Quitting When Ahead -- Revisited

[Alan Mendelson]

Let's talk about "quitting when ahead."

I still don't buy "quitting when ahead" as a valid strategy to actually net money. If it actually worked -- well, we're going back about 10 steps here, but, instead of quitting for the year, why not cash out and come back again tomorrow, a new day? Or rather, cash out, take a lap around the casino, and "reset" your day? Hell -- instead of cashing out and doing all that hoopla, just keep on playing, it's the same thing anyway. I'm sure you'll end up a big winner!

Anytime you quit when ahead gives you an opportunity to have a profit. That means quitting for the day, or quitting long enough only to take a bathroom break. That's all it is. If you don't "quit" then all you are saying is "I will play until I lose." Is that what you want to do -- play till you lose?

You are focusing on "quitting when ahead" which is not the issue. The issue is did you hit a winner?

So tell me -- after hitting a winner do you really want to give it all back right then and there? Or would you rather walk away and enjoy the money whether it's during a five minute break or for the rest of the year? You tell me.

That's all "quitting when ahead" means. It does not change the math of the game. The math of the game will always be the math of the game. Quitting when ahead only allows you to have the money after you won it.

I don't have to keep playing. I don't have a contract with a casino that says I must play for 8 hours a day, five days a week.

So tell me-- what's wrong with quitting when ahead? That's really the question. What's wrong with it? Since you can't guarantee me I will continue to win (even on positive expectation games) what's so horrible about leaving with a profit when I have one?

[RS__]

There's nothing wrong by quitting when you're ahead. The problem is making it seem like it's possible to have long-term profits by doing that as your strategy, ie: win goal / stop loss.

[Alan Mendelson]

There's nothing wrong by quitting when you're ahead. The problem is making it seem like it's possible to have long-term profits by doing that as your strategy, ie: win goal / stop loss.

What a stop loss can do is keep you from losing more.
What a win goal can do is keep you from losing back that which you've won.

So what's the problem?

[RS__]

You make it out to be a way to make money, when all it is is a lose-less system.

[regnis]

You make it out to be a way to make money, when all it is is a lose-less system.

Not if you're ahead.

[LoneStarHorse]

Why not discuss are any of you attempting to make a living playing video poker ?? Because if you are I'd like to sell you some shares of the Verrazano Bridge....
I assume most of you have a job or had a job and retired are financially stable and gamble for recreational reasons only...
Am I wrong ???

[redietz]

The logical fallacy of "quitting when ahead" as a strategy for doing better than you would if you didn't "quit when ahead" is that, as arci and many others have pointed out much more clearly than me:

You are not really QUITTING. You are PAUSING.

Unless you are really and truly quitting for all time when ahead, it's not quitting. It's just pausing, and it's self evident that pauses with a year between them or pauses with a day between them or pauses with 10 seconds between them aren't going to change the math or the results if you wind up playing the same number of hands.

Now, as a way to reduce play so you lose less, great. If it gets you out of the seat faster, it's a benefit if you are playing negative expectation games.

[a2a3dseddie]

Can't fault the "quitting while ahead" mindset. After all, what separates winners and losers? Winners leave when they are winning and ahead.

Can't fault having a stop-loss limit either. Helps out with discipline and self control.

Really, then the question becomes, can you "quit while ahead" making your "win goal" enough times to offset the money you lose all the times you hit your "loss limit" instead?

Sure, everyone here would agree that many times we were "ahead" during a particular session, only to give it back. So what? Hindsight is 20/20 and no one has a crystal ball.

[james40]

The logical fallacy of "quitting when ahead" as a strategy for doing better than you would if you didn't "quit when ahead" is that, as arci and many others have pointed out much more clearly than me:

You are not really QUITTING. You are PAUSING.

Unless you are really and truly quitting for all time when ahead, it's not quitting. It's just pausing, and it's self evident that pauses with a year between them or pauses with a day between them or pauses with 10 seconds between them aren't going to change the math or the results if you wind up playing the same number of hands.

Now, as a way to reduce play so you lose less, great. If it gets you out of the seat faster, it's a benefit if you are playing negative expectation games.

We are essentially talking money management. The casino wants to extract as much as possible in each session, you want to keep as much as possible in each session. With the exception of Mickey Crimm in Montana, I don't think there is anyone on this forum making a living off of gambling.

I set limits on what I will take to a casino and I use the big hits in VP as natural breaks in the action, I'm not quitting while I'm ahead, I'm just slowing down to savor the moments when I am ahead. Take a dinner break, go see a show, or if in Vegas go people watch.

Whether I sit back down that day or a month later I know I'm back at square one. It was almost 10 years between my first RF and my second, then last year I hit a RF on 5 out of 6 trips. Now I wasn't playing that much during those 10 years, life interfered, but it was still quite a drought. I was maths bitch for those 10 years.

[james40]

Why not discuss are any of you attempting to make a living playing video poker ?? Because if you are I'd like to sell you some shares of the Verrazano Bridge....
I assume most of you have a job or had a job and retired are financially stable and gamble for recreational reasons only...
Am I wrong ???

As a corollary to that, I have found myself playing less over the last few years. The smoke and video screens kill my eyes after a couple of hours and I have to take breaks. Our visits are fewer and my sessions shorter. We don't do day trips as I like to have a room to go to when I need a break, so they are usually one to two days visits to Tahoe and a week or so in Las Vegas twice a year.

I also focus more on the entertainment side of casino visits, scheduling trips around concerts or shows we want to see and restaurants we want to try.

We absolutely refuse to play at the numerous Indian casinos in CA, as not only are the pay-tables laughable, they are essentially an unregulated industry. Therefore the bulk of my play goes to Harrah's or Harvey's in Lake Tahoe and one or two visits a year to Las Vegas.

The side benefit of less visits is we end up with a higher daily average than we would otherwise. Therefore, my offers have tended to get better with fewer visits. I got the Caesars invite for NYE, the Paris invite for the "Big Game" and the freeplay offers are flooding my e-mails.

I almost feel "over-comped".

[slobdinger]

Why not discuss are any of you attempting to make a living playing video poker ?? Because if you are I'd like to sell you some shares of the Verrazano Bridge....
I assume most of you have a job or had a job and retired are financially stable and gamble for recreational reasons only...
Am I wrong ???

LSH, in the bigger markets like Nevada, Mississippi, New Jersey, it has gotten increasingly harder over the years to make a living playing video poker. This has to do with the increasing knowledge of casino personnel like slot operations managers. How did they get that education? They got it from video poker pros. It started with Lenny Frome in the late eighties, then by the nineties, video poker writers like Dan Paymar, Bob Dancer, Jean Scott. Dancer even went so far as giving seminars to casino execs, teaching them how to protect themselves from the sharp players.

I used to work big edges in Nevada, 3% and 4% in the nineties and into the 2000's. But those edges have all dried up. But there is a lot more to machine play than just video poker. There are edges to be found in video keno, video line games, accumulators slots, slot progressives. But one has to be willing to move around to find these edges, and one must be willing to live in the area where these advantages can be found. And one must be willing to move on when the edges dry up in an area. The nomadic lifestyle that I lived before my gambling career has easily fit that situation.

[arcimede$]

As we've discussed over and over and over and over and ... over again, quitting while ahead is a fine approach when playing negative games. However, any strategy that reduces your play will also be just as good. The benefit is from reducing play. That is it. There is no magic because you can't count on getting ahead on any trip. Your overall return will approach the expected return of your play.

When playing decent positive games quitting while ahead is actually not a good thing. Since that limits play and the more you play a positive game the more you are expected to win, then all you would be doing is reducing the profit. Naturally, this is a long term view. Also, I don't consider a game really positive unless you have at least a .5% edge. Too much volatility in VP to expect to win with anything less.

Finally, I seem to remember Alan having a large drought in royals a few years ago when we were conversing on LVA. I wonder why he didn't mention it.

[Rob.Singer]

What's astonishing about this subject is how our collection of so-called "AP's" accept that a player can win by quitting while ahead on "negative EV" games even at 99.7% or whatever, yet for some very odd reason, that cannot happen and is not allowed to happen over and over and over again--and in the same breath utter how you absolutely CAN win by quitting while ahead on a 100.5% game....a mere .8% theoretically better than the other game. And all this belief, during a simple few minutes or several hours session.

In a scenario where someone plays a single denomination on a -EV game all year or decade long with no particular strategy other than optimal, I give very little hope to coming out ahead at the end of that term. But is .8% or even 1.5% gonna make any real difference on the "quitting when ahead" mantra? Of course not. That tiny difference in any one session where goals are pre-set might allow one or two sessions to be turned around, but all this nonsense that -EV HAS to yield an overall loser but +EV HAS to yield a winner or has any real difference-maker attached, is 100% crap.

But enter a strategy such as SPS, where it is specifically designed to create individual winning sessions, time after time. That's why people hate me, and that's why arci has been on such an anxiety trip for all these years, enough so that he lost track of the needs of the missus. This is not anything so special that the regular folk would never understand. The unintended consequences, however, has been the know-it-all crowd not wanting to be able to understand it along with being afraid to try it for fear their sacred vp beliefs might wind up in just another heap. Keep applying long term rules to short term play and you will continue the need to scratch your head while needing to criticize those who have the abilities and vision you never had. Just take a quick look at mickeycrimm. He failed in "AP gambling" and ended up in some pothole like Montana, where all he can do now is claim things he supposedly did in the past and how he's the world's greatest "keno pro" ever in a place as obscure as a working bathroom scale in his mother's Alaska subsidized shack.

[Alan Mendelson]

Rob you were going great until you brought up SPS and then criticized Arc. You don't know when to stop.

[LoneStarHorse]

People dislike you because you're an ASSHOLE.... Many of these people know you for years that's why they know you're an asshole.. Me I read through the threads and then you chose to start in with me... I had an open mind about you, but due to your ignorance I decided quickly you're an asshole.. Make matters even worse, you insult people's Mothers which I've yet seen you apologize for...
You fail to realize while the world is big, it's also very small.....

What's astonishing about this subject is how our collection of so-called "AP's" accept that a player can win by quitting while ahead on "negative EV" games even at 99.7% or whatever, yet for some very odd reason, that cannot happen and is not allowed to happen over and over and over again--and in the same breath utter how you absolutely CAN win by quitting while ahead on a 100.5% game....a mere .8% theoretically better than the other game. And all this belief, during a simple few minutes or several hours session.

In a scenario where someone plays a single denomination on a -EV game all year or decade long with no particular strategy other than optimal, I give very little hope to coming out ahead at the end of that term. But is .8% or even 1.5% gonna make any real difference on the "quitting when ahead" mantra? Of course not. That tiny difference in any one session where goals are pre-set might allow one or two sessions to be turned around, but all this nonsense that -EV HAS to yield an overall loser but +EV HAS to yield a winner or has any real difference-maker attached, is 100% crap.

But enter a strategy such as SPS, where it is specifically designed to create individual winning sessions, time after time. That's why people hate me, and that's why arci has been on such an anxiety trip for all these years, enough so that he lost track of the needs of the missus. This is not anything so special that the regular folk would never understand. The unintended consequences, however, has been the know-it-all crowd not wanting to be able to understand it along with being afraid to try it for fear their sacred vp beliefs might wind up in just another heap. Keep applying long term rules to short term play and you will continue the need to scratch your head while needing to criticize those who have the abilities and vision you never had.

[jbjb]

People dislike you because you're an ASSHOLE.... Many of these people know you for years that's why they know you're an asshole.. Me I read through the threads and then you chose to start in with me... I had an open mind about you, but due to your ignorance I decided quickly you're an asshole.. Make matters even worse, you insult people's Mothers which I've yet seen you apologize for...
You fail to realize while the world is big, it's also very small.....

Just ignore the guy. He has absolutely ZERO credibility in the gaming world.

[RS__]

Why not discuss are any of you attempting to make a living playing video poker ?? Because if you are I'd like to sell you some shares of the Verrazano Bridge....
I assume most of you have a job or had a job and retired are financially stable and gamble for recreational reasons only...
Am I wrong ???

I believe jbjb is a professional AP, but am not sure. I've made more money gambling than I have made with a real job (dealing, taking home ~$20/hour).

[coach belly]

Me I read through the threads and then you chose to start in with me...

In the interest of fairness, I went back and looked through your posting history. You came on board on 1/5/2016.

As it turns out, LoneStar, it was you who started up with Singer, totally unprovoked.


You started a new thread calling out Rob, on 1/11 here:

I see that RobSinger is crying out for attention... Last week he said "I'm done no longer posting here"

Now he's back with his same old insults, my advice to everyone s just ignore him...He appears to be an Internet troll who thrives on making everything about him. Probably because he had his milk money taken from him daily while in school....

So I propose for everyone in here to ignore him, in a few days he will just vanish again...

You started another Rob Singer thread on 1/15 here:

In my time here there is only one lousy rotten apple here, that person is Rob Singer.

Started another Rob Singer thread on 1/17 here:

What this person just said about someone's Mother is just unacceptable.... Tell you what if he said that crap to me, I'd find him tomorrow.....

And started yet ANOTHER Rob Singer thread on 1/19 here:

This thread is dedicated to the forum's little man, we ALL know who he is...

Just for the record, you started some trouble with a couple other members too.


You took an unprovoked shot at Mickey Crimm (slobdinger) on 1/7 here:

I wouldn't go to Montana if it was in a private plane and three hookers on it....

If you gamble "by the book" location means nothing... Bottom line here is he is just blowing smoke up all your asses....

Then you took an unprovoked shot at aceofspades on 1/10 here:

I'm very doubtful of your story

You can start topics and comment however you see fit, it all adds to the entertainment value of the forum.

But don't go portraying yourself as some open-minded sweetheart who got bullied by Rob Singer,
because that's just not what happened here.

You engaged Rob Singer, he posted his typical comebacks, which didn't sit well with you.

Ultimately that led to you challenging him to meet you face-to-face for a fistfight.

Well, all things considered, it seems to me that you came here looking for a fight with somebody...so did you?

[Alan Mendelson]

I've made more money gambling than I have made with a real job (dealing, taking home ~$20/hour).

The question is how much more?

[LoneStarHorse]

coach belly

I will respond to each and every one of your statements, here I go

1- totally unprovoked?? Since you took your time researching my comments did you look into what he said to me before I wrote what I did??

2-Yes I purposely wrote that Rob Singer is a rotten apple because he IS the only instigator in here

3-So what you're saying is it's ok to disrespect a members mother.... You would allow me or rob to say your mom is a toothless hillbilly who you sleep with... That's right if he said that about my mom I'd knock him out without a moment of regret....

4-My comment about going to Montana was meant as a joke.... I do stand by my statement of anyone who gambles by the book is just blowing smoke up someone's ass

5-Yes I questioned aceofspades but if I had known that someone had stalked him then I wouldn't have said what I did....

6-At no time did I say I was bullied by anyone or RobSinger .....

Finally I found this forum by accident, I googled Passport Travel and this forum came up... I read the threads and decided to join.... I am a native New Yorker born and raised there... Worked in NYC for over 20 years, commuted daily... Lived through 9/11 watched 4 of my friends from school die that day....
After that day my whole attitude changed, wouldn't take crap from anyone, at anytime....
Did I join to fight with people no, will I question them or challenge them sure..everyday of the week...

That's always been my style, if you don't like my style well that's on you and anybody else.... I do find it odd that you took time out of your day to research my threads... In fact it's like you're building a case against me to defend RobSinger...l

You're free to do whatever you want, that's the beauty of America.... We have freedoms and choices....

Finally I posted my information to show people I am who I say I am... If people don't like it, they can avoid interaction with me....

That's it I've said enough... Will await your reply

In the interest of fairness, I went back and looked through your posting history. You came on board on 1/5/2016.

As it turns out, LoneStar, it was you who started up with Singer, totally unprovoked.


You started a new thread calling out Rob, on 1/11 here:




You started another Rob Singer thread on 1/15 here:




Started another Rob Singer thread on 1/17 here:




And started yet ANOTHER Rob Singer thread on 1/19 here:




Just for the record, you started some trouble with a couple other members too.


You took an unprovoked shot at Mickey Crimm (slobdinger) on 1/7 here:




Then you took an unprovoked shot at aceofspades on 1/10 here:




You can start topics and comment however you see fit, it all adds to the entertainment value of the forum.

But don't go portraying yourself as some open-minded sweetheart who got bullied by Rob Singer,
because that's just not what happened here.

You engaged Rob Singer, he posted his typical comebacks, which didn't sit well with you.

Ultimately that led to you challenging him to meet you face-to-face for a fistfight.

Well, all things considered, it seems to me that you came here looking for a fight with somebody...so did you?