VP Royal Flushes

[arcimede$]

I know that Alan, but by explaining it as you have you actually PROVED my point. Just think if a new player began by playing 500,000 hands that included a royal-starved time like yours. Then think about what it would be like if this new player, at some point late in your low royal flush streak, then chose to play his hands inside casinos rather than at home. How great would THAT be?

It would make absolutely no difference. The odds don't change based on past events. You don't really believe they do, do you? That is beyond stupid.

The point is, since you never know when you'll get hot or cold, IF you do well at home, just stay out of the casinos until it seems hopeless or it seems like it's starting to turn around. But if you do poorly at home, pick a day to start playing at the casinos. It's like an automatic advantage, simply because, as the AP's always say, EVENTUALLY THE MATH WILL CATCH UP.

No one says this who understand the math, especially APers. This is an example of a typical Singer lie. Make up some kind of nonsense and then make some idiotic claims that only the totally ignorant might believe.

I wrote how I wish I understood this better prior to beginning my disastrous 6-1/2 year career as an AP. Any new player would benefit from understanding this. Current players typically would not, because current players for the most part, find themselves hooked on the action provided by the real machines when playing for real money, and at-home play is only limited to filling in slow days or getting a kick out of silly tournaments etc. like you see on videopoker.com.

Your ignorance is massive.

[arcimede$]

In a way we are, because without them most everyone loses each year. I think if you step back and look at the overall concept it might help. You're starting out; you go to casinos like everyone else; you most probably lose (unless you have magic fingers like arci, magic machines, and casino execs who don't care and simply look the other way if you take them for tens of thousands every year on grandfathered-in machines that they otherwise keep a keen eye on because of their controversial paytables) and you just are beside yourself.

OR....you could do what I recommend, and learn the game at home while playing a whole lot of hands. If you do well or close to it, stay home and play, because the math is being kind to you. But if not--and here's where you're big advantage comes into play--you simply head out to the casino, which is exactly where you want to be as you witness first hand the math working it's "magic" as it corrects all that losing that's been going on. Just as the AP's say it will.

It's that simple.

It doesn't get any more ridiculous than this. ROTFLMAO. How can anyone be this stupid?

[arcimede$]

And every time he presents his short-term, goal-oriented strategy he's mocked in another cesspool of ridiculousness.

He's mocked for good reasons. His claims are nonsense and those who believe them are foolish.

[Alan Mendelson]

And every time he presents his short-term, goal-oriented strategy he's mocked in another cesspool of ridiculousness.

No, slingshot. In this case there is no mention of a short-term, goal-oriented strategy which, by the way, I happen to agree with. At issue is this fantastic belief that if you play enough hands at your home computer with losses, that somehow you will be able to sit down at a real machine in a casino and win. I would like to see this proved. Can anyone run a simulation? Or keep logs?

[arcimede$]

No, slingshot. In this case there is no mention of a short-term, goal-oriented strategy which, by the way, I happen to agree with. At issue is this fantastic belief that if you play enough hands at your home computer with losses, that somehow you will be able to sit down at a real machine in a casino and win. I would like to see this proved. Can anyone run a simulation? Or keep logs?

No one needs to do a simulation to point out this is idiotic. He's essentially saying that if you flip a coin then the results are affected by coins you have flipped in the past. And you wonder why I called him a dufus.

[Alan Mendelson]

Here are two inconsistencies I see in this theory of Rob's:

1. If true, why when I went through a 180,000 hand royal flush drought in casino play did I also fail to have a royal in "fun play" at home?
2. Rob wrote in one of his books how he got back-to-back royals, and the other day he posted about two royals in one day. How many hands did he lose at home playing "fun games" did he have to lose in order to score those casino wins?

The more I think about it, Rob isn't serious at all about this. He is just trying to mock the "math guys" with twisting around their own "math". Fess up Rob... it's all a joke, right? You really don't believe this, right?

[quahaug]

Rob, That tongue in cheek is pretty funny. You are absolutly right!

[Rob.Singer]

There's nothing inconsistent about it Alan. You're just trying to take it to a level that need not exist. It's really very simple and has nothing to do with what-ifs or how-abouts. New players simply do what I said. Should the hands at home run great, stay away from the casinos until your luck changes. Should you do lousy, hit the casinos. It's all about the math. It's all about the math eventually catching up. Sure I'm mocking the math guys because they'd NEVER stay away from a casino if their lives (or someone else's, as we see from arci) depended on it. They just GOTS to have them points! But, when you think about it, it's all that math theory that validated my recommendation.

[Alan Mendelson]

Okay Rob, let's just leave it at this:

Sure I'm mocking the math guys

[arcimede$]

I'll have to admit I've had more laughs from Singer's comments in this thread than I've had in a long time. It's like saying a baseball player hitting every ball on the button at batting practice should not be played since he is sure to go out in the game. How many managers do you think would pull a guy for having a good batting practice? Absolute proof Singer is a completely idiot. All I can say is anyone who still believes a one word from this idiot deserves whatever they get.

[Alan Mendelson]

I'll have to admit I've had more laughs from Singer's comments in this thread than I've had in a long time. It's like saying a baseball player hitting every ball on the button at batting practice should not be played since he is sure to go out in the game. How many managers do you think would pull a guy for having a good batting practice? Absolute proof Singer is a completely idiot. All I can say is anyone who still believes a one word from this idiot deserves whatever they get.

Bad analogy, arc, but I understand your point. Baseball is a game of skill so you can't use it here.

I think the best way to address Rob's ridiculous claim (and I think it is more satire than a claim) is that one hand of video poker has no bearing on the next hand. The RNG you play on has no memory (like dice, like the spin of a roulette wheel, like an automatic card shuffler) so your odds of a winning or losing hand are not affected by the previous hand or the previous one million hands. And even if you did have the misguided belief that an RNG at one machine was not truly random from one hand to the next, how would a practice computer at home have any bearing on the results of a computerized video poker machine at a casino?

Yet, many of us do use the same thought process Rob has discussed here.

At craps we say the last ten shooters were bad so the next one has to be good.
At roulette we say the last ten spins were black so red is due.
At blackjack we say I lost the last ten hands I have to win the next one.

And come to think of it, Arc, you're guilty of the same thing. You've talked about how it's okay to have losing sessions because you'll win something like 7 out of 10. Really? Do you really go to a casino and say "it's okay if I lose today because I'll be a winner 7 out of ten times?" If you knew that why would you go to the casinos on the "losing days"? Why not just show up on the winning days? LOL

[Rob.Singer]

I think you're getting it Alan. Think of all the foolishness Bob Dancer writes about being an "AP" and then look at the similarities of what arci scribbles down. They both claim a big loss today "ain't nothin'" and was actually something that was "expected" because they "know" the math will "all work out in the end".

The stupidity of such claims is astonishing. Exposing such nonsense is what made me the most popular video poker writer ever at Gaming Today.

[arcimede$]

Bad analogy, arc, but I understand your point. Baseball is a game of skill so you can't use it here.

Yes, it's a game of skill with a slight randomizing factor. No one controls their swing perfectly. Essentially, every player has a range within which their swing operates. This range can make a big difference in results.

I think the best way to address Rob's ridiculous claim (and I think it is more satire than a claim) is that one hand of video poker has no bearing on the next hand. The RNG you play on has no memory (like dice, like the spin of a roulette wheel, like an automatic card shuffler) so your odds of a winning or losing hand are not affected by the previous hand or the previous one million hands. And even if you did have the misguided belief that an RNG at one machine was not truly random from one hand to the next, how would a practice computer at home have any bearing on the results of a computerized video poker machine at a casino?

Yet, many of us do use the same thought process Rob has discussed here.

At craps we say the last ten shooters were bad so the next one has to be good.
At roulette we say the last ten spins were black so red is due.
At blackjack we say I lost the last ten hands I have to win the next one.

And come to think of it, Arc, you're guilty of the same thing. You've talked about how it's okay to have losing sessions because you'll win something like 7 out of 10. Really?

Nope, never said that. What I've stated is that there's a high probability we will all see good and bad swings over time.

Do you really go to a casino and say "it's okay if I lose today because I'll be a winner 7 out of ten times?" If you knew that why would you go to the casinos on the "losing days"? Why not just show up on the winning days? LOL

That's what's silly about Singer's overall approach and win goals in general. You never know when you will win or lose. So, leaving with a win goal could actually limit your win. And, when you return you could lose big time. It's all random so we can't assign a higher probability to any particular time.

[arcimede$]

I think you're getting it Alan. Think of all the foolishness Bob Dancer writes about being an "AP" and then look at the similarities of what arci scribbles down. They both claim a big loss today "ain't nothin'" and was actually something that was "expected" because they "know" the math will "all work out in the end".

The point is that the math dictates there will be BOTH winning and losing sessions due to variance. In addition, the math predicts the future winning sessions will outperform the losing sessions on positive games leading to overall profitability. So, Dancer's claims are completely supported by the math. Your claims, however, are nothing but silly nonsense from someone who thinks the odds change on a game based on past results. That is so absolutely idiotic it is hard to even write this without bellowing out in laughter.

The stupidity of such claims is astonishing. Exposing such nonsense is what made me the most popular video poker writer ever at Gaming Today.

Do you have anything to back up that claim? Didn't think so. I will agree that your claim was "astonishing"ly stupid.

[Rob.Singer]

Couple of comments. First, anyone who thinks or expects it will be more likely or even just as likely to see a second huge jackpot hit in the same session, over losing what was already won because you just couldn't get up and leave with the win, is astonishingly delusional. Overwhelmingly, big losses will almost always occur before hitting another big win.

And, the super-expert combo of Bob Dancer and Skippie Hughes were simultaneously fired from Gaming Today by publisher Chuck DiRocco after just under a year of writing the video poker columns for him, and he immediately replaced both of them with guess who I quit after he died and after nearly 8 years of continuous writing. Fact: Dancer & Hughes were paid $100/week for their advantage play babble. I refused to ever accept a penny from GT for my Undeniable Truth column--the most popular column ever in the nearly 40 year history of the paper. Fact: losers need to be paid in order to have an income; winners do not. Hughes died penniless after being forced to move out of Nevada in order to stay away from the "+EV" machines and to find work. Dancer can never retire, and will eventually follow in Skippie's footsteps after his huge inheritance from his land-mogul father, has been systematically distributed to the casinos.

Chuck DiRocco was a true visionary. When his wife Eileen was forced to take over after his death, for over a year she wanted me to change my style and I wouldn't. I quit. The paper was 30-some odd pages when I wrote for it, and it was double the area in print per page than its 12-14 pages are today. I attribute some of that to having such a weak writer as Elliot Fromm re-writing his father's vp articles over and over again. I just wish he'd write how Lenny was quoted--and is on tape at my book publisher's office--saying how nobody, including him, can beat the positive EV machines with advantage play.

[Alan Mendelson]

While I believe in playing with win goals, I think my "win goal" method differs significantly from Rob's. My win goal is not a fixed amount and if I reach a win goal I will keep playing with a rising stop loss. I used it today, playing poker at The Bike.

I bought into a $300 table and my goal was to win $100. In the early going it was tough, and I was down to slightly less than $100 and then started to come back, slowly. Finally I won a couple of bigger pots that gave me about $450 in my stack, or a profit of $150. Instead of quitting because I had reached my $100 win goal, I kept playing but now said I would leave if my profit shrank to $125. In fact, I decided to leave with a profit of $136 because two new players came to the table and not knowing how they played I didn't want to expose myself to unnecessary risk.

In video poker you can do the same thing.

[Rob.Singer]

And how you perceive and use win goals is just as I recommend to everyone. There's no need to do it exactly as I do, but base-lining your thoughts from how I do it is really the best way for all the different gambling personalities there are. Without ANY goals, a player just keeps playing until mostly bad things occur. AP's are very knowledgeable about what those are.

[arcimede$]

Couple of comments. First, anyone who thinks or expects it will be more likely or even just as likely to see a second huge jackpot hit in the same session, over losing what was already won because you just couldn't get up and leave with the win, is astonishingly delusional. Overwhelmingly, big losses will almost always occur before hitting another big win.

Hilarious. What part of random don't you understand? This is typical of the nonsense we hear from people like Singer. They are completely clueless and spew this idiotic crap. Anyone that believes them is a fool. And, it turns out today was a nice example. I hit 7 (yes 7) $1000 jackpots in my session.

The rest of his claims are the typical lies we hear from Singer all the time.

[Rob.Singer]

Funny Last week I hit 1 ( yes 1) $8000 jackpot and I quit my session. Then at a second casino I hit 1 (yes 1) $4000 jackpot so I quit THAT session. Like I said, funny....

[Alan Mendelson]

Is there a thousand dollar payoff on $1 One Eyed Jacks, or were you playing a multi line machine??