When you spend enough time in casinos and find yourself playing the same somewhat boring must-hit by machine for perhaps the twentieth time, you start to notice the people around you a little bit more than usual because taking notice of the people at least breaks the monotony. Casting my gaze between the machine and a gentleman sitting a few machines down and caddy-corner from me, I noticed he was talking to himself pretty earnestly. I was so curious as to what he might be saying (I could tell he was talking somewhat loudly, but not loud enough to hear from my position). I arose and kind of paced back and forth as though looking at other machines while keeping an eye on my machine and trying to get within earshot of the gentleman.
I finally got close enough, hopefully without being noticed and heard, “...And $600, at that. You walked in with $20, you could have walked out with $600 and now you’ve got five bucks left. That’s a good freakin’ job. Nice work.”
I didn’t have a ton of interest in listening to the poor guy continue to disparage himself, so I returned to my machine feeling a little bit bad about having made it a point to figure out what he was saying in the first place. Although, noticing that gentleman did bring me back to a conversation I had with a friend of mine about going to the casino prior to the time that I engaged in advantage play in any serious way.
Brandon James: What do you want me to do, then? I like going to the casino. Concerts are too noisy, and to be honest, I’m tired of everyone in the lawn area shoving each other around all the time. If you had actual seats, I’d think about it.
Friend: Yeah, but, I’m offering you this ticket at half price, man. I really think you’ll enjoy the show, you’ve already said that you kind of like two out of the three bands.
Brandon James: That’s true, but I don’t pay for tickets for a band I, ‘Kind of like,’ even at half price. I have to believe that there is someone else you can get to go with you. I’d be happy to ride you there, I’ll just go chill at that one casino until the concert lets out.
Friend: I still can’t get over the fact that you’ll go to the casino but not the show.
Brandon James: I’m a built-in designated driver. I don’t care if I drink at the casino or not, and I’d really hate to see you drink and drive at all, much less to attempt to do it for seventy miles. You can say you won’t drink at the concert, but I’m not buying it, you’ll be plowed before you even walk out your front door.
Friend: Probably, but what makes the casino better than this concert?
Brandon James: Other than the fact that I might get to keep my hearing, you mean?
Friend: Smartass.
Brandon James: If I buy that ticket off of you for the price you are asking, then barring finding a $50 bill on the ground while we are at the show I am going to be out money. In addition to paying forty bucks for that ticket, I am also going to have to buy my pop and I’ll probably end up getting something stupid like a T-Shirt or a hat as if I don’t already own enough of both. On the other hand, if I go to the casino, I might walk out with more money than I walked in with.
Friend: What if I stay sober and you get to drink?
Brandon James: Yeah, that’ll happen. What’ll happen is we’ll either end up getting a room with two beds if we can find one, or I end up sleeping in the back seat of the car and you take the front while we spent the night in the parking lot of the concert venue.
Friend: You’re probably right.
The problem with our old friend the self-talker from above is that he forgot why he decided to take his $20 to the casino instead of a concert or a bar. The fact of the matter is that the casino is the one place where he could potentially have a good time for that amount of money and perhaps even manage to turn it into more money. Apparently, the guy turned that $20 into something around $600 and then bought himself a $600 concert ticket.
Many of you out there might be thinking, “But, the guy only lost the $20 he brought with him,” but that’s the wrong way of looking at it. The one thing that the old codger had right is the fact that he lost $600. Granted, he only walked out of the casino with $20 less than he walked in with, but there can be no doubt that he lost $600.
The reason why is because, when you go to the casino, you are at no point bound to continue betting after you have either lost or won. The old gentleman ran his $20 up to $600 and decided it would be best to continue to try to press his luck. He may have even reasoned that he was playing with $580 of, ‘House Money,’ and that he could possibly increase his bets and win even more than the $580 he was up at that time.
The problem with that sort of reasoning is that there is no such thing as, ‘House Money,” whether you are an AP or a recreational player. The only thing that could be considered, ‘House Money,’ would be free play because you have to run free play through at least once.
As a player, when you have won or lost any sum of money, there is no obligation for you to make any more bets. Ultimately, the guy was correct in being jacked at himself not because he was about to lose $20, but because he had lost nearly $600 to that point and was more likely than not going to lose the rest of it.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Vince Vaughn’s words towards the end of the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story are quite true, “Money won is sweeter than money earned.” There is nothing that is going to send those gratification receptors of your brain buzzing like a significant and unexpected win and your brain is going to want to hit that high note again as soon as possible. While it may seem dull compared to the prospect of winning, even more, money, the piece of advice that I give to people who are playing -EV games is to take an inventory of where you are at and only lose the most that you said you were going to lose.
For example, if that old guy decided that $20 was all he could afford to lose that day, then my advice is to make it so that $20 is all that he loses. Obviously, being on an advantage play of some kind is an exception, but I am pretty confident that was not the case with this guy. At his high point, he apparently had $600, so he should not let his total amount of money get below $580. When he hits $580, there you go, he lost twenty bucks!
Granted, an attitude such as this reeks of the concept of, “Money management,” but I am not suggesting it does anything to change the house edge against you or make you more likely to win. Although, I suppose that a strict adherence to this concept would result in less money being exposed to the house edge because the gentleman would have quit when he got down to $580 rather than continuing to play. Thus, from an expected return standpoint, it could reasonably be argued that he is doing better by following that advice.
Let’s say that you go to the casino with a gambling budget of $200 and you are playing essentially entirely negative expectation slots or video poker. Imagine that you get down to $150 and you suddenly have a $100 hit and are up to $250.
Again, you planned to lose $200 on this trip to the casino, so you do not want your ticket to get down below $50 at this point. If you lose everything on the ticket then you will not have lost $200, you will have lost $250, which is $50 more than you said that you were going to lose. If $200 was a fine amount to lose before, then why should it go up simply because you are doing well and had a decent little hit on the machine?
For negative expectation players who suddenly find themselves ahead by a decent little amount or any amount at all, really, making sure that you leave without losing the original amount that you intended to lose is the same as making sure you leave the casino happy. Why should you want to leave the establishment without any cash when you were ahead at one point?
Also, don’t take this as saying you must lose the amount that you said you are going to lose relative to your high point, by all means, feel free to take it all out of there, you’ll feel even better!
Many people have a tendency to harp upon the inefficacy of these sorts of control techniques, but I firmly believe that this kind of techniques contribute to a player having discipline while gambling, which is undoubtedly a positive thing to have. If you set aside an amount that you were willing to spend at the casino, then do not spend more than that amount. If you can spend that amount and walk away with more than nothing off of your gambling, then that’s fantastic. You have money that you can either spend somewhere else or contribute towards your next visit to the casino.
The same concept can be applied to online gambling. It is very important that I reiterate that setting daily loss limits will not change the expected return of the game that you are playing, but what it does do is force you to approach online gambling in a disciplined manner. Where is the value in watching your entire balance go down to zero in one session while you are fuming the entire time when you could have approached several sessions contentedly and hopefully?
I will grant that, in the short-term, managing your expectations and not losing more than you said you were going to is not going to get those areas of your brain that process excitement lighting up like a pine tree on Christmas Eve. But what it will do is make gambling remain an enjoyable process after you are done gambling for the day. You will not have to look back on your session, or trip to a B&M casino with regret because you did exactly what you said you were going to do.
I wonder how high that guy started betting after he got himself up to that $600, maybe he jumped on one of the $5 denomination Quick Hit Platinum machines and started betting $15 at a time. It’s not inconceivable that, if he had done that, he could have lost most of that money in under a half hour...and it wouldn’t even require running that badly. As opposed to that, the poor gentleman could have instead taken his $580 home and brought $20 to the casino with him on 29 separate future days. He could have even left and decided he would try it with $100 the following day. It wouldn’t matter as long as he stuck to doing that.
The problem is that people get wrapped up and lose the concept of the value of money when they hit an unexpected amount pretty quickly. The money itself remains something of an abstraction rather than something of substance and it is for that reason that the players are not concerned about, “Giving it back,” to the casino. The reason that the term, “House Money,” exists is that your brain hasn’t fully come to process the fact that, no, that is your money.
More than anything I want people to pursue advantage plays and win, but not everyone can do that or myself and my friends wouldn’t be able to do that. There wouldn’t be any casinos left if everyone won. Since not everyone can win, my secondary goal is that I would like it if people would not leave what is supposed to be a recreational activity disappointed or angry, but I see it happen all the time. It’s depressing because these people walk out of their house expecting to have fun, they walk into the casino expecting to have fun, they have fun when they are just getting started playing...but then often eventually stop having fun essentially because they won money!
If that old guy had just lost his $20 and been done with it, he probably would have left the casino happier than winning the $600 and losing it all back. That’s the ironic thing, because of his actions after the win it could be said that it was the fact that he won that made him miserable. That’s a pretty sad thing because it is that potential for winning that is supposed to be the draw of gambling.
Maybe the old guy should just start going to concerts.