djatc's Blog
Roadtrip #1: Seattle to Reno
Finally packed up everything I own and cleaned out the studio. I actually don't own much. Turned what I could into cash. I pawned my monitor and I had a genius as a clerk so she kept pressing the button on and off and finally I said, "you gotta plug it in...." then she demanded a power cord. Then she asked me if I had HDMI, which I thought meant did I have a HDMI cord for this, which I said no. Then another guy said does the monitor have HDMI, then I said yes. The girl said "why didn't you say so?" I worry about pawn shops, and the future of this country.The first leg of my trip has me on I-5 going south all the way through Oregon, then breaking off at Eugene through Klamath Falls. Hope there are no crazy mountain roads, as I drive a Miata. 682 miles to Reno. Hope to make it in 12 hours. Got a room at Harrah's, so I might play a little BJ (horrible conditions at Harrah's, might go somewhere else) and start the next morning heading to Vegas!!! I will be in and out of hotel rooms till the end of July. I will keep updating as the days go by... I have tons of coupons to do coupon runs with.
Vegas! Will not leave until I am a winner!
Finally got all my crap taken care of and will be going to Vegas in June! This is gonna be a long term vacation, at least 2 or 3 years, longer if I graduate and get a job or win the Megabucks imo. If I win it I can teach classes on how to win Megabucks for a steady income.... Made a string of reservations throughout all the hotels I got comped and it looks like I can get free rooms from when I move to the middle of July lol. Basically it's a combo of Luxor, Palms, Gold Coast, Sam's Town, and Caesers.I strongly recommend people put some coin-in on Boyd properties; they are the CET of low rollers. I put $500 or $600 through a gimp pay JoB progressive and they sent me 5 free rooms every month until Sept, with a dining credit and $75 in freeplay. This effectively cancels my losses so I'm pretty happy.
Same goes for CET properties; if your first day ADT is really high they will comp you everything possible. I am getting an effective "rebate" of freeplay of close to 70% of the amount I lost, and rooms. The best play for CET is to get their credit card, and play enough to get to Diamond with the point boost. While not a great +EV play, they offer the best in getting you rooms so it's worth putting a few coins in if you wanna stay at Caesers Palace. Downside is that their highest returning game is FP JoB at $5.
Mlife is a different beast. Since I made money chasing tier levels (disproportionate rate of 4OAK on the 3 play JoB at Luxor imo) they have not sent me any good offers until I lost a bit at UTH. I'm gonna have to limit my table game playing to AP only when I move.... They did send me free rooms and freeplay (not enough to cover my losses unfortunately) so I took advantage of that to fill the gap between other hotels.
I am up lifetime at the Palms but still managed to get some rooms, and I think it's because I played a ton of UTH. I made money (over a grand) but got a food comp while playing and ended up with nice room offers. I had to give some back at the 5 play JoB, maybe that's what set it off.
Any tips on living the comp hotel nomad life?
How could I forget the El Cortez...... I am up lifetime there too (played $1 LDW underolled) and made some decent scores. Only problem is their front desk is busy as hell everyday, so I can never get to make reservations. I'm looking forward to cashing in my 5x point day so I can bang on the STP JoB for some +EV action. Let's hope I don't get 86ed.
Comments
There is not a Stations property on your list. I've found them pretty easy and fair with comps. And I bet you could rotate through the hotels again from the middle of July until...?
Adding Stations to my list when I get there. I just never got around to their property. I always map out places to play at and give each a little play, and try to take advantage of new member bonuses. Didn't work so well at Riviera though, only got a T-shirt. I did ask about rebates and they said they have none.
Keep us up to date on your Vegas sojourn. Send teddys a pm.... he did what you are about to undertake....
I hope you do well on your living in Vegas on the cheap sojourn. Just remember to have fun. That guy who did 26 days in Vegas on twelve dollars a day had a blast but he did his laundry in his room and took buses around town. Thats not fun at all.
I suggest you find a woman willing to support you for awhile and just leave her and your dirty laundry behind.
What's a sojourn? Is that a type of Korean liquor?
I pm'ed teddys a while back and found his show on GWAE interesting. I don't know if I can get my cost down to $12 a day (I like to eat), but I can save quite a bit since I have a car, and will be utilizing coin laundry. I still haven't cashed in my comps at El Cortez and the Palms which sent me some more free rooms. I might have to buy some rooms on the 4th weekend because I thought I had to fly back for guard drills but turns out not to be.
Will be updating this blog as the days get closer.
Also, if anyone knows of a nice young lady who would like to support me throughout this period I will buy you a (cheap) buffet!
I'm not quite sure I understand. Will you have a permanent residence starting in mid-July?
Yes I am moving there in June. I plan to live as long as possible in hotel rooms. I found an apartment with a forum member here so after my free rooms run out I'm moving there.
I would like to do that, but don't have any comps. My internet searches have not yielded any good results.
I've asked on the forum here without many replies.
Did you search for a monthly hotel room or studio?
No I had to give the casinos some play before you receive offers. They need to see your action before deciding how much to send to you to entice you.
"I've asked on the forum here without many replies. Did you search for a monthly hotel room or studio?"
If you're talking about getting a long-term room/studio in Vegas, just search Craigslist. Sometimes people will post some good deals on rooms. (I recently saw a casita for $450/month with utilities & wireless internet included)
Good luck man. Sounds like fun.
If you didn't leave the table you'd get the royal!
100.76% Deuces WildHands played: 500001
Payback: 100.96%
Won: 23955 credits
I dunno why but I couldn't access the "overall play" screen without playing through a hand. I totally forgot to update this and I haven't let autoplay do it's thing in a week now. Anyway things are going back to the norm, it was an up and down rollercoaster of 3 or so royals until everything fixed itself. About 6 royals which is far below EV but still over 100%.
I've gotten my fair share of royals in my VP career (less then a year). My very first one was at Muckleshoot casino, located in Washington state. As you know WA offers no class III machines and therefore the video poker machines are just like slots. This was the days before knowing any of this so I stuck a couple hundred through a machine, and hit my first royal a few days before the New Years. I was such a noob that I thought I had to buy coins of some sort to stick into the machines, and asked a bored bartender where I could get some coins to play the machines. He looked at me like I was an idiot and said to just stick your bills in the machines. After that I was hooked, and hit another royal on New Years. This one cost me significantly more then the last, but was still under the amount I got paid so it worked out. While attempting my third one I didn't hit it, and ended up out most of the cost of the royal. By then I realized I was trying to beat up a class II machine and would be wise to not play anymore. Good thing was that since the returns were so low, I received $400 in cashback, and $500 or so in bounceback. Since then I haven't put a single coin through this state.
My next royal came from a JoB progressive I heard about in Oregon, so I drove the 200 or so miles to check it out. I hit it at the lowest amount ever ($1150, just under W2-G status) and checked WoO to find the best strike point. The casino offers 0.28% cashback so the meter would only have to rise to about $1300 to make it an even play. After finding out the best amounts to start playing (I built an excel spreadsheet of the strike points and hourly) I went back several more times and didn't hit it :( I did earn some freeplay and rooms, so that was the beginning of comp whoring at its finest.
The last royal (single line only) came at the Palms on my first Vegas trip. I spent most of the week couponing and signing up for players cards throughout Vegas with a rental car so I was +EV in terms of gambling until I tried to go for DIAD at Caesers. The last day of the trip I didn't even know it was my last, and thought I had an extra day so I stayed up the entire day at the Palms on the FPDW machine. The royal came at 3:30am or so after playing and chatting with a guy that was staying there that emphasized he only plays games with an edge. I headed back to the El Cortez (I'm a cheap bastard), showered, and knocked out for all of 5 minutes until housekeeping came by and said you're supposed to check out today. Damnit! Something about Vegas vacations make me think I always have an extra day to play around. This happened on my second trip as well. I head back to the Palms and down a redbull so I can have one more royal before the airport. Sure enough number 2 came just minutes before I cashed out. Finally I hit 4 deuces at the airport machine, too bad I was playing single quarters :(
Anyway the blog title is referring to an incident at the Gold Coast. I was playing UTH (I can't get enough of this game), and there was an obnoxious Ukrainian dealer who was funny but getting on everyone's nerves cuz he kept pulling out better hands lol. One Chinese lady left the table to go play BJ or something, and she was last base so the dealer ended up getting the Qs on the AKJTs board for the royal!!! The dealer starting gloating and trolling so the entire table was heated, not in a malicious way but a "you gotta be kidding me" way. The highest hand I ever had was a quad at the Palms, and this let me cash out with a purple chip which was kinda awesome. Did it for 2 days in a row and I would alternate between 50 line JoB and UTH so everytime I came back to the table I would tell the dealer I hit a royal. Only problem is 1c 50 line only pays $40 for one.....
What's your royal flush story?
Comments
I've hit so many Royals...it's hard to say what's the best "Story"...
I'll tell you about one the DEALER made at PaiGow...a friend and I were the only people at the table...we were just playing our $25 promo chips...the dealer turns over a natural royal flush of spades and just wipes the cards up and it's done...We were both like "HOLY CRAP A ROYAL!!!" and the dealers like "Yeah so what?! Happens all the time." BS!
Or another time...I hit a $ royal at MSS in Vegas, totally unexpected and I wasn't "stuck" at all, so I was completely and utterly up $4000...
My first $ royal was dealt, single line of course! My most recent royal was the smallest and most strange: I was scavenging a 10c Ultimate X machine (bum status) and saw the 10-play deuces wild had a bunch of multipliers. One spin at 5 coins and I'm staring at only the lines that had multipliers. The hands with multipliers didn't hit anything big so I kept scavenging and cashed out. When I looked at the ticket it was over $410. At first I thought someone had left credits in the machine, which has happened plenty of times though not that large of an amount. Once, someone left a machine in the middle of a hand. I guess these are the same people leaving multipliers that they paid for lol. Anyway, I went back and saw my 10c royal :)
Sucks the dealer picked up the royal instead, but with the ages of the auto shuffler, I feel like every decision in life makes a difference. If she would have left, the royal wouldn't have occurred. My royal story that I have already blabbed about here and on 2+2, dealt royal at Flamingo near the pleasure pit. Great view of the pit from those machines and you can gamble for quite cheap while gawking at them since they are penny machines.
wouldn't have left...I am bad about forgetting that "not" word sometimes, meh.
Video gaming with an edge
100.76% Deuces WildHands played: 426319
Payback: 101.07 %
Won: 22775 credits
So the autoplay went through 10 royal cycles.... and it's up to about 5 1/2. My computer crashed so I had to redo the simulator so I would have been up to 800k or so. Can't wait to get to Vegas and play for real.
The title of this post is the reason why I enjoy video poker so much. I grew up playing RPG's (Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and recently Fallout). I enjoyed the story lines of games and since English is my second language (Japanese being first) I didn't understand what the heck was going on until I played them over and over again to put the context clues together. This helps big time with language tests where the content is far beyond what I can comprehend, and I would put together words and try to make a guess on what is being said.
Anyway the reason why I mention video games is because in every game I would try to find out what the best way to gain levels is or to accumulate gold. Item duplication tricks, hidden grinding spots, selling rare items, manipulating markets (I made a good amount of gold in WOW at the auction house) and other edges I can get over the game to be over leveled. This carried over to poker at first. I enjoyed the game since playing with my friends for quarters (we were all very horrible, but it was fun). The problem was that I suck at reading people, and started making way too many fancy moves which don't make sense for the stakes I was playing. It's humbling to come to the conclusion that even though I put the time into poker I still suck. I made the decision that I'll only play tournaments for fun, and not to grind out a profit. The game is a lot more fun that way for me. I can play a lot more aggressively when the stakes don't matter and it's a fixed amount. Last tournament I played I knocked out like 6 people in a field of 20. Too bad there were no bounties.
While I was playing regular poker I played video poker for fun after reading WoO (Thank you Wizard for showing me that gambling can be profitable!). At first it's pretty hard to stick to a strategy when you think it's gambling and you wanna try to hit the royal while disregarding optimum play. Anyway over time I incorporated the right plays and saw that there is money in perfect play. It's not much but same as poker there is exponential growth which makes playing low stakes bearable. Since I cannot get to a casino now that offers +EV games I do a lot of scouting on the internet for the best plays. It's rewarding to find a great promotion, because most people don't care to do the work on finding them. This takes quite some time but it's part of advantage play; perfect play, finding promotions, and bankroll. As of right now I am open to other opportunities (counting, dice control, etc) but I'm not too familiar with the methods nor do I have any experience. It's always good to spread your AP targets though.
Computer perfect VP play results
I let VPW run autoplay for a few days and this is the results:100.76% Deuces Wild
Hands played: 233425
Payback: 102.37%
Won: 27680 credits
It's not nearly enough to average out but it does show that over time money can be made if you have an edge. Pretty interesting results.
I dunno what's going on with CET properties but they have sent me a lot more free rooms/freeplay then my play warrants, which is awesome. I currently have 5 free nights, $50 food credit, 2 free tickets to certain shows, 2x $350 freeplay vouchers, 2x 4 night stays for a video poker tournament, 3 free nights with a $300 pool credit, and 2x 3 free nights with $750 in freeplay or Macy's gift cards. I guess they figure I am a bigger player then they think I am. TBH the total free play amounts are about the amount of action I gave them, so now it's time to "launder" them with VP.
Moving to a whole new city is a big task. When I made the move here (WA state) I did it for school so I knew exactly where to go, and stayed at the dorms for the first few quarters. After that I knew I could save money by moving and I would know where the good spots are. With this Vegas move it's gonna be rough for a few weeks until I can figure things out. Good thing those hotel comps can help me out :). I did network with some folks here and found a great place that fits my budget, and if that doesn't work out a possible roommate. It's always great to have someone to bounce ideas back and forth with, as when I was playing poker online it was strictly solo and I felt I could have gained much more skill had I discussed my play. I found a big leak playing live and I probably won't be trying to support myself playing poker, only tournaments for fun and if I feel I have an edge. Tournament play is much more fun; you can put people all in more often and make them give up chips, whereas a cash game it's an ongoing battle if you can reload after you bust out.
Palms finally sent me some offers. It's funny because I am up $3k or so lifetime there and they sent me 3 free nights. Only casino I know of that I am up at :)
Comments
Doesn't VPW have a faster setting? 233425 is not a very big sample. That is a ridiculous result, btw. That's almost $7K ahead, huge outlier. I would expect closer to a million hands you'll start seeing the 100.76%.
100.76% Deuces Wild
Hands played: 233,425
Payback: 102.37%
Won: 27680 credits
Sample size is too small.
One can still play that many hands and be in the hole, a BIG hole.
VPW is not that good for a high speed large run simulator BTW, IMO
only a 75% chance of showing a profit after that many hands played.
That means out of 1 million VP AP players,
about 250,000 would STILL be in the hole after Hands played: 233,425
About 2.5% of all VP AP playing this game for this many hands would still
down between $4k to $6.5k!
great playing a +EV game
Run some larger simulations yourself or do the math.
Doesn't VPW have a faster setting? No
233,425 is not a very big sample. Agree. But it is better than 23,425
That is a ridiculous result, btw. Nope. 100% I disagree
That's almost $7K ahead, huge outlier. Nope. I still disagree
Well within the 2 standard deviation range.
Do the math or run a sim.
Nothing surprising here to me
All VP writers only talk about perfect play and never mention how much
bankroll is needed and how many hands it takes to be even close the actual
return %.
I would expect closer to a million hands you'll start seeing the 100.76%
You are WAY OFF on that one.
The Wiz even shows how to do the math. But no one will.
It is ALL about perfect play only.
http://wizardofodds.com/ask-the-wizard/video-poker/deuces-wild/
how many hands would I have to play to have a 90% probability of getting to 100.66%?
the answer, which is 42,383,720 hands. That is a lot!
(almost 43 MILLION hands...and ONLY 90% probability. still a BIG room for error!!)
Suppose your goal is to simply come out ahead with a 90% probability.
Then you would only need 733,790 hands. This is still a lot,
Yep.
Only perfect play is needed to be a VP AP winner!
Good Luck is still needed
VPW is pretty slow.... It can only do about 2800 hands/hour. I just leave my computer on and let it do its thing. I am trying to get to 1mil to see what the results are. It's gonna be a long road to grow the bankroll at quarters, but I gotta pay my dues.
@7craps "All VP writers only talk about perfect play and never mention how much bankroll is needed and how many hands it takes to be even close the actual return %."
Preposterous. Ludicrous. Ridiculous.
Now they added another 3 days of rooms with a 150k freeroll poker tournament or luxury sunglasses.... they will be disappointed when they get no play after the freeplay is washed lol.
Comments
Good Luck.
Good luck, man.
I definitely don't envy the drive from Klamath Falls to Reno and then from Reno to Vegas. Then again, the alternative (driving down CA and then over to Vegas) is probably 150 miles or so longer. Both routes are probably similar time-wise.
Made it to Reno in 10 hours. Almost ran outta gas between stops. Not fun to desperately coast through a winding road...... won some money at Cal-Neva by doing a really amateur count, was like +5 though.
Good luck!!