{"id":4024,"date":"2016-08-02T12:02:13","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T19:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamblingwithanedge.com\/?p=4024"},"modified":"2016-08-02T12:02:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T19:02:13","slug":"d-t-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/d-t-b\/","title":{"rendered":"D T B"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bonnie\u2019s family accepts that I\u2019m a successful gambler. They also believe that the methods and discipline I use to succeed involve far more study than they want to invest — especially since it will never be more than an occasional hobby for any of them.<\/p>\n

Fine with me. I have no need to turn anybody else into a video poker pro. It\u2019s really hard to succeed if you WANT to do so. It\u2019s basically impossible if your heart isn\u2019t in it.<\/p>\n

Except.<\/p>\n

Most of this branch of Bonnie\u2019s family never gambles at home (these particular ones live in Central California) and when they come to Vegas to visit, they want to gamble. And they are GOING TO gamble. And they are going to gamble at penny slots.<\/p>\n

Once they asked my advice. My advice to very occasional penny players is very dissimilar to what I would advise my usual readers. Given the audience, I suggested:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Only bring money you can afford to lose.<\/li>\n
  2. Never visit casino ATMs. If you lose what you rationally thought you could afford, give it up for this trip. On the games you are playing, the odds are against you and collecting more money from the ATM means you\u2019re probably going to lose more money — and pay outrageous fees for the privilege of losing.<\/li>\n
  3. Probably the best odds for penny slots will be found at the South Point. You still have the worst of it, but at least your money will last longer. And Bonnie hosted them to a nice dinner and show there, so they would be at that casino anyway.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Simple enough, I thought. If they get pleasure out of playing these games, fine with me.<\/p>\n

    Except.<\/p>\n

    They ended up at the M (which has FAR tighter machines than South Point), lost what they came with, and hit the ATMs. Lost that money too.<\/p>\n

    So, they figured out the rational thing to do at this point is DTB, which stands for \u201cDon\u2019t Tell Bob.\u201d And they didn\u2019t tell me, although Bonnie spilled the beans after her family went home.<\/p>\n

    I actually like their DTB philosophy. I do not want to be \u201cDaddy\u201d to a bunch of senior citizens. They absolutely do not need to ask my permission to gamble however they want.<\/p>\n

    Am I disappointed in them? No, not really. I understand my study and discipline is pretty rare in the gambling world and other people enjoy the \u201csport\u201d in different ways. It\u2019s not inexpensive to gamble this way, but those are choices for them to make. They aren\u2019t asking me to support their hobby, so why should I care?<\/p>\n

    Plus, my host at the M gave them a nice room for the weekend based on my play. The fact that they chose to play there (and ended up predictably losing there) has a certain element of fairness to it. I mentioned to my host that Bonnie\u2019s relatives aren\u2019t competent gamblers and will probably want to gamble anyway — and it was partly based on what I told the host that they got the room for free.<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s how Vegas works – whether they tell me or not!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Bonnie\u2019s family accepts that I\u2019m a successful gambler. They also believe that the methods and discipline I use to succeed involve far more study than they want to invest — especially since it will never be more than an occasional hobby for any of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":0,"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":[601,558,643,557],"tags":[856,857,561,649,858,859,860,861,862,693,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024"}],"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=4024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}