Tag: video poker

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How Much Does It Cost?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Be Careful What You Wish For  

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Is This Correct?

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

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

Here are my problems with this question:

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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Something I Didn’t Expect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What Should I Say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I’m Glad I Didn’t Hit It — Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Matter of Perspective

If you’re a computer programmer working on a video poker game, the hand A♠ Q♥ T♥ 8♠ 3♥ is equivalent to A♦ Q♣ T♣ 8♦ 3♣, but both of those are different from A♣ Q♥ T♥ 8♠ 3♥. Can you see why?

The ranks of the cards are the same and in all three hands QT3 is suited. In the first two hands, the ace and eight are suited with each other. In the third hand, the ace and eight are unsuited.

To 99% of all players, 99% of the time, that distinction is irrelevant. It could possibly be important, for example, in a Double Bonus game where there is a progressive on four aces. At reset, you hold QT on this hand. If the progressive on four aces is high enough, you just hold the ace. How high the progressive has to be will be different if there are 12 cards still in the pack unsuited with the ace than if there are “only” 11.

With that kind of thinking in mind, assuming you are playing 9/6 Jacks or Better, do you see any difference between A♦ Q♣ T♣ 8♦ 3♣ and A♠ Q♥ T♥ 7♠ 3♥?

For anyone who would hold just the ace on either of these hands, you’re a hopeless Jacks or Better player. Holding the ace can be correct in certain other games, but not Jacks or Better.

The Basic Strategy play on both hands is to hold the QT. It’s the second-best play in both cases, but AQ is better. The fact that AQ is better than QT in these two hands is because the 3 is suited with the QT. This is known as a flush penalty and is generally only of concern to advanced players. Many players have enough trouble just learning the basic plays without dwelling on the fine points. What makes the hands different is that in the first hand, the 5-coin dollar player is making a nickel mistake versus a 2-cent mistake in the second.

The difference in the size of the mistakes is due to the 8 interfering with the straight possibilities of QT and the 7 not doing so. Why is this important? Well, it’s not if you’re playing the game with a 4,000-coin royal.  But if you’re playing a progressive, holding QT is correct in the first hand when the royal is at 4,685 and above, while in the second hand, holding QT is correct at 4,365 and above.

So, for whom is this kind of analysis important? Frankly, only to a pretty small self-selected group. Some pros learn these things — many don’t. A few recreational players become competent in these distinctions — although it may never be cost-effective for them.

Some of us just plain like studying things. This has been one of my “secrets to success.” The more I know about how and why things work the way they do, the easier it is for me to learn and memorize strategies.

If you think my secret is worthless to you, that’s your right. But in general, the more people study these things, the better their results turn out to be. Whether it makes sense dollars-and-cents-wise if you put a value on your time is debatable. But if it gives you pleasure to gain insight into these games, why the heck not do it?

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Accidental Quadruple Deuces

A version of this article first appeared about 10 years ago.

Regular Deuces Wild, played for quarters, returns $250 for four deuces. Double Deuces returns $500 for the same hand, but takes away elsewhere in the pay schedule. Loose Deuces returns $625 for that hand and Triple Deuces gives you $750. Each of these games can be found in Las Vegas.

How about Quadruple Deuces returning $1,000 for four deuces? Or even more? In 2007, this game existed accidentally for a few months at a large local casino in Las Vegas, but it could have happened anywhere. And while the base Deuces Wild game on which it was found wasn’t all that great, adding 3,000 coins to an every-4,400-hands event adds about 12% to the return. Apparently four players were able to exploit this and keep the information quiet for a couple of months. They certainly didn’t post it on one of the Internet bulletin boards as that would have killed the play in a day or less.

What happened was this (I might have the facts a little off as I am getting this secondhand): There were eight quarter games tied to a progressive. Six of these games had the progressive set normally, which means that it would be collected when the royal was hit. But two of the games had the progressive accidentally attached to the four deuces hand. Apparently, a slot tech got a little bit sloppy one day and nobody who worked for the casino caught it. So, the four deuces hand started at $1,000 and moved up from there.

Since these were ticket-in, ticket-out machines, winning the jackpot merely spit out a ticket and the players could keep playing, so long as the jackpot was below $1,200. And it usually remained at that level because four deuces is a fairly frequent hand with respect to having the progressive rise $200 or more. When the progressive did rise that high, which it did a few times, these players wouldn’t play. They hoped that one of the other machines would hit the royal so everything would look normal. And their luck held. No over-$1,200 set of deuces was hit on either machine.

The way the bubble burst was that someone “not in the know” was playing one of the two juicy machines and happened to hit the royal flush. The nerve of them! When they were only paid $1,000 instead of whatever the meter read, they understandably felt cheated and called it to the attention of the floor people. When it escalated to supervisors, it didn’t take long for the casino to realize what the error was. The two machines were shut down for a while and adjusted. Christmas was over!

I was told about this play after the fact. One of the four players who hit this hard was attending one of my free classes and told me about it. He had just finished reading my Million Dollar Video Poker book in which I write about taking advantage of a similar-yet-different casino mistake.  He wanted to tell me that these errors were still happening out there — if you could find them.  

He asked me if the casino could demand its money back because of the machine overpaying. While first making sure he realized that I wasn’t a lawyer and couldn’t speak authoritatively on the subject, I told him that I didn’t believe the casino could effectively take any civil or criminal action against him. If the casino could not show that he was in cahoots with the slot tech who made the improper settings, then the casino was stuck.

What the casino COULD do, however, was restrict him from the property if it so chose. Assuming these four players used their slot club cards while playing this game, it wouldn’t be difficult for the casino to check their records and determine who was playing these machines heavily over the past few months. Even if the players didn’t use their cards, they were surely caught on surveillance tape.

The casino could well decide that they didn’t want these players around anymore and that would be perfectly legal. Casinos in Nevada can restrict the play of anyone, so long as it’s not based on things such as race, gender, or national origin.

Of course while this was going on, the players couldn’t be sure how it would all turn out. They were regularly winning $2,000 a week or more apiece, week after week, and that’s big money for quarter video poker. Winning like that is EXCITING, especially since you don’t know how long it’s going to last.

I wasn’t there, but there had to be discussions about how to share time on the machines, how to keep it quiet from others, and how much they could play without the casino employees noticing that these same guys were playing the same machines EVERY DAY all day long. There are no unique best answers on how to do this and opinions vary widely.

However they decided to do it, it was impossible to predict when a casino employee would put two and two together, when other players might find out and demand a piece of the action, or when someone accidentally hit the wrong kind of jackpot at the wrong time. There would have been all KINDS of things to worry about.

Mistakes continue to happen in casinos. To exploit them, you first have to FIND them. Players who do a lot of scouting have the best chances to find these kinds of mistakes. Players who don’t scout are left with complaining that other people find these things.

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Interesting Promotion at the M

I received a postcard from the M where they are trying to get new players. The promo was:

  1.         I get $100 in free play right away for bringing in a new player,
  2.         The new player also gets $100 in free play — plus a kiosk spin (usually $5 in free play, I think, but it could be more),
  3.         For every point the new player earns in the first day, I get 10x points, up to a total of 50,000 points,
  4.        Good (if you got the postcard and the new player has NEVER had a card at the M) from June 1 to July 31.

The slot club is 0.3% (slightly more, actually, because they give you $3 for $999 coin-in rather than $3 for $1,000 coin-in). 50,000 points is worth $150 of free play — which is way more than the house’s expected win if you’re playing the best machines.

The loosest game is $2 9/6 Jacks or Better. There are two such machines — newly installed — in the high limit room. There is no choice as to the denomination and no telling how long they’ll last. 10x points (which is worth 3%) on top of a video poker game returning 99.54% seemed possibly like a mistake, except that it was limited to $150 max which might be a reasonable cost for a new player.

I don’t actually know if this was a mistake or not. I hooked up with a player friend, “Kevin,” who lives near Aliante — which makes the M geographically undesirable for him. Which is why he didn’t already have a card. I know some non-players for whom I technically could have played the free play, but that’s strongly against the rules there and I’m well known. No thanks. If I had to use a non-player, I would have let them play and talked them through their $105 in free play — which we would probably have played on 25¢ 8/5 Aces Bonus. If they were a non-player, any possible W2G could have been a problem for them.

As it happened, June 1 was a normal free-play pick-up day for me (they have 6 to 7 such days per month). Kevin and I agreed to go in and play the promotion on the first day it was active.

We were certainly not going to ask for clarification as to whether the 10x points included video poker or not. The booth personnel (who are also the cashiers) would likely have said, “I don’t know. Let me make a phone call.” If they did that, it’s possible that signs would have been posted saying “slots only.” If we could arrange it, we didn’t want such signs posted until after we played.

Our deal was, we would play the promotion and also play an additional 850 points which entitled us to a “free” lunch buffet. Other than the amount of my free play, we split everything based on my $850 worth of play and his $5,850. Whether this split was overly generous or not didn’t concern me. Kevin is a friend. And enjoying lunch together was part of the attraction of the “date.”

I often play for a buffet on my free -play pickup days there. There have been incidents where players who only picked up free-play without any additional play were punished for this. As a known professional player, I am hyper-sensitive about creating situations where it would be easy for them to justify restricting me.

The $205 in free play we got between the two of us more than covered the expected loss of playing $5,850 for him and $850 for me. If we got the additional $150, great, but it was still a decent play if we didn’t. (And yes, we could have lost, but the decision beforehand is made based on EV, because you don’t know what your actual result is going to be.)

I had him play $5,850 rather than just $5,000 because the M usually doesn’t allow you to “double dip.” If there’s a gift of the day you can get for 800 points and you also want the free buffet, it takes 1,650 to earn both. We only had one shot at this and if they decided to give us 10x points on only 4,150 points (which would be 5,000-850), that would cost us $28. No thanks.

We didn’t split the $150 on the day we played because I wasn’t certain whether or not we were going to get it. It could be that they “intended” it to say “slots only,” but they didn’t put that in writing. How it would be enforced down the road was an open question.

I hadn’t decided how aggressively to pursue the 10x points if they denied that it applied to video poker. It was “only” $150 (split between two of us) and you need to pick your battles. In a somewhat similar situation at the Silverton I wrote about a few months ago, we were talking about an $8,000 difference between getting the multiple points or not. I’m willing to fight a lot harder for $8,000 than I am for half of $150.

Eight days after we played, I received an email saying that 50,000 points had been placed on my card, so I sent my friend an email saying that I owed him $75 next time we saw each other.

I never had to decide how hard to argue for this. It’s possible that future players will be told “slots only” when they sign up. I don’t know. But this was a case of taking advantage of the situation before they made changes to it. If they keep the promotion “as is,” then whether we did it early or not doesn’t matter. If they restrict it later to slots only, it matters $150 worth. For me it was a no brainer to do it as early as possible.

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You’re Not a Poker Player

In early June, Bonnie and I were at a square dancing workshop and there was this guy, Scott from Alabama, who showed up. He had played a few days before at the Colossus event in the World Series of Poker, did well enough to get his money back plus $500, and was killing time before his flight back home. He had arranged his stay through the last day of the Colossus in case he made it that far. He hadn’t, but that was why he was still in town. Square dancing events are publicized if you know where to look, so he found us and danced. He was very welcome.

The Colossus is a $565 buy-in tournament with starting flights over several days. Re-entries are allowed. He was very proud of the fact that he cashed in his first WSOP event, which gave him the confidence to come back next year. He had to tell me, of course, about the hand he blew out on and that he was ahead until his opponent paired on the river.

I asked him if he had considered re-entering and he said, “No.  If I’m not a good enough player to win on my first try, I’m not going to throw good money after bad.”

I told him that I didn’t know anything about his personal bankroll, but that didn’t make any sense to me. He probably had $500 in expenses to get to and stay in Vegas for five days. That made his first entry cost $1,065. His re-entry would cost “only” $565, or basically half price since he was already in Vegas. If the first one was a good deal for him to enter, re-entry must be a great deal. Why come back next year and pay another $1,065 and not get the same equity right now for only $565?

In any tournament with several thousand entries (there were 18,000+ entries in this year’s Colossus), there is a considerable amount of luck insofar as how long each player lasts. The hand where he blew out (in 400th place or so) could have easily happened much earlier and he would have gotten nothing at all. No less skill on his part. Just the luck of the draw.

You can’t conclude, I argued, that just because you cashed this time that you are a good player or just because you didn’t cash any particular time that you’re a bad player. No player cashes every event. Your record over a whole lot of tournaments says a lot about your skill. Your result in a single tournament says very little.

He asked if I was a poker player. I told him no, that I was a video poker player, but that I’ve been a successful gambler for several decades and believe I have some knowledge and experience about how it all works.

He informed me that since I wasn’t a poker player, I really didn’t know what I was talking about and he didn’t want to discuss it anymore. Okay. A square dancing event is mostly a social activity and if he didn’t want to “talk shop,” that was fine with me. I went over and spoke to someone else. Whether or not I could get him to agree with me was not something I cared about very much. He had never heard of me and self-professed video poker experts are not people he considers worth listening to.

But you, my reader, I do care whether you agree with me or not. I assume you accept that I am generally knowledgeable about these things or you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

This is another case of paying undue attention to short term results. This example looks a bit different in live poker than it does in video poker, but the principle is the same. Perhaps this example is easier to understand than in the ways I have expressed it previously.