Page 24 - March 2010 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
MIt’s Not the Same
ost video poker players enjoy recalling their best winning streaks. Including me, of course. I wrote a book about mine.
Remember that time when you got three royals in one day? Or perhaps four sets of aces-with-a-kicker in one weekend? Or maybe ten four-of-a-kinds in two hours? Pretty heady stu . Lots of fun.
As a video poker writer, people frequently send me questions. I’ve received dozens of e-mails in the above situations saying something like, “What are the odds against this happening?” Players are delighted. And they want to know if they have broken any records!
Now take the reverse side of the coin. Remember those days when your machine forgot what a straight or higher even
smelled like? Whatever
I’ve concluded that players are willing to accept an average gambling experience today, or even slightly worse than average, without complaint. ey know that gambling is an up-and-down experience and they take the bad with the good. As long as it isn’t too bad.
And they’re certainly willing to accept a much better than average result. But a much worse than average result is unacceptable. e damn casino must be
cheating again! Remember the bell-
if I were like that. I sort of take a “don’t sweat the small stu ” attitude, and players ask me how it’s possible to do that. e honest answer is, I don’t know. Maybe you have to be born that way.
money you placed in the machine was gobbled up immediately, and somehow the machine reached into your wallet and extracted a few more bills to boot. We’ve all had these days.
I’ve received dozens of e-mails about these
“Learning to lose is a big part of your survival as a gambler.
shaped curve you learned
about back in math class
years ago? at applies
to your gambling results,
too. For whatever reason,
players are only willing
to put up with the upper
three-quarters of the
curve. e lower quar-
ter (where the biggest
losses occur) they want A number of people believe themselves to be truly to tear up and make it unlucky. And, of course, some are! It’s a mathematical
Assuming you’re playing in a jurisdiction where IGT and other name-brand machines
are found, the games are fair.
Over the course of years, you
Learning to lose is a big part of your survival as a gambler. Assuming you’re playing in a jurisdiction where IGT and other name-brand machines are found, the games are fair. Over the course of years, you pretty much get the results you deserve. For the vast majority of people, the decisions they make on which machines to play and how accurately they play them add up fairly.
Except now the players
kinds of cases, too. pretty much get the results
tautology that one out of twenty players is in the “unluckiest ve percent.” But far more than that number think they are in this group simply because they react to their losing sessions with much stronger emotion
than they react to their winning sessions.
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.
don’t want to know
if they’ve broken any
records. Now they want
to know if they’ve been cheated! Now I get, “Other than changing the pay schedule, is there any way a casino can tighten a machine? Because last weekend I was at the ABC casino and it seemed the machines just weren’t fair.”
I have never received an e-mail saying, “I hit two royals yesterday. Is it possible for a casino to intentionally loosen a machine other than by changing the pay schedule?” Players never consider this possibility because, I suppose, it wouldn’t make any sense for a casino to do it.
go away. To make it dis- appear, they try things like changing machines,
changing games, moving up or down in stakes, swear- ing o gambling for awhile, or just plain complaining about it. All of these techniques do nothing, of course, to eliminate the lower quarter of the bell curve—which is un-eliminatable.
So what do you do about it? To me it’s obvious. You simply learn to live with it. How do you do that? at’s di erent for everyone. ere are people who live
and die with every hand. Gambling in those situations would seem to me to be an exhausting experience. I don’t think I could be a successful professional gambler
youdeserve.”
Page 24
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
March 2010
Video Poker with Bob Dancer