Alan, if at any point you truly wanted to know whether loss limits and win goals worked at all, you would consult a professional mathematician. They aren't hard to find.

If you are playing a negative expectation game, I have no qualms with anything that reduces your play. If you are playing a positive expectation game, win goals and loss limits are somewhat silly. One would be better off determining when or how long to play based on fatigue and the resulting error rate.

If there are no positive expectation games available, my "something better" recommendation is "Don't Play." Video poker ain't that fascinating. Twenty years ago, there were plenty of positive games with good comps. Now they are rare, but not quite extinct. I point out the 10/7 machines at The Four Queens. They are, however, merely quarters, and some people would rather lose at dollars than win at quarters. I'm not sure why, but some people would.

I suspect there's a correlation between not consulting mathematicians and preferring to lose at dollars to winning at quarters, but that's sheer speculation on my part.

To paraphrase Johnny Cochran, "If the pay table don't fit, then you oughta quit."