Recently, a poster on the videopoker.com forum wrote words to the following effect: \u201cI have no doubt that if I could ever learn to quit while I was ahead, I\u2019d be far ahead at video poker, even though I play games returning only about 99%.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s look more closely at that statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Assume you\u2019re playing Jacks or Better for quarters. On your very first hand you end up with two pair. You are ahead $1.25. Do you quit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is probably not what the poster meant by being ahead. He drove 20 miles for 30 minutes to get there and would not consider being ahead $1.25 worth his while. He\u2019s not about to drive home now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, for now, let\u2019s assume he did mean his statement literally. If he got ahead, at all, he\u2019d quit. Usually, when he played, he\u2019d end up a small amount ahead. He might hit a flush or a full house, or even, on very rare occasions, a royal flush. Often his score would be more than $1.25, but he\u2019d quit whenever his head was above water at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under these conditions, would he be a net winner over time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer is no. The game returns 99%. Occasionally he loses everything he brings — $20, $200, $2000, whatever. The machine goes ice cold for some period of time and he never gets ahead in the entire session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually he loses enough and goes home. He then comes back the next day and wins $1.25, and $2.50 the next day, and . . . and sooner or later he\u2019ll run into another cooler session again that will totally wipe him out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This also works the same if he sets win and\/or loss limits. He\u2019ll keep playing until he gets, say, $50 ahead or $25 behind, or any other arbitrarily set amounts. There will be days when he gets $48.75 ahead, and then everything goes south. Over time, assuming he plays well, his scores will average 99% of his coin-in.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I assume he really meant (and he is welcome to post in the comments that my assumption is incorrect and why) was that if he could quit when he reached the high point of the session (because somehow, he\u2019d magically know that he was at the high point), he\u2019d be ahead. In the case where $48.75 was his high point, in his mind he wants the ability to quit there if it doesn\u2019t go any higher. If it moves up, he\u2019ll take the higher amount. But if it goes down, he wants to lock in the $48.75.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you can do this, you will definitely end up ahead. The problem is you never have enough information to do this. At any point in your gambling session, you might know where you are at that moment, but you can\u2019t know what the next hands will bring until you play them. And if you play them and they go minus on you, you can\u2019t unplay them and take the amount you had before you played.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, technically speaking, this poster was correct. If he can do something that is impossible to do, he\u2019ll definitely end up ahead. The problem is, he will never be able to do this. Whenever you quit, you\u2019ll never know when the very next hand would have been a royal flush had you played it. About once every 40,000 sessions, that would be the case. But you\u2019ll never know which one of the 40,000 sessions it was because you stopped just before that royal flush happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, a poster on the videopoker.com forum wrote words to the following effect: \u201cI have no doubt that if I could ever learn to quit while I was ahead, I\u2019d be far ahead at video poker, even though I play games returning only about 99%.\u201d\u00a0 Let\u2019s look more closely at that statement.<\/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":"Quitting While You are Ahead --- Does it Work? by Bob Dancer","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601,558,557],"tags":[561,898,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121516"}],"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=121516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121516\/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=121516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}