Page 14 - June 2008 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
LEearning the Right Lesson
xperience can be a great teacher. People who have been around the block a time or two are able to cope much better with whatever comes next than people who are raw beginners.
It’s up to you, however, to learn the right lesson. ere are very experienced blackjack players who will tell you that playing with a bad player really hurts the odds for the good players. It’s total nonsense, of course, but that’s what their experience tells them. ey tend to remember the evidence that supports their hypothesis and ignore the evidence that contradicts it. e same is true in video poker. Let’s look at a situation and see what lessons we can draw from it.
You’re considering playing 9/7 Double Bonus at the hypothetical ABC Casino near San Diego. eir 0.50% cash back doesn’t come close to making the 99.11% game pro table, but you have a juicy coupon in your hand. is one-
time-only coupon o ers
a 100-coin bonus on
any four-of-a-kind. is
turns the game into a
103.8+% blockbuster.
You have $1,600 cash-
Lesson B:
You are the unluckiest person alive. You always get the short end of the stick promotion-wise. Time to give up video poker and take up bowling!
Lesson C:
You should bring more money with you next time you go to play. Running out of money is stupid.
to April of this year), it is undoubtedly true that many of us were luckier than average during this time period and that many of us were unluckier than average. If you pick a di erent time period, however, (say January to April of last year), a di erent set of people will be the lucky ones. Even so, whether you were lucky or unlucky in the past says nothing about whether you’ll be lucky or unlucky in the future.
Of course there are some skill factors at work. Unskilled players who lose sometimes think that it’s just because they are unlucky. If that’s the reason they are losing, then yes, they will be “unlucky” (unskilled, really) in the future unless they change their ways.
e third possibility, that you should take more money with you when you go to play, is a good lesson to learn from this “disaster.” Running out of money costs you here as you were not able to cash the juicy coupon. If you’re uncomfortable carrying large sums of money with you, obtaining lines of credit at casinos you play at is one solution to this problem.
So which lesson would you have learned? When someone tells me they have “learned their lesson,” I frequently wonder what lesson they have learned. Overreacting to one recent situation is easy to do, but not really smart.
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, his autobiography Million Dollar Video Poker, and his two novels, including Sex, Lies, and Video Poker. Dancer’s products may be ordered at www.bobdancer.com.
on-hand without raiding
your bank account, so you
take it on down to the
casino and start playing.
Dame Fortune frowns
on you that day and in
two hours your $1,600 is
history. You played 1,500
hands and lost at more
than a 20% clip. You still
have the coupon, but
haven’t connected on a winning quad and are now out of money.
Any
who picks the rst possibility is misguided. e casinos in California are fair. Period. Hitting no quads in the next 1,500 hands has about a 2% chance of happening, which means that one
“Of course there are some skillfactorsatwork.Unskilled players who lose sometimes think that it’s just because they are unlucky. If that’s the reason theyarelosing,thenyes,they
will be ‘unlucky’ (unskilled, really) in the future unless they change their ways.”
person
Page 14
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
June 2008
What lesson have you learned? Let’s look at some possibilities.
Lesson A:
e ABC Casino is unfair! You should have hit about four quads during the time you played if it was a fair machine. Since you didn’t, it proves you should avoid playing video poker there in the future.
in fty times you go gambling you’ll have this much bad luck or worse. e fact that today is when you’re running bad is unfortunate, but not really a big deal. It’s going to happen sometime and today isn’t anything particular signi cant.
e second possibility is equally misguided. Many people believe that they are either luckier or unluckier than average. is tends to say more about their personality (“half full” versus “half empty”) than it does about anything else. Now if you look at a particular time period in the past (say January
Video Poker with Bob Dancer