2017 VP Results - Not Great!

[onemoretry]

I have gone over and over my results for 2017. It does not matter how I look at them, by trip, by casino, by denomination, or whatever, the bottom line is, on total play of about $0.98 million, I was down about $9500 at the machines themselves. Cashback and MSS scratch cards totalled about $1500, reducing the deficit to $8000.

That amount of coining produced around 1,017,140 total hands. I had 33 royal flushes, which averages to one per 30800 total hands played. One would think that the better than average royal success would translate to a wining year, but that was certainly not so.

I played four denominations, 5c, 25c, 50c, and$1.

The 5c play was all at Harrah's Laughlin on 50 line machines (deuces wild bonus at 98.8% return). Total coinin was $111450, which produced 445800 hands, and 17 royal flushes (1 per 26200 hands). I was ahead $2150 here.


My 25c play was at many locations - Harrah's Laughlin and Lake Tahoe, Main Street Station, Gold Coast, The Cromwell, the M, Aquarius, Casino Rama, and a tiny,tiny bit at several Caesar's strip properties. The bulk of the play was multiline. Total play was $577000, which produced 461600 hands and 12 royals (1 per 38470 hands). Despite the good royal count, I was down $7700 at the 25c level. At 25c I played 8/5 bonus poker, 9/6 JOB, NSU deuces, "airport" deuces and 8/5 ACE$ bonus.

The 50c play was all 8/5 bonus poker at Seneca Niagara. Total play was $261800, producing 104720 hands and 4 royal flushes (1 per 26180 hands). But again, despite a decent number of royals, i had a negative result, this time $2300.

The $1 play was minimal - about 5300 hands ($26500 coining) of single line 8/5 bonus poker at the Rio, which produced a $1600 loss.

So far this year, I'm up $50 at Casino Rama, and $200 at Seneca Niagara, but down $500 at Laughlin. A two week Las Vegas trip starts next week.

[Tedlark]

OMT it's interesting that your Las Vegas results were less than stellar especially considering it took up over 61% of your play. Do you know what your "boat anchor" game in Las Vegas was? My easy guess would be ACES$ Bonus. Would you consider substituting DDB for ACES$ Bonus in Las Vegas?

Best of luck to you and your wife on your upcoming trip.

[DaBurglar]

OMT....first off I sincerely applaud your detailed record keeping and your meticulous analysis... excellent job. If only I still did this as well, my AC arguments might hold more weight, but I used to do what you did, every year from 1993 thru 2010...

After looking at your figures though, I'm not certain what's happening here.... I can understand you being disappointed by having a year end Net Loss, but I don't think your results were all that bad considering how VP has been the last decade....

Doing a straight simple return %, we see you gambled just under one million bucks (980,000) and had a machine loss of 9500, so that means 970,500 bucks was returned to you for a return of 99%. Well see, that's spot on for the best games available, which you choose, so in essence you got exactly what you should!   I myself would have been ecstatic with 99% returns any of the last five years I seriously played (2011 to 2016)...

The troubling aspect of your numbers which you clearly touched upon is the fact you lost money while being significantly Over Royalled! Obviously for this to happen, you had more than the mathematically expected rate of "duds" (non paying) hands, which should comprise 55% of your total hands played. You must have been well over 55% to be down 9500 while getting a royal on average every 30-31,000 hands instead of every 44-45,000 like expected!

This has been the bane of my AC playing from 2011 to 2016.... I have had far too many duds, way beyond the 55% threshold during that entire period which prompted me to suspect something was off with the casinos and VP games. In your case though, it's obvious you just had a mathematically aberrational year, with a year end result that isn't all that poor...

Again, great post.

[billryan]

Did you get free flights? Rooms? Meals?
Sounds like you got a few free vacations, which considering some of the poor games you played,isn't a bad thing.
Your cashback/ mailings seem pretty light.

[DaBurglar]

Did you get free flights? Rooms? Meals?
Sounds like you got a few free vacations, which considering some of the poor games you played,isn't a bad thing.
Your cashback/ mailings seem pretty light.

That's another thing.... earning a 99% return also is accompanied by the stuff you earned via the players cards you used while churning your $980K thru...

Think what you want but I believe you had a GREAT year! Congratulations!

[DAAnMAAn]

Tough to glean anything from the analysis. The denominations are all over the place which seems to greatly complicates it. Only thing I can add is it seems like simple variance is the culprit. Next year you may be 8k up.

[olds442jetaway]

I would call those results fantastic. Wish you continued success and fun. Glad you are not in my shoes. My very conservative estimate 2m coin in and 80k loss. For 2018 I have completely changed the way I'm playing. No hand pays so far. The 50 hand pays last year didn't help a bit and in fact are going to cost me another 9k in state of Ct taxes shortly. My Royals I can count on one hand and the quad deuuces were about on schedule. Since my average paytable worked out to be 98.5 return, my results were way way off. The retail value of my free stuff approximates my net loss, but I certainly can't take that to the bank or buy the 2 new cars we need with it. The math will work over infinity, but my example above just reinforces that fact and even millions of hands can still be considered short term results. For those who don't want to bother doing the math. My net loss was around 4 percent.

[BobDancer]

when you gamble for many different denominations, whether as a pro or a recreational player, your play on the highest denomination tends to dominate your results.Getting very lucky on nickel machines doesn't come close to offsetting getting unlucky on dollar machines. If you wish to analyze this further, analyze it by denomination. there you will likely see you were over-royaled on the lower-denomination games. That will change from year to year.Those who noticed that your return was about 99% --- and you were playing games that averaged 99% IF YOU PLAYED CORRECTLY -- are spot on. That's what counts if you're keep score.If you were playing in Tahoe, they have 25c Fifty Play and Hundred Play 9/6 JoB (99.54%). More play on that game and less on the lesser games will lessen your loss rate.Those who suggested that you're equally likely to be ahead $8K next year are being unreasonably optimistic. Yes there is variance from year to year, but you're playing $1 million coin-in on low denomination games. With that much play, your results will be fairly close to average.There are those on this group who say they don't really care about the results --- they care about having fun. Fine. Let them care about that. But your post implies you are angry/frustrated with your results. To fix that you need to play better pay schedules, on days with good promotions, and learn the games with a higher degree of accuracy. Those who say that recreational players don't care about these things are welcome to their opinion. But video poker math is video poker math, whether you're a recreational gambler or a pro.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=BobDancer]when you gamble for many different denominations, whether
as a pro or a recreational player, your play on the highest
denomination tends to dominate your results.[/quote]Lots
of great information.  I find this statement the most
interesting.  If a few of your 17 nickle royals happened
at dollars, you would have easily had a winning year. 
This explains why a player who switches denomination may have a wide range of results depending upon the frequency of higher denomination jackpots. Is there more
or less skill involved in hitting a nickel royal vs. a dollar royal?  If you switch denominations you are playing a game inside of a game.  The first game is VP.  The second game is "musical chairs" with the denominations.  

[DaBurglar]

when you gamble for many different denominations, whether as a pro or a recreational player, your play on the highest denomination tends to dominate your results.Getting very lucky on nickel machines doesn't come close to offsetting getting unlucky on dollar machines. If you wish to analyze this further, analyze it by denomination. there you will likely see you were over-royaled on the lower-denomination games. That will change from year to year.Those who noticed that your return was about 99% --- and you were playing games that averaged 99% IF YOU PLAYED CORRECTLY -- are spot on. That's what counts if you're keep score.If you were playing in Tahoe, they have 25c Fifty Play and Hundred Play 9/6 JoB (99.54%). More play on that game and less on the lesser games will lessen your loss rate.Those who suggested that you're equally likely to be ahead $8K next year are being unreasonably optimistic. Yes there is variance from year to year, but you're playing $1 million coin-in on low denomination games. With that much play, your results will be fairly close to average.There are those on this group who say they don't really care about the results --- they care about having fun. Fine. Let them care about that. But your post implies you are angry/frustrated with your results. To fix that you need to play better pay schedules, on days with good promotions, and learn the games with a higher degree of accuracy. Those who say that recreational players don't care about these things are welcome to their opinion. But video poker math is video poker math, whether you're a recreational gambler or a pro.



A great post with exceptional insight, from B. Dancer, in a great thread... I wish more people would post THESE types of analytical data detailed threads about their video poker play, along with the types of threads VMAN typically posts with awesome descriptive narratives and lots of awesome pics...and then acknowledged experts like B. Dancer can comment like he just did with accurate incisive insight!

Lucky Larry's posts often are nice too when they include pictures and tales of some of his non-vp activity.

Anyway, OMT, listen to what B. Dancer is telling you here...you had a decent year!