Page 14 - January 2009 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
When Should You Quit for the Day?
Let’s say you’re playing at your favorite casino. It’s getting close to the time when you should be leaving. Your score currently stands at 180 credits, but it has been going up and down. You decide that when your score reaches 200 credits, you will cash out and go home. At this particular moment, your machine goes into a suck-the-player-dry mode and in ve minutes
your credits are down to zero. You sigh, and pack up to leave.
is kind of experience has happened on occasion to every gambler—whether at video poker,
slots, craps, blackjack, or whatever. As they leave the casino, many people are lled with self- loathing for “wasting” those last 180 credits. After all, had they cashed out ve minutes before, they’d now have considerably more jingle in their pocket.
Because of this kind of experience, many players will tell you that their results would be satisfactory if they could only gure out when to leave a machine. ey look for decision rules for when to quit. Such as, perhaps, when you lose 50 credits in 10 minutes, it’s time to go. Or, maybe, only risk $20 at a time. If it doubles, cash out. If it goes, change machines.
You’ve heard people with these theories.
Now let’s take a di erent case. Same casino, same
180 score, same decision. But this time when you get down to 35 credits, up pops a royal ush! Wonderful! Four thousand credits. How exciting! Eventually you get paid, play o your remaining credits, and again, pack up and go home.
is second scenario is a lot more fun than the rst.
What players want to know
is which of these scenarios
is coming back when we
had 180 credits and were deciding when to leave. If they knew the rst scenario was around the corner, they would have left at 180 credits. If the knew the second scenario was ahead, of course they’d keep playing.
Unfortunately, there is no way in the world to tell. e rst scenario is more likely, of course, because
royal ushes don’t come around very often. But always quitting at 180 credits because it is more likely to go to zero than 4,000 will cause you to miss out on a lot of royals.
for another article. For now, I never play for stakes that will seriously harm my life if things go bad. And nally, I look to see if there is some minimum amount I “have to” play in order to get amenities Shirley and I consider valuable. Like, maybe, 10,000 points in a day to get room, food, and beverage status.
Once those things are decided, I play as long as I’m feeling alert. If the machine sucks, sucks, sucks, that’s no fun, but it’s no big deal and no reason to quit or change machines. If the machine gives me a royal or two, that’s a lot of fun, but that’s no reason to quit or change machines either.
I don’t know what’s coming over the next few hours of play. But I have a real good idea what’s coming over the next thousand hours of play—based on pay schedule, players club, promotions, and my skill level. Almost whatever the ups and downs are over those thousand hours is ne with me. A terrible 200-gaming-hour losing streak might cause me to reconsider. But a bad day or a bad weekend? Totally irrelevant.
Read about Bob Dancer’s Video Poker Seminar at Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino on page 10.
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 or at 1-800-244-2224 Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Paci c Time.
is your current score, or your results over the last few hours or less, is a lousy predictor of what’s around the corner. It’s easy to understand why players
want to know what’s coming. It’s not so easy to accept that they can’t know until they
e long and the short of it is your current score, or your results over the last few hours or less, is a lousy predictor of what’s around the corner. It’s easy to understand why players want to know what’s coming. It’s not so easy to accept that they can’t know until they round the corner and
“The long and the short of it
nd out.
So how do you decide
when to quit? I’ll tell you what works for me. First, I choose the game to play based on the pay schedule: i.e., I know that 9/6 Jacks or Better returns 99.54% and 8/5 Jacks or Better returns 97.30%. If I’m
going to play Jacks or Better, I play 9/6 or not at all. Second, I take the players club and promotions into account—for example, playing more on double point days. ird, the denomination is important. e exact denomination depends on your gambling bankroll and your willingness to sustain risk, but that’s a discussion
round the corner and find out.”
Page 14
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
January 2009
Video Poker with Bob Dancer