Banging The Draw Button Is Not A Winning Strategy

So this past weekend was a casino grind. Total of 18 hours of time spent. about 9 of which was playing Bonus Poker. As usual, I take the time to watch other people play and note the varied ways they give money to the house.

Example 1: A woman was playing what I believe is "wheel poker". In this game you play a normal Jacks or Better but the last card (the one on the extreme right) is marked. There is a wheel that has two portions. The inner portions determine the suit and the outer the "denomination". If the wheel matches the card, the player is given a bonus. So I watched this player who did what I call the "insurance play". That is, If they got a pair of 2s and 1 high card, they held the pair AND the high card. The logic being that you don't get paid for a low pair but if you get pair on the draw you get paid. For someone unfamiliar with the math, it sounds good. Indeed when I first played Double Bonus Poker, where you get paid quite a bit for Quad Aces through 4s. I would hold any low card that dropped. Of course, I soon lost my buy-in. The math doesn't work out like that. And this player also had a rapidly diminishing bankroll. They got frustrated and changed to the next machine. Same play, same results.

Example 2: A man decided that there was no point in using any skill whatsoever. He treaded the Double Bonus Draw Poker machine like a slot machine and simply kept mashing the draw button in the hopes that he would hit something big. Yes. He left disappointed. Or maybe not disappointed. Example 3: A man who insisted on talking to himself, rather loudly and smashed the draw button as hard as he could. Every time I hit a combination that game a longer "just got paid" sound than the usual pair "paid" sound. He would pause, mutter and then resume slamming the draw button. I had been down 3/4 my buy-in before hitting a series of quads that put me up overall. I cashed out and left the machine. Mutter-Smasher decided that the machine I was playing on was "lucky" and went to sit at it. Well, first problem is that statistically speaking, it was unlikely he was going to get any more quads out of that particular machine (simple probability per 1000 hands) since about 4 dropped in the space of 20 hands prior to his sitting. But also because he apparently was not playing correct strategy, he was only likely to get dealt [enter combo here] rather than drawn hands.

As I've become more competent at my gambling the ways in which people volunteer to part with more money then they have to is that much more evident to me. My last example is from Blackjack:

Example 4: A guy who I've seen before had probably $500 in bankroll. His opening bet was $25. I already knew he was going to lose it all. His strategy was to vary every other bet between $5 and whatever number he felt would get him paid. Sometimes it was 25. Other times it was $100. He had a $100 bet out and was dealt a 20 to a dealer's 2. He stood and walked away (I see this a lot). The dealer made 21 and he said: "that just wasn't possible". It just did.

He proceeded to lose the rest of his bankroll in about 10 minutes. I was going to advise him but thought better of it. If I was bright and motivated enough to learn basic strategy (he was making all kinds of playing errors), counting and whatever else to give myself an edge, I don't see why anyone else who's going to frequent a casino couldn't do the same. If they haven't then they don't mind losing money. I mind. I mind a whole lot.

Ok I know I said last example but one more: Example 5: ATM madness.

Another thing I see often are people who are tapped out and go to the ATM to get 14% to 25% interest advances from their credit cards. You add that to the .5 to 8 percent edge the house has at the start and the player is losing a whole lotta money prior to even placing a bet anywhere. And I say "at the start" because in the cases where strategy is required the maintain or overcome the house edge, the house's edge can balloon due to player mistakes.