Page 26 - April 2013 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
NSo Excuse
hirley and I attended a Harrah’s Seven Star Event in Atlantic City a while ago. ey provided travel money, food money, gift cards, and various events to make the weekend interesting, and on ursday they gave us a game in which we had a small edge.
We received 7x points for the day, up to a maximum of 12,500 points, which means $125,000 coin-in on most video poker machines. You can use your points for comps (which make them worth 0.70% if you accept at face value the comp prices) or you can sell them back to the casino for free play (which is always worth at least
50% of the comp rate, sometimes more. At the 50% rate, the 7x points were worth 0.35%).
In addition, for every $15,000 coin-in, we got a $25 gift card. is is worth 0.17% at face value. We gured the gift cards could be used at the Pier Shops at Caesars, which included an Apple Store. Happily, it turned out that the gift cards were actually Mastercards which are good anywhere. We gured that these Mastercards are worth face value.
e best game I found where you could play $125,000 in a reasonably short period of time was $5 9/6 Jacks or Better at Caesars. It takes 6 or 7 hours to play that much on these $5 machines. ere were lots of Seven Star players club level folks in for the weekend, and there were only ve of these machines that I saw. I heard there were a few of these machines at Harrah’s, and none at Bally’s or Showboat. Perhaps I heard wrong, but at any rate there were not many of them. I would have preferred a $10 game, but I could not nd any with that pay schedule.
Much of the time that I played, there were other players from Vegas there as well. “Ron” and “Mary” have attended my classes and have been playing on at least a semi-professional basis for a number of years. Most of their gambling years end up positive, but if they don’t, it’s not a disaster. ey’re retired and have a nest egg — so if they don’t win every year they can still live comfortably. But by playing video poker well, they get to stay in really nice suites, have gourmet meals, qualify for cruises, etc.,
that they would not normally be able to a ord. A lot of us think this is a pretty nice lifestyle.
At one point, I hit a straight ush, which is a $1,250 hand-pay on these machines. e casino was busier than usual and it took several minutes for me to be paid. I was idly watching Mary play while I waited.
She was dealt A♥ K♥ T♥ 3♥ J♣. She held ‘AKT’ rather than the correct ‘AKT3’. I called out “hold all four hearts,” but she wasn’t even sure I was talking to her. She made her play, hit the button, and then turned around and asked,“Did I mess that up?”
is is not a major error. For a $5 player the mistake is worth 18.5¢ and only comes up every 4,500 hands. It’s one of the penalty card situations in 9/6 Jacks or Better. If you’re not familiar with these, in Video Poker for Winners, from 9/6 Jacks or Better, click on analyze → strategy
→ show report and you’ll see the short list of all of them. e penalty cards in 9/6 Jacks or Better are both few in number and relatively simple. ere are many recreational players who either don’t care enough to learn them, or aren’t smart enough to learn them, but Mary isn’t a recreational player at all. Ron and Mary probably play 1,500 hours a year, frequently for stakes higher than $5 per coin, and
they’ve played 9/6 Jacks or Better thousands of hours. ere’s simply no excuse for her mistake.
Talking with Ron and Mary later over lunch, Mary
embarrassedly confessed that she hadn’t studied video poker in a while. She also stated that she would not have thought to study 9/6 Jacks or Better again because it’s such an easy game and they’ve played it so much. I asked them about some of the other penalty card situations in the game and they weren’t clear on them either.
Not knowing a few penalty cards is one thing, but I then asked them questions about some hands that had nothing to do with penalty cards, such as A♦ K♦ J♣ 9♣ 8♣.
Mary guessed the diamonds and Ron (correctly) guessed the clubs. But he wasn’t sure. Playing A♦ K♦ would be a $1.40 error for a $5 player. Recreational players make bigger mistakes than this all of the time. But Ron and Mary think of themselves as video poker professionals. I thought so too.
ere are players, even pretty good ones, who are philosophically opposed to learning penalty cards. ey have bought into the argument that they are too hard to learn and not worth very much. e late Skip Hughes and I used to argue publicly over this, with Skip taking the
“Penalty cards are not worth messing with” position. Whichever side you take in this argument, however, if you’re someone who’s playing for meaningful money, you need to review strategies and practice periodically.
Memories aren’t perfect, and when people switch from game to game to game, the ne points of each game are easily confused.
Whenever people ask me how come I’m so lucky at video poker, I tell them that I teach others to play, and I study a lot in order to nd things to teach and write about. Hard work is the “secret” key to my being lucky. It’s a key that can work for others as well.
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.
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PAGE 26
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
APRIL 2013