Tag: Bob Dancer

Posted on by — Leave a comment

More About Airport Slots

Bob Dancer

A few weeks ago, I wrote about slot players (including me, occasionally) “hustling” at Harry Reid International Airport and the organization that runs those slots doing what it could to remove these hustlers. I received a few comments that didn’t get posted, and I want to address those now.

One comment was from someone whose contacts among knowledgeable people in the gambling world are as good as anyone’s. I’m not naming him. Had he wanted to be identified, he could have figured out how to post the comment so that everybody could see he sent it. He wrote:

I am told that it is the employees who are playing these slots so that they are trying to intimidate players off them to get them for themselves. I’ve also heard a big team is paying them off, but I think it is more the former.

My personal contact was with the managers of the airport slots. One of them was a former shift slot manager at the South Point, and since Michael Gaughan owns both the South Point and MJG Airport Slots, this strikes me as a reasonable, believable promotion for him. This man had worked for Gaughan for a couple of decades.

I asked him if identifying “advantage” players and restricting them was company policy or just some rogue employees doing their own thing for their own purposes. He was very clear that it was company policy. I’ve known him for years and watched him closely as he answered. I believe he was telling me the truth. If my expert friend is correct, I got conned. You can draw your own conclusions.

Another player wrote words to the effect of:

If the advantage players keep going after certain brands of slot machines, the obvious solution is to remove those machines so there’s nothing to attract these players.

Perhaps obvious to you, but to me this is clearly the wrong approach. Many of the machines the pros like are also very popular with the recreational players. If the airport removed these slots, whatever machines they replaced them with would not be as popular — and hence, not as profitable.

One thing not obvious to some of my readers is the difference in the way a casino profits between video poker and slots. 

In video poker, if only expert players play the machines, the house makes a lot less money — or they may even lose, depending on the pay schedule, slot club, and promotions. Whether a casino profits or not can depend on removing expert players. 

In slots, however, the house makes the same percentage whether the game is played by pros or novices. The competition is not between players and the house, but just among the players themselves.

So, if they’re making the same percentage, why do some casinos run off advantage players? Let’s say a casino’s slots average a 94% return. If pros pick off the games when they are positive, regular players are playing games averaging maybe 89%. Occasional players can’t tell the difference, but frequent players get a sense that their money doesn’t last as long at this particular casino. When the game returns that little to the players, many quit. 

If the casino removes the knowledgeable players, the average player gets a 92% return or higher. These players enjoy themselves more and play more. The casino holds more money because there are more coins played. Casinos depend on repeat customers — especially casinos with a lot of competition. 

The airport is different in several ways. While at the airport, there is essentially no competition from casinos. If someone wants to play slots, he/she has to play whatever is offered by the airport. You can bet that these slots are tighter than they are at most of the casinos in Vegas.

A related factor is that the customer base of players at the airport is a lot more diverse than the players inside the casinos. Many people inside the airport are not casino patrons. Their flight between, say, Fresno and Phoenix, makes a layover in Las Vegas. These customers are not in town to gamble — but since they have an hour to kill between flight legs, why not? Such players might not be able to differentiate between tight and loose slots. You have to be a somewhat frequent player to know this.

This means the organizers of the airport slots have less incentive to kick out pros than regular casinos do. So why do they do it?

My guess is that it’s in the DNA of the managers that having an environment that supported professional gamblers was a bad thing for them — simply because it was a bad thing back when they worked for regular casinos. So they continue to do it.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Still More About Slots

Bob Dancer

Last week I wrote about the hypothetical “Green Bob” machines. Today I’m going to talk about how to obtain some of the numbers we assumed last week. You should probably read that article before trying to make sense out of this one.

In general, there are three sources of information about these slot machines — par sheets, information from others, and figuring it out yourself.

  1. Par sheets.

A par sheet gives a lot of information about the game. These are designed to be useful to employees in slot departments. Probably more than 10,000 people have access to par sheets. I am not one of them.

Under certain circumstances, people with access to par sheets will share them with others. I have made a few unsuccessful attempts over the years at getting a slot director to provide par sheets to me. How to be successful at this is not something I can speak about from my own experience.

  1. Learning from others

I got started by having a “guru” I trusted give me some useful information. There are X feeds and Internet sites dedicated to this. Over time, my first guru stopped telling me things and I found a second. I “bartered” by sharing video poker information for slot information — but bartering can take many forms.

Much of the information online is not very good. Over time you’ll need to figure out the sources you can trust and the sources you can’t. I see no possibility that bobdancer.com will ever become a major source of slot machine information.

  1. Figuring it out yourself

On the Green Bob machine, the information you need is: How long does it take, on average, for each meter to go off, and how much, on average, is each extra spin on each meter worth. You also need the RTP (return to player) — which is to say you need to know whether this game returns 88% overall, 92%, or whatever. 

We’ll cover the RTP first. Assuming you don’t have access to the par sheet, this information is usually in the data displayed when the slot machine is open. There is a LOT of information there, but the RTP is near the top. When the door is open, read what’s there. Sometimes slot employees will tell you to step away, but usually they don’t care. Sometimes you can get them to open up a machine for some reason, perhaps claiming that you’re not sure, but you think the bill acceptor didn’t record the last $100 bill you entered. 

In the Green Bob machine, you also need to know how long it takes each of the three meters to go off. You can do your counting while you are playing or somebody else is playing. So, each spin will add to each of the three counts. Eventually one of them will go off. You’ll record that number and start counting over again. The more cycles you have the better.

We don’t have a Mega meter on this particular machine — but these typically have a cycle of 50,000 or more — approximately the same as a royal flush. You’re never going to get an accurate count for enough cycles to get a close estimate on the cycle. When figuring out whether I’m going to play a game with a Mega meter, I ignore that meter. One will go off periodically and that day will be a winner, but I always assume that that day won’t be today.

There are games where the top meter tops out at 99 spins. I’ve heard pros say things like 99 on the top meter might or might not be a play. It could take you 12 hours of play to find out. 

Once you get a cycle for each meter, you need to figure out how much each spin pays. I collect by both denomination and number of coins — so a penny game betting 500 coins would be recorded differently than a dime game betting 50 coins. While both games require $5 per spin, it’s very possible that the latter game is a bit looser. As the denomination increases, some manufacturers, not all, give the player a slightly better game.

After 30 or more data points for each number of coins/denomination combination, you can get a fairly reliable average of how much each spin is worth. But there will always be variance. Sometimes 25 spins for a certain bet size will return $30 and sometimes it will return $800. You’ll never know how much it will return this time until you play it.

From here, you need to put all the numbers together to figure out how much it will cost to get a Minor meter currently at xx to go off and how much it will return once it does go off. These are average amounts. Sometimes the machine will give more. Sometimes it will give less.

That is basically how it’s done. It’s hard work and once you have the numbers, you’re competing with many other players who have their own numbers — however obtained — sometimes by guessing. There’s a lot of walking around checking machines. If you’re looking for an easy way to get rich quick, this isn’t it.

Posted on by — 5 Comments

More About Slots

Bob Dancer

When I write about slots, it appears that I frustrate some of my readers. A typical response I get lists several demands. Following is one of those responses simplified:

  1. Where exactly did your “adventure” happen? I’m not interested in telling you that. The games I write about are found in many casinos. Slot club promotions are not irrelevant, but they are not as important as they are in video poker. In video poker, most of the games return less than 100% and you need the slot club benefits to make the game playable. The slot machines I play are typically in the 105% – 120% range, so getting double points for an extra 0.05% doesn’t mean too much.
  2. There are several hundreds of different slot machine titles around. Exactly what game are you talking about?

    I’m not interested in telling you that either. If I told you the game, some readers would want to know all the ins and outs of playing that game profitably — such as when to get on and when to get off, and how does that vary by denomination and, occasionally, slot club details. However much I share, there will always be players wanting more information.

  3. How can a slot machine pay 120%? We’ve always heard that slot machines return less than video poker, and no video poker game (other than a very occasional super-high progressive or a huge casino mistake) pays anywhere near that much. This I can talk about, and is indeed the subject of today’s blog.
  4. Where can I get more information about advantage slots? Michael Shackleford wrote a decent introductory section on advantage slots in the recent update to Gambling 102. There are several places on X, formerly Twitter, and YouTube.com where this is discussed. Look and you will find what you want to know, but I’m not going to give you an easy-to-follow roadmap. There are already many, many slot professionals out there. If you do decide to go this route, know that there will be lots of competition for the best games. 

In the past I’ve written about the hypothetical “Red Bob” slot machine and how it is played. Today I’m going to write about the equally hypothetical “Green Bob” machine — which is played differently than the “Red Bob” machine. Neither machine is an exact clone of a real machine, but slot players will recognize similarities between these games and games that do exist.

Assume the following about Green Bob: The game has three meters, Mini, Minor, and Major. Randomly the meters grow. Randomly the meters “go off,” and when that happens, the player gets as many free spins as are on the meter that just went off.

Assume further that the reset value of each meter is 6 (meaning if you hit the Mini meter immediately after just hitting the Mini meter, the second time you hit it, you would get six spins.)

If you don’t count the meters going off, the game returns 60%. You get some pays from three or more identical symbols in a row. The game gives occasional wild cards, both in and out of the bonus rounds, which help. If the meters don’t go off for a long while, you will be losing at a pretty rapid pace.

Based on how often each meter increases and how much each bonus spin is worth when the meter goes off, assume you’ve calculated the meters this way:

Each increment over 6 for the Mini meter adds 1% to the return on the game. The Mini bonus round is played on a 5×3 matrix with 243 ways to win. (All pay lines go left to right on this game. There are some games where pay lines go both ways, but this is not one of them.)

Each increment above 6 for the Minor meter adds 2% to the return on the game. The Minor bonus round is played on a 5×4 matrix with 1024 ways to win.

Each increment in excess of 6 for the Major meter adds 3% to the return on the game. The Major bonus round is played on a 5×5 matrix with 3125 ways to win.

With modern slot machines, it is very common for differently sized displays to happen at different points in the game.

Let’s assume that you see a machine with all three meters at 15. It’s being played, but the player is down to only a few credits. If that player leaves, you want to sit down and play that game. If the player pulls out another $100 bill and inserts it, you can read body language to get an idea whether or not to wait.

That is, you can sometimes tell if that’s the last $100 bill the player has just by the way he pulls it out. If it’s a $1 per spin game, $100 is going to last for a while. If it’s a $30 per spin game, $100 probably won’t last very long at all. Of course, if it’s a $30 per spin game and you don’t have several thousand dollars of cash on you, you run a very good chance of running out of money before one or more of the meters goes off.

Since the Mini meter is 9 units above the reset value of 6, it adds 9% to the 60% base level of the game. The Minor meter is also 9 units above reset, so it adds 18% to the 60% base level of the game. The Major meter too is 9 units above the 60% base level of the game, adding 27% to the value of the game. Adding these numbers together, you’ll get 60% + 9% + 18% + 27% = 114%. This is definitely worth playing — if you can be the player who gets the machine when the current player leaves. This is not a time for sauntering. If that player stands up, move in immediately.

If you get on the machine and the Mini meter goes off first (and the other two meters haven’t risen), the game will still be at 105% and well worth playing. If the Minor hits, the play is over. If the Minor hits, the play is “only” 96% (assuming the other two meters haven’t risen), but the typical case will be that one or both of the other two meters will have risen and so the most likely scenario when you sit down is you’ll play until either the Major goes or both the Mini and the Minor go off.

So far, we’re assuming a lot of information. Next week, I’ll discuss how to figure out the numbers we assumed this week.

Over time, the game will return 88% or whatever it’s set at. Sometimes it’s at 60% and sometimes it’s at 120% or higher. Perhaps you can understand now how if you get on and off at the right times, this game that returns 88% overall can be well worth playing.

This is a case of looking forward, not looking backwards. When the Major goes off, you’ll probably collect a W-2G. This is NOT a time to keep playing because you’re running hot. When the Major is only 6, it’s not a play. Similarly, if you’ve already lost $3,000 on the play, assuming you have the bankroll, so long as the numbers are high enough, keep going!

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Gambling at the Airport

Bob Dancer

About 2½ years ago, McCarran International Airport underwent a name change to Harry Reid International Airport. Under whichever name, it’s a major portal to and from Las Vegas, with 57.6 million passengers passing through it in 2023 — probably more this year. In terms of passenger arrivals and departures, it’s the19th busiest airport in the world (8th busiest in the U.S.).

Because it’s Las Vegas, there are legal slot and video poker games to be played at the airport. The slot machine concession at the airport is owned by Michael Gaughan, who also owns the South Point casino in Las Vegas.

The South Point, of course, is one of the best places to gamble in Las Vegas. At the airport, maybe not so much. Michael Shackleford, the Wizard of Odds, estimated that the airport slots are as much as 8% tighter than slots in Vegas casinos. Why this is so is because the airport has a captive audience. If your plane is delayed by an hour or two, very few of us would hop into an Uber to go to the South Point or elsewhere to receive a better gamble. If you have the urge to gamble (and that’s not so rare among passengers in the Las Vegas airport), you gamble in the airport as you’re killing time. 

As a video poker player, I’ve always avoided gambling at the airport — just as I usually avoid gambling at video poker on cruise ships. When casinos have captive audiences, the odds are not in the players’ favor. And since I live in Las Vegas, I have good games available to me 24/7 and do not need to play bad games to scratch any gambling itch I might have.

That all changed when I started playing slot machines a few years ago. Certain slot machines store up value. Although there are many formats for beatable slots, a common one has three or four meters, which rise with coin-in and eventually, randomly, give you however many spins are on the meter. And the meter is then reset to a lower number. Players learn that on such and such a game, if the mini meter is 20, or the minor meter is 30, or the major meter is 40, or the mega meter is 140, it’s a winning bet to sit down and play. You don’t always win, of course, but you’re playing with an advantage. If you find these games at the airport, you probably want to bump your strike numbers up to 22, 33, 44, and 155. The lower return to players (RTP) means that you do not get as much per spin in the bonus round as you do in casinos with a higher RTP.

In regular casinos, when the meters get high enough, players continue playing until the meters go off. But at the airport, if they call your flight and you HAVE to get home today, most players will leave the machines and get on the plane — no matter how high the return percentage currently.

As you might expect, this has given rise to airport slot hustlers. Some players will buy refundable tickets in order to get past airport security, and then walk (and take free shuttles where available), from one terminal to the next. I’m guessing it’s three or four miles of walking to check every machine in all of the terminals. If you have a refundable ticket, once you’ve checked all the machines (and played the ones you believed were positive), you leave the airport without even getting on a plane. And then you do it the th e next day. And the next.

As a general rule, casinos do not like the idea of certain players always beating them. Casinos in Nevada are allowed to 86 such players — for virtually any reason at all that doesn’t involve discriminating on the basis of sex, skin tone, national origin, or a few other categories.  Harry Reid International Airport, however, is United States Federal property. MJG Airport Slots does not have the right to 86 players from the airport. 

I’m not sure of exactly what legal rights MJG Airport Slots has to prevent unwanted players from playing their machines, but it definitely takes actions. They know the slots that the pros commonly examine and if you show up several times a week checking those machines, in all the terminals, you will be noticed. The airport has security cameras all over the place. Perhaps MJG Airport Slots has access to that camera feed — or has its own cameras which it uses.

If they believe you are an advantage slot player, you will be approached and told not to play the airport machines anymore. Your picture will be taken. You will be told that if they catch you again playing these slots, the police will be called.

If we still had the Gambling with an Edge podcast, I’d ask Bob Nersessian to tell us what rights players have and what rights MJG Airport Slots have. 

I fly in and out of this airport a couple times a month. Sometimes I’ll allow time for a slot run before or after the flights. Since MJG Airport Slots senior personnel used to work for Michael Gaughan and have paid me hundreds of jackpots over the years, I assume I’m recognized on sight and considered an advantage player. Making extra trips to the airport to check these slots wouldn’t be worth it to me. I’d be picked off for sure. For me, if I were asked not to play there and the police would be called if I did, that would be sufficient grounds for me to cease. 

The Reno Airport, which is much smaller than Harry Reid, also has slot and video poker machines. I assume there are slot advantage players there as well. I don’t know how they are dealt with in that airport.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

I Was a Little Uneasy — Part II of II

Bob Dancer

Last week I set the stage where I was playing slots and ran out of cash on hand. It was a game I evaluated at $2,200 and I didn’t have a line of credit at this casino. After being unsuccessful at getting a gambling buddy to come and help, I called my wife Bonnie who agreed to take Lyft and bring me some money. 

Eventually Bonnie shows up — safe, and with an inconspicuous bag of cash. It had taken more than an hour since I first started calling. I was relieved that she made it safely. Once we got set up with $500 inserted into the machine and on the correct game, I asked her if she’d prefer to play or to supervise. She wanted to play!

So, we reviewed the necessary instructions. We do this every time. She might not remember from last time. The key part was to keep hitting the button until one of the bonuses went off. After it’s completed, I’ll re-evaluate whether we should keep playing or quit. Probably a bigger key part was to make sure we were on the right game! The buttons to change denomination are very easy to hit accidentally, or maybe activated when you lay a bottle of water down. It is not that hard to stay on the right game — but it is very easy to inadvertently switch and instead of playing a 125% game you’re playing an 84% game. Bonnie sometimes forgets to concentrate on this. Not often recently, but it has happened and so we review it every time.

The two lower bonuses eventually both go off. The lower of the two going off twice. The net from when Bonnie got there was $1,500 — meaning I lost about $500 on the play. A slightly disappointing result — but the variance on these games is pretty large and that’s part of the game. I had estimated it to be worth $2,200. The fact that it was lower than that doesn’t mean my estimate was bad. Ask any sports bettor about the actual best guess of a score before the game is played — and the final result when it is over.

Bonnie wasn’t ready to go home yet so we walked around until we found another playable game. This time we lost again. Then we found another positive game. And lost again.

The net score was about even from when Bonnie got there — meaning my score would have been the same had I simply abandoned the game and gone home. But I believed the position was worth $2,200 and I was going to try to find a way to turn that into cash if at all possible.

While I was at the casino, I never considered using the ATM machine there. The rates charged in casinos to get your own money are outrageously high and I have always avoided them. In actual fact, I put in $500 when Bonnie got there, and we never added more money. Had I known that would have been the result, it would have been an acceptable option to use the ATM machine.

I don’t know how much these machines charge these days — it probably varies from casino to casino — but $25 would have been cheap enough. The Lyft was $20, and I also had to get Bonnie involved for a couple of hours. But I didn’t know it would be $25. I could have gone through another $2,000 or $3,000 before the bonuses paid off. Even if Bonnie weren’t answering her phone (not intentionally, but sometimes her phone is in a different room than she is) I would have walked away from this “$2,200 opportunity” rather than use the ATM.

But the next day, I submitted a line of credit application at two downtown casinos. I play enough downtown that I need the ability for some “fast cash” on occasion. Not very often, but sometimes. I have been using casino credit for 30 years and have a sterling record of repaying by debts. There is a Central Credit Agency in Las Vegas where all credit information is stored, so getting more credit isn’t a problem. 

And when the lines come through, I will use them a few times even when I don’t need to. When I’m going to be making a big play at one of the casinos, I’ll withdraw $5,000 in cash — no matter what my cash-on-hand status is. And then at the end of the play, I’ll pay the cash back. This establishes a record the casinos want to see.

Posted on by — 10 Comments

I Was a Little Uneasy — Part I of II

Bob Dancer

I’ve written recently about running out of bankroll. Today’s blog is about running out of cash on hand, which is a different thing.

I was playing on Fremont Street. Primarily slots, but there are some video poker games there as well. Four Queens has $1 10/7 Double Bonus, and the three ONE casinos (Circa, D, Golden Gate) have linked progressives for games in denominations between 25¢ and $5 in several different games. 8/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe (98.5% at a 4,000-coin royal) is the highest-returning game in the mix and sometimes one or more of the denominations are positive. I’d prefer it if there were juicy $5 and $10 games regularly available there, but the situation is what it is.

If I knew going in that I’d be playing a $5 video poker game (say I knew the Circa progressive was at $38,000 last night and if it hasn’t been hit yet, that’s the game I’ll want to play), I pretty much know how much cash to bring with me. I’ve been playing video poker for 30 years and I have experience with such things.

But if I’m going to be playing slots, it’s hard to know how much to bring. Sometimes I’ll find a game for 75¢ a spin that I calculate is returning 120%. That’s not going to take a lot of money. Win or lose, the net result will be a few hundred dollars or less. But sometimes I find a game for $30 or $50 a spin. Even if I calculate that I have a significant advantage, I don’t know whether or not I will win this time — and I might be behind $10k or more before the bonus round pops.

Having too much cash on hand exposes me to risks I’d rather not face. While I’m in fairly good shape (current orthopedic ailments notwithstanding), I’m 77 years old and could be considered a target.

The game I ran into was an $8 per hand game that was positive. Although I had run into a $1,500 buzzsaw earlier in the day, I still had about two grand on me — which was going to be enough maybe 80% of the time. It’s impossible for me to know exactly. The game had four meters on it, and both of the bottom two were in positive territory. I’m figuring to play until I hit both of them. If either or both of the higher meters go off, I’ll be in hog heaven and will definitely have enough to go until I take down the lower two.

Luck wasn’t with me today. I went through my cash on hand. So, what to do?

I called over the slot supervisor and told him the situation. I’d lost $2,000 over the past hour and have no more cash on me. I have plenty of cash about 12 miles away. Will he lock up the machine for me for an hour and allow me to get more “ammunition?”

The slot supervisor was somewhat sympathetic, but he told me it was July 3 and the bosses said no machines could be locked up for the entire holiday weekend. It was 10 p.m. and there was no way he would call them at home over a matter such as this.

So, I started calling some gambling buddies. I have some friends who might be willing to help me out for either a percentage, a flat fee, or whatever they wanted. I’d tell them that I had plenty of cash elsewhere and they’d have their money back the next day at the latest. Plus, I’d owe them a favor down the road. A largely unrestricted favor is pretty valuable.

If we agreed to split the jackpot, that could be a bit tricky. Currently, I estimate my “position” has a value of about $2,200 going forward. The fact that I’ve already put in $2,000 is not relevant going forward. Whoever helps me out would be starting now.

It’s also possible that I could lose starting from right now. I could put in another $2,000 and the bonuses only add up to $1,500. An unexpectedly bad result possible. Whoever takes a piece of this needs to know that winning isn’t guaranteed, and they’ll need to be willing to take a piece of the potential loss as well. If they can’t stand the idea of losing, then their help is only worth 5% or 10% of the bonus rounds. The people I call will understand these things.

Before I started making calls, I put the screen to the $1.20 version of the same game. The meters were low, and no professional would play it. But there are always pros lurking around and I didn’t want to leave the screen showing the juicy game at $8. I’d be sure to get tons of “do you mind if I play that?” questions I didn’t want.

The usual first person I’d call was out of town, so calling him wasn’t going to be useful.

The actual first person I called was Richard Munchkin. He doesn’t play slots, but has a son that does and both know me well enough to trust me both for the money and the ability to calculate that it was a good game. Munchkin’s phone went to voicemail. He turns it off when he goes to bed. I didn’t have the phone number for his son.

The next person I called was planning to leave on an 8-hour road trip at five in the morning. Short of a life-or-death situation, which this wasn’t, he didn’t want to leave his house. I told him to go back to bed.

The third person I called was Bonnie, my 81-year-old wife. While I 100% trust Bonnie with money, she’s a little forgetful. Well, maybe a little bit more than a little bit forgetful. She could easily not remember at which casino I was waiting. My phone had about 5% power and could run out, so I had to be sure she got the complete message the first time. I made sure she had all the information written down and could read it back to me. 

She no longer drives but has taken Lyft enough that she’s reasonably comfortable with that. My biggest fear is that Bonnie is very friendly and talks to everybody. I could imagine her telling the Lyft driver that her husband has run out of money and she was bringing him $5,000. Depending on the Lyft driver, Bonnie’s safety might be at risk. The $5,000 would be the least of our worries. (I’m not bad-mouthing Lyft. I assume that Bonnie would be completely safe with 99%+ of all Lyft or Uber drivers. But you never know for sure that she wouldn’t get one of the rare bad apples.)

While I was waiting, basically nobody bothered me. I was sitting in front of one of several hundred slot machines in the place, and the screen that was showing wasn’t anything special. Which was good. I didn’t want to call attention to myself. When this was finally over, Bonnie and I would be two senior citizens with multiple thousands of dollars on us. Downtown after midnight can be a bit sketchy.

I’ll finish this story next week.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Going Broke

Bob Dancer

One of the risks of gambling is losing more money than you can afford. That happened to me in 1979, when I lost a lot at backgammon. After I bailed myself out of debt, I vowed to never let that happen to me again. So far, I’ve been able to keep that promise to myself. But nobody knows precisely what the future holds.

Video poker is one of the easier games to successfully avoid bankruptcy. I didn’t say it was easy. I said it was easier. The reason it’s easier is because you can learn to precisely measure how much a particular game returns and how much the slot club pays. Those are key elements in avoiding going broke. And games are nicely denominated. You can play for quarters, dollars, etc., and after a bit of playing, you know how bad the bad days can be at that denomination.

In games like live poker, it’s hard to precisely know how good you are compared to your competition. And even if you can accurately quantify this, the nature of “no limit” and “pot limit” games is that you can lose everything you bring to the table every time you sit down.

An excellent starting place in avoiding going broke is to never play games where the casino has the edge over you. If you insist on playing games that don’t meet this criterion, play games that are small in denomination compared to your gambling bankroll. 

Easier said than done for some players. Most of the “fun” of gambling is playing for stakes where it hurts when you lose. If you’re a millionaire and always play for single-line quarters, no matter the pay schedule, you’ll never go broke. And you probably won’t have any fun either.

The Kelly Criterion, named after John Kelly, a theoretician at Bell Labs in the 1950s, is a method of sizing bets so that you will never go broke and, indeed, will grow your bankroll at an optimal rate. It’s defined as maximizing the logarithm of your wealth. For most of my readers, that definition is way too technical to be useful. 

What it means in very simple terms is that if you lose a significant percentage of your bankroll, you cut back on your bets. If you’ve been very successful at a particular bet size, the Kelly Criterion tells you to increase your bet size.

Unfortunately, exact bet sizes in video poker are rather limited. While you can play $1.25 per hand, $2.50, $5.00, and $25 on single-line games, you can’t play $17.34 on one hand. Also, at a given casino, the return on quarter games may be very different than the return on $5 games. At one casino I frequent, on their multi-denomination machines, you can get 8/5 Jacks or Better if you bet dollars, 9/5 Jacks or Better if you bet $2 denominations, and 9/6 Jacks or Better if you bet at the $5 level. They have a similar breakdown for all games on the machine, including Bonus Poker, Deuces Wild, Double Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus Poker, and several others.

At this casino, you sometimes have the advantage if you bet the $5 game (i.e., $25 per hand), depending on various promotions, but you basically never have the advantage if you bet smaller than that. Playing $25 per hand is beyond the means for most players.

Video Poker for Winners has a bankroll calculator, but the program hasn’t been updated for several years and will not work on newer computers. Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker, available at Huntington Press, among other places, is probably the most useful tool out there for figuring out how much bankroll you need to play most games. It’s inexpensive and very useful.

When I was starting out playing $5 9/6 Jacks or Better (with 0.67% cashback and juicy promotions — those were the days!), it seemed to me that having a bankroll of 3-5 times the royal flush was a sufficient bankroll, assuming you were playing games similar to what I was. I published that “3-5 royal flushes” rule — and since then I’ve apologized several times for doing so.

The actual bankroll depends on how big the variance of the game is and how much of an edge you have. For the same return, a Double Double Bonus player needs considerably more bankroll than a Jacks or Better player does.

Today, the slot clubs are considerably tighter than they were 30 years ago, so you need considerably more bankroll to play the same games as you used to.

How much bankroll you need also depends on your age and your other responsibilities. I’m 77 years old now. If I go broke, there are very limited employment opportunities available to me. When I went broke in 1979, I was 42 years old. I was able to find a fairly lucrative job and was able to rebuild my bankroll. That option isn’t available to me today.

Your income stream, from whatever source, also affects how much bankroll you need. Possibly you have a job, or Social Security, or a pension, or an inheritance, or royalties of some sort, alimony, or whatever. Some players have none of these things. Everyone has a different income stream, which is why there is no “one size fits all” answer to “how much bankroll do I need.”

Avoiding going broke should be a strong priority to all successful gamblers. If you don’t pay attention to this, you may well end up in a position you don’t want to be in.

Posted on by — 13 Comments

Joints Don’t Last Forever

Bob Dancer

Six months ago, I underwent a total hip replacement. Recovery took some time, but I’m about 90% back. My physical therapy (PT) appointments ended some months ago, but I get plenty of exercise going up and down stairways in parking garages as I go to various casinos.

When I travel to out-of-town casinos, I’ll usually take a walker, both for use in the casino and also for “working” in the airport. If it’s a short trip, my only ‘luggage’ is a backpack. Vegas has a pretty sizeable airport, and for someone like me it takes two hours to check all the slot machines in all of the terminals. Having a walker to carry the backpack is very handy. 

If the out-of-town casino is fairly large, using the walker to carry beverages, snacks, and other things is useful. I don’t ‘need’ the walker, but it has advantages I appreciate. I don’t walk up and down staircases when I have it, but I usually walk more than if I didn’t have the walker so that makes up for it somewhat.

Now that the hip is fixed, it’s time to take care of my left shoulder. I had arthroscopic surgery on my rotator cuff on June 18th. I also had pain in the bicep area on the same side. My orthopedist said he’d evaluate that when he had me opened up and would fix it if it needed repair it. Recovery would be longer and more painful if he had to sew up a bicep tear.

Turns out it was ‘only’ a bone spur irritating the bicep, so he fixed that while he was in there. I got lucky.

I’m writing the first draft of this blog about 24 hours after I was released. So far, so good. I need to take hydrocodone-acetaminophen for pain if needed for several weeks and also an antibiotic every six hours for three days. I took the first three doses of the narcotic and skipped the fourth because the pain was manageable, and these drugs have side effects. I still took the amount of Tylenol that was mixed with the narcotic because that’s supposed to help reduce swelling.

They gave me an interscalene nerve block which is supposed to help post-surgical pain. The average length of relief for someone my age/weight/severity of surgery is 12 hours or so, but each patient reacts differently. It might be that the nerve block was still working 20 hours after surgery when I skipped the hydrocodone. If the pain kicks back in, I’ll take a pill. It’ll take 30-60 minutes for the relief to begin. It won’t be a lot of fun, but using the minimum amount of narcotics is a goal that makes tolerating a bit of pain along the way acceptable.

Bonnie was a registered nurse for 40 years and is willing and able to help me with icing the shoulder and whatever else is needed. I won’t shower until 48 hours after the operation, and she’ll need to help me with that and getting dressed afterwards.

My first PT session is 12 hours after that shower, and I’ll be going 3x weekly for some time. Friends who’ve been through this tell me that the diligence required for shoulder PT is more important than for hip PT. I’m planning to do that, but I also realize that I don’t have a perfect track record on keeping with the plan.

I might do a follow-up blog about my shoulder if I feel there’s something interesting to say. Part of this will depend on what responses I get – if any.

Even after I heal as well as I’m going to, I won’t be done. I have arthritis in both thumbs and will see a different orthopedist in early August. I might get out of there with a steroid shot in each hand. It might be more serious. We’ll see.

Posted on by — 3 Comments

Getting Greedy

Bob Dancer

Often, I’ve heard players tell a video poker story of a time when their score was positive on a given day, but then they “got greedy” and ended up with a negative result. The phrase is usually accompanied by some self-loathing. Perhaps, “Why did I let myself do that again. I know better!”

I almost never say that, although I’ve certainly had my share of experiences where my score went south after I was ahead for a while. Today I want to look at that term.

I’m not going Gordon Gekko on you and proclaiming, “Greed is good!” As I’m using it today, greed is a negative trait.

Let’s also accept in general that winning is good and losing is bad. Then losing intentionally would be a bad thing. One more premise we must accept is that gambling scores go up and down. We can all recount what happened over the last half hour. None of us can accurately predict what swings will happen in the next half hour.

To my mind then, so long as I am playing a game that exceeds 100% in theoretical return, and playing to the best of my ability, when I lose, it’s just a circumstance I cannot control. I know it’s going to happen sometimes. Frequently, even. I just don’t know if it is going to happen today or not. 

If I hated myself after each loss, then I’d be in a psychologically unhealthy profession. Losing is just part of the game.

Most players, of course, aren’t playing games where they have the advantage. They either can’t find good games, don’t know how to play them well, or possibly are in the mood to play and don’t really care whether or not they have the advantage. For players like this, if they’re just thinking about the royal flush without accurately considering the cost to get it, then yes, perhaps that could be said to be “greedy.” But that’s not the way most players use the term.

As best as I can tell, some players who use the term simply mean they lost and aren’t happy about it. Perhaps they’re telling what poker players refer to as a bad beat story. If that’s the case, no big deal.

Others, perhaps, are justifying their loss by admitting to a “personality defect” (i.e., greed) which has the effect of saying that this is not really their fault. They are still good people who have occasional lapses.

But the fact is that they are going to be losing again and again and again — interspersed by wins sometimes. Every gambler goes through this. Even winning ones. It isn’t that you’re greedy. It’s that you’re playing a game with ups and downs.

Perhaps they use the term because they are poor losers. While nobody likes to lose, getting really, really upset about it probably suggests you should consider not gambling. Knowing you’re going to get upset over and over again because that’s the nature of the game isn’t the healthiest way to lead your life.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Waking Up

Bob Dancer

I’ve read several authorities who claim that having regular sleep hours is the healthiest way to lead your life. Whether these experts are correct or not, I haven’t lived my life that way. For the past 30 years, my life has revolved around when and where the best video poker plays are.

If the point multiplier starts at midnight, I’ll be there. At 3 a.m.? That’d be okay. I’ll make it. An appointment at 8 a.m.? No problem. Another appointment at 1 p.m.? That’s okay. Meeting for dinner at 7 p.m.? Sounds good.

Obviously, I need to sleep some of the time. So, I sleep when I can, set the alarm as needed, and get to wherever I need to be. Friends and colleagues learn not to call me at such ungodly times as 10 a.m. or maybe 3 p.m. because I might be sleeping. It’s better to text me something like, “Call me when you’re awake.” Some days I take three different naps. And, because I’m a male senior citizen, sometimes I wake up more than once just to go to the bathroom.

I take a medication that makes me slightly drowsy. I’ve asked my doctor for a non-drowsy version, but he thinks the one he gives me is the perfect one for my health condition. So, I take it at night — just before I go to bed — but if I’m only sleeping three hours this particular night because of a promotion, the drug is still in my system — at least a little.

The net effect is that when my alarm goes off, my body doesn’t immediately become wide awake.. If I’m going to gamble intelligently (or do anything else intelligently, for that matter), I need to make sure I’m awake before I proceed.

My three methods of waking up are showers, physical exercise, and mental exercise — in any order, often in combination. Showers are self-explanatory. My go-to physical exercise for years was jumping jacks. When my hip joint deteriorated and eventually was replaced six months ago, that was out. Plus, now I’m going to need arthroscopic surgery on my left shoulder, so even though I can now jump up and down, sort of, swinging my arms over my head is painful and will possibly aggravate the tear in my rotator cuff that’s already there. Depending on the time of day, I often I suggest walking around a block or three with Bonnie — which is good for a number of reasons.

For mental exercise, I do a variety of things. If I’m going to be playing a video poker game for which I don’t believe my accuracy is at least 99.9%, I’m studying that game — both by looking at the strategy and practicing on the computer. I wish Video Poker for Winners still worked on my computer, but I make do with WinPoker. I select hard hands so as to review the hands that are the most difficult. Or, I start from particular cards so that I know all the exceptions. 

If I’m going to be making a slot run, I’ll review all of my strike numbers. I have numbers for more than 60 games. The ones I see every day I know by heart. But there are some games I only see occasionally — so I forget the numbers if I don’t review them.

If I’m playing a video poker game I know well, I might amuse myself on the website www.extremesudoku.info. It provides harder-than-average puzzles, and after I’ve done one or two, I’m awake.

I do drink coffee in the morning and take a slew of vitamins that I think are working, but there are those who say that vitamins are just a way to have expensive urine. I’m not sure.

If I’m driving to where I am going to play, I’ll often sing along to the songs I play. I don’t need my voice warmed up in order to play video poker well, but there’s something about waking up my voice that also wakes up my whole body.

And then I go to the casino — do my best — and take what I get.