http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/...-jobs.html?m=1
The third person should be quite familiar.
"Rob Singer
This is another puzzling column. It is ostensibly about video poker, but on each of the few occasions that I've read it, the guy doesn't actually describe what to do in particular situations to optimize gains. (Clearly there are better and worse strategies for playing; a source I deem reasonably reliable asserts that the optimal strategy gets approximately 99% payback, and can actually be slightly profitable, once you take into account the incentives and bonuses offered by casinos on players' club cards. The casinos are relying on the fact that only a small percentage of players deploy a strategy anywhere near optimal. If all players did so, they would probably have to lower the payout schedule to keep the machines profitable to the house.) Rather, all he does is brag about the fact that he is a long-term winner at the game.
In this week's column, as with the other couple I've read from him, he says that he is always being attacked by critics he disparagingly refers to as "the math people," who don't believe he could be as successful as he claims to be. He says that he has records to back up his claims, and, of course, the critics can't prove him wrong. He claims to be a "professional video poker player."
To be sure, I haven't examined Mr. Singer's personal win/loss records, nor am I interested in doing so. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that he could upon request produce records showing a substantial profit over many years of playing in quantities approaching the hours of a full-time job. Would that convince me that he has found a system of play that turns video poker into a +EV game (neglecting here any points-based incentives offered by the casinos)?
Nope. I would consider it far more likely that his record-keeping was deficient, either through intentional misrepresentation or the kind of selective neglect that is a temptation to any record-keeping gambler: Faithfully record every win, but leave out losses now and then, with a whole litany of excuses why they shouldn't be counted. (I am proud to report that although my poker playing has plenty of faults and holes, my poker record-keeping has been scrupulous. I have not even once yielded to the temptation to omit the results of a session on the excuse that it was an atypically bad or unlucky day, or that I wasn't really trying that day, or whatever. I have definitely felt such pulls, but have managed to force myself to include every painful loss.)
The problem is much like trying to disprove alien abduction. Of course, for any individual story of such, it is possible that the alleged victim really was paralyzed and taken by a tractor beam up into an alien spaceship and given anal probes. (I saw it on the very first episode of "South Park," so it must be true!) I can't prove that it didn't happen. But the alternative explanations are, in my opinion, just a whole lot more plausible. They include, variously, people seeking attention and/or financial gain, delusions and hallucinations, and manifestations of poorly understood but natural physiologic states of sleep, influenced in their subjective interpretation by cultural norms and the experiences reported previously by others. (In other words, the same phenomenon that in previous generations would have been reported as a visitation from a succubus, say.)
In Mr. Singer's case, I find it just as implausible that video poker game manufacturers have designed the games in a way that can turn them into your own personal ATM if you just follow the simple strategy (whatever it is; he doesn't seem to talk much about it) claimed by Mr. Singer to be a winning one, as that every night thousands upon thousands of people are being abducted and experimented upon by aliens.
Look at it like this: If you were a casino owner or manager, would you purchase for your casino a machine that the manufacturer told you could be easily exploited by players to be profitable? I sure wouldn't. That would kind of defeat the basic idea on which casinos are built.
That consideration leaves us with only four possibilities: (1) The machine designers and casinos are knowingly building, purchasing, and installing games that they know can be beaten by anybody who follows the Singer strategy. (2) He has stumbled upon a loophole that has not been noticed by anybody in any of the various manufacturing companies, nor by any of the casinos that install the machines and monitor their profitability performance. (3) He is either intentionally lying or somehow unintentionally deceiving himself about his actual long-term results. (4) He is the luckiest S.O.B. ever to walk the planet, with results many standard deviations from the mean.
I find #1 and #2 impossible to accept, absent extraordinarily strong evidence (which no one person's results could provide). I have no objective way of distinguishing between #3 and #4, the only other remaining possibilities. But #3 strikes me as by far the less improbable one.
I am, in a sense, envious that these hacks can get paid for writing complete bullshit and passing it off as helpful gaming advice.
I'll leave you with this thought: If winning at gambling were as easy as these worthless columnists portray it, the casinos would all go bankrupt overnight. Casinos love players who are convinced they have a system that reverses the odds--because they're all wrong, no matter what some lying or self-deluded GT/ST columnist has written."
I'm not taking sides here, but I found this quite humorous.
Reply With Quote
