Page 24 - December 2010 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
PIriming Your Play
am currently reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It discusses being able to think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant—in the blink of an eye—that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. I read a variety of books looking for an edge at video
poker. In this book I think I found one I can share with you.
I should warn at the outset that I’m extrapolating from an experiment that had nothing to do with video poker. It was done by psychologists, and I’ve only had four classes in that subject in my life. Still, if I’m correct in my interpretation, it’s a fairly easy way to improve our video poker results. And if I’m wrong, it’s likely I’ve done no harm. ose are odds I like.
Two Dutch researchers, Ap Dijksterhuis and Ad van Knipperberg, performed an experiment where they asked two groups of people 40 tough Trivial Pursuit questions. Before the rst group tried to answer the questions, they were asked to think about what it would mean to be a professor and told to spend ve minutes writing down everything that came to mind. ey then tried to answer the Trivial Pursuit questions and scored 55.6% on the test.
Before the second group tried to answer the same Trivial Pursuit questions, they were asked to think about being soccer hooligans for ve minutes. (Perhaps the Dutch students who were being tested were more
familiar with soccer hooligans than I am.) At any rate, this second group scored 42.6% on the Trivial Pursuit test.
is is a very signi cant di erence in results. e groups were identical to each, except the rst group was in a “smart” frame of mind, à la being a professor, and the second group was in a “rowdy” frame of mind.
So how does this relate to video poker?
If we practice advanced plays immediately before we go and play video poker, we will be in a serious frame of mind when we actually reach the casino. For me this means practicing penalty card situations and close plays, although I don’t think this is a critical part of the phenomenon. As I understand it, this e ect comes from getting your mind in the “serious video poker player” mode, which for most players means reviewing the strategy they usually use. ( e extra knowledge that comes from knowing penalty cards is something di erent altogether.)
If you’re like me, at least occasionally when I practice, I come across an obscure hand that I didn’t quite remember. And at least some of the time, hands I became extra sure of, go ahead and occur in this particular session. Knowing this might happen gives me extra con dence.
If you show up without having practiced recently, you are in a very di erent frame of mind. You may be fairly con dent that you know the strategy to this particular game, but not nearly as con dent as you would be if you’d practiced the di cult hands.
I’ve regularly argued that additional practice is a good thing. Now I’m using some research by some Dutch psychologists I’d never heard of before (and probably you haven’t either) to bolster what I’ve believed all along. Does that make my argument more persuasive? I can’t answer that for you. But for me this is something new.
What I learned from reading this book is a new reason for studying. I previously considered the primary reason for studying is the accumulation of knowledge. Clearly in video poker, the accumulation of knowledge about how to play the hands is a good thing. (You may argue the price to obtain this knowledge is higher than the knowledge is worth, but there’s no denying the knowledge is valuable.) e Trivial Pursuit experiment suggests that studying the tough hands just before playing changes your unconscious mind-set in a bene cial way. And this bene t is in addition to the accumulation of knowledge.
To be sure, this is merely a theory. Hypothesizing that the Trivial Pursuit experiment would yield similar results when applied to video poker is currently unproven—and likely not going to be tested in the near future.
With this uncertainty in mind, consider the possible gains if the theory is correct (both in actual knowledge and in mind-set) versus the possible losses
if the theory is wrong (you’ve wasted a bit of time.) To me there’s no contest. e possible (probable?) gain clearly outweighs the possible loss.
Of course, I enjoy studying video poker so the possible loss on the deal is essentially zero. ere is always an opportunity cost—which is how much I could have earned doing something else rather than studying. Economists always assume that since you’re giving up money-making opportunities, you’re giving up something tangible. I don’t believe it is additive. It’s possible that spending time studying—or watching a football game—actually stimulates the mind and allows for more asset accumulation in the long run. Even if I don’t extract any extra gain from the improved mind-set, I’ve spent a pleasant hour or so reviewing the tricky hands. Who knows? I might even get an article out of it!
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
December 2010
Video Poker with Bob Dancer