Page 24 - January 2010 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
AOMaximumLoss
ne casino requires $150,000 a month of play, or a $10,000 loss, to earn their top mailer. Let’s assume that the game plus the players club adds up to about 100% even, and you gure the monthly mailer is worth about $500. is makes the play worth
0.333% ($500 / $150,000 = 0.00333 = 0.333%). While this is not a great play, assume it makes your cut.
Let’s assume you can play the game in question in $1, $5, $10, or $25 denominations and your personal bankroll is su cient for any of these. Which is the best denomination to play? e answer, by far, is to play for $25 because those are the stakes for which a $10,000 loss
is most likely. Being down 400 credits (400 * $25 = $10,000) is not that rare. If you played for $5, it would require your being 2,000 credits (2,000 * $5 = $10,000) in the hole to reach the $10,000 threshold. at is much more di cult.
One thing that is hard for many players to understand is that
reaching the $10,000
loss limit is a desirable
lossesthatarecappedat$10,000.Ifyourlossesare capped and your wins are unlimited, this will likely turn into at least a half-percent promotion. For a $25 player, that’s a relatively large advantage. Plus it doesn’t take you long to play your monthly quota. If you win, it’ll take you less than two hours. If you lose, it’ll take you less than that. Please note that you should stop as soon as you reach minus $10,000. There is no
goal! And it’s generous for the casino to provide us this “out.” If you lose the $10,000 after only $50,000 of coin in, this becomes a 1% promotion because you still get the $500 mailer. A 1% promotion is much better than a
0.333% promotion.
Of course, you don’t
want to lose that much. It’s appropriate to play as well as you can and hope you do well. But if you do lose that much, your play for this month is over. You are not required to play anymore.
“I understand that many of my readers play for
day scores as one long session, and realize that over time they will very likely have average results for the game/players club/promotion they are playing. Players who obsess about wins and losses on a par- ticular day may have difficulty understanding this. A $10,000 loss can look very large to them and is to be avoided at all costs. This is very shortsighted, in my opinion.
I understand that many of my readers play for smaller stakes. Okay. No problem. On occasion there have been other promotions with loss limits built in. When you find one suitably sized for the stakes that you play, you should treat it as a good deal for you and worth money in the bank.
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 his new book, Video Poker for the Intelligent Beginner, 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. Pacific Time.
Sometimes you’ll
hit a $100,000 royal
or various other big
hands. You get to keep all of that. It’s just your
can psychologically treat their day-after-day-after-
smaller stakes. Okay. No problem. On occasion there have been other promotions with loss limits built in. When you find one suitably sized for the stakes that you play, you should treat it as a good deal for you and worth money in the
bank.”
incentive to continue. Larger losses don’t buy you a bigger mailer and getting some of your money back means you just have to keep playing.
This is a relatively easy lesson to under- stand for players who
Page 24
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
January 2010
Video Poker with Bob Dancer