Can You Keep From Losing?

[FloridaPhil]

In the game of VP, there are short term events and long term results. Short term events are what happens in an hour or a day, a month or even a year. Depending upon how many hands you play, long term is not defined, but it could be in term of millions of hands. A player who only plays VP once a year on vacation or on his/her birthday is always playing short term. The more hands you play, the more consistent your results will be over the long term.

One of the most disturbing things about playing video poker is that you will have far more losing days than winning. Personally, I hate this. Over the years I have worked hard in an attempt to come up with strategies to keep this from happening. How did I do? Terrible...

In reality, there is no way to keep from losing on any given day because it's part of the game. This result can happen if you play positive games, negative games, single coin nickels or $100 a hand. Trying to always walking out of the casino ahead is good for your morale. The problem comes when you walk back in.

If you are going to play VP regularly as a hobby like I do, you are going to have to deal with losing days. This means you must get your mind right and have dedicated funds to work with. Experts call these funds a bankroll. How much bankroll do you need to play quarter VP like I do? I personally think you need access to $5,000 totally dedicated to the game. You won't use it all, but that's the amount I think you should have. In addition, if you are going to play negative games or make mistakes, you will need to add to this bankroll on occasion. Despite the claims, very few players make money long term playing VP. You probably won't.

You will have years where your bankroll may grow. You may have years where it shrinks. The important thing is the long term cost to play the game. In a normal year, I play about 300,000 hands of VP. Most of the games I play are negative. For this reason, I pay mostly quarters. Over my lifetime I have had a lot of hobbies. Boats, fishing, race cars, airplanes, guns and a few more that aren't worth mentioning. Each and every one of those hobbies cost me money. Most of them cost a lot more than playing 300,000 hands of quarter VP. At this stage of my life, I can't race down a drag strip or chase marlin in the Bahamas. VP keeps me occupied and I enjoy my time in the casino. I'm not there to beat the casino, I'm there to have a nice day away from everyday life. When VP stops providing that entertainment and escape, I'll move on to something else.

My point is, you will be better off if you don't try to keep from losing on occasion. Play the best games you can find. Learn to play them as computer perfect as you can. Don't try to trick the game into giving you a big jackpot by switch denominations or inventing a scheme of some kind. If you're losing, avoid moving up in denomination to recoup. I've tried it all and I will tell you the best way to play VP is slow, stable, deliberate and disciplined. It may not be as much fun, but you will do better long term.

[FloridaPhil]

After I wrote the previous post, I thought of some more information I should add. How do you build a $5,000 VP bankroll from scratch?

If you are going to gamble for money, you must have disposable cash. If you don't have money you can afford to lose, don't gamble period. Most small time players play VP out of their wallets. This is not advisable as the swings of VP will have you walking around with an empty wallet too many times. In the beginning this may be unavoidable.

What we did was start out small. We played quarter VP out of our wallets until we hit our first royal. We stashed our $1,000 jackpot in our safe and continued to play as before. Building a bankroll is easy if you devote yourself to saving. Lots of people have a hard time saving money. Saving to build a VP bankroll seems easier because there is a reward and a purpose. We got into the habit of stashing a little extra money into our VP bankroll whenever we had a chance. We continued to play and each royal went in our safe. Eventually, our bankrolls grew large enough to fund most of our play.

The funny thing was, we didn't quit building our bankroll at $5,000 each. One unintended consequence of VP bankroll building is it's addicting. Eventually we found we had over $30,000 in our bankrolls, all from VP play. It wasn't all profit because we added money along the way. With this money, we could both easily switch to dollars. We choose to stay with quarters and keep our money.

It's not hard to build a bankroll if that's your goal and you are dedicated to it. It's essential if you are going to play a lot of VP. The swings won't bother you because you are not using your walk around money to play VP.

[Gronbog]

long term is not defined, but it could be in term of millions of hands.

The second part of your statement is correct but why do you keep saying the part in bold? I've shown how to calculate the long term several times on this forum.

[markinca]

long term is not defined, but it could be in term of millions of hands.

The second part of your statement is correct but why do you keep saying the part in bold? I've shown how to calculate the long term several times on this forum.

You should know by now that Phil doesn't actually read anything anyone says, much less understand it.

[Carcounter]

As I've said before, there is a third category of players who are not AP's, but not recreational players who are resigned to losing in the long or short term. I put myself in that category and I suspect others on the forum are as well. I will not play bad games period.

[Eduardo]

I'm probably more in that 3rd category as well when I plan my vacations, though occasionally I will gladly play a lower pay table if it's all that is available and I have a few minutes to kill. Which means I might have $40 I want to play and catching a cab doesn't make up for the price of a full house. That happens maybe once a year.

Not sure what category that puts me in.

I guess I'd call myself an "informed amateur." I don't play nearly enough to be an AP, or to consider it my "recreational" hobby for more than a couple weekends a year.

[JoB Hero]

I'm probably more in that 3rd category as well when I plan my vacations, though occasionally I will gladly play a lower pay table if it's all that is available and I have a few minutes to kill. Which means I might have $40 I want to play and catching a cab doesn't make up for the price of a full house. That happens maybe once a year.

Not sure what category that puts me in.

I guess I'd call myself an "informed amateur." I don't play nearly enough to be an AP, or to consider it my "recreational" hobby for more than a couple weekends a year.

I agree Eduardo we’re more like educated gamblers. We look at 6:5 black jack and make a sour face or a horrible vp game on quarters and just shake our heads. I personally only play Under 100 hours a year. So when I do I better see 99%+

[OTABILL]

long term is not defined, but it could be in term of millions of hands.

The second part of your statement is correct but why do you keep saying the part in bold? I've shown how to calculate the long term several times on this forum.

You should know by now that Phil doesn't actually read anything anyone says, much less understand it.

As I have posted the long term is not guaranteed. Therefore you cannot define long term for individual. Furthermore, as I also posted, my wife and I made 1 - 1 /12 trips a year to Vegas and Laughlin for 10+ years, played almost exclusively (99%+) single line VP and neither of us hit a rf. And we played between us for hours virtually each day we were there. Now we have health issues that may prevent us from going back to Vegas and even playing locally due to smoke in the areas where VP machines are placed. How do you calculate life events that impact the long term. You can't and that's why calculations are often meaningless. For us, the long term may have ended. Phil, as a senior in that sense, gets it. I submit, you haven't taken into account the uncertainties of life into your calculations.

[billryan]

After I wrote the previous post, I thought of some more information I should add. How do you build a $5,000 VP bankroll from scratch?

If you are going to gamble for money, you must have disposable cash. If you don't have money you can afford to lose, don't gamble period. Most small time players play VP out of their wallets. This is not advisable as the swings of VP will have you walking around with an empty wallet too many times. In the beginning this may be unavoidable.

What we did was start out small. We played quarter VP out of our wallets until we hit our first royal. We stashed our $1,000 jackpot in our safe and continued to play as before. Building a bankroll is easy if you devote yourself to saving. Lots of people have a hard time saving money. Saving to build a VP bankroll seems easier because there is a reward and a purpose. We got into the habit of stashing a little extra money into our VP bankroll whenever we had a chance. We continued to play and each royal went in our safe. Eventually, our bankrolls grew large enough to fund most of our play.

The funny thing was, we didn't quit building our bankroll at $5,000 each. One unintended consequence of VP bankroll building is it's addicting. Eventually we found we had over $30,000 in our bankrolls, all from VP play. It wasn't all profit because we added money along the way. With this money, we could both easily switch to dollars. We choose to stay with quarters and keep our money.

It's not hard to build a bankroll if that's your goal and you are dedicated to it. It's essential if you are going to play a lot of VP. The swings won't bother you because you are not using your walk around money to play VP.

I'm very confused. You started with $1,000 and built it to $30,000 while playing negative games and losing so much you switched to single coin nonsense?

[FloridaPhil]

I'm very confused. You started with $1,000 and built it to $30,000 while playing negative games and losing so much you switched to single coin nonsense?

Excellent question. We did not build all our current $30,000 bankroll from VP profits. I think I made that clear. The money came partially from VP winnings and partially from contributions as we went along. This didn't happen overnight. We started building our VP bankrolls about 10 years ago. The fact that we have a $30K bankroll does not change the fact that the games we play are negative. We still play quarters to limit our losses. If we moved to dollar play, our bankroll would go from our safe to the casino.

I also don't play single coin all the time. That was also made clear. I play single coin when the odds are better, like in the example I gave in my previous post. When I play deuces wild in Tampa, the 50 cent single coin odds are significantly better than max coin quarters, so I play single coin. When we play in Hollywood, the quarter odds plus the comps are good enough to play max coins, so we do. They comp our rooms and some food in Hollywood and that makes it worthwhile to increase the coin in. Because all the games we play are negative, we stay small most of the time. By limiting our coin in, we limit our losses.

The promise that math guarantees a certain result when playing VP is in our opinion baloney. If Gronbog or anyone else wants to invest his/her own money on that premise, it's fine with us. We are happy betting quarters and adjusting our coin in to the circumstances at each casino.

I am not on this forum to argue for or against any VP strategy. I think when you play VP with your own money, you can play any way you wish. I state how we play VP and report what happens when we do. How you build a VP bankroll playing negative games is useful information for a lot of players. It's putting away money to use at a later date. If we had not played VP small, we would have had no money left to save. One day when we quit playing VP, we'll have a nice bundle of cash instead of a bunch of memories.