Customer Reviews

Million Dollar Video Poker (Gambling Theories Methods)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Bob Dancer's Million Dollar Video Poker is an excellent description of the life and goals of a successful advantage video poker player. I'm considering giving it to some of my relatives to help them understand the lifestyle, risks, and possible gains of playing beatable VP machines.

However, if you're looking for a book that describes how to beat the VP machines (strategies, etc.), this isn't going to help you out very much. You'd be better off reading Bob Dancer's Winners Guides, which he's gradually publishing for each VP game. While Dancer includes some tips and information in Million Dollar Video Poker, he basically only says as much as he needs to in order to tell his story to someone who might not know anything about video poker.

I thought this was going to be a tutorial. It was more of the story of a professional gambler and how he got lucky. It was an interesting read if you can get through the narcissitic "I'm the greatest parts"

This is not a book on playing strategy. It's more an autobiographical account of how the author extracted over a million dollars from the casinos. Many of his tactics are described in great detail. The really amazing thing is that anyone would be so candid about his personal life and the things he's done, and how he rationalizes doing things that many people might consider unethical, immoral or perhaps even illegal. One sentence on page 170 is especially revealing: "I'd had a lot of people work with me, get mad at me, and want nothing more to do with me." He seems to delight in being disliked.
There are many good recommendations, such as learning a game thoroughly before playing it and continuing to practice on a trainer program so that your skills don't deteriorate. I especially liked the section titled "The care and feeding of slot hosts." Flattery and gifts (bribes) will get you over a lot of hurdles.
On the very first page of the text, Bob shows his disdain for less than perfect players. Consider a Jacks or Better hand containing a suited J-10, an off-suit King, and two low cards, one of which may or may not be a flush penalty card. The "best" play when there is no penalty card is the J-10 (highest EV by 0.01). I could go into a mathematical analysis discussing how infrequent such a decision occurs, and how frequently there is a penalty card, thus making the K-J the best play in the vast majority of cases, but Bob would come back with dozens of other trivial situations. Therefore, I'll simply point out that several respected analysts have shown that a penalty-card-free strategy comes much closer than 0.01% off of perfect play, and even my easy-to-follow Precision Play rules come within 0.01% of the game EV. That's less than one dollar (a cheap cup of coffee) on $10,000 action, not just on the example type of hand, but the total for all penalty card situations. That may be important for the 50 or so truly professional players (Bob's estimate), but the rest of us would probably lose more expected gain through playing errors and reduced playing speed when trying to follow perfect strategy.
In spite of Bob's insistence upon perfection in playing strategy, he says he never uses a mathematical risk of ruin calculation. He uses the "3-to-5 royals rule" instead. For example, for a game with a $1000 royal, he is happy with a $3000 to $5000 bankroll. On Deuces Wild that figures to a modest 7.4% to 21% risk of ruin, but on Double Bonus Poker (one of Bob's favorite games), it's 61% to 74%. Most serious players would feel that he is often playing way over his bankroll. A few pages later he says, "...I learned that one pro had lost $80,000 on the [$5 15/10] Loose Deuces play at the Frontier. Wow! I had no idea that a loss of this magnitude was possible." A quick run with the Sorokin formula reveals a 39.5% probability of losing an $80,000 bankroll on that game. $80,000 is four royals. So much for the "3-to-5 royals rule." I might risk a few hundred dollars with a 40% risk of ruin, but not $80,000.
To be fair, however, we must acknowledge that Bob doesn't play where his advantage is only about 0.1% on the game itself. Slot club rebates, comps and promotions add a lot to the expected value, with a corresponding reduction in risk of ruin. Still, I would want to estimate the total value to me of such amenities and incorporate that into a mathematical risk of ruin calculation.
As he has done so often in the past, Bob goes out of his way to criticize others' work, and the facts be damned. On page 41, he says, "I'd picked up Dan Paymar's 8th edition of Video Poker Precision Play. His Jacks or Better strategy was an eye opener. It was considerably more complex than Wong's, but, as I learned as I went along, full of mistakes. Still, it gave me added insight. In a footnote in one of Paymar's appendices, he'd written that you should hold a suited high card-10 over two unsuited high cards unless there was another card suited with the high card-10."
That's apparently his best example that my strategy is "full of mistakes," but the error is entirely his. The footnote in question can be none other than note "m" on page 57. Quoting verbatim from that edition, "`Honor-10 suited' means A-10, K-10, Q-10 or J-10 of the same suit. Don't hold a suited 10 with an ace if the jackpot is less than 940-for-1, and don't hold a 10 with any honor if any discard is the same suit or a straight card." Nothing at all is said of two unsuited high cards in this note, but in the hand rank table to which it refers, "Two honors (unsuited)" is just above "K-10, Q-10, J-10 suited." How does Bob interpret this to say that a suited high card-10 should be held over two unsuited high cards? Moreover, his error was pointed out to him when he wrote the same thing several years ago.
On page 125 he says, "... Jokers Wild is an extremely difficult game to play.... Paymar's [strategy] was probably the best and I estimate it generated a return that was still at least .25% less than perfect." Actually, unless you're trying to be as perfect as Bob, Joker Wild is much easier to learn than Double Bonus, and an independent expert has determined that my hand rank table comes within 0.02% of perfect. Bob's "estimate" was off by more than an order of magnitude.
On page 175 Bob says, "Today, Dan Paymar's Video Poker Optimum Play... is currently the best book on how to play video poker on the market." Thanks for the compliment, Bob. It's too bad you were unable to resist the temptation to say that it's full of errors. You wrote a long harangue (your word) on those "errors" several years ago, and I showed that altogether they added up to less than 0.01% of the total game EV. Jazbo Burns confirmed that, using his proprietary strategy analysis software.
It's a minor point, but many places in the book Bob refers to a payoff as, for example, 800 to 1. I'm surprised that Anthony Curtis didn't edit this to the mathematically correct 800-for-1 (the "1" is not returned with the payoff). The difference is small on a royal flush (but still large if you view small errors as Bob does), but on a pair of jacks there's a 100% difference between 1-for-1 (returning your bet, which is just a push) and 1-to-1 (a real win of an amount equal to your bet, as on a winning craps pass bet).
In summary, Million Dollar Video Poker is a very important book for anyone considering doing business with Bob, as it gives great insight into his ethics and morals. It is also important for anyone intent on becoming a professional gambler, no matter whether your game of choice is video poker, blackjack or anything else. Perhaps the most important lesson is that Bob spent several years learning how to take advantage of every potential opportunity, during which he made far less than he could have earned in a regular job in spite of admittedly stealing from the casinos (page 88). If you are not up to the task, the book will hopefully dissuade you from the attempt.
By far the most valuable part of the book is the final chapter, "Winning is a Process, Not an Event." These four pages give the best advice I've ever read for a wannabe professional gambler. If you buy the book, do it for this section.
The goal of making big money playing video poker boils down to a lot of hard work that would likely have yielded even greater rewards in a productive endeavor. And it's getting even harder as the casinos learn to structure promotions to be less vulnerable to pros.
On page 210 Bob says that Deuces Wild is much more fun than Jacks or Better. I consider it very significant that this is the only time in the book where he says anything about video poker being fun. But don't despair; you can still have fun playing video poker as a skilled recreational player and supplement your income without all that work if you start with the strategy book that Bob recommends.

Bob Dancer tells the story of his exciting 7-year ride playing video poker, beginning with a modest bankroll and ultimately leading to a million dollar win over the casinos. Along the way he relates some of the most fascinating and revealing anecdotes of any gambler to date. In the process the intelligence, psychology and strategies essential to a successful player are disclosed.

The book leaves little doubt about luck's keen role in conquest over the casinos. But disciplined play is vividly illustrated by Dancer to be far more crucial. He demonstrates that discipline maximizes opportunities for luck to play out in the gamblers' favor.

While focused on Dancer's video poker experience, any gambler will find food for thought applicable to their game. For that matter, even a reader with a passing gaming interest will find it a very lucid, compelling and entertaining read.

The book is quite possibly the most insightful book on the subject of gambling that anyone who has ever stepped foot into a casino, or who contemplates doing so, will pick up. It isn't one to overlook.

Other reviewers have commented correctly that this is not another how-to book about playing video poker perfectly. Bob Dancer and others already have written those books. This new one offers: (1) a surprisingly revealing account of Dancer's rags-to-riches life over the past 20 years; and (2) his advice about preserving one's bankroll and soul while gambling to earn a living. Video poker happens to be the venue because that is Dancer's game of choice. But anyone who aspires to being a winning gambler should read this book. In addition, the book is a fun read. The Dancers' climactic $1,000,000 win is merely the happy ending of an adventure that often threatened to end badly.

Bob Dancer is as good as it gets in the Video Poker world. He knows math and he explains Video Poker very well. This book is a good introduction to the world of professional Video Poker play. It is a book that lays the truth bare about playing for a living in Las Vegas.

Bob Dancer is the best there is today. His book chronicles his rise to Video Poker Czar!

Even though he won over $1 million in a five-month period, he had to put most of his winnings back into the machines in order to win the next big jackpot. Mathematically his strategies are probably perfect, but that doesn't put money into my pocket. I've played video poker using his strategies and I lose every time. I guess if I had a bankroll of $80,000 to spend I would eventually win a jackpot, but then what's the sense if I win a jackpot of $40,000 when I'm already down by $60,000??!!! The book is a nice story about his life while earning a living at video poker, but his real earnings these days are from the sale of books, strategy cards, and video poker CDs.

Bob Dancer says that there are better video poker players than he is, but he's the only expert at his level who writes about it. His entertaining narrative covers most of his professional career, from finding quick ways to get extra "casino action chips" at Vegas World in the beginning to taking shots at a $100 video poker machine at the MGM Grand at the end. Along the way he provides lessons in bankroll management, a glimpse at the work week of a VP professional, and examples of the right and wrong ways to deal with comps.

You won't find the decision chart for any video poker games, but you will read about what it really takes to be a consistent winner.

this is a must-read. In this riveting account of the ups and downs of playing professional V. Poker, Bob Dancer reveals it all - from his low roller beginnings to the high roller world, and the wild ride getting there. Packed with fascinating info about casinos, promotions & comps, bankrolls, winning & losing, Dancer shares his secrets with the reader.

Well written in a chronological diary style, this book describes the tedious life of the professional video poker player. Yeah, Dancer gradually works his bankroll into six figures and stays at the MGM Mansion, but his "job" is to play 15000 hands of VP per week and calculate the payback of a casino's latest coupon deal to the hundredth of a percent. If you want to be a pro gambler, read this book! Dancer pretends to be a wonderful, ethical guy, but he spends his days (nights) looking for VP machines programmed incorrectly to pay a high cashback rate. He's like the guy who checks pay-phone coin returns. Dancer is a smart guy, but he doesn't contribute as much to society as he wants you to believe. Still, this is a unique look at full-time casino action.