Originally Posted by
Alan Mendelson
In the interests of fair and open disclosure and since I am keeping track of my intra session wins and final tallies, I must report about a huge loss at a casino Tuesday night.
All was going OK playing 7/5 Bonus Poker. I had a small profit early in the session from some quads and full houses and at that point I could have quit with a modest win and went home. But I didn't -- and then I lost at Bonus. I didn't lose much, but I lost.
What to do?
I decided to try playing a little Double Double Bonus rationalizing that one "big hand" would offset my loss at Bonus. A big hand might be quad Aces with or without a kicker. Or one of the small quads (2, 3, 4) with or without a kicker. Just one of those and my small loss at Bonus would be wiped out.
But I never got one of those "big hands" in the first half hour, or the first hour or the second hour or third hour, or fourth hour.
The pay table was 9/5 for the Double Double Bonus game. Sure that's not a bad pay table, but if you're not getting any of the big quads you're just getting the schlock part of the pay table. And that's what happened to me.
It wasn't a total disaster -- eventually I did get quad aces but no kicker, and I did get 2222 with a 3 kicker. But they came too late. Had they come early in the session I would have danced my way out of the casino. But because they came late in the session they only partially offset my losses from Double Double Bonus.
Luckily I could afford the loss and it was relatively small considering what I've won in the past couple of weeks. But make no mistake -- this loss hurt.
One of the biggest reasons for the loss is that I followed correct strategy for playing DDB including:
I broke up full houses with 3 aces (twice) but failed to make quad aces both times it happened.
I did not hold unsuited high cards with the ace and missed out making a pair that would have salvaged the hand.
Four times I was dealt four to the royal and missed all four. Three times I was dealt three to the royal and all three times I picked up one more royal card but failed to get a winning hand. That really poured salt on my wounds.
I learned a big lesson: I will never play Double Double Bonus again at a high denomination ($5/coin). It just isn't worth the grief.