Page 24 - November 2010 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
WIt’s Not the Same
hen it comes to driving a car, Shirley thinks I drive like an old lady, and I know she drives like a maniac!
Our automobile insurance is with Allstate. (Please—I am not interested in this article generating either sales pitches or testimonials that we change insurance companies or the amount of insurance that we own. is article is actually about video poker, but I need to provide a bit of context before I get there.) Allstate has a four di erent of coverage levels, from
“Value,” which is the cheapest, to “Premier,” which is the most expensive. Each coverage level comes with a di erent package of bene ts in addition to the coverage itself.
Shirley and I were debating between which of the top two levels we were going to buy. e basic di erence between these levels was the number of tickets and accidents we could have without risking our policy being cancelled. e most expensive policy would forgive us for three such incidents in a ve-year period, whereas the second-most expensive policy would only forgive one such incident.
Although we are both reasonably safe drivers (I suppose most people believe this to be true about themselves), there have been some tickets and minor accidents in our past. I suggested that the best predictor of the number of accidents and tickets we get in the future was the number we have received in the past.Someonewhohasneverhadaticketoraccident is very likely a safer driver than someone who has had several of these. Yes, there is a luck factor with respect to “getting caught” when we’ve been speeding or barely escaping an accident versus barely clipping the other car, but all in all using the past as an indicator of the future is probably the smartest bet.
“Aha!” responded Shirley. “I’ve heard you say numerous times in your video poker classes that the results of the past half hour aren’t relevant in deciding how good a game or machine is. You tell your students that you shouldn’t use the past to predict the future. Now you’re saying the opposite when it comes to automobile insurance! Aren’t you being a hypocrite?”
No, I’m not. e situations are not the same. And this point is the entire reason for this article.
In video poker in Nevada we have a 52-card deck dealt randomly—forgetting for now about the few games with jokers or other special cards that use more
than 52 cards. e mathematics of such a 52-card deck is well known. Using “Video Poker for Winners” or other software, we can easily determine the total return on the game and how to play each hand.
For a case with such easily obtainable information on what the return on a game will be in the long run, using this information is far superior to using actual experience. For many of us, our experience is dominated by short-term swings. I strongly believe that whether a machine is better-than-average or worse-than-average over the past half hour tells us nothing about what’s going to happen over the next half hour.
Driving a car is di erent. ere is no solid mathematical model that explains how many accidents or tickets I’m going to get in the next ten years. Insurance companies have statistics that predict how many accidents this group of 10,000 people will have, but we don’t know at the outset whether Bob and Shirley Dancer will have better-than-average results or worse-than-average results. We are looking for better predictors than merely assuming we are average. And the best predictor I know of is what has happened in the past.
Another di erence between these situations is the number of events. In video poker, many of us will play hundreds of thousands or even millions of hands in the relatively near future. is is enough separate events to get “reasonably close” to the long term. (Exactly how close is a discussion for another day.)
When it comes to driving, Shirley and I are both in our sixties and have, perhaps, twenty years or so of driving ahead of us. Likely our driving skills will
gradually diminish over time as eyesight, coordination, and other physical and mental attributes deteriorate. at’s a fact of life that a ects us all. If we drive slower
tocompensate,willthismakeussaferdriversorless safe? I’ll let others debate that one.
If there was a good model of what our driving results were going to be in the future, I’d consider using that model rather than experience. But I know of no such model, so I’ll use experience to guide my way.
is is a very di erent situation than what I nd in video poker, which explains why my actions are di erent.
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 the software “Video Poker for Winners,” 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.
Page 24
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
November 2010
Video Poker with Bob Dancer