Page 14 - December 2008 • Southern California Gaming Guide
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Bob Dancer: Video Poker
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Iwas teaching a “Secrets of a Video Poker Winner” class on a ursday night at a Las Vegas casino several years ago, and somebody asked me when and where I was going to play video poker next. I told them that a downtown Las Vegas casino o ered double points on Wednesdays and Fridays to local players and so I’d be playing a ve-dollar 9/6 Jacks or
Better game there after midnight, which was about four hours after the question. e casino has eliminated this promotion since then and the players club now is di erent, but that doesn’t change the basic lessons of this article.
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
December 2008
Somebody was unclear just how to gure the value of double points. I told them that the casino normally o ers .33% in cash back, and it doubles to .67%. I told them that I gured I played 600 hands an hour on the machine, and that each hand took $25 to “fully load.” Six hundred times $25 means I’ll be playing $15,000 per hour, and an additional .33% means that double points are worth $50 per hour on these machines. Since I often played six or more hours at a time when I played, paying attention to when it is double points adds up to real money. To be sure, the numbers are more dramatic when playing on a $5 machine than a 25¢ machine, but the principle is the same.
After class, I drove to the casino and checked in. I slept until about 2 a.m. and then went downstairs to play. I didn’t set an alarm because it wasn’t critical exactly when I started, so long as it was after midnight.
ere were ve acceptable machines there and often I’m the only one playing during the graveyard shift. Playing at that casino on double point days was a
“decent” play, but it wasn’t a “drop whatever else you’re doing” play that attracts a lot of local pros.
As luck would have it, it turned out to be a better- than-average night. I connected on both a royal and a straight ush, along with a sizeable number of
4-of-a-kinds. I was still playing at 9 a.m. when a lady who looked vaguely familiar came up to me.
“You said ‘after midnight,’” she said. “I didn’t gure you’d still be here.” Turns out she was in the class the night before.
“I didn’t start to play until 2:30 or so, and I still feel alert, so I’m still at it.” I replied.
“How’s your score?” she asked.
I hate this question. I’m sort of a public gure in the video poker world so answering “it’s none of your damned business” isn’t a viable option, even though that’s the answer I feel like giving sometimes. Plus, at the moment I was sitting next to a friend who was going through a painful losing streak and so saying,
“I’m up eighteen grand” would have rubbed salt into his wound, and I didn’t want to do that either.
“I’m doing all right,” I equivocated. It wasn’t a lie, but neither was it very responsive to a question I didn’t want to answer. But it was a polite way not to be responsive, and that’s basically what I was looking for. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to mind. But then she hit me with a question that totally ummoxed me.
“Are you having fun?” she asked.
What? To me this has as much relevance as if she
asked me the color or my underwear. Why on earth would anyone be concerned whether or not I’m having fun?
For the last ten years, I’ve probably averaged about 30 hours a week of playing video poker and another 30 hours a week writing, teaching, researching, thinking about or traveling to play video poker. It’s very much a profession. A profession that has yielded signi cant
rewards, nancial and other.
It is a profession I enjoy. Very much. For a lot
of reasons. But enjoying something you do every day is hardly the same thing as having fun. Fun is something I look for on vacations. Something unusual and, well, fun. I looked to the player sitting beside me and asked him if “having fun” was in the top ten list of things important to him while playing.
He shook his head. is isn’t something professional players look for.
e fact that I won $18,000 doesn’t make the day fun. It sounds like a large amount if you’re not used to playing for $5 stakes, but it’s just a rather ordinary result for days I hit a royal—which I do twenty to fty times a year. Not because I’m a great player, but rather because I play a lot and royals come around every 60 or so hours of play on single line games and more frequently on multi line games.
I don’t know much about the lady asking the question, but I got the impression that she was a tourist to Las Vegas. Perhaps she only got to Las
Vegas once or twice a year. For her, Vegas is a vacation. For her, fun is important.
I’m not putting her down at all for thinking of playing video poker in terms of fun. Many recreational players think that way. Video poker is, after all, a small part of their life. A small enough part that they haven’t developed the expertise to have the advantage over the house. So if they’re not the favorite, the reward they get from video poker must come, perhaps, from the “fun” zone.
So how important is having fun playing video poker to you?
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
Video Poker with Bob Dancer