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Thread: Use of Win Goals and Stop Losses

  1. #21
    Originally Posted by RS__ View Post
    My goal was not to win that day on the $1 machine. My goal was to play big then get big free play offers down the road.
    Of course you don't mean that you played with the intention of losing. I think everyone understands that. But are you saying that you were playing for comps? Free play is a form of comps, and if you were playing for free play (comps) you were making a very big mistake.

    Even those who are in players' clubs should never play for free play, or comps or points. If you do you will be trapped into losing for the sake of the comps. You know what I mean: "just another $100 through the machine and I get ten more tier credits and that bonus."

  2. #22
    Originally Posted by RS__ View Post
    Question: If a casino had a promotion where after doing $1,000 coin in they give you $100 in FP [or $10K coin in gets $1K in FP or $100K coin in gets $10K in FP]....would you "quit while ahead" after you hit a big hand? Or would you think, "Wait, I'm not an idiot, I'm getting close to a 10% edge on this game, I'm going to fire away until I hit the coin-in goal." ?
    The first question is "are you winning?" I happen to use a rising stop loss which allows me to raise my win goal should I win. Unlike Rob who has a strict win goal -- if I am winning I will adjust my win goal higher to take advantage of additional wins that might come. I will give you an example: If I have a win goal of $500 but I hit something bigger like a handpay for $1200, I will adjust my stop-loss to something like $800 and use $400 to keep playing. But never will I play more for points or bonuses if I have already reached my loss-limit.

  3. #23
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    Of course you don't mean that you played with the intention of losing. I think everyone understands that. But are you saying that you were playing for comps? Free play is a form of comps, and if you were playing for free play (comps) you were making a very big mistake.

    Even those who are in players' clubs should never play for free play, or comps or points. If you do you will be trapped into losing for the sake of the comps. You know what I mean: "just another $100 through the machine and I get ten more tier credits and that bonus."
    If I'm playing a -EV game (most are), I expect to lose. I don't want to lose, but I expect to lose.


    I believe when people say "don't play for comps" they mean don't play for free hotel rooms, free food, free travel, or whatever else.

    But, I think you'd have to be a fool to not realize if you're getting some huge amount of your action back in free-play (essentially cash), that you're playing a good game and should play as long as you keep getting that 5% or 10% in FP. I know you guys don't like the whole "math" thing -- but try to figure out this problem:

    (-0.0046 + 0.10) * $10,000

  4. #24
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    The first question is "are you winning?" I happen to use a rising stop loss which allows me to raise my win goal should I win. Unlike Rob who has a strict win goal -- if I am winning I will adjust my win goal higher to take advantage of additional wins that might come. I will give you an example: If I have a win goal of $500 but I hit something bigger like a handpay for $1200, I will adjust my stop-loss to something like $800 and use $400 to keep playing. But never will I play more for points or bonuses if I have already reached my loss-limit.
    Many years ago (circa 2005 or so) I discussed this very same matter with Rob himself. I don't expect him to remember this, but when I brought up the idea of trailing stop losses similar to those used in stock trading Rob simply replied, "VP is far too addictive of a game for that."

    He has a point, actually. Yes, it makes more logical sense to "ride a wave" with a trailing stop rather than having a strictly fixed stop playing goal from the beginning, but I actually see Rob's point of how it's tougher (at least for me) to stick with a trailing stop because of the "heat of the VP action".

    Trailing stops are great in theory, but harder to carry out in practice than fixed goals.

  5. #25
    If you don't care too much about the math and you're just having fun with 98-99% VP games, I've found over the years that 200 credits is a good trailing stop to use for any single machine before determining whether it's turning "cold".

    I've ridden some big waves using a 200 credit stop loss along with countless "dud" machines that eat up the 200 credits from the start.

    Examples:

    200 credits turns into 300-395 credits...leave machine at 100 credits
    200 cr. into 400-495 credits...leave machine at 200 credits (break even)
    200 cr. into 500-595 credits...leave machine at 300 credits

    ...and so on....I've had a fair number of instances of "following the wave" above and beyond 2000-3000 credits on scarce machines.

    This is well-suited for DB, DDB, TBP+ games because the non-special quads pay 250 credits. You can find out for the price of less than one quad whether a particular machine is paying out or not.

    ....The above advice is for entertainment purposes only, not math-based

  6. #26
    Originally Posted by RS__ View Post

    But, I think you'd have to be a fool to not realize if you're getting some huge amount of your action back in free-play (essentially cash),
    What is this huge amount you are talking about? I'm familiar only with cash back and other promotions that return 1/10 of one-percent of coin in. What are you getting?

  7. #27
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    What's really interesting is that the so-called APs will keep playing after a big win... but the grandmas and Sadies of San Diego when they hit a big win take the money and go to the buffet. And they go off happy and smiling and laughing. Don't you admire that? They leave to enjoy their money.
    Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I just don't have a set amount. Hell, I don't usually sit and play all that long to begin with. In fact, the ONLY vp I really play anymore is vulturing Ultimate X.

    And Rob, I don't do loss rebates. Even I don't like them.

  8. #28
    If people want to "enjoy their money," then they shouldn't play negative expectation games. I mean, really, you can't argue both ways, namely that people enjoy gaming as recreation wherein you toss your money away AND people value their money over the experience of gaming so much that they should quit at various points because it's emotionally satisfying.

    Most of this discussion, as before, is moot. Very few people play positive expectation games. So anything that leads to people playing fewer hands at negative expectation games (as all CET games are) is a good thing.

    But, as arci and I have argued in the past, rather than using win goals and stop losses, you may as well use randomly-set timers, or someone wearing green walking by, or a particular song playing on the sound system to stop play. They can work just as well as win goals and stop losses.

  9. #29
    Originally Posted by redietz View Post
    If people want to "enjoy their money," then they shouldn't play negative expectation games. I mean, really, you can't argue both ways, namely that people enjoy gaming as recreation wherein you toss your money away AND people value their money over the experience of gaming so much that they should quit at various points because it's emotionally satisfying.
    Assuming the standard mathematical model of a downward sloping bankroll over time playing -EV games, the "enjoying their money" part comes in the intermittent spikes during that downward slope (royals, aces, etc.). The rush of the big hits can be like a drug.


    Sort of like jumping off of a tall mountain at terminal velocity and having the occasional supermodel swooping in to perform brief erotic acts with you as you plummet to the ground.

  10. #30
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    What is this huge amount you are talking about? I'm familiar only with cash back and other promotions that return 1/10 of one-percent of coin in. What are you getting?
    There are a few numbers in that post of mine. See if you can find the numbers. If you read the ENTIRE post you'll find it. HINT: It's shortly after the part where you stopped quoting me.

  11. #31
    Count Room, I loved that analogy.

  12. #32
    Originally Posted by RS__ View Post
    My goal was not to win that day on the $1 machine. My goal was to play big then get big free play offers down the road.

    When playing in a loss rebate promotion, then yeah, that's a situation where you want to know when it's optimal to stop playing after a win and when it's optimal to quit playing after a loss (usually once you've reached the biggest lost).

    Not sure what you mean by your ROR / BR / $11K / dollar 9/6 JOB sentence. It really doesn't make sense....unless you add in some other information (how much you play, the edge you're playing with [if you have one]).
    The goal was "not to win that day, but get free play offers later"? WTF?? I don't think anything needs to be said about that.

    $11,000 BR for dollars: ever hear of Jazbo or Kelly?

  13. #33
    Originally Posted by RS__ View Post
    That's because AP's are not in it for the "right now" like typical ploppies and gamblers are. They're in it for the long haul. They have some goal in mind (oftentimes a certain amount of coin in).


    Question: If a casino had a promotion where after doing $1,000 coin in they give you $100 in FP [or $10K coin in gets $1K in FP or $100K coin in gets $10K in FP]....would you "quit while ahead" after you hit a big hand? Or would you think, "Wait, I'm not an idiot, I'm getting close to a 10% edge on this game, I'm going to fire away until I hit the coin-in goal." ?
    You quit AND LEAVE IMMEDIATELY upon attaining your win goal. Why? Because you have something called "real money" in your hands when you quit; all you have is theory if you don't.

    When the Revel had the $100k loss rebate promo, I told Wizard and posted on a few forums that I went in 50-50 with a professional gamblers friend from LV. We chose him to go back and play, and I had it set up for him to stay several months in my sister's guest house outside of Philly if he lost and needed to be there for the weekly rebates. I trained him on my ARTT strategy, but as you may know all vp machines over $5 were removed for this, so he played a 5-level on 25c thru $5 machines. I set our win goal at $8000, and when he got to +$8250 he came home. After expenses we split about $7100 with only a few days work.

    Could he have won much more? Likely. But why, when a trip's goal is met? Greed kills, just as doing everything the casinos want & expect their players to do does. And btw, all that theoretical WoV chatter during this promotion about Revel "banning & 86ing hot shot AP's" from this? Total BS. Before we got involved, I checked the rules, double checked the rules, then called twice to verify them exactly, and we agreed he wouldn't use any of his "AP tricks" like card-pulling (which was specifically noted as disallowed) or getting involved in team play with anyone he might know playing there. The people complaining about being thrown out all simply broke the rules, then posted the whining about Revel being "so unfair just because we are AP's". My guy played within the rules, won, and left. He never got hassled because he didn't go in unprepared or thinking he was smarter than them.
    Last edited by Rob.Singer; 05-16-2015 at 01:10 PM.

  14. #34
    Originally Posted by Rob.Singer View Post
    The goal was "not to win that day, but get free play offers later"? WTF?? I don't think anything needs to be said about that.

    $11,000 BR for dollars: ever hear of Jazbo or Kelly?
    I know what Kelly (Criterion) is. It has to do with EDGE, which you didn't include in your post. Your BR requirement is going to be much different with a 5% edge than a 1% edge. But I would almost never play VP with just a 1% edge. I'm mostly looking for at minimum a 2% edge.

  15. #35
    RS -- are you saying there are a fair number of 2% edges in the UK? There certainly aren't here.

  16. #36
    I have no idea about the UK. I live (and play) in the US. There are plenty in the US.

  17. #37
    RS__ I have never heard about free play rebates of five percent to ten percent and if you have to lose to get those rebates on losses what's the advantage? As I said most free play "awards" are 1/10 of 1% of coin in. Your scenario doesn't sound real.

  18. #38
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    RS__ I have never heard about free play rebates of five percent to ten percent and if you have to lose to get those rebates on losses what's the advantage? As I said most free play "awards" are 1/10 of 1% of coin in. Your scenario doesn't sound real.
    He probably is referring to those loss rebates like I talked about at Revel. That one wasn't something you see every day, but there's probably a lot of smaller ones out there all the time. But you're right--you have to hope to lose in order to get any benefit from it. The math guys love them because even if they lose, then lose the rebate, they can claim they played in a "positive" situation. Only problem is, phantom bucks aren't accepted anywhere but on WoV.

    I don't believe RS lives in the UK. That's oncedear and cesspool, among others.

  19. #39
    I'm not talking about loss rebates (why do you keep bringing those up?).

    Alan, if this seems so unrealistic....I have to wonder what kind of awesome conditions there were in the 90's...

  20. #40
    It would depend on how often the rebate is awarded as to what kind of advantage is involved. The guy who took Atlantic City for five million plus was able to wrangle a per trip rebate. Well, his trips were only a couple of days, so he always had the advantage (playing blackjack). He'd either win and quit each trip or, if losing, play enough until his rebate kicked in, then quit.

    For video poker, I'm unaware of any such rebates, but I've always suspected Dancer has some arrangements with various properties. Other high rollers may have rebates for vp. Normal folks don't have access to these angles.

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