As of July 1, I’m down about $150,000 for the year in video poker, mainly on $5 and $10 single-line games. (I’m ahead a modest amount on slots. Nowhere near the size of my video poker deficit.) Some casinos, where I would happily play with just their normal promotions, have offered me “show up money” so I will come in and hopefully, for them, continue my losing streak.
Casino employees have seen me use a walker both before and after my hip surgery at the end of last year, and the next time they see me, I’ll be in a sling. I look like a 77-year-old man with significant health issues — which is what I am. Recovering from the orthopedic ailments means the quality of my sleep isn’t what it used to be — so my normal level of alertness is there far fewer hours in the day than it was previously. This is probably obvious to anybody who closely observes me. I don’t look like any sort of a video poker guru that casinos should fear.
So, what’s going on? Is this a normal losing streak or have I lost a significant portion of my gambling mojo?
Possibly I’m not the best one to ask, but I’m betting that it’s more the former than the latter. And by ‘betting,’ I mean I’m continuing to play the same games and doing the best I can.
Whenever I go through a losing streak, and there have been several in career, I carefully review the game I’m playing, its strategy at the 100%-accurate level, and the parameters of the slot club and various promotions that make me believe this is a game I should be playing.
I look at my bankroll and verify I have enough to consider playing. At my age, I’m extremely conservative in my bankroll estimates. The option of landing a good-paying job is not available to me. I’m not going to inherit anything. I don’t have a Rembrandt hidden away that I can sell. I do have some relatively small revenue streams coming in, which helps ride out the storm. What I have is what I have and if it goes, it’s gone.
In terms of video poker competence and playing within my bankroll, I’m I confident I’m still all right. In last week’s blog, I referred to the Kelly Criterion that says, approximately, that if your bankroll decreases, you should bet less. I’m still fine betting the stakes I am. In fact, I could still afford $25 games were they available with the same promotions. But they’re not, so I don’t even need to worry about $10 games.
I do have some advantages over other players — namely I’ve been through losing streaks before and they’ve ALWAYS ended and eventually I’ve made up all the lost ground and set a new personal high. I believe wholeheartedly that if I continue to play games where I have the edge, good things will happen. I believe it’s mathematically inevitable.
This confidence cuts both ways, of course. There could easily come a time when I’m no longer mentally competent and what I calculate to be a 99.54% game actually becomes a 98.82% game when I’m hitting the buttons. If (when?) this happens, I could be in a situation where I’m playing a negative game, and no amount of confidence will enable me to ride it out. While I’ve taken several readings and find myself still a competent player, this could happen.
I’ve experienced this kind of situation at a fairly close and personal level. My father, who wasn’t a gambler but had several varied business investments, became less cautious and less competent when he got into his 90s. His children could see this, and we tried to warn him about it, but he was convinced we were all wrong and he was as sharp as he ever was. He blew away 90% of his wealth in the last decade of his life. “Fortunately,” he died at age 96 before he lost it all, but it could have happened. We would have had to get a court order to prevent this, against his kicking and screaming, and that wouldn’t have been fun no matter what the end result was financially.
This isn’t a blogpost asking for your sympathy. I’m fine, have an enviable bankroll, and will recover. It’s meant to be a message saying these types of things happen to all players — even the pros. Most or all of you have experienced something similar. Perhaps lower dollar amounts because you play for lower stakes, but you’ve endured long losing streaks that weren’t fun at all.
