Page 8 - December 2002 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
Learning to Lose is an Important Part of Winning by Bob Dancer
From 1973 to 1991, I played probably 20,000 hours of backgammon for money. As a gambling game, backgammon has little in common with video poker. Any techniques I mastered for moving checkers around a board according to the roll of dice have been useless in helping me play video poker.
Surprisingly, however, “learning to win” at video poker requires many of the same techniques as “learning to win” at backgammon. There is no doubt in my mind that my success at video poker has come easier to me than others because of the experiences I’ve had from many years of gambling. Even gambling at a totally different game taught me many important things.
The lesson that I learned at backgammon that I want to talk about today is “learning to lose.” That’s right.
“Learning to lose” is an important part of “learning to win.” It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not.
When a gambling game has a large luck component, as do most of them, sometimes you will win and sometimes you will lose. Nobody has “good luck” all of the time, nor does anybody have “bad luck” all of the time. (Many people will swear to you that they believe they are either lucky or unlucky, but that doesn’t make it so.) In the short run, luck is dominant.
When a gambling game has a large skill component (as do games such as video poker, blackjack, backgammon, sports betting and live poker), then over the long run the skill factors will dominate. But to get to the skill in the long run, you must survive the luck (good and bad) in the short run.
In backgammon, towards the end when my skills were at their best, I won about 60 percent of the sessions and lost about 40 percent of the sessions. And the size of the wins was similar to the size of the losses. In video poker, I win about 30 percent of the sessions and lose about 70 percent of the sessions (depending on the game), but the size of the wins is much larger on average than the size of the losses. After all, one royal ush can make up for a number of losses.
In both games, my net score is signi cantly positive. (I mean “was” for backgammon and “is” for video poker, but I’ll just use the present tense so I don’t have to qualify every sentence.) And in both games, I frequently lose. What gambling experience has taught me is that there is a rainbow at the end of the tunnel. Losing today is no big deal. Losing ve days in a row is not that rare. I’ve been through longer streaks before and come out on
top. My longest losing streak to date is 4 months long. I hope I never break that record, but I might.
At backgammon, there are players that become very miserable because they lost to their opponent’s lucky dice. And it’s true. They did. In most backgammon games, luck is a factor. But the same players that were ahead at the end of last year will probably be ahead at the end of this year, because skill is also important and these players have the skill to win.
I have lost $10,000 or more — sometimes considerably more than that. And they don’t particularly bother me. It is just part of the game. In the same vein, I’ve had over 100 jackpots of $20,000 or higher; most of which put me up for that particular day. But that isn’t a reason to go out and celebrate big time either.
I often write, “Today’s score doesn’t matter.” Whether I win today or lose today is of little importance. The sum of six months or more of scores is important, but not the individual ones. It took many years to learn that. But I am glad I did.
My wife Shirley still lives and dies with the swings. She’s seen my scores for six years and has been a community-property partner for almost ve. She’s seen a very large net win during that period. But the downswings we have still bother her. In another ve or ten years, I suspect,
when she knows way deep down that “we are going to win this year,” I think she’ll be able to relax more and ignore the swings.
That’s it for this month. Until next time, go out and hit a royal ush.
“Bob Dancer” is the nom de plume of the top video poker writer in the country. In addition to playing video poker frequently in high-roller rooms across the country, he writes about what he does. He has a monthly video poker column in Casino Player, and is the video poker editor for Strictly Slots.
The same with video poker. You often hear people complain about how long it has been since they hit a royal ush. They’ll
tell you that if they had
the “normal” number of
royal ushes, they’d be
way ahead. And they are
right. Add several royal
ushes to anybody’s
score and it makes it
better. But, of course,
if these same players
hit four aces twice in
the same day, they want to keep both sets. They only want what is “fair” when they are “under” the normal amount of good things. If they are “over” the normal amount, then they want to keep everything.
Gambling is not like a regular job with an hourly paycheck. The gambling road goes up and down nancially. That’s the nature of the game. Once I accepted that “bumps in the road” are usual, it was relatively easy for me to eliminate almost all of the stress that comes from losing sessions. I can’t say it’s fun to lose, but I can say that I rarely lose any sleep over how much I am up or down. I’ve had well over fty sessions where
“Whether I win today or lose
today is of little importance. The sum of six months or more of scores is important, but not the individual ones. It took many years to learn that. But I am glad I did.”
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Page 8 December 2002
Column: Video Poker with Bob Dancer