Page 24 - June 2011 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
GOambling Versus Time of Day
n a recent cruise, we left Miami on a Saturday (Eastern time zone), and our rst port of call
was Costa Maya, Mexico (Central time zone) on Monday. Sure enough, to make sure that “ship time” matched the time on land, in our “Freestyle Daily” newsletter for Sunday, it told us to move our clocks and watches back one hour before we went to bed Sunday night. Most of us gured out that we would be told to move our clocks the other way ursday night, after we had
returned from our nal port of call.
We could, of course, have been instructed to leave our clocks alone until Friday night and make the adjustment then. is only a ected what time it is on Friday aboard ship, and since everybody else on the ship would be on the same time, it’s no big deal. If you’re going to eat dinner at 6 o’clock, and everybody on the ship agrees when 6 o’clock really is, there is no problem. e only time a problem would occur is if half the ship is on Eastern time and the other half is on Central time. In that case, there’s a possibility of being an hour late for dinner. e big advantage of making the switch ursday night
was 7 a.m. Period. Everybody was pretending the same thing—and most didn’t even realize they were pretending.
So how does this relate to gambling? I’m glad you asked. It relates to bankroll—which is what we call the amount of our total wealth that is reserved for gambling.
Almost none of us keep track of our gambling score lifetime-to-date. I keep records on Excel and know my score year-to-date (i.e., since midnight New Year’s Eve), but I certainly don’t add it to my ending score in 2010, 2009, 2008...1973, 1972, which is how long I’ve been gambling professionally. (For some of the early years, I don’t even have records. It took me a while to learn the
got out of bed this morning. People will be delighted if they are $300 ahead or depressed if they are $300 behind, but for most of us, this really shouldn’t matter.
Let’s say your total bankroll, however you de ne it, is $52,583. You win or lose $300 today. Does that change anything relevant? I don’t think so. Whatever gambling opportunities you could a ord yesterday, you can still a ord today. And yet people have large emotional swings over this meaningless number. (To be sure, winning or losing $40,000 on that size bankroll would be meaningful. For this article I’m assuming you’re betting small relative to your bankroll size.)
e amount you are up or down today is as meaningless as whether the entire ship is on Central time or Eastern time. It is easier to start from zero every day. But useless.
Let me phrase it di erently.
Two people have bankrolls of $10,000 and $80,000 respectively. e rstpersonwins$300today. esecond person loses $300. Who’s better o bankroll-wise?
With this example, it should be easy to see that the size of your bankroll when you went to bed last night is far more important that the size of the change of your bankroll since you got up this morning.
Listen to Bob’s radio show Gambling With An Edge, on Thursday evenings 7 to 8 p.m. Pacific Time on radio station 1230 AM in Las Vegas online at klav1230am.com. Dancer’s products may be ordered at bobdancer.com or at 1-800-244-2224 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time.
instead of Friday night is 24 hours to adjust to what the time will be when they disembark. When you’re trying to catch a plane, it is very useful to know what time it is.
that travelers have an extra
To be absolutely correct
and match up with the
outside world, we probably
shouldn’t have changed
our clocks until mid-day
Friday—which is when we
crossed the actual line that
Eastern time. But this would be way too confusing. We avoided this by pretending to be in the Eastern time zone on Friday morning even though we really weren’t.
Far more important is my
“People will be delighted
if they are $300 ahead or
value of keeping records.) Even if I had this number at my ngertips, it wouldn’t
be particularly useful— other than perhaps for
depressediftheyare$300 ego-stroking purposes.
behind,butformostofus,this total current bankroll— which includes all of the
really shouldn’t matter.”
separates Central time from
At the 7 a.m. exercise class (never a well-attended event), no smart instructor would tell the class that it was really 6 a.m. according to the outside world. Aboard ship it
winnings noted above, but also has been a ected by various expenses along the
way. (I was a big winner at gambling in 2008, for example, but the stock market debacle more than erased whatever I won in casinos that year. ere have been other years where I was a small winner in the casinos, but a big winner in the stock market.)
For most people, however, the important number seems to be how much they are up or down since they
PAGE 24
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
June 2011