Looking for advice

[dallasdad03]

Trying to get Diamond in a day at Caesars Rewards. My choices are drive 6 hours and play $5 1 play 9/5 JoB earning 1 point per $10, or drive 4 hours and play $5 1 play Full Pay TDB earning 1 point per $20.

[seemoreroyals]

I would do the JOB. Just be prepared to kick yourself when the premium hands show up and you only get 125 credits instead of up to 4000. It all depends on how well you deal with variance. With no double credits back for two pairs and only double credits instead of triple credits for three of a kind, TDB lends itself to some expensive dry spells and can be particularly disheartening when played at the $5 level.

[BobDancer]

How big is your bankroll? How big is your stamina? Why are you doing this in one day? Doing it in two days (2,500 tier credits a day) gets you to the same place. Including many hours of driving for either play, you're going to need some sleep somewhere along the way.

Your choice is playing $50,000 at $5 per hand ---which is going to take 10-12 hours at least. Your expected loss is about -$775. (Assuming you play perfectly --- which is not a given. 9/5 JoB is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than 9/6 JoB.)

Playing $100,000 at $5 9/7 TDB requires 4,000 hands of play. Your EV is about -$422, but the variance is sky-high. According to Video Poker for Winners, you will lose at least $20,000 7.71% of the time (which is about 1 chance in 13). Will that be disastrous to you financially or psychologically?

[dallasdad03]

My bankroll is $5000. I dont have to do it in one day could do the two days. I usually play $5 per credit so $25 per hand.

[onemoretry]

My bankroll is $5000.

That looks like a pretty skimpy bankroll for $5 play.

[BobDancer]

My bankroll is $5000.

That looks like a pretty skimpy bankroll for $5 play.

It definitely is VERY skimpy. According to VPW, playing 4,000 hands at $25 per, you will be down $5,000 more than 75% of the time.

For 9/5 JoB, again according to VPW, you have a 0.02% (1 time in 5,000) to lose $5,000 playing 10,000 hands at $5 per.

The size of your bankroll makes the 9/5 JoB option the better play by a mile.

The only remaining question is what advantage do you see getting from having Diamond status that makes it worth taking on losses of this size?

[Player422738]

My bankroll is $5000. I dont have to do it in one day could do the two days. I usually play $5 per credit so $25 per hand.

Even you play on $1 9/6 JoB, $5000 is not enough. I simulated couple of sessions, sometimes only 1 or 2 royals show up per 150000 hands.

The long term edge could be for couple of years. And keep in mind, the gambling loss can't be carried over to the next year like stock investment loss, and you can't deduct your gambling winning with your previous year's loss.

Let's say you lose $8000 this year and you make $10000 next year, you have to pay on the total $10000 for the tax return, not $2000 since the loss can't be carried over. So you may only have $6500 after tax if you have other incomes and in a high tax bracket, and overall you are still $1500 even you may have long term edge. The tax is going to get you down even worse than the casino's house edge.

(I still think investing stocks is way better because the loss can be carried indefinitely, whenever you make profit you can use your accumulated loss to deduct tax.)

[BobDancer]

My bankroll is $5000. I dont have to do it in one day could do the two days. I usually play $5 per credit so $25 per hand.

Even you play on $1 9/6 JoB, $5000 is not enough. I simulated couple of sessions, sometimes only 1 or 2 royals show up per 150000 hands.

I respectively disagree.

Bankroll is not typically figured on "worse case scenario." It's figured on "what will happen 90% of the time, or 99% of the time, or 99.9% of the time, or 99.99% of the time." You get to choose your own level of risk.

Running VPW, 10,000 hands of $1 9/6 JoB (which is what we're talking about here) has a 0% chance of losing $5,000. This doesn't really mean 0. It means less than 0.005% of the time, which would be rounded to 0.01%. That means you'll go broke less than one time in 20,000. Possible, yes. Likely, no.

Insofar as your comparison to investing in the stock market with playing video poker, the tax considerations you point out are true enough (I think. I'm not a tax expert). The games themselves are very different. In video poker, the mathematics of a 52-card deck of cards is well-known. What's going to happen in the stock market is dependent on many things beyond your control. The chances for bad things happening in Iran, Korea, and/or China which will tank our stock market are non-negligible. If someone told me 5%, I wouldn't know if that number is high or low.

We had our own housing crisis 12 years ago where the market plunged 50% in a year or so. Yes it all came back (if you're weren't wiped out in the initial plunge), but it didn't have to.

Betting intelligently at video poker, you don't have swings this big. (I am assuming you're always betting with an edge. Otherwise it's not an investment. It's a donation.)

At a minimum, it's a choice where different people come up with different conclusions. I'm heavily in the market and play millions of dollars a month through video poker machines. For me, gambling is much the less risky bet.

[dallasdad03]

How big is your bankroll? How big is your stamina? Why are you doing this in one day? Doing it in two days (2,500 tier credits a day) gets you to the same place. Including many hours of driving for either play, you're going to need some sleep somewhere along the way.

Your choice is playing $50,000 at $5 per hand ---which is going to take 10-12 hours at least. Your expected loss is about -$775. (Assuming you play perfectly --- which is not a given. 9/5 JoB is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than 9/6 JoB.)

Playing $100,000 at $5 9/7 TDB requires 4,000 hands of play. Your EV is about -$422, but the variance is sky-high. According to Video Poker for Winners, you will lose at least $20,000 7.71% of the time (which is about 1 chance in 13). Will that be disastrous to you financially or psychologically?

I just read a post of yours from 2018 "Are $5 games beatable". I was wondering after reading that if I should wait until I have $100,000 saved to use as my bankroll, before getting serious about playing VP on a regular basis to build tier status with Caesar's Rewards?

You also mentioned playing 200,000 coin in per month, 8000 hands. How frequent did you play in a month?

[BobDancer]

I just read a post of yours from 2018 "Are $5 games beatable". I was wondering after reading that if I should wait until I have $100,000 saved to use as my bankroll, before getting serious about playing VP on a regular basis to build tier status with Caesar's Rewards?

You also mentioned playing 200,000 coin in per month, 8000 hands. How frequent did you play in a month?

There's a HUGE difference between the bankroll you need to play TDB and JoB. Play with the bankroll features on VPW and you'll see. $5,000, though, isn't enough to play $5 machines of any type.

The $200,000 coin-in figure was just an example. That would take me about 20 hours on single line --- far less on Triple Play or Five Play. The coin-in per month affects what your EV is. How many times a month you play, not so much --- other than some casinos reward you on average play per time so playing $200,000 in one day will get you better offers than $200,000 over ten days.

How much is Diamond Status worth to you? There are definitely benefits (free parking in Las Vegas, line passes at WSOP, better mailers) but for some people those benefits are worthless. You're going to have to decide for yourself.