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Best of John Grochowski
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Gaming Guru
Pro video poker and great luck23 August 2015
The money today is made on free play, point multipliers, other casino promotions, progressives, drawings and tournaments. Every professional has his or her own formula, but I think the basic ingredients are the same for most, if not all, successful players. I certainly agree it is getting harder to make a living at video poker, although I had my best year last year and am on track to do almost as well this year. Constant adaptation is required. The biggest change since when I started is that more casinos are looking at strong video poker players the way they regard advantage blackjack players. The only difference is that instead of prohibiting you from playing (although this happened to me at one small locals casino in Las Vegas), they cut off your mail offers, which are what makes the less-than-100% games profitable. ANSWER: I appreciate the above input from a Las Vegas-based professional gambler who blogs at vegasoffthestrip.blogspot.com. Turning comps, promotions and direct-mail offers into profit is possible – my longtime friend Jean Scott, “The Frugal Gambler,” has made a career out of it. However, it does take a good deal of work and discipline, sorting out comp rates, strength of promotions, direct mail offers per amount of play and other factors at each casino. Not all casinos and not all jurisdictions offer generous enough returns through their player rewards and marketing programs to overcome the house edge on machines that pay less than 100% with expert play. Some casinos even drastically reduce rewards on games close to 100%. And while Las Vegas still has many games in the 99%-plus range, in some areas of the country we’re seeing 97 to 98 percenters as the “good” games. It’s extremely difficult to overcome that through rewards and promotions. That’s something the player with profit-making decisions has to explore and track: Are the total marketing offers resulting in play on a particular game at a particular casino generous enough to turn a 99% game into one that returns 100%-plus? Attempting to do this professionally remains something I don’t recommend to the vast majority of players. QUESTION: My sister-in-law always seems to win on the slots. Last week, she won a $20,000 jackpot, and she had jackpots of $5,000 and $8,000 last month. She said she had 14 jackpots last year that were over the tax form amount. She said she doesn’t know how she does it, she’s just lucky. What do you think? ANSWER: I think she probably plays a lot on high-denomination machines, most likely three-reel games. A larger percentage of your overall return is concentrated into bigger pays on three-reel games than on video slots. Jackpots above the $1,200 level that triggers a form W-2G are a lot more common on $5 games than on penny slots. However, long losing streaks between jackpots are also part of the norm, and you can have large losses overall despite having a number of big payoffs. I’d urge caution, and hope that your sister-in-law is not overbetting her bankroll. This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net. Recent Articles
Best of John Grochowski
John Grochowski |
John Grochowski |