By Paul Player, Sr.

VP Editor's Note: Paul Player, Sr., is a real guy who plays almost daily in Las Vegas, mostly for quarters. This article concerns his results for 1999. In many ways, the year as a whole was "about average," but the individual events occurring within the year were anything but average.

Some of Player’s methods are different from what I would do—which is just fine, because everybody has to find the way that works best. But most of what he does is what I would do if I were currently playing for quarters. So if you’re a quarter player, perhaps there are some lessons here.

One impossible-to-miss observation about Player is that he keeps extensive records. He records more things than most players do. But what is also obvious is that, with complete records, you can go back and analyze what you have done and make intelligent decisions on how to improve in the future.

—Bob Dancer

Most people who play video poker have heard that playing "positive" video poker games and playing them correctly will make you a winner.

My experience is that this is true in the long run, but from the time you start until you reach that elusive "long run," it’s a wild roller coaster ride. How long is the long run? Hard to say other than to quote John Meynard Keynes when he says, "In the long run, we are all dead." But I play enough so that one year represents a good part of the way towards the long run.

Notice Figure 1. This graph is a plot of my cumulative dollars won and lost during the year 1999. The data is from playing quarter video poker for 854,730 hands in approximately 1,100 hours of play during 274 daily playing sessions from Jan. 1, 1999, to Dec 31, 1999.

The year started out rather uneventfully, with the first 10 days producing some minor wins and losses that net a cumulative loss of less than $500. The rest of the month was a steep slide, with a few win peaks in between.

By the first week of February, the net loss was almost $3,000. Then the VP gods smiled upon me, and in less than 30 days, there was over a $7,000 upward swing, which peaked out at plus $4,293 wins for the year-to-date. During this period, I got four royal flushes, including two within 24 hours.

That was the end of the good times. A royal flush drought ensued, lasting for 368,900 hands. There was no sign of a royal flush from March 9 to Sept. 21, which included 121 playing sessions. Then royal flush Number 5 for the year popped out. I mean popped out—it was on the deal, a no-brainer.

During this royal flush drought, my nice $4,992 win disappeared and I fell below the break-even line. With renewed hope and vigor, I thought that Royal Flush 5 would be the start of an upward trend for the rest of the year, but I was wrong. The rest of the year produced three more royal flushes with ups and downs, mostly in the negative region, with an occasional peak barely above break even.

Then, 10 sessions before the end of the year, an amazing thing happened. I was playing Deuces Wild and hit four Deuces four separate times in one session. What fun! This brought me to $7 above break-even and I was sure I would end the year on a positive note. Wrong. The next nine sessions produced a decline of $1,700, ending at negative $1,692 for the year.

That particular roller coaster ride was unique to me for one particular year. This year will be different. Each of your yearly rides will be different. But it will be a roller coaster ride. Bob Dancer writes about this kind of ride on high denomination machines. Don't think the "little guy" is immune to it.

Ending the year with a negative score was offensive to me. I know it can happen, but I'm a good player and feel it should happen to the other guy, not me. So the two questions I asked myself were a) if I was playing the correct games, and b) is my skill level adequate for this?

The answer to my first question is absolutely yes. I’m very well connected to the Las Vegas quarter video poker scene. I regularly read Strictly Slots, Skip Hughes, the Review Journal and all the casino mail that comes my way. I play the quarter games with the returns among the highest. (I suppose I could add the 101 percent version of Joker Wild to my repertoire, but that game is very difficult and I know enough games as it is.)

And not only do I play the right games, I play them on the right day. Some casino is having double or triple points almost every day of the week. Promotions giving away something extra happen all of the time. Well over 90 percent of the time, I’m not only playing the right games, but playing them when something extra is added on.

I break down the games into a few categories. Here are the categories I use. They are somewhat arbitrary, to be sure, but I find it useful.

1. Full pay Deuces Wild (100.76%): 35 percent of total play.

2. 10/15 and 10/17 Loose Deuces (101.0% and 101.6%) plus Sam Town's Bonus Deuces (101.0%): 15 percent of total play.

3. All-American Poker (100.72%): 20 percent of total play.

4. 10/7 Double Bonus (100.17%) and 10/7/80 Double Bonus (100.53%): 25 percent of total play.

5. East Coast Video Poker: 4 percent of total play.

6. Targets of opportunity (probably 105%+): 1 percent of total play.

All the play, except for category 5, was played in Las Vegas. I spend summers on the East Coast, so that’s the reason for category 5. East Coast video poker includes six sessions played in Atlantic City; the games played are 9/5 Double Joker (99.97%) and Pick'Em Poker (99.95%). I also played one session at Foxwoods (playing All-American Poker), and had a brief session playing dollar 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%) at Paradise Island in the Bahamas.

Targets of opportunity are games I find in the casino which are in their "advantage" mode. These include Flush Attack, in the flush attack mode, Jacks or Better Play Off with a high bonus, and slot machine games such as Piggy Banking, Boom and Bingo, when in a positive mode. The total hands and time played during the year include Flush Attack and Jacks or Better Play Off, and excludes time and "hands" played in slot games. However, the money won and lost on the slot games is included in the year total and the graph. Some of the video poker I played included Deuces Wild on Odyssey Four Play machines, and I played a lot of Double Bonus on Triple Play machines. In these multi-hand games, each line is considered a hand played. Continued...