Page 8 - July 2004 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
How Does It Make You Feel? Aby Bob Dancer
ssume you start with 100 credits on your favorite machine. Over the next twenty minutes, you build up the credits to 350. Full houses are coming with a nice regularity, as are straights and ushes. Four-of-a-kinds are appearing at twice their usual frequency. Life is indeed beautiful.
it won’t until you actually go ahead and play the hands.
I don’t know how to help you obtain “serenity.” But I do believe it to be important. For many readers of this column, the hours you spend playing video poker represent a major part of what you do in life. inking that what you do is a “disaster” is not a healthy way to lead your life. is is a rather elementary concept. Turning around the way you feel is something quite a bit less
elementary.
Notice that “serenity” doesn’t mean
you aren’t always trying to improve your skills. I suggest good players do that all of the time. Serenity doesn’t imply you shouldn’t constantly strive to nd better games. Good players do that too. What serenity means, in my book, is not beating yourself up when a good decision turned out to have not-so-good 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.
is is the way video poker is supposed to be.
At this point, all of a sudden with no warning at all, the machine turns ice cold. You get an occa- sional high pair or two, but nothing higher. In fteen minutes all of the credits have disappeared into Never-Never-Land.Sigh.Welcome to Real World 101.
Anyone who has played much video poker has had this exact situation happen all too often. is is no fun at all. Every person has a slightly di erent way of dealing with it. Ask yourself which of the following is closer to the way you feel at these times:
a) is is a disaster. If you had just left ten minutes ago, life would be a lot better. You’re an idiot for not being able to see this happening and quitting before it got this bad.
b) is is not a big deal. It happens. All you can do is to choose a good
game, play each hand perfectly, and take what you get. Streaks go both ways.
My feelings are pretty well
described by b) above. I would never presume to tell you how you must feel in a particular situation, but I suggest that if a) describes the way you react to this all-too-familiar situation, then perhaps you need to consider doing something else with your life rather than gambling at video poker.
An American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, composed what is known as the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know
the difference.” The current situation involves “serenity” and “wisdom.”
Insofarashelpingyougain“wisdom,”I can tell you that this situation happens to everybody. I can tell you that if you watch a computer play every hand perfectly, every so often it has streaks exactly as I described here. Whether you are playing every hand correctly or every hand poorly may well a ect how often you have such streaks, but not the fact that you will have them. I can assure you that nobody can accurately predict the next 200 hands.
ere are other streaks that start out the same as the one described above, but when you get down to 20 credits, everything turns around again and you get several good hands in a row. Maybe even a royal ush. And there is no way to tell whether this is the time that the streak will turn around or this is the time
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Page 8 July 2004
Column: Video Poker With Bob Dancer