Tag: video poker

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A Look at Casino Drawings — Part II of II

Bob Dancer

Today we continue our look at casino drawings. If you want to catch up and read last week’s blog, I’ll wait until you come back.

You usually have to plan for a drawing. While it is possible that you’re automatically entered into a drawing and your prizes are sent to you in the mail, the far more typical way is that you need to show up at the casino and activate your tickets at a kiosk. You then need to stick around until the drawing is held and, if you’re lucky enough to be drawn, claim your prize within some relatively short period of time.

This means that if you’re going to compete in one drawing at 7 p.m. on a given night, you can’t be at another drawing as well. So you need to pick and choose where you have the best chance.

It’s not trivial to get to a casino, park, and deal with the crowds in order to win at a drawing. Today, if I don’t have an expected win of at least $250 at a drawing, I won’t be showing up. Your number might be different from mine, but financially it rarely makes sense to show up at a drawing when you only have one ticket in the drum. Yes, it only takes one ticket to win, but that’s looking at “possibilities,” not “probabilities.” I actually look one more layer deep. I look at the probability of being called and the average size win.

In general, the more tickets you have in the drum, the better your chances of winning. If you’re a $5 player, you have a significantly better chance of winning than if you’re a 25¢ or $1 player. If you’re a 5¢ player, five coins at a time, you basically have no chance at all.

It’s usually not a good idea to play a negative game in order to get drawing tickets. Having an expected loss of $1,000 in order to have a 10% chance of winning $500 in a drawing doesn’t make financial sense.

It can make sense to play a negative game if it’s “close.” Playing 99.73% NSU Deuces Wild with a 0.20% slot club is a negative game. A drawing can make up the shortfall. If mailers and comps are given to you in addition to the 0.20% slot club, then this situation was probably slightly positive to start with. 

If you’re going to be at a drawing, and Thursday is a 10x drawing ticket day, make sure you play on Thursday. Ticket multiplier days are a way for a casino to present something worthwhile to players looking for an edge and it doesn’t cost the casino a dime. It actually makes money for the casino because of the extra play generated on that day. The casino has already budgeted the drawing, say $20,000, and it largely doesn’t care which of the players win the money. Drawing ticket multipliers shift the odds from the players who don’t play on that day to those who do.

Don’t win drawings at the same casino too often. This is the “voice of experience” talking and it applies to players who play for relatively large stakes compared to most of the other people in the drawings. At small casinos, where the same people show up for drawings every week, it gets noticed if that one guy seems to win all the time. Players will complain, and when that happens, the casino will come up with a solution that the winning player doesn’t like. So if you win, take a month off or so. 

Read the rules carefully. If it’s the same rules for every drawing, probably most of the kinks have been worked out of them. But if they modify the rules every time, mistakes can be made. Sometimes point multipliers are in effect from 3 a.m. to 2:59 a.m., but ticket multipliers are in effect midnight to midnight. Double dipping might be possible! And they might have a senior’s drawing on Tuesday and a “for everybody” drawing on Friday, and, if you’re old enough, your play can count for both drawings. There might be limits to consider.

It’s possible that for the amount you play, winning a drawing is essentially a zillion to one longshot. If that’s the case, don’t even try. Concentrate on other ways to win in the casino — or in life.

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A Look at Casino Drawings — Part I of II

Bob Dancer

It’s been a while since I’ve written about casino drawings. In Part I, I’m going to address a selective history of drawings. And Part II deals with how to improve your chances in drawings.

My personal history deals primarily, but not exclusively, with drawings in Las Vegas starting in 1994. The ways they did it in Atlantic City and other places are mostly a mystery to me. 

While most casinos held drawings similarly to the way other casinos did it, any marketing director could say, “I’ve got a good idea. Why don’t we . . .?,” and you had a different twist on how to do it.

“In the beginning,” drawings used paper tickets on which you filled out your name and player’s card number. Sometimes you needed additional information like your address. If you had a lot of tickets, you had to allow considerable time to prepare them. Using rubber stamps or address labels made it faster than doing everything longhand, but it still required an effort.

Some players believed that folding the tickets was useful, and many players had their own techniques. Some casino executives drawing the tickets felt that folded tickets provided an unfair advantage, so they would intentionally feel around for unfolded tickets. I was never sure, so I folded half of mine and left the others au naturel.

The tickets had to go into some sort of drum. If the drum was large, say able to hold 20,000 tickets, and there were only 500 tickets in the drum, spinning the drum mixed the tickets pretty well. If that same drum was filled with 22,000 tickets, the tickets were so jammed that no matter how many times they spun the drum, the tickets stayed right where they were. In this kind of drawing, it was vital to place your tickets in the drum within the last half hour or so before the drawing. If your tickets were placed before that and are now at the bottom of the drum, you had zero chance of it being picked. Someone might dig down one foot or so into a batch of tickets to get one, but nobody could dig down six feet.

You usually received tickets based on your play — maybe every 1,000 slot club points earned you one ticket. Sometimes different tier levels received different numbers of tickets per slot club points. Sometimes video poker machines earned tickets at a different rate than slot machines. Sometimes there were “ticket multiplier” days. Sometimes everybody received free tickets.

Often, but not always, you had to be present to win. Often, but not always, if somebody called wasn’t present, they drew again. Sometimes you could win two or more prizes if your name were drawn more than once. Sometimes anybody could enter and win a drawing, but sometimes it was only for invited guests.

Sometimes the first name drawn gets the biggest prize. Sometimes they keep drawing until they get the right number of names, and then each of the contestants picks an envelope, spins a wheel, or does something else to decide how much they have won.

In Nevada, usually the drawings were fair — but more than once a casino was caught cheating. I have to assume that sometimes casinos cheated and were not caught. It isn’t that difficult for a casino employee to have a ticket palmed when he/she reaches in to pick out a ticket. If done well, it’s extremely difficult to catch. 

I’ve entered many hundreds of Vegas drawings over the past 30 years — possibly more than one thousand. I don’t know the total amount of prizes I’ve won, but it easily exceeds $1 million, including cash, free play, and sometimes physical prizes like cars, jewelry, and even cruises. That’s not all profit, of course. Sometimes I had to play a negative game to earn drawing tickets.

Sometimes there were cash or free play options. For example, if your name were drawn for a $25,000 car, the casino would arrange for you to buy any car you wanted at, for example, Finley Toyota, or would offer you $20,000 if you didn’t take the car.

Sometimes casinos issued 1099s when you won at least $600. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes, if you won more than one drawing over the calendar year, the casino would sum up your prizes and present you with the tax form if your total winnings were at least $600. Sometimes casinos would treat each drawing as a separate event tax-wise.

Next week I’ll discuss how drawings are different today than they used to be and give you some pointers on doing well in these drawings.

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You Have to Choose Your Battles

Bob Dancer

I’ve played at Caesars properties for a few decades and generally play up to Seven Stars status. If Bonnie and I didn’t enjoy cruising, we might not play here. But we do, and we do.

They used to have Seven Stars lounges at each property. While each property did these lounges differently than the other properties, generally you could get free food and beverages for the price of a tip. The company was sold several times, went through a bankruptcy or two, and now Seven Stars lounges are called Laurel Lounges — and basically don’t exist.

Still, each property modestly rewards their Seven Stars customers with respect to food and beverages. Whenever we go to a different Caesars/Harrah’s/Eldorado property, we check out how the system works there. In Las Vegas, Seven Stars players get four drink coupons and one $10 food voucher daily. (Diamond players get the drink coupons but not the $10 food voucher.) The drink tickets can be used for any beverages which cost $25 or less — and at a significant number of restaurants and bars across town. Each property also has bars and restaurants that don’t accept these food and beverage vouchers.

There are some glasses of wine that cost $25.99 available at these bars and restaurants. It seems obvious that your $25 voucher would cover most of that, leaving you with a small overage to pay for using a different means. But obvious answers aren’t always correct. Here if you order that glass of wine, you can’t apply a voucher at all. It’s over $25 and that’s that. The restaurant servers don’t like this rule, but they have to abide by it.

In late February, Bonnie and I had some Seven Stars visitors and so we all went to Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill inside Caesars Palace. Bonnie and I each get 10 annual $100 “Seven Stars Celebration” Dinners, from February 1 to January 31. We’re not big eaters and, including our $10 food vouchers, can easily order enough food for $120 to satisfy both of us. Our friends had their own vouchers.

I was not playing anymore on this day, so I ordered a glass of wine. My first choice of wine would have been a $25.99 glass, but I knew the rules and ordered a glass for $21.99. While I was ordering, Bonnie took her ID and Player’s Card to one outlet where she can get 750 ml bottles of Diet Pepsi for her tickets. While I’m sure diet soda isn’t healthy for her to drink, and have told her as much, she enjoys them, and she uses two of her drink tickets each time we go there to get soda to take home. She knows how I feel about diet soda, figures that I’m probably right healthwise, but it’s not a battle either one of us want to fight repeatedly. She’s 80 years old. That’s one of her pleasures in life. Let her be!

Until recently, one of the fast-food outlets, DiFara Pizza, sold liter bottles of Fiji water at a hotel price of $9.99 apiece. Any extra drink tickets that are not spent elsewhere go towards this water. They seem to have done away with this water, and now 700 ml bottles of Aquafina are the biggest you can get. Still, we always need portable water in a desert.

On this particular night, Bonnie got two bottles of Diet Pepsi, I had one glass of wine charged to her drink tickets, and so we stopped to pick up five bottles of water on our way to the car. Somehow, though, the system showed that I indeed had four drink vouchers to spend, but Bonnie didn’t have any. Either the outlet where she got the soda or the restaurant over-charged her. 

I suppose we could have spent 15-20 minutes and figured out exactly what happened and gotten it rectified, but we’re talking about a bottle of water here. Probably costs $4 at Walmart – although certainly more than that here. 

I did mention to the server that it’s not fair that we don’t get that fifth bottle of water. The server was polite enough, but unbudging. If her computer doesn’t tell her that Bonnie has another bottle of water coming, we weren’t going to get one. So, we let it go. Another battle not worth fighting. 

Both Bonnie and I were slightly irritated — but that feeling passed quickly. We’re fortunate that we’re able to shrug off these things and not sweat the small stuff.

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How Do I Figure?

Bob Dancer

Bonnie and I regularly played at an out-of-town Caesars property where part of the monthly mailer was $200 in resort credit apiece. If we played our usual amount, our host would pick up food charges. So that left the resort credit to be spent at gift shops. They had a women’s store, a men’s store, and a jewelry store, in addition to a typical small gift shop where you could get various sundries. 

Generally speaking, you don’t expect casino gift shops to compete on price. At the men’s store, I was told that if I paid with cash or credit card, I’d get a 35% discount. If I used Reward Credits, I’d get a 20% discount. And if I charged to my room, I’d get no discount. Part of the deal with the $200 resort credit was that you had to charge it to your room. 

The resort credits weren’t worth anywhere near face value to us — but they were obviously worth something and made the play worth more to me than if I didn’t get to spend them. So how much are they worth?

No gift shop is worth the same amount to every player. I would wear a few of the shirts sold by this particular men’s store — but not all that many. A younger man — or a man whose taste is different from mine — might find he liked a much larger percentage of the inventory than I do. Bonnie is usually with me on these trips — and she can usually find something in one of the gift shops. If I tell her she has $400 to spend at such and such a selection of stores, she’ll find at least that much for one of us — or for one of our relatives or friends.

If I were thinking a $200 gift shop award might be worth $100, I asked myself, “Would I pay $100 in cash to get that $200 gift shop award?” For me, the answer was, ‘No.’ But I might pay $50 in cash. So, I figured that’s what the award was worth. 

I find it useful to turn this into a percentage — so I can add it into the mix along with the return on the game, the slot club, and other such awards. If I regularly played $10,000 and they gave me this award worth $50 to me, the award would be worth 0.5%. If I played $100,000 (which is closer to what I actually play), the award is worth 0.05%.

Frankly, something worth 0.05% would rarely be enough to tip the play-or-not-play scales into positive territory. Maybe if a play were already worth 100.3%, which is about the minimum I’ll play, I’ll make a play I might otherwise pass on. But that exact circumstance rarely happens.

It turns out that I find such awards most valuable for “keeping Bonnie happy” reasons. 

Bonnie and I keep our finances separate. If I win or lose $40,000 on a trip, it basically doesn’t affect her finances at all. But if I have the advantage on the play, and I can play on her card as well as mine, it’s good for her to make the trip with me, even if there is not much for her to do once she’s there.

So, gift shop awards, at least one nice dinner per trip, free movies in the room, and excursions to sight-seeing places are all part of what we do while we’re there. Sometimes I give her half of my win in a drawing. She’s 80 years old, I’m 77, and staying happy together is a significant part of our game plan. If there is suitable music, we dance for a few hours. If we earn cruises, she gets a big say in where we go. Bonnie’s generally a good sport about coming with me when I take these “business trips,” I want her to look forward to our time together. If getting to go shopping brings a smile to her face, I’m all for it.

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Playing With House Money

Bob Dancer

The expression that titles this blog has at least two different meanings. First, it could mean you have some sort of a cash windfall, so losing it would be less painful than if you earned the money doing hard labor. Second, it could mean that you have already exceeded expectations, so even if you don’t win in the current situation, it’s not so bad. An example of the second meaning was heard in the first round of the football playoffs between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Philadelphia Eagles. It was said that nobody expected the Bucs to even make the playoffs, so they were playing with house money.

In both meanings, the word “house” refers to a casino — at least originally. 

Although the phrase is fairly common and is understood by most adults, I think it is based on an entirely false understanding of what “house money” really is. The fact that this expression is used so frequently means that most people think of “house money” incorrectly.

Let’s say there’s a casino drawing and the winner receives $50,000 in cash. Lo and behold, this time you are the lucky winner! Congratulations! 

Now, after you’ve won the drawing, does the fifty grand belong to you or the casino? I think it belongs to you. Whatever your wealth/bankroll was before the drawing, it’s now $50,000 greater. 

If you’re a multimillionaire, the extra money is nice, but doesn’t change your fiscal priorities very much. If you are struggling financially, that much money can literally be life-changing.

Of those for whom the money is life-changing, it’s prudent to think twice on what you wish to do with these funds. Seeking advice from an advisor might be a good idea. 

There are tax considerations to this win. If you want to think of this as $35,000 after taxes, it’s probably smarter than thinking of it as $50,000. It’s easy to spend however much you have in front of you, but next April 15, Uncle Sam will still be waiting with his hand out. Not preparing for that is an expensive mistake.

It may well be that a new car is highest on your list of current needs, but just because you have $50,000 in your pocket doesn’t mean you need to get a vehicle with all the bells and whistles. This $50,000 windfall is usually a one-time event. Helping yourself solve two or three financial problems is usually better than just solving one.

Calling the windfall “house money” takes away from recognizing the importance of making the correct decision. It’s your money and you only have one life. Make the most of it!

I heard a funny story recently — supposedly true. It’s not exactly in line with what this column is about — but I have some extra space so here goes:

A famous poker player won a $1,000,000 prize at a tournament. He was asked what he was going to do with the money.

“Well, I have some people I owe money to. I’ll pay them off.”

“But what about the rest?”

“They’ll just have to wait.”

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This Game Tonight

Bob Dancer

The following incident happened while a friend of mine was playing slots, but there’s enough in common to gambling at video poker that I think it’s worth discussing.

“John” was scouting a casino in Las Vegas looking for slot machines in positive conditions. There are many, many slot machines that are sometimes positive — but most of the time, on each of these machines, the house has the advantage. Most players, however, are not aware of when the game is positive or not and simply play the game, quitting whenever they feel like it. Sometimes they quit when the game is positive, and then when the next knowledgeable player comes by, that player typically sits down to play it off. 

John has “strike numbers” on perhaps 20-30 different slot machine titles. That’s nowhere near all or even most of the beatable machines, but still, it’s more than most players know.

He found a game for $25 a play that he thought might be positive. This is a much larger game than usual for slot players. Most players can’t afford to play this game, but the size of the game was not a showstopper to him. He shifted the denomination on the machine so that it showed the $10-per-play game and consulted his notes. The $10-per-play game was nowhere near a positive play at the moment, and other pros seeking games would walk right by. He wanted time to think about this situation without drawing attention to the game.

His notes said that the game was a play when a certain meter was at 15 or higher — and sure enough this meter was at 16. So, it was a play. His notes also said the game is highly volatile. He knew that on a volatile $25 game, he could easily win or lose several thousand dollars. If he played this game in this situation several dozen times, he figured he’d make a sizeable profit. But there was no way to tell at the outset whether this time would be positive or negative.

He had $3,500 on him. He figured that would cover the swings most of the time. He wouldn’t likely run out of money, but if he did there were people he could call. He didn’t like making these calls — partly because that meant others would have the right to call him when they ran out. He trusted himself to run out of money very rarely, but some of the people he called wouldn’t have the same discipline. But if he asked for help, he had to be prepared to give help to others in the future. He didn’t want to open that door.

He actually called me to ask my opinion. John and I respect each other’s knowledge and have helped each other out occasionally. I know him well, know how he handles swings, and I thought he should go for it. I wasn’t in Vegas at the time, and he was, so there was no way I could get money to him if he ended up needing some.

He was just about to start when another pro, “Peter,” approached him and asked if he were going to play the $25 game. John knew Peter vaguely. He’d seen him checking out machines but wasn’t sure how knowledgeable he was.

John said yes. He thought it was a good play and he had the bankroll to play it. Peter said he had the bankroll too, but wasn’t in the mood to risk his daily score on such a volatile play.

Peter, it seems, had been losing recently and was sort of gun shy. He didn’t trust his own judgment, so he didn’t want to play such a big game. He could likely find a sizeable number of smaller games where he could increase his bankroll by dribs and drabs rather than making a big jump one way or the other all at once.

Peter said he had a few thousand dollars on him and suggested they partner up for this one game. John thought about this. It had some positive aspects to it. It essentially guaranteed he wouldn’t run out of money. 

At the same time, John had never done business with Peter before. Was he trustworthy? Who was going to eat the W-2G if there was one? Peter was friendly now, but what if Peter was the one playing when the bonus round hit and denied making a deal? So John passed and played it by himself. Peter wished him luck and left.

As it happened, the bonus round went off rather quickly and John ended up making $900. This was a nice result, but it certainly didn’t have to be that way.

I want to look at Peter’s reaction to this. Peter had actually seen the game first and passed on it. He had the financial bankroll — but not the emotional bankroll — to play the game. So, I believe he was right to pass.

Everybody has his own emotional bankroll. Respecting your bankroll parameters, both financial and emotional, is critical to long term success at gambling. I also think that Peter suggesting they be partners was a move that made sense for him. This would lower the swings and lower the risk. So now it might have been within his comfort zone. 

It couldn’t have been too much of a surprise for Peter that John turned down his offer to partner up. That’s probably the usual result. But you don’t know unless you try. 

All in all, the situation was well played by both men.

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A Variety of Games

Bob Dancer

Today I play different video poker games at different casinos — usually the highest-returning games offered in denominations that interest me. It wasn’t always this way.

In the “good old days,” which for me were the mid-1990s, the best $5 and higher games almost everywhere were 9/6 Jacks or Better. With slot clubs and promotions, this game could be played with an advantage at a dozen or so different casinos in Las Vegas. I learned the game 100% accurately and it was just a matter of putting in the hours, assuming you had the bankroll to survive the swings. Borrowing the title of a Josh Axelrad book that was based on playing blackjack, this was a matter of “Repeat Until Rich.” And I did. And many others did. 

There was some strategy choosing at which casino to play, and when. Casinos offered point multipliers sometimes, or had a promotion where they invited a lot of players in and gave away lots of money over a weekend — usually by a slot tournament or by a drawing — and if you played then, sometimes you got a piece of that money. Not every time, of course, but when you’re already playing a game where you have the edge, these extra “pieces of money” add up. In a typical year, I’d play in maybe 75 events (meaning some weekends I played at two different events), and collected the extra money at 10 or 15 of them. 

Back then, mailer money in Las Vegas was rare, whereas today it’s common. Today, it’s rare when I play 9/6 Jacks or Better. At the five casinos I play the most (limiting the discussion to video poker and not including playing slots, which I also play), I play five different games. Actually, more than five, because at two of the casinos, there is more than one acceptable game. I “rotate” which game I play depending on the monthly promotion.

And the games I play vary in denomination. At one casino, I play dollar single line, meaning $5 per hand. I’d prefer to play larger, but the higher-stakes games at that casino aren’t good enough. And the dollar game, plus slot club, mailers, and promotions, provides me with enough benefits that I keep playing there. 

I’m no longer playing just in Las Vegas. No longer just in Nevada. Although I’ve mentioned some other places I play periodically, and there are some I haven’t mentioned, it’s still a surprise to me that a resident of Las Vegas can find better video poker out of town. Don’t expect me to announce exactly which game I play at which casino. At some of the places I play, the good situation would not last if lots of players were playing it.

Playing a number of games keeps me sharper than playing just one game. Plus, 9/6 Jacks or Better is arguably the simplest game to play well. Every additional game I learn has special one-of-a-kind sorts of situations that I have to master. And when I do master them, sometimes they provide inspiration.

There is also the issue of keeping the games straight in my mind. The combinations that are the toughest to keep straight are the 3-card straight flushes versus two high cards, suited or not. Every game has its own rules and going back and forth between games, it’s easy to get mixed up. It’s also easier for a senior citizen to get mixed up than it was when I was still “in my prime.” 

So I find myself practicing more today than I did before. Just before I go and play a game I haven’t played in a month or more, I’ll spend a few hours mastering it again. I can get so I can play a game 100% perfectly, but it takes regular review to stay at that level for a number of different games simultaneously.

And it is no longer, “Repeat Until Rich.” The available edges are smaller today. Casinos continually become savvier and savvier in what games and promotions they can profitably offer. Casino mistakes are still out there, and I still try to exploit them when I find them, but they aren’t as numerous, as large, and don’t last as long as they did before.

There are still some players who do well, of course, and I am one of those some of the time.  But I believe the number of players who regularly exceeded $100,000 annual profit was higher twenty or twenty-five years ago than it is today. 

Still, I’m out there trying. It’s what I do. It’s what I enjoy. It’s part of what keeps me as intellectually sharp as I can be at my age. Yes, I’ve shifted to also playing slots as well as video poker, but video poker remains my mainstay. And probably will so long as I can find good games — even if those games aren’t the same ones I’m playing today.

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INSIDE TRIPLE DOUBLE BONUS POKER

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

AC Says:

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This article was written by Jerry Stich in association with 888Casino.

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Learning it All

Bob Dancer

I was paid to help somebody learn the strategy for 9/5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus. “Mary” was a person who wanted to learn the minimum and take the strategy with her. Whenever Mary wasn’t sure of how to play a hand, she’d look it up on the strategy sheet.

I suggested this wasn’t such a good way to go about learning this game. There were enough unique hands in this game that you’d never know if it was an unusual play unless you knew the whole strategy. But Mary reminded me that she was paying me by the hour and the customer was always right, so we were going to do it her way.

Today’s lesson dealt with hands starting with an A of one suit and a suited JT of another. Mary wanted to concentrate on just those hands where the final answer was A or JT, but I informed her there were a lot of other possibilities. She allowed me to go over them.

“You hold all trips, which can only be aces, jacks, or tens, given that each hand we’re talking about starts with AJT and there are always exactly five cards in each hand.

“We hold 4-card straight flushes, namely KJT9, QJT9, and QJT8. Whether we hold 3-card straight flushes, KJT and QJT, depends on whether there is another king, queen, or jack in the hand.”

At this point, Mary stopped me and said she thought the lesson was just about A and a suited JT, not all this stuff about royal flush draws and straight flush draws, not to mention 3-of-a-kinds and I seem to be getting into high pairs.

“I am and it is,” I assured her, “but every one of these hands includes AJT. If you don’t want to look at every line of the strategy and use a top-down approach, these are all hands that can arise starting from AJT. Each of the high pairs, AA, KK, QQ, and JJ have different things to be concerned about, and low pairs are not treated all the same either. We haven’t even gotten into most 4-card consecutive straights and 4-card inside straights, nor have we discussed most 3-card straight flushes, which come in four different flavors, each of which is treated differently strategically. You probably should be taking notes. We’re less than halfway through and there are still some tricky hands ahead.”

Mary looked uncertain, not sure she was ready for this. If she pulled the plug on this lesson, so be it. I needed to know all of this because I played the game myself.

“Let’s look at pairs, remembering that we’ve discussed trips, so they are off the table. A pair of aces is better than any other possibility, as are a pair of kings. For a pair of queens, it matters if one is suited with the JT. If so, we’ve already discussed the 3-card straight flushes. If both queens are unsuited with the JT, the pair is better than anything else not discussed so far.

“For a pair of jacks, we now have the possibility of two pair — jacks and tens. This is the only two pair combination we hold with hands included with AJT. Pairs of nines and tens are lower in value than JT9. 

“Now let’s look at the 3-card straight flushes. Six of these include an A and two low cards. These are simple to play. Hold the three cards.

“JT9 is more valuable than any two suited high cards and any 4-card straight in the hand except QJT9.

“JT8 is more valuable than any two suited high cards and any 4-card straight in the hand except JT98. It is lower in value than every pair.

“JT7 is less valuable than two suited high cards and 4-card inside straights with three high cards (i.e., AKJT and AQJT).

“If you have a K in the hand suited with the A, hold AK unless there is a flush penalty to the AK, in which case you hold AKJT. If you have an unsuited K in the hand, hold AKJT.

“A Q in the hand is played identically to a K, with the exception that QJT9 is greater than either AQ or AQJT.

“There are three other hands starting from AJT where you hold neither A nor only JT. From AJT98, the correct play is JT98 and those hands with a 4-card flush (including JT), hold the 4-card flush. From AJT and any low pair, hold the low pair.

“Okay. We’re now ready to discuss the hands you wanted to look at first: AJT with none of the above items in the hand. But as you can see, there are a LOT of other possibilities before we get to this point.

“With AJT without any of the cases already described, first look at penalties to JT. If there is a 9, 8, or flush penalty to JT in the remaining cards, you hold the A by itself, no matter what penalties the ace has.

“If there is a 7 in the hand, hold the A unless there are two flush penalties to the A. In this case, a straight flush penalty to the case counts as a flush penalty.

“If the JT is totally unpenalized, hold the JT if the A has one or more flush or straight flush penalty.

“That’s it. That’s the entire strategy for these hands.”

“So, I’m ready to play now?” Mary asked me.

“Not really. AJT is probably the trickiest combination in this game, but an unsuited AQJ is played differently in this game than any others. Plus, the 100-for-1 return for straight flushes, rather than the more typical 50-for-1 return causes quite a few unusual plays. We can go over those later if you like. I think you’ve had enough for today.” “Finally, something we agree on.”

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Not a Smart Promotion

Bob Dancer

In Nevada, there are a large number of bars/pubs with restricted gaming licenses that permit them to have up to 15 machines. I haven’t counted these pubs, but I believe there are more than 100 of these in Clark County alone, a large chunk of land in the southern part of the state, which includes the two most populous cities — Las Vegas and Henderson.

In 2022 and 2023, a number of these pubs had a promotion where if you bring in a W-2G from any casino, the pub would give you up to 10% of that, usually up to $500. Although each pub had slightly different rules, if you hit a $4,000 jackpot at South Point, for example, you could take that W-2G to places that would give you $100 in free play today, and tomorrow would give you an additional $300.

You had to bring in the W-2G within 24 or 48 hours, sometimes loosely defined. Some of these pubs limited this to once a week. Some once a day. When they found out how slammed they were getting, some limited the promotion to only jackpots earned in to pubs, which for me was no problem because I played at Dotty’s. Sometimes you could cash the same jackpot at two or more pubs.

I’m not sure what the bar managers were thinking. Perhaps it was some version of, “These players will have $4,000 in their hands, and if we can just get them in the door, perhaps they’ll leave a good part of this here.” That must have happened some of the time, of course, but most of the time this was a losing promotion for the house.

Since I play at Dotty’s where you get rewarded for W-2Gs, I can generate as many jackpots as I like. It’s already a positive play at Dotty’s to play $10 9/6 Jacks or Better where I get a W-2G every 400 hands or so. Extra money for a promotion that was already positive is a good thing. My problem was: How do I milk these promotions? I know they’ll eventually stop the promotion or kick me out, because I’m definitely not the kind of customer they are trying to attract. 

When a bar would let you cash a W-2G once a week, I’d limit myself to once every other week. When a bar would let you cash the W-2Gs once a day, I’d never cash more than two in a week, and then I’d take at least a week off. I’d rotate the times I’d show up to all three shifts, so bartenders didn’t know how often I was cashing these. If the bar had several outlets around town, I’d vary where I’d go to pick up the money. 

Usually, the best game was 6-5 Bonus Poker, a horrendous game worth less than 97%. Whenever I came in, I’d play about an hour at quarters. That meant maybe $1,000 through the machines, which cost me $30 in EV. There were slot clubs and bonuses such as wheel spins for certain 4-of-a-kinds, reducing my expected loss to perhaps $10 — which meant a profit of at least $90 because the casino started me with at least $100.

Sometimes I’d come into each place and play for an hour or so without cashing any W-2G. I wanted my record to show that I was a “regular player,” not one who would just show up to cash a W-2G. 

In the earlier example, when I brought in a $4,000 W-2G and received $100 today and $300 put on my card tomorrow, I downloaded the free play as soon as I could. There was no doubt that eventually I was going to be removed from the promotions, and when that did happen, any unclaimed free play might well be forfeited.

I tipped the bartenders at least $5 or $10 each time. I knew the managers would kick me out eventually, but I didn’t want the bartenders suggesting that I be eliminated.

Eventually all of these promotions ended – at least for me. I’m actually surprised they lasted as long as they did, at as many different places as there were. I guess it was a copycat effect where, “That casino is doing it and seems to be getting more business. Maybe we should too!”

I ended up more than $10,000 ahead over all of these properties. Not a lot, and it required driving around some, but there was basically no downside. Yes, I could lose more than $100 in a specific day collecting the money, but over time it was guaranteed I would come out ahead. 

And when establishments are giving away non-trivial amounts of free money, I’m the kind of guy who takes it. And if I learn about another bar with this promotion, count me in!