.

In addition to being invited and accepting the invitation early enough to get one of the coveted seats, guests are required to bring one bottle of premium champagne — preferably comped. This year getting two comped bottles wasn’t possible for me, so I went to Lee’s Discount Liquor Store and forked over $340 for two bottles of Dom. More than I usually spend for an evening out, but I was NOT going to miss the ball, especially the 21st.

There is pretty tight security surrounding the event — both because there is a significant amount of money in the pockets of the attendees, but also because there are only so many seats. If extra people get admitted, somebody is going to have to stand up. Some guy named Phil Ivey and his date crashed the party. Seems this guy plays a little poker. These gate-crashers were allowed to stay and, in fact, found seats right up front.

Guest speaker was Professor Edward O. Thorp, whose seminal Beat the Dealer was the book that allowed the career of “blackjack professional” to exist and whose equally seminal Beat the Market basically created the profession of Wall Street quants. Each gambling professional at the ball received an autographed copy of A Man for All Markets, Thorp’s newly released autobiography. Professor Thorp referred to himself as a pebble thrown into a lake, whose ripples became a tidal wave. A video of Dr. Thorp’s speech was posted by Richard Munchkin on January 31 at gamblingwithanedge.com.

There was a musical duet by Megan Riordan, who happens to be Max Rubin’s daughter and starred in the Dublin production of Once: The Musical and Blackjack Hall of Fame member Darryl Purpose. I wasn’t familiar with the haunting and lovely Academy Award winning song, “Falling Slowly,” but Bonnie and I had worn dance shoes “in case” such a moment occurred. We had scoped out the best nearby dance floor (off to the side so it wouldn’t interfere with the performance) and we danced our quiet two step while Megan and Darryl did their rendition. It added to our night without subtracting from anybody else’s.

One feature of the Blackjack Ball each year is the induction of a new member into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. This year’s winner, Don Johnson, arguably the most famous blackjack player in the world after his well-publicized $15 million win in Atlantic City, is both highly qualified and very popular. It could be argued that he stacked the ballot box, so to speak. Both this year and last, Johnson donated HUGE bottles of champagne to the ball for the winners. This year’s winner of the blackjack ball competition, who I will keep secret for a few more paragraphs (but you have heard of him), says the bottle was the Nebuchadnezzar size, containing 15 liters of the bubbly.

The ball is primarily about like-minded folks who don’t get to see each other that often, getting together and partying. They have a skills competition, preceded by an “impossible” test to get the final table number of contestants down to five. I call it impossible, but there is significant correlation between who ends up at the final table every year. This year Anthony Curtis made it there for something like the seventh time out of the 21 balls and two guys who were on the MIT Blackjack team (John Chang and Andy Bloch) also made it back to the final table. I made it to the final five one year — kind of like a Slumdog Millionaire situation where I just happened to know the questions asked that year. This year it took 12 correct answers out of 21 and I only got nine correct. That might sound close, but there were probably 40 others in the competition with nine, 10, or 11 correct. I was definitely an also ran.

Although I have been known to submit questions to Max for the ball, and I was really proud of my question this year, Max decided not to run it. There was one video poker question submitted by somebody else. I’m glad I got it correct because it would be embarrassing for me to miss the only video poker question. Let’s see how you’d do:

At the Casino Snoqualmie, you are playing Double Double Bonus and are dealt 9TJQA, all of the same suit. Choose your best play from these five choices:

  1. Hold all five cards for a flush
  2. Throw the A away and draw to an open-ended straight flush
  3. Throw the 9 away and draw to a royal flush
  4. Throw all five cards away
  5. It doesn’t matter what you do. Your EV is the same whatever play you make.

I’m pretty sure all of my readers know the right play in Nevada would be “c.” Going for the royal is much the better play when the game is dealt fairly. But if you know that Snoqualmie is in the State of Washington and games there are rigged by the state, you have a chance to come up with the correct answer of “e.”

One of the rules of the quiz was that you had to take it in ink and if there were any double answers, blanks, or scratch-outs, you were automatically disqualified. I was grading the test sheet of someone whom I didn’t know before the ball, a young man who calls himself Loco. He got 12 correct, which would put him at the final table, but there was a scratch-out. The scratch-out, however, was at least contributed to by Max misreading the question.

Max had a question regarding who said, “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.” Was it Joseph Stalin, the Queen of Hearts, or Attorney General nominee Jeffrey Sessions in his confirmation hearing? Unfortunately, Max said Robert Sessions, not Jeffrey Sessions. Loco, who guessed it was Sessions (as did I — we were both wrong because the correct answer comes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland) wrote down “Robert Sessions” and then crossed out the “Robert” when Max corrected the question.

There was no debate that Loco missed that question — but should he be disqualified for Max’s unintentional misreading? Other than briefly meeting Loco an hour previously, I didn’t know him from Adam and had not bet on any player winning. Still, I thought that applying the “no scratch out” rule in this case wasn’t fair and took it up front for Max and his assistants to make an official ruling. It was decided to not penalize Loco for this scratch out and he was in the final five, along with the three players I’ve already named and a player named David Spence. I had seen David at an earlier ball but had never met him.

There were four questions at the final table, each question eliminating one player. The first player out doesn’t get any of the prize pool, but the approximately $14,400 pool is shared among the other four, as $7,200, $3,600, $2,160, and $1,440. That prize pool was generated by everybody anteing $20 at the door and then bidding on who they thought was going to win. My apologies to Munchkin, who has “owned” me for a couple of balls and has yet to receive any return on his investment.

The first and last questions were both, “How fast can you count cards accurately?” For the first test, each player was given a well-shuffled single deck and was asked what counting system he used. If he used the Hi-Lo system, the cards 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are considered low; cards 7, 8, and 9 are considered neutral; and T, J, Q, K, A are considered high. Some players used this, some didn’t, but whatever count you used had to be announced up front. Max then removed one card from each deck and set it face down on the felt in front of the deck.

Players were told to turn the deck over and start counting — slamming the deck down on the table when they were finished. When asked in order from slowest to fastest, the player needed to tell whether the card removed by Max was high, low, or neutral. First guy wrong was out. If everybody got it correct, the slowest guy was out. From fastest to slowest, the order of finish was John Chang, Anthony Curtis, David Spence, Andy Bloch, and Loco. All players correctly identified the missing card, so Loco was eliminated.

The second test was that you were given 10 seconds to estimate and write down the number of cards in a discard tray. Max put out 135 cards. Anthony estimated 136. David 131, and both Andy and John 124. They basically cut cards to see who stayed on, but with a twist for blackjack professionals. Max let them examine a well-shuffled single deck for about 15 seconds. Max then lightly riffled the cards once and let them use a cut card to cut to, hopefully, a high card. John cut to a deuce, effectively eliminating himself. Although Andy could have also cut a deuce, ending up in a tie which would require a re-cut, Andy cut to a ten and John was out.

The third test was to cut exactly 22 cards from the bottom of a single deck in less than ten seconds. Anthony missed by one, David by two, and Andy by three. So, Andy was eliminated and we were down to two players, David Spence and Anthony Curtis. Since I’ve already told you that you’ve heard of the winner, and David is not that well known to my readers, the actual winner won’t be a big surprise. But there was some drama still to unfold.

The last test was similar to the first, except this time it was a double deck and also, it only mattered what the faster counter said. That is, if the faster guy answered correctly, he was the 2017 Grosjean Cup for the World’s Best Blackjack Player winner. If he answered incorrectly, the slower guy was in.

I was standing at Max’s right shoulder throughout the competition — taking notes for this column and an upcoming radio show. As David and Anthony raced through the double decks, it appeared to be very close. As they slammed down their cards at the end signifying they were through, for me it was actually too close to call. Instant replay would have been useful! Max wasn’t sure either so he asked the crowd. The consensus was that David was first. Anthony didn’t dispute this, so it became official that David was the faster one.

Unfortunately for David, he miscounted. He said it was a neutral card removed (7, 8, or 9) and it turned out to be low. So, Anthony Curtis was our winner! I told Anthony that it didn’t affect whether he won or not, and he wasn’t required to answer, but did he think the removed card was high, low, or neutral?

Anthony had the confidence to announce that the removed card was low. We turned it over. We’ll tell you whether he was correct or not on the February 9, 2017 podcast of Gambling with an Edge, which will be all about the Blackjack Ball. Richard and I will be joined by Max, Anthony, and newest Blackjack Hall of Fame member Don Johnson. Should be fun!

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Sydney Phillips, Come Play Blackjack!

Sydney Phillips, a 7th-grader at St. Theresa’s private Catholic school in New Jersey, wanted to play on the boys basketball team after the girls team was discontinued. After the school said no, Sydney’s dad sued. So the school just expelled Sydney, and her sister, too, via a snotty letter! Unfair! Am I the only one whose blood is boiling right now? Sydney, if you need a summer job in six years, look us up! Continue reading Sydney Phillips, Come Play Blackjack!

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Which is More Believable?

I recently read the book Fluke by Joseph Mazur. This book looks at some improbably real “coincidences” and helps us understand the math behind what happened.

Like somebody who writes that she hit a royal flush on the first hand she played two days in a row and wants to know, “What are the odds on that?” Mazur correctly points out that there’s a huge difference between looking at how often that happens to someone anywhere and how likely it was to happen to Mary Smith on December 12 and 13 in 2015? Hugely different problems and Mazur does well to explain that.

If you’ve ever been amazed by that day in 2004 when you ran into somebody you hadn’t seen in 30 years — and you and he both just happened to be in a small café in Turkey at the same time — then this book will help you understand that it wasn’t as flukish as you thought.

One case Mazur covers, however, is Joan Ginther, who won the Texas lottery at least four times over 18 years. Although I accept that Mazur’s mathematical talents in this area are far beyond mine, this is a situation that, in my opinion, Mazur misanalyzes.

Mazur goes through the probability of anybody picking a winning lottery number — and he focuses on the type where you pick six numbers. He goes through the math of winning several times, the number of people playing, the number of lotteries there are in the United States, and concludes that it’s not that unrealistic to expect someone winning four or more times.

He also duly notes that the actual winner, Joan Ginther, has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Stanford University and possibly figured out some way to boost the odds in her favor. He mentions this and then ignores it.

I think Ginther’s background and intelligence are the crux of the matter.

Without precisely ranking Stanford among the elite universities of the world, I’m going to posit without proof that it’s on that list somewhere and that Ph.D.s in mathematics from that university typically have genius-level intelligence with a great facility at numbers.

Further, according to reports in several publications, Ginther’s wins weren’t on lottery tickets where you pick six numbers. Ginther’s wins were on scratchers, which is totally different animal. On a scratcher, some numbers on a grid are already exposed when you buy the ticket. It’s very possible that Ginther used this pre-printed information to decide which lottery tickets to buy. If so, the odds against her were significantly different than what they would be for someone who picked the cards blindly.

This type of advantage was discussed by Mohan Srivastava in https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff_lottery/.  When Srivastava was a guest on our Gambling with an Edge radio show, he said he didn’t know the details of Ginther’s wins, but based on the analysis by a journalist named Peter Mucha, Srivastava speculated that Ginther used methods related to ticket distribution to win. (Listen here) If you like that podcast, Srivastava was on our show earlier (found here) where he went more into the basics of beating the lottery, but only mentioned the Joan Ginther case in passing.

Mathematicians (and video poker players, for that matter) tend to be better than average at “pattern recognition.” I can’t quantify this, but it does seem to lend more credence to the possibility that perhaps Ginther noticed and exploited certain patterns. Srivastava’s personal success was certainly based on this.

So, who’s right? Ginther isn’t talking, although she is said to live in Las Vegas and we’d love to have her on the show.  Let’s look at some assumptions and do a sort of Occam’s Razor analysis:

Mazur:  Pick 6 lotteries are played in a lot of places and have been for a long time. Getting four big wins could happen once by chance to anyone, and it just happened to be Joan Ginther.

Srivastava:  The lotteries Ginther won were not Pick 6, but had other characteristics. It’s possible to analyze those characteristics to gain an edge — if you’re smart enough and dedicated enough. A Ph.D. in mathematics from Stanford University is likely smart enough and dedicated enough to succeed. Although Ginther’s success had a luck element to it, assuming she was a skilled gambler makes a lot more sense than assuming she just got lucky.

In my opinion, Srivastava’s argument makes more sense. What do you believe?

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Not What I Thought I Knew

I enjoy reading. I read both fiction and non-fiction — on a wide variety of subjects. Periodically I look at “Best Books of xxxx” lists to see if anything looks interesting. One such list included the novel Mata Hari’s Last Dance by Michelle Moran.

I vaguely remembered learning decades ago that Mata Hari was a seductress and a spy in World War I — but I didn’t know anything else about her. So, I ordered a copy from the library, figuring that if I couldn’t get into it in a few chapters, I didn’t have to finish it.

Mata Hari, the stage name of a Dutch woman named Margaretha Zelle MacLeod, was a dancer who, beginning in 1905, didn’t mind baring herself at a time when others didn’t do that. She also took several lovers over the years. To keep the mystique going, she regularly fabricated tales — especially to the press. Any novelist trying to get to the truth — and trusting contemporary accounts — was going to have to make some educated guesses as to the actual facts. In the end, nobody can be sure what the whole truth is — simply because there will always be conflicting accounts.

By the time the war started, Mata Hari was nearing 40 years of age and her career was eclipsed by imitators who were younger and better dancers. She made some mistakes and the French believed (probably erroneously) that she was a German spy.  They executed her in late 1917. Whatever spying she did was amateurish at best. The novel presents her circumstances as tragic — although it was clear that she was unwittingly her own worst enemy at times.

Plus, since that’s the only book I’ve read about Mata Hari, most of my “knowledge” comes from that particular book and that author’s point of view. I’m assuming the book was fairly accurate (as historical fiction goes), but I don’t have a depth of knowledge to know for sure.

Although I enjoyed the novel and reading about an era I didn’t know much about, let’s bring this discussion to gambling.

Many video poker players only “know” either what they’ve heard from somebody else or they “know” things about which they’ve made some semi-educated guesses and stuck with. While it may be intuitively “obvious” to some that from K♠ K♥ 7♣ 7♦ 3♠ you hold the kings and not two pair, that play is usually incorrect. From K♥ T♥ 3♥ 7♣ 4♦, it may seem trivial that the best play is to hold exactly two cards (and it is sometimes), but there are games where holding no cards is better, other games where holding one card is the best, and still others where three cards is superior number to hold.

I am somebody who accepts that for most players most of the time, choosing the play with maximum expected value is the way to go. Virtually all long-term successful players use these strategies. There are theoreticians who devise special strategies which have different goals than max-EV, but I’ve never used such a strategy and do not intend to.

How do you figure out what the best max-EV strategy is? Simple. Use a computer program that provides you that information instantly. I sell such a program (Video Poker for Winners) but there are others on the market as well.

The computer program will tell you how to play one hand at a time. That’s fine, but there are 2.6 million different hands — or slightly more than 130,000 if you treat all suits as being equal. That is, if you consider 7♣ 7♦ A♦ 9♦ 4♦ to be “essentially identical” to 7♥ 7♠ A♠ 9♠ 4♠, then you’ve cut the possible number of hands to learn by a factor of about 20. Surprisingly to most novices, 7♥ 7♠ A♠ 9♠ 3♠ is considered to be a totally separate hand than the previous ones.

Exactly how to simplify these things into a usable strategy is a discussion we’ll leave for another day. Modern software products do this for you — some better than others. Various authors have done the heavy lifting for you and present usable strategies — and again, some better than others.

I teach classes for those who prefer to learn by listening rather than figuring things out by themselves. (Author’s note: The next semester of free video poker classes at the South Point will begin at noon Wednesday, January 25, at the South Point in the Silverado Lounge. See bobdancer.com for the complete class schedule.)

Back to the question of “how do I know this is the right way to go?” Short answer is: (drum roll please) I don’t!

I do, however, believe I’m going about this the right way. And I’m betting many tens of millions of dollars a year on this belief. So, the question is:  Why am I so confident?

  1. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years with a great deal of success. That isn’t a guarantee that I’m right. Luck plays a part in all results. Still, long term success tends to build your confidence.
  2. A lot of really smart players do it the same way. Bob Nersesian regularly says that the smartest people he knows are professional gamblers. I agree. And most smart, successful video poker players I know are using techniques similar to those I use.
  3. I have many contacts among casino executives, game manufacturers, gaming lawyers, game designers, mathematicians, and whole bunches of successful gamblers in other disciplines. I’m a sponge for new knowledge. I’m always tweaking what I do. You don’t get good in a vacuum. The more you talk to people in other somewhat related disciplines, the better you understand how things work.
  4. Other smart gamblers accept me as an expert in video poker. If I was way off base, someone knowledgeable would have probably said why. And I probably would have listened. I do read authors I disagree with. I can often gain something from what they say. Nobody has a monopoly on intelligent strategy and it pays to keep an open mind.
  5. Going through the process of putting your thoughts into words and letting any and everybody challenge them has a way of making you a lot sharper. People do find errors in my writing sometimes. I am far more grateful that I get to learn something new than I am embarrassed at being found imperfect. I accepted decades ago that I can’t walk on water.
  6. I’ve been reading and studying gaming strategies for many decades. Bright people tend to get good at what they spend their time doing.

Put this all together and I’m confident in what I say about video poker. I am far less confident in what really happened to Mata Hari, although I know more about her situation than I did a month ago. I likely won’t read another biography of her ever — but who knows? While I enjoyed the novel, becoming a history-professor type of expert on her is not in my plans.

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The Best Video Poker Player

I’m probably the most famous video poker player of all time — not that there’s any real competition nor is there any prize. This “award” comes from me being a well-known writer and teacher for more than 20 years. That has made me “high profile” — which is a far different criterion than “best.”

So, what attributes would the best video poker player have? Presumably there would be some mix of the following:

  1. Knows several games at the professional level.
  2. Studies and practices enough to stay sharp on all games he is currently playing.
  3. Is successful at bringing home the money over the course of several years.
  4. Maintains sufficient on-hand bankroll so that when the opportunities present themselves, the money is available to exploit those opportunities.
  5. Is able to keep his welcome at casinos — especially in comparison with other players with more or less the same results.
  6. Is able to re-establish relationships with casinos whenever restrictions take place.
  7. Is good at figuring out how any particular promotion may be exploited. This requires some intelligence. I’m sure bright people do better at this than not-so-bright people, but I don’t think being a genius is necessary.
  8. Knows the slot clubs inside and out.
  9. Scouts enough to know the relevant games at all nearby casinos.
  10. Keeps up on the promotions so he knows when to play where.
  11. Maintains physical health and stamina, including maintaining reasonable diet and exercise, so that long hours may be put in when special opportunities come along.
  12. Has a network of players who share information about good plays.
  13. Has the mathematical skills to figure out new games when they come around. This is a key one, but there are actually several mathematical skills — including computer programming — which come into play. It is very possible you’re a better programmer than me and I’m better at other “mathy” kinds of things than you are.
  14. Can use the existing computer software (assuming you haven’t created your own which is better in all respects) to figure out various promotions easily.
  15. Can psychologically deal with inevitable losing streaks.
  16. Can avoid huge spending sprees after big wins.
  17. Likes Country Western music (okay, this probably shouldn’t be on the list. I was just checking to see if you were still paying attention.)
  18. LIKES to play and does so willingly. If it’s just a tedious way to earn money, you’re probably not going to be doing whatever is necessary to get and stay sharp.

There are probably things I’ve missed, but you get the idea. There are a LOT of things that make up being a strong player.

Which one is most important? I don’t have a clear-cut ranking of these attributes and even if I did, there would be room for others to disagree. If you’re not good at several of these things, you’re not a strong player. The “best” would consist of some composite score of all these things.

Whomever the best player is, I’m confident that I’m better than him in some of these categories. Likewise, all strong players are better than me in several of these categories and thousands of players are better than me in at least one category.

Being really strong in one or two of these areas can sometimes make up for a shortcoming elsewhere. There are a LOT of different formulas for success.

Finally, your score on this list is basically a secret. There are no published statistics ranking players in any of these categories.

If I’m leaving out important attributes necessary to be a good video poker player, please comment on this article. Some of these comments may well generate one or more articles in the future — and I’m always looking for more things to write about.

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How Bad Is It to Be Greedy?

I assume you know what it means to be greedy. If I’m right about this assumption, then you’re ahead of me. I’m very confused by what the word means.

I Googled “What is greed?” It came back with the Oxford Dictionary definition, “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” It mentioned that greed was one of the seven deadly sins. And it also quotes Gordon Gekko, the Michael Douglas character in the movie Wall Street who said “Greed is good!”

Still not clear.  When does a desire become intense? I remember back in college that sometimes friends and I would go out seeking pleasant short-term feminine companionship. I would call those desires intense and selfish. Back then, fifty years ago, there was kind of a “boys will be boys” mentality about “cruising for babes.” Today it is considered to be far more predatory than it was then. There are a lot of names you could have called our behavior back then, but I never considered “greedy” to be one of them.

If a student athlete wants to be good enough to someday be drafted into the National Football League, he might undertake the following: he begins his workouts every day at 6 a.m.; he spends hours each week studying game film to improve his own skills and figure out the tendencies of whoever is going to be his college opponent next week; he avoids drugs; he’s the last one to leave practice every day. It’s fair to call this athlete very intense. Although he loves the game, the potential million dollar benefits are certainly a part of working that hard. He may well be looking forward to buying his mother a house, but most of his thoughts about using this money are personal and selfish.

I would call the behavior in the preceding paragraph appropriate actions for somebody with a plan. Laudable behavior. Give that kid a standing ovation for working so hard. The actions, though, meet the Oxford Dictionary definition of “greed” namely “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” I think it’s far better to praise this young man for trying to make something of himself than it is to castigate him for the sin of greed.

I have heard the term greed used in at least four separate gambling contexts recently. Perhaps you didn’t hear of these particular instances, but I’m confident you’ve heard of similar ones.

The first was on a video poker bulletin board where somebody posted a picture of a $1,500 jackpot on a quarter Triple Double Bonus Ultimate X game with the note, “Unfortunately the greed took over and I kept playing and ended up with only $700. I hate when that happens!”

The second followed a story about another Las Vegas casino planning on charging for parking. This comment by a player who was unhappy with the casino’s decision started off with “Greed! Greed! Greed!”

The third was a comment from a quarter player who was mad at all the five dollar players for being greedy and winning all the drawings.

The fourth was about a player who hit three royal flushes in two weeks at a casino after which the casino kicked him out. The comment from another player was, “Serves him right for being so greedy!”

These examples do not follow the Oxford Dictionary definition.  The first case resulted from normal swings in a game with sky-high variance. If the swings went up, the person would have felt intelligent, skillful, and proud. When the swings went down, the player blamed greed. To me, it’s a case of the player either not understanding the normal swings of the game or being a bad loser.

In the second and third example, we have somebody else taking actions that cause our lives to be a little more expensive. Since they did it to us, then they are greedy! I see the world as a bunch of moving parts where each person is trying to do what’s best for himself. I do not expect anybody else to roll over and play dead in order for me to succeed. If they block me going to the left, I go to the right. As our outgoing first lady said recently, “If they go low, we go high.” I do not see this as greed on their part. Or on my part for adjusting to what they are doing.

In the fourth example, the player was greedy because he hit three royals? I don’t know anybody who knows for sure when he’s going to hit his next royal, let alone his next three. Royals happen in their own good time. It is possible you’re going to hit three royals tomorrow. It’s possible it’s going to be months and months before you hit that many.

The player who hits three royal flushes in a short period of time is fortunate. But greedy? Like he did it on purpose just to spite the casino? I might well have some unkind words about a slot director who thinks getting royals quickly is a sign of great skill, but calling the player greedy? I don’t get it.

What would I call greedy? Well, if there was only so much food for, say, four people, then taking more than a fourth of it before others have had a chance to eat would be greedy. If some food was left over at the end, then that’s fair game. Or perhaps two roommates were both trying to get ready to go and they had a deal that 15 minutes in the bathroom at a time was all you got. Someone who took more than that is greedy, in my opinion.

What these examples have in common is that there’s a fixed amount of something and sharing is the name of the game. In this context, greed is refusing to share. In a game situation, where players compete against each other, refusing to share is often the sensible thing to do.

If you think of the world as a closed system and everybody from all lands are brothers, then you can come up with some sense of greed. In this context, you’ll see “green” philosophies, which basically try to save the environment for everybody. Within that context, people who refuse to save the environment are greedy.

But you’re not going to get universal agreement on this. I can easily support a “take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints” philosophy when visiting a national forest. Whether we should shut down a lumber industry to save an endangered species of owl is a topic of spirited emotions on both sides.

If you cannot or will not see the world as a closed system and you believe it is “every man for himself,” then greed isn’t well defined, at least to me. Or perhaps, Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is good!” makes sense. I do not see the world that way, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out exactly where the lines of demarcation go.

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Another Matter of Perspective

Recently I wrote a column about me growing up gambling-wise at the Cavendish West, which was a gin and backgammon club in the West Hollywood part of greater Los Angeles. If you didn’t read it the first time, it may be found here.

I mentioned that I lost my bankroll and had to get a job — and I didn’t like it. I received this sarcastic response.

” . . . I had to go out and get a job to support myself. It was awful.” Really? What was awful, not being top dog, or having to work for a living? I can dig it, having to support myself and a family really is a drag!

First of all, as Richard says every week on the radio show, we welcome your comments. This particular comment, intentionally or not, brought up some subjects I don’t often write about, so thank you for giving me an idea for another column!

There are not many people who can make it as a professional gambler. For most players, gambling reality is that the house always wins.

If you are bright enough and have studied hard enough and have developed the other habits necessary to succeed at this obscure “profession,” there is a sense of pride about being able to do something that most people can’t.

I don’t believe this type of pride is unique to being a gambler. I believe most people believe they are better at something than are most other people. It could be that you are good enough to play in the National Football League, or have won the blue ribbon for best marinara sauce three years in a row at the county fair, or have never taken a sick day off, or all three of your kids graduated, or . . . something. And whatever this something is that makes you unique, you’re proud of it.

Sometimes it turns out that reality teaches you that you aren’t as good as you thought you were — or perhaps you once were. The football guy loses his job to a younger, stronger player; somebody figures out a more popular recipe for the sauce; you develop a tumor and need to take several sick days off. Something. Whatever it was that you were proud of — that was part of the core of what made you unique — is no longer there.

Coming to grips with this lack of uniqueness isn’t pleasant.

Having somebody who was never in the NFL sneer at you and say it’s no big deal not to be at that level anymore is somebody who simply doesn’t understand. There is a brotherhood among players that just doesn’t exist with non-players. Being forced to give that up sucks. Although I can’t speak from experience about being in the NFL, there is definitely a camaraderie among successful gamblers and I’d rather be on the inside looking out than the outside looking in.

Sometimes when this happens, you see the player work very, very hard to regain his abilities to play at that top level. Occasionally the player makes it back to the league, but eventually Father Time always wins. Sometimes the player shifts positions or becomes a coach to stay in the game.  More often the player tries for a while to make it back and then eventually gives up that dream as unattainable.

In my case, I was able to make it back — sort of. With a great deal of work, my backgammon skills improved — but not enough to support myself against the really good players. I learned blackjack and became proficient enough to make money there — although I was kicked out of enough places that I finally gave up that career.

Eventually I found my niche in video poker. My fame, such as it is, is due more to being a writer and teacher than being a player.  Inarguably, many of my player skills have been honed by helping others learn the game.  The majority of my wealth, however, comes from being a player. I’m almost 70 years old and eventually Father Time is going to win this contest too. The house doesn’t always win, but Father Time does.

I’ve never questioned that I needed to make a living rather than have things handed to me. In Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way,” he’s proud that he got to succeed under his own terms. That’s the way I feel as well.

It’s not a feeling that I’m better than others. It’s a feeling that eventually I was able to find the right small pond where I could be a big fish. It was neither a short nor an easy journey. Perhaps it’s better described as a feeling of relief than a feeling of pride.

For my readers, I wish they can each find their own small pond where they can be a big fish. It’s a good feeling.

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Wrong Conclusion

A square-dancing friend, Sal, was telling me how happy he was that he finally learned to play Full Pay Deuces Wild. He had studied the Winner’s Guide, practiced on Video Poker for Winners, and in the last two months had averaged about $30 per hour in profit on about 5-6 hours of play per week on the quarter game. He had pictures of three $1,000 royals on his cell phone that he wanted to show and have me admire.

Using this source of extra income, he had made a commitment to move his girlfriend, Betty, to Vegas from out-of-state. “I can finally afford it,” Sal told me. “I never realized I had what it takes to be a successful gambler.”

“Hold on,” I told him. “Full Pay Deuces Wild is worth somewhere in the range of $6-$10 per hour, depending on how fast you play and the benefits the casino gives you. There will be periods where your results exceed this for relatively short periods of time and there will be months in a row where you lose, lose, lose.”

“You’ve been going through what we call positive variance for the past few months,” I told Sal. “It won’t last. Guaranteed. It’s even possible you haven’t learned the game sufficiently well to be a favorite at all. Or maybe only a $2 an hour favorite.

“Having a two-month winning streak is no indication of whether you are playing competently or not. On a hand like W W 7♠ 6♥ 8♠, where the W (for wild card) indicates a deuce, good players hold WW78. Had somebody just held the deuces, he might have scored despite the 1-in-360 odds against him and ended up with four deuces this particular time. That would have been profitable in the short run, but over time that play is a costly one. There are numerous examples in this game where the wrong hold can work this time, so just looking at results over the short run gives you the wrong conclusion.

“If you need the extra $150 or so per week to bring your girlfriend to town and have her stay here, you better find an additional source of income, tell her not to come, or let her know that she’s going to have to pitch in financially to make this work.

“Plus, you need a bankroll of probably $4,000 or preferably more on hand just to cover the swings of this game. This is not money you need for rent, food, or anything else. This is money AFTER you’ve paid off all your credit card, any expenses related to her move, and all other debt.  It’s just a reserve because the negative variance times are definitely coming.”

Sal sighed and said that talking to me today had been a real downer. He preferred to think positively and the negative picture I presented was not pleasant at all.

I shrugged. “I’d rather tell you what I think is the truth rather than to paint a rosy picture that won’t come to fruition. I experienced what they call Gambler’s Ruin almost 35 years ago, It was no fun. And now you’re a senior citizen, it’ll be even harder to recoup if it happens to you.”

They were starting another dance and Sal left to find a partner. During the next break between dances he came back to me.

“Betty doesn’t even think gambling is a good idea. I haven’t told her yet that gambling is what allowed me to pay for her ticket.”

“You aren’t going to like my response,” I told Sal, “but if you go out and spend the money right away whenever you hit a royal flush, you will never accumulate the necessary bankroll. There will be times when you go to the casino for 5-6 hours and come back and have to tell Betty you lost $400 or more. That’s merely going to reinforce her general attitude that gambling is bad news. She probably won’t believe that you’re playing a game where you actually have the advantage.”

“So what should I do?” he asked. “You make it sound like it’s going to be a disaster.”

“I can’t make the decisions for you,” I told him. “I’ve never met Betty. I don’t know how flexible she is about staying with you if you continue to gamble. I don’t know how employable either one of you are or how good you are at getting by. I don’t know what your habits are and how expensive they are. All I do know is that if you are expecting Full Pay Deuces Wild for quarters to continue to generate $30 per hour, it simply won’t happen.”

“I guess Betty and I are going to have a long phone call tonight and discuss things” Sal told me.

That’s probably a good start.

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Learning the Wrong Lesson

Most of us continue to learn as we progress through life. A 70-year-old man has many more life experiences than a 20-year-old. Most 20-year-olds have more recently been a student and have a more flexible mind than their grandparents, but their grandparents have been in many more situations and have learned from them. That learning experience is very valuable.

Unless they’re a football fan.

On a kickoff in the National Football League, a “touchback” — meaning the kick goes into the end zone or beyond and the receiving team makes no attempt to run it out — results in the ball being placed on the 25-yard line.

If the receiving team runs the ball out and gets “only” to the 20-yard line, the typical announcer says that running it out was a “bad decision.” The reason he says this is obvious. Had the kick returner given up and taken a knee, the ball would have been at the 25-yard line. Since he only got to the 20-yard line, any fool can see that it was a bad decision.

Conversely, had the runner gotten to the 30-yard line, this would have been pronounced a “good decision.”

Seventy-year-olds have heard this kind of football-announcer logic hundreds or thousands of times. And they sometimes believe this kind of thinking because it makes sense.

Except it’s dead wrong — at least to my way of thinking.

Whether or not you have made a good decision or a bad decision should be determined at the time you make the decision — NOT sometime down the road. In the case of football, the player needs to consider how deep the ball is kicked, his speed, the score of the game, the placement of the players on both teams, and a variety of other factors. Sometimes another player has the responsibility of determining whether or not the kick should be run out because the guy who is catching the ball needs to concentrate on that and not on where everybody else is.

When the player catches the ball and runs it out, he cannot know exactly where he will be tackled or run out of bounds. He can have a good idea — but he doesn’t know exactly. Over time he learns that on average, if the ball is kicked nine yards deep, he doesn’t get as far as when the kick comes down right on the goal line. This is an important factor in his decision. He learns that balls kicked really high take longer to come down so he’s more likely to be tackled earlier than if it were a low kick. This is also an important factor in his decision. There are many other such factors and eventually he becomes better at this — or is replaced by somebody else.

In gambling, many people use the same type of illogic — namely if they win they were playing well and if they lose they were playing poorly. Again, this is dead wrong to my way of thinking.

A good bet, or a good decision, should be evaluated as good or bad when you make the bet — not afterwards. With the hand Q♠ J♠ T♠ 9♠ 8♦, discarding the 8 and seeing if you connect on a flush or straight flush this time is definitely not the way to evaluate what the correct play is. (Generally speaking, in games without wild cards, when the straight flush pays 250 you keep the straight and when it pays 400 or more you go for the straight flush.)

People who listen to a lot of football games and learn to accept the kind of logic presented there have a tough time accepting this “truth.”

What makes “my” truth better than the truth told by football announcers? (It’s not “my” truth at all, but merely the truth I’m presenting here. It was discovered long before I came along.) The most successful gamblers from a variety of disciplines accept it.

Poker players talk about pot odds. If the pot is offering 3-1 odds and the actual odds are only 2-1 against you, poker teachers tell you that you should make the bet even though you are going to lose it two-thirds of the time.

Michael Shackleford, the head guy at the Wizard of Odds series of websites, who is arguably more of a theoretician than a gambler (although clearly, he is both), phrases it as, “It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s whether you had a good bet.”

The basic strategy in blackjack says you should splits 8s against a ten (as well as all other up cards.) Doing this, you’re frequently going to lose twice as much as if you either stood on the 16 or took another card. This decision is made because on average, you’ll lose less money splitting the 8s than you will making either of the other two plays. And “on average” means over several times, not just this time in particular.

In sports betting, you might see -150 on one side of a bet and +125 on the other — meaning you have to bet $150 to win $100 if you lay the favorite, and you win $125 for your $100 bet if you take the underdog. Either side might be the smart bet — depending on a bunch of factors. Waiting until after the game is over and THEN saying “I should have bet on . . .” is not the way it’s done — but that’s the way football announcers tell it.

Experience is a great teacher. But sometimes it teaches us the wrong lesson.

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Where I Grew Up

Someone pointed me to an article in a West Hollywood publication about the Cavendish West. I was surprised to find that I was quoted in the article as the author never spoke to me. He did, however, paraphrase some things I’ve said on the radio show.

The Cavendish West is the place where I learned many lessons about gambling — from about 1975 – 1991. Although I did play a bit of contract bridge there for money, I was never a winning player at that game. My game of choice was backgammon, where I was successful — for a time.

In the mid-1970s, when backgammon was a sexy game, was played in discos, and was written about in popular magazines, I was sufficiently above average that I did quite well financially. Eventually the game passed out of favor and the Cavendish was left with only the good pros beating up on the not-so-good pros. I fell into the higher end of the lower category — and eventually, around 1980, I had to go out and get a job to support myself. It was awful.

I wrote a “Lessons from the Cavendish West” chapter in my Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography, but today I want to primarily address other things.

At the Cavendish, there were a LOT of good players. You could sit and watch them play, and so long as you were quiet you were generally allowed to look on. As Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” You could take notes and see how the big boys did things.

Sometimes they’d take three or so minutes to make a play and you could see what they finally did, but you had no idea of what their thought process was. For me, just watching was pretty boring. Playing was a lot more fun than watching. Still is. I basically had a free backgammon university education available to me, but instead chose to go and play backgammon against somebody over whom I had little or no edge. That led to a form of gambler’s ruin.

Today I hope I’m smarter than that. Video poker opportunities are less plentiful and less lucrative than they used to be. Studying, scouting, and waiting for the good ones are all part of succeeding these days. It’s easy to predict a day will come that I’ll be playing two hours a week or less. I’m preparing for that day. Perhaps you should too. Those who continue to play even though they are not the favorite will continue to lose.

Other factors that were drummed into me concerned sleep management and substance abuse. During certain periods in the 1980s, I worked 50+ hours a week in IT departments and then tried playing and/or studying 40 hours a week of backgammon. Both careers suffered — as did my social life. Today I can’t stay alert and play more than 6-8 hours at a time, although if I get a good four hours of sleep I can put in another session of that length. However much EV I calculate a play is worth, that calculation presumes an insignificant number of errors. If I play long enough, I make many more errors than I calculated and lose all my edge.

The Cavendish was housed in an office building and one flight up was a small roof that covered a portion of the building. Players frequently smoked marijuana or other substances on the roof and getting an invitation to join them was fairly easy. I didn’t do that very often, but when I did, my results suffered greatly. I am not someone who can smoke a joint and then concentrate on playing the way I need to in order to succeed.

Because of our last election, recreational marijuana is about to be legalized in Nevada. That’s fine for those of you who want that, but for me it’s poison. I’ll stay away. It’s possible that someday I’ll be in sufficient pain that I will take marijuana to help deal with it, but I’ll give up gambling for as long as I’m consuming.

The end of the article tells of the last days of the Cavendish, when voters of the then recently incorporated West Hollywood decided they didn’t want the club in their city. Previously, West Hollywood was a part of the City of Los Angeles. It was said around the club in the 70s and 80s that the mother of the DA (or was it the chief of police?) regularly played gin rummy at the Cavendish, so the club was safe from being raided. That was probably true, but I don’t know which public official, which mother, or even which jurisdiction this applied to. I was just happy that I could play there.

The Cavendish died a couple of years before I moved to Las Vegas. I was sad to see it go, although by that time it was just a time-killer for me. There were relatively few backgammon players at the end and, although I could get into a game where I was a slight favorite (I was a MUCH better player at that time than I was back in 1980 when I had to leave and go get a job), the house rake absorbed most of my edge. Still, it was a pleasant diversion one or two nights a week and I liked that.

When I got to Vegas, there was a backgammon club here. I briefly considered staying active in the backgammon scene, but I already knew I couldn’t support myself playing backgammon in Los Angeles and had heard it was tougher in Las Vegas. No thanks. I decided to stick to games I thought I could beat.

If you read the article, you’ll see a picture of a backgammon board at the top. This is a folding board, sold at toy stores with toy store dice. This is NOT what we used at the Cavendish. In a reply that I sent in response to the article, I explained what the differences are.

The picture is also missing the most important part of the game — i.e. the doubling cube. Without a doubling cube, backgammon is just a game. With a doubling cube, backgammon is a great gambling game.

I suspect my many thousands of hours at the Cavendish helped make me a better gambler today. After you’ve been through many many dozens of winning streaks and losing streaks, it’s easier to keep your balance when you’re in another one.

At the time, especially when I was losing and had to go and get a job, I thought I had “wasted” several years of my life. Today I believe I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today without going through that first. Among other things, the Cavendish introduced me to Richard Munchkin and for that I’m very grateful.