{"id":119737,"date":"2019-06-18T09:12:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-18T17:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=119737"},"modified":"2023-08-24T14:45:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T22:45:30","slug":"good-today-compared-way-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/good-today-compared-way-2001\/","title":{"rendered":"How Good Am I Today Compared to the Way I Was in 2001?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2001, I had my only year ever where my video poker net score exceeded $1 million. Much of that was taking advantage of a few casinos whose managers were arithmetically challenged, combined with being over-royaled on big denomination machines.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2019, I have relatively few places that welcome my action. Casinos are faster at pulling the trigger, with respect to kicking players out, than they used to be and, if you\u2019ve been a winning player long enough, being booted from casinos is simply a fact of life. I can still find games where I have the edge, but not nearly as big of an edge as before or as many places to play.<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, I\u2019ve been talking about my video poker opportunities being less than they were before. But how about my skill level? How does that compare?<\/span><\/p>\n

On the plus side, experience teaches you many things. Once you\u2019ve learned several games at the professional level, learning new ones is much easier. Plus, the tools to study video poker are much superior today than they were earlier. <\/span><\/p>\n

On the minus side, I am 72 years old now. I can still memorize things, but it\u2019s harder to memorize than it was before and things don\u2019t stay memorized as easily today. If I haven\u2019t played a game recently, I\u2019ll have to go and relearn it. From everything I\u2019ve learned, this mental deterioration is a progressive \u201cdisease\u201d and however bad it is now, it will be worse when I\u2019m 82 and worse yet when I\u2019m 92.<\/span><\/p>\n

A big factor in my skill level is my hunger to succeed. In years past I scouted much more than I do today. I was more willing to \u201cdrop everything\u201d and travel out of state if I heard about a great play. I was able and willing to play 12 or more hours straight for the right promotion. I\u2019m neither as able nor as willing to do that today.<\/span><\/p>\n

My hunger previously was fueled by the fear of financial failure. Gambling was my main source of income. Even though I tend to be thriftier than many others, I do have some things I willingly spend money on. <\/span><\/p>\n

Disregarding for now doomsday scenarios where the entire world economy collapses and wipes us all out, I have no fear of financial failure. Bonnie and I have accumulated enough, our life expectancies are short enough, and we have insurance to cover many of the bad financial things that could happen. And I play for stakes low enough that my bankroll isn\u2019t threatened. So, I don\u2019t need to worry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Assume there were some written tests on \u201cHow do you play these hands?\u201d for a large variety of games — some I\u2019ve studied, some I haven\u2019t. It\u2019s possible I would have done better in 2001 because I could play more games at the 99.9%+ accuracy level then than I do now. It\u2019s possible I would do better now because I\u2019ve been exposed to more games and can play more games at the 99% accuracy level now than I did then. (Especially if you include games like Ultimate X or Quick Quads which weren\u2019t around in 2001.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Although many of my technical skills have decreased, I\u2019m probably better today at figuring out how slot clubs and promotions work than I was then. Back in 2001, more of the value of video poker was in the game itself (e.g. 99.54% for 9\/6 Jacks or Better) and in the slot club. Free play mailers were not as prevalent. Promotions were often all gravy on top of games that were already positive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, much more of the return of the game is in promotions and mailers, and the value of the total package of benefits is much lower than it used to be. This means you need to be better at analyzing these things — or you\u2019ll end up playing a game where you do not actually have the advantage. Playing such games is of no interest to me whatsoever. So, by necessity, I\u2019ve gotten better at this evaluation.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an educated guess as to the precise number, but I\u2019ve played 20 million or more base games since 2001. (By \u201cbase game,\u201d I mean counting a Fifty Play deal as one hand, not fifty.) Fortunately, boredom hasn\u2019t set in yet. A wild variety of scenarios have happened, and I have learned from this experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bottom line: I don\u2019t know exactly whether I\u2019m a better player or not than I was in 2001. If I had to bet on it, I\u2019d say the younger me was stronger. The benefits of youth in this case outweigh the benefits of experience. But it\u2019s a close call.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2001, I had my only year ever where my video poker net score exceeded $1 million. Much of that was taking advantage of a few casinos whose managers were arithmetically challenged, combined with being over-royaled on big denomination machines. In 2019, I have relatively few places that welcome my action. Casinos are faster at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601,558,557],"tags":[561,585,986],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}