Alan, here’s a simple mental exercise I dreamt up that will tell you all you need to know about whether or not “money management” or if having “win goals” or “loss limits” will work.

Imagine a video poker machine that randomly generates 1 million hands. Archimede$ or some other “computer perfect” advantage player plays these 1 million hands exactly “by the book”. Whatever profit or loss they end up with will be the maximum EV that machine could have generated over those 1 million hands.

Now imagine you or anyone else (Rob, jatki, regnis) sit at an identical machine and play those exact same 1 million hands with the exact same original 5 cards and the exact same 5 potential redraw cards. You can take as long as you want to play those 1 million hands. You can get up and leave when you get ahead or fall behind by whatever amount you choose. Just understand that when you come back to play you’ll pick up where you left off and continue with those same 1 million hands that the advantage player has already played. So, if you start playing and hit a royal flush on hand 4,000 and quit, when you return to play you’ll be playing hand 4,001 that the advantage player has already played.

Who will be further ahead? If you play exactly by the book, wouldn’t you be even with the AP? Nobody can play better than computer perfect. The only way to alter what the machine ultimately will pay out at the end of those 1 million hands is to deviate from computer perfect play. It’s already been discussed that Rob’s special plays could factor in and put you further ahead (possibly), or further behind (probably). But it should be obvious that if you continue to play those 1 million hands to completion, money management and win goals / loss limits would be meaningless.

One last question. You seem to have more disposable income than many of the posters here. Let’s say you have $1,000,000 that you have to invest in a video poker player. Would you rather give it to arcimede$ with his purported positive EV machine, or hand it over to jatki or Rob and have them play the negative EV 8/5 machines? You must choose someone. Assuming they are all trustworthy individuals whose system of play would you put your own faith and money in?