Recreational Player Perspective

[OTABILL]

After reading countless posts on this
forum, it is painfully obvious that there is a disconnect between
professionals, purely recreational players and those somewhere in between. Recreational players have a different mindset  from professional players and amongst  themselves.  We don't view VP as a job or a
money-making endeavor.  Let me try and
provide our (wife and I) perspective. As purely recreational players, our
objective is to go to a casino and have an enjoyable experience. That's why we prefer DDB with a lower paytable then JOB with a
higher one. We might spend more money and have less time at the machines. But
why not do something  we enjoy rather
than something  we find boring.  It's a time to get out of the house and
have some fun together. We budget a certain amount of our discretionary funds
for this purpose. If we exhaust our preset bankroll, so be it just as if we
spent the money  to see a play, go to a
concert or ballgame, play a round of golf, etc.  And yes, we view each visit as an independent
event, just as we would any other night out-on-the town.

Let me use another example. Going fishing
where one might catch dinner might appeal to someone with the perspective that
a recreational activity needs to have a positive financial expectancy.  Professional fisherman obviously need to
recoup their expenditures and make a profit to be successful. But not a sport
fisherman who will probably never recoup the cost of chartering a boat, thus
making it a negative expectancy activity.

Putting it another way, when we go to Las
Vegas on vacation, we could eat at Taco Bell and other fast food eateries for around
 $10 per meal.  Or we can spend  more to dine at a nice restaurant and perhaps even
several hundred dollars to celebrate  a
birthday at Buchon at the Venetian or a similar gourmet  restaurant.  

Please note we are talking about spending money
for entertainment,  not "losing"
funds. Of the activities noted above (dining, concerts, golf, etc.), VP is the
only one where we actually can be paid to have fun. Hope this reflects  the viewpoint of  others on this forum as well.

[Quad Deuces]

There are also non-professionals who only play when they have an edge.I simply do not enjoy playing negative games.I find 9/6 JoB Super-Times Pay perfectly enjoyable at 99.82% + .7% + 10X drawing tickets + hot seat drawing chances like I'll be getting tomorrow after work at the Gold Coast.  I only wish it wasn't capped at $10K coin in or I might just be able to strike the "after work" language.

[FloridaPhil]

I could not agree with you more.  My wife and I are purely recreational players.  We want to win, but that's not our primarily goal when we go to a casino.  We like to gamble on mini-vacations which we try to take at least every 2-3 months or so. We stay in fantastic hotels for free, eat free meals and go to free shows.  Unbelievable as it may seem, we are primarily quarter players.   We have developed strategies that would drive a professional player nuts.  They don't make any mathematical sense, but they add an element of fun to VP that most straight up quarter players never experience.   I have suggested that this forum have a recreational players section.  That would allow us to discuss some of these without ridicule or having someone demean us because we don't subscribe to Bob Dancer's formula.  If I want to lose 10 days in a row to hit a $1,000 single hand, so what?  We've had some  great days (up $14,000 on one trip) and enjoyed every minute of it.  We don't care about the net profit, we care about the net fun.  
 

[jetermacaw]

Hi Phil, as someone new to all this I welcome all strategies that fellow players want to share, feel free to share your knowledge anytime.

[faygo]

When I walk in a Casino, formost in my mind is winning. I appreciate the knowledge highly skilled players impart here.  In no way do I ever feel demeaned by anyone pointing out were I am wrong . That is how we learn.   Regardless of all the perks, if I don't leave with more money then I walked in with, it was a losing trip.  

[Lucky Larry]

Sweet C and I, too, are recreational players. We go for the enjoyment but we also practice to increase our odds of winning and play to win. Winning allows us to have more bank roll to keep doing what we enjoy. While the rooms, meals and gifts are not free (they are comped-but not free) but we consider them part of the joys of life.

[FloridaPhil]

My wife and I love to win also, who doesn't... On the other hand, losing is a big part of gambling. Anyone who says they win all the time is a liar.  Over the years, we have found that using the classic Dancer strategy doesn't work for us.   This is true because Bob's first rule is to never play a negative expectation game.  In our world, positive expectation VP games do not exist (at least I have never seen one) and we don't want to quit playing VP altogether.   We hardly ever vary from his correct hand play strategy, but we commonly change games and/or denominations in mid play.   For example, if you play quarter 8/5 Jacks with perfect strategy, you will be bored to death and once a year or so will see a $1,000 Royal or two.  On the other hand, if you go to the casino tomorrow and start drawing 4-of-a-kinds all morning, it makes sense to switch to DDB after a couple of them.  We've both done this many times and turned a small win into a really nice jackpot.  My wife and I have worked out when to switch games and/or denominations and while it's true we don't win all the time, we make the game a lot more exciting and have walked away with many times more than a Royal when it comes out in our favor.  We are not saying we are long term winners, but we are very happy with what we do. These are the kind of discussions I'm talking about having.

[Lucky Larry]

Phil,
We are with you, for us, as recreational players, its about having fun and the joy of playing. We accept that we lose more times than we win but our bank roll is part of our "entertainment" budget just as we budget/spend money on eating out - which we also enjoy.   

[jim18]

I am posting a response to two topics on different parts of this forum.  Both topics deal with the difference in thinking between experts and recreational players.When I wanted to learn more about video poker I purchased strategy cards and software from Bob Dancer.  That may have been 10 years ago.  I subscribed to “Casino Player” and “Strictly Slots”.  And I still read those magazines.  I am getting my share of expert advice.Today, if I ask a question on this site I might be lucky enough to get a response that I can use.  I do not really care who it comes from, as long as it is good advice.Offsetting that are the negative experiences that I have encountered from experts on this site.  One person told me to read a book called the “Drunkard’s Walk” so that I could understand randomness.  Another person told me to get a degree in mathematics so that I could better understand video poker.  These people might mean well, but I see their suggestions as arrogance on their part.It is my guess that all of the professional gamblers live in Nevada.  Why does this seem to be the case?  The conditions of taxation and choice of games and pay schedules favor people of Nevada, so that is why they play there and strive to be successful at doing so.  The same conditions do not exist where I play at, or where most recreational players play at.As a result the strategies and results will not be the same for both sets of gamblers.Looking at some postings on this topic I see that one frequent poster feels that we like affirmation and not criticism.  OK, I agree with that statement.  However, when I make a posting I am not looking for criticism.  I am looking for help or clarification.  The arrogant experts feel a need to be excessive, so as to set them apart from ordinary people.Another frequent poster feels that this site is already a recreational player site.   He says that the topics here are almost of no interest to professional players.  Lets expand on that.  I am using the terms expert and professional interchangeably, and maybe that is not totally fair.  However, if the experts and professional players find the topics here to be so uninteresting, then why do they have the need to be so responsive to the postings from recreational players?I will spare you the pain of reading my opinion of why these experts feel a need to reaffirm their expert standing in the video poker community.  Still, how is the ordinary player served by the ego stroking and often negative responses of the elitist video poker players?My suggestion is as fellows: Using the IP address of posters as a starting point, put all of the posters who have already posted 1,000 or more postings into a special group.  Just as this site can keep posters who are not gold status from posting in a certain part of the forum, lets keep the experts and processionals boxed in.  My guess is that these people will not be happy with such an arrangement.  Still, we need to isolate the 10 or so professionals/experts for the benefit of the other 300,000 members. 

[OTABILL]

My wife and I love to win also, who doesn't... On the other hand, losing is a big part of gambling. Anyone who says they win all the time is a liar.  In our world, positive expectation VP games do not exist (at least I have never seen one) and we don't want to quit playing VP altogether.   




That's how we feel as well. I am on the forum to learn how
to play better, maximize winnings if possible, and find out the best places to
play locally or elsewhere. The essential point remains that we play for
enjoyment, entertainment and at times to let loose after a stressful
occurrence. All within our discretionary budget. Nobody likes to lose but it is
inevitable from our perspective that we will spend more than we take in. That
is why I like the term spending for entertainment better than losing. I don't
consider it a losing trip if after 2-3 hours or whatever timeframe we are at
the casino if we have spent within our budget for that trip, let's say for
illustration, $400.  Had we gone to an
NBA  game, it may not have cost us more.

I might add that locally, we have not found any positive
expectation DDB VP (unless the progressives are sky-high). We could drive to
Vegas or Laughlin and find better machines. But just to gamble, the cost of
gas, pet sitter, time, etc., even assuming comped rooms and food, would basically
eliminate the difference in paytables.