Page 8 - November 2003 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
When to Quit a Video Poker Machine by Bob Dancer
Iwas having lunch at a local casino in Las Vegas with two friends of mine who happened to be married to each other. After lunch, the husband had to check out a few things in the casino, so his wife and I played video poker. She was a real novice, and interested in
learning, so we sat her down at a machine and, basically, I told her how to play every hand until she got the hang of it.
Stopping strategies are one of many techniques used by people trying to gure out how to go home winners. These people have experienced losing sessions in a casino, and are striving to develop techniques to prevent losing in the future. This is a worthy goal, to be sure, but I do not believe the answer lies down this path.
Have you heard the “Quit while you’re ahead” advice? Sounds good, and many losing players will tell you, “If I can just learn when to quit the game, I’ll be ne.” There is no such knowledge. We always know we should have quit a half hour ago, but we never can know if we’ll hit a royal ush in the next half hour until we actually go through that half hour.
So if the secret to winning doesn’t lie in when you quit, where does it lie? It lies in limiting yourself to the best games in the casino and investing the time and effort to learn to play the games perfectly. The information is available. Learn it and you’ll like your results.
Bob Dancer is America’s best-known video poker writer and teacher. He has a variety of “how to play better video poker” products, including Winner’s Guides, strategy cards, videos, and the award- winning computer software, “Bob Dancer Presents WinPoker,” and a brand-new book Million Dollar Video Poker. Dancer’s products may be ordered at www.bobdancer.com
We played dollar 10/7 Double Bonus, the best game found at this particular casino. Even though there was more to explain in this game compared to many other games, we weren’t in any big hurry. Whether we got 20 hands in before her husband returned or 100 was largely irrelevant.
We got lucky that day. After about fteen hands, she held a pair of black fours and drew two red ones on the same hand. $400. Nice.
At this point, she just sits there. I gure she is in the mood to admire her quad. But no! She is ready to quit! She’s having a good time. But her husband always told her that whenever you hit a quad or higher, quit. I coaxed her into continuing, but she was very uneasy. Like she was cheating on her husband by continuing to play after hitting a four-of-a-kind!
When he came back twenty minutes later, I asked him about his strategy of quitting immediately after a good hand. He responded
that since your score goes up and down, relatively unpredictably, if you quit after a big hit you were catching the cycle at a good point. He estimated that this actually added to his overall profit. Instead of 100.17% (which the game returns when you play perfectly), he figured he was probably getting at least 100.3% by the use of intelligent stopping rules.
His stopping strategy makes intuitive sense. Unfortunately, it is very wrong. If you quit after hitting a quad, your long-term expectation is 100.17%. If you quit every time after losing six hands in a row, your long-term expectation is 100.17%. If you quit every time you get back-to-back 3-of-a- kinds, your long-term expectation is 100.17%. If you quit every time the Cubs fail to make it to the World Series, your long-term expectation is 100.17%. Do you see a pattern here?
Stopping strategies have nothing to do with your expected win or loss rate.
Page 8 NOVEMBER 2003
Column: Video Poker With Bob Dancer