Page 12 - June 2006 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
Winning and Whining by Bob Dancer
In the 1970s and 1980s, I played tens of thousands of hours of backgammon. Mostly in a private club. I was a good player (not a great one). Whatever success I had came from playing players not as strong as I was. And the way I found out how good somebody was,
motivation ( nancially as well as emotionally) these days is to be a teacher who helps people improve their game. So I tell these players the truth. “No wonder you lose. If you continue to play that game at that casino, you will continue to lose. Get used to it, or start studying!”
e hard lesson for many people to learn is that luck is only relevant in the short run, but when we are talking how much you are up or down this year or last year, we are talking long run. And when we talk long run, luck plays a very small role. Over time, you get the gambling results you deserve! You cannot see the long run. You cannot even de ne it precisely. But it de nitely exists. And players who base their decisions on doing well in the long run do quite a bit better than players who base their decisions on what is happening in the short run.
is is actually good news for the player who wants to turn their losing ways into winning ways. e ability to know which pay schedules pay the most is easy to learn. Correct strategy is harder to learn, but many people can succeed at this if they apply themselves.
Crying and moaning about how badly you are doing is normal. (And I guess we could say that this de nition means some people are more normal than others!) But frankly, most people don’t care to hear your sob stories. You will have winning days sometimes (probably— it depends on what you play) and you will have losing days (guaranteed!).
And if you want to complain on your losing days, go right ahead! It is much easier to complain than it is to take the steps so that your winning days are increased and your losing days are minimized. My unscienti c observation is that most complainers continue to be losers.
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, his autobiography Million Dollar Video Poker, and his novel, Sex, Lies, and Video Poker. Dancer’s products may be ordered at www.bobdancer.com.
was by watching their moves carefully.
One of the things I noticed was that the poorer players would go around and tell everybody who would listen about how unlucky they were. ese players would correctly observe that they rarely got the “miracle rolls” to save themselves from intricate positions, while their opponents frequently did.
( e private club would rent the table. Losing players would directly pay winning players. It is less obvious that this same thing is happening in casinos, but it is. Losing players pay the casinos, who take a small service fee and pay o the winners.) If you tell people
( e reason they got fewer good rolls was because they played their earlier moves awkwardly which made fewer good rolls available. I could give a lot of examples, but this is not primarily an article about backgammon.)
e good players, however, could see the bad moves that the poorer players would make. We knew that luck had very little to do with a player’s results over time.
Although everybody went through winning streaks and losing streaks, generally good plays begat good results and bad plays begat bad results.
But the good players would commiserate with the bad players. e good players would sympathize and assure the bad players that their luck would eventually turn around. In a nutshell, the good players would at out lie to the bad players! e good players knew that the results would not turn around until there was a skill level change. We also knew that most poor players were more interested in playing more often than they were in taking the time to learn how to play better.
A reasonable question is why would the good players lie to the bad players? e reason was that in order for good players to win, there had to be bad players to lose.
that the reason they lose is that they are not very smart and they don’t play very well, then they very well may decide to take up another hobby. is would cut into the good player’s income stream. But if you tell the bad players that they are basically ne players in a losing streak, then they will come back (and continue to lose) again and again.
Fast forward to 2006. Now my game of choice is video poker. I teach beginner classes in Las Vegas, and sometimes across the country, and run into players of all skill levels. Several times every week somebody
comes up and tells me how unlucky they have been. at they almost never get royals. at they usually lose. at they are about to give the game up because
they are so unlucky.
When I ask them what game they play, they often
tell me Double Double Bonus. When I ask them where they play, they frequently tell me they play at a chain of casinos noted for movie theaters and good restaurants, but sub-standard video poker.
Although as a player I am still in a position where I need weaker players to lose in order for the casino to make enough money so I can win, my stronger
“The hard lesson for many people to learn is that luck is only relevant in the short run, but when we are talking how much you are up or down this year or last year, we are talking long run. And when we talk long run, luck plays a
very small role.”
Page 12 June 2006
Video Poker with Bob Dancer