Question on big payouts in bars.

[mulleon]

The key to it is playing a game with a positive expectation and playing perfectly all the time. Then you should win over a several year period.

I try to play perfectly, but I make a few mistakes. Trying to get it perfect. Occasionally I have a couple of drinks and I'm sure that leads to a few more mistakes, but that's usually at the bar for Quarters at max coins. I wouldn't dare play a multiline or higher denomination while drinking it would probably wreak havoc on my bankroll. I'm there to have a good time it's not my job.

[notes1]

why so angry, i just asked a question?

[Vman96]

so, if one plays a postive expectation game, over the long run, they are guaranteed to win? 

No, but depending on what you play, how well you play it, and how long you play it, you can be near 100% certain you'll be ahead. Mainly your best bet of a standard VP game you'll be ahead on lifetime with high probability is full pay deuces. But even after 1,000,000 hands (2000 hours for a 500 hand/hr player), you probably are only about 90% likely to be ahead (a rough estimate, my computer doesn't like 1M hand sims.). This is why people like Bob depend on promos and other things. They can get a bigger edge and get more "coin-in" for their play. But the more you play a positive game, the more likely you'll get ahead. That is guaranteed by the "Central Limit Theorem".

And if you play a negative game, an overall losing outcome becomes more and more likely the more you play it. But after a million hands, a few people would still be ahead at 9/6 DDB (1.02% house advantage), there is still enough variance to let that happen.

[DaBurglar]

Vman.......excellent post.    often you swoop in during heated discussions and quell the flames with sound, simple logic combined with simply knowing what the Flip you are talking about......well done.A word about this ongoing emphasis of Bankroll management and size and all that.........in my opinion this is one of those incredibly obvious tenets that many people overlook simply because  COGNITIVE DISSONANCE is as much a part of human nature as lying, self preservation and love of sweet sugary foods!Is there anyone here who really does not understand the importance of Bankroll management, the roll that playing within one's budget plays to long term survival (never mind success/profit for the moment, just "SURVIVAL"?)       Come on......we all know this, and we all know that having a LARGE bankroll, juxtaposed with the appropriate betting level or denomination of credit is central to this "LONG TERM SUCCESS"  billyryan keeps talking about.      That much is obvious........but I linked the concept of cognitive dissonance within this post because, again, HUMAN NATURE being what it is, many otherwise smart intelligent people are somehow able to delude themselves or stick their heads in the sand when it comes to properly managing a bankroll, playing within their budget and means and maintaining  SOUND, solid strategy in the face of the inevitable negative runs (or downturns) that occur through variance within their game(s) of choice that tend to have potentially POSITIVE long term returns if properly played and managed (whether it is Black jack,  Video poker, CRAPS, or that oft-forgotten other potentially good game to play for people with large bankrolls........BACCARAT!)

[billryan]

Does CAPIALIZING certain WORDS make them SPECial?
If only half the word is CAPITALIZED, should WE pay half as much ATTENTION?
   In twenty years, I've never met a professional baccarat player and the few professional craps players I know are pretty much cheats. Unless one wants to believe dice control is something an average person can master, which I'm highly dubious of. I see you left poker off your list.

[billryan]

Vman96,
I'm more familiar with the Law of Large Numbers, but they seem to be close enough to the same thing.

[jsm2016]

So it seems then, from reading the many comments here, that there is a substantial risk of coming out behind on my--gulp--favorite game: deuces wild. As one poster put it, there is a 10% chance of a net loss over 2000 hours X 500 hands per hour of play. If one considers a "gambling day" 5 hours of play, that's 400 gambling days. At four gambling days per month, that's 100 months or more than 8 years! And even after, there's a one-in-ten chance of losing? What's the secret?

[billryan]

The secret is just what Mr Dancer preaches and some people scoff at.
After a million hands,you will have accumulated cash back, free play, perhaps some tournament invites, free meals and goodies.
If you can play much of the time on double or bonus point days, that will add up even more.
The ten percent figure seems high,to me, but keep in mind you might be down a dollar.
Cycle $1,250,000 through the game and reap the rewards.

[Vman96]

The ten percent figure seems high,to me, but keep in mind you might be down a dollar.
Cycle $1,250,000 through the game and reap the rewards.

I just did a quick back of the envelope calculation with a spreadsheet. And I did it so quickly it was off (I actually did $1M coin-in on accident for expected profit step, not $1.25M).

This is what I did...this time with more particular details.

Probability of a Royal in FPDW: 1 in 45,282
Number of expected Royals in 1M hands: 22.084 royals
Expected profit after 1M hands: 0.76% x $1.25M = $9,500
So if you are 10 Royals in the hole, you're likely behind.
Probability of 12 Royals or less after 1M hands (binomial theorem on a spreadsheet): 1.45%

So yeah, I was off for being careless. But the unluckiest will still be in the hole after a million hands. But if you do the same type of calculation for 2M, 3M, 4M hands, etc., the percentage will keep getting smaller.

[olds442jetaway]

Thanks for the updated calculations VMAN. That fully explains what I knew all along without the exact percentages. As posted many times over the last couple of years, I have gone over 1m hands and only landed 2 or 3 Royals. That was not all on Deuces Wild, but those stats are all from single line games with an average payback with free play of 99.4% That comes from averaging the 98.91 deuces wild play with the 99.54 job play and also adding in about .3% free play. Well that just about explains how playing the best games available and with nearly perfect strategy can easily translate into a 50k loss which is exactly what happened.
     Unfortunately, I am on another bad roll again this year. The year started out OK, but now I am up to 225k single line hands without a Royal. I am posting this for any of those who think by playing a positive expectation game or nearly so can be guaranteed a win in any given year or at least within a couple of years. I am hoping to be on the right side of the rain cloud at some point, but who knows. Long term is longer than all but what the most knowledgeable math folks will grasp. There of course will be those that are on the other side of the curve and probably can eek out a couple of percent positive by the end of a gaming year. If I didn't see Royals happening all around me including my Mrs. who hits them right about on schedule, I would quit my play at this casino entirely, but I am 99% sure it is not the casino playing games and it is just my bad luck.