Si usted es un planificador experto o es más una persona que va con la corriente, la administración del tiempo puede ser un salvavidas y reducir el riesgo de desarrollar comportamientos problemáticos de apuestas.  Si bien puede sonar como un engorro, ejercer una buena administración del tiempo puede ayudarle a aprovechar al máximo su día. Siga leyendo para saber más sobre estrategias sencillas de administración del tiempo y cómo practicar comportamientos de apuestas responsables para mantener su vida en el buen camino y apegada a su calendario. 

Sugerencias para la administración del tiempo

¿No tiene suficiente tiempo en el día? ¿Demasiado tiempo en sus manos? De cualquier manera, planificar su horario y reservar tiempo para desconectarse y tiempo para trabajar en sus habilidades de recuperación pueden ayudarle a mantener un equilibrio saludable. De hecho, administrar bien su tiempo es un componente clave para las apuestas responsables. A veces, cuando se apuesta, las personas pueden sentirse desconectadas de la realidad y perder la noción del tiempo. Sin embargo, cuando las personas designan momentos para tomarse descansos y se ajustan a ellos, esto puede ayudar a los apostadores a reconectarse con la realidad y obtener el control de sus emociones, ya que hacer apuestas puede crear una liberación de dopamina en el cerebro y dar a los participantes un tipo de “subidón” que puede nublar el juicio. 

Si elige limitar o restringir sus apuestas, ya sea limitando el tiempo empleado, cuánto dinero se apuesta o de otra manera, es esencial hacer un plan y cumplirlo. Una buena manera de reducir el tiempo dedicado a las apuestas es invertir su tiempo en otras actividades, entre ellas:

• Estructurar el tiempo todos los días para que no haya tiempo “libre”
• Permanecer en el momento siendo consciente de lo que está haciendo
• Pasar tiempo con amigos y familiares que lo apoyen
• Asistir a reuniones de grupos de apoyo 
• Leer los libros de trabajo de recuperación de autoayuda, disponibles al comunicarse con 888-ADMIT-IT
• Revisión de videos en línea – disponible a través de 888-ADMIT-IT

Muchas personas que apuestan creen que no necesitan tomarse descansos, pero, cuanto más se ignoran las restricciones de tiempo, más peligrosas pueden llegar a ser las apuestas.  Una buena práctica es hacerse cargo de su horario escribiendo las cosas que planea hacer ese día para reflejar dónde puede haber tiempo libre. En el caso de los apostadores problemáticos, el tiempo libre puede ser peligroso, por lo que, de nuevo, estructurar su tiempo es esencial.

Prácticas de apuestas responsables 

Administrar mejor el tiempo es un gran primer paso para las apuestas responsables, pero hay muchos otros enfoques positivos que se pueden implementar, entre ellos: 

• No apostar cuando está molesto, estresado, cansado o distraído
• Nunca apostar bajo la influencia de sustancias
• No apostar con dinero destinado a cosas esenciales
• No perseguir pérdidas

Siempre es el momento adecuado para la recuperación

En la vida, todo se reduce al momento adecuado, y cuando se trata de problemas con las apuestas, cuanto antes encuentren la ayuda y la esperanza que necesitan los que están en riesgo y sus seres queridos, mejor. La recuperación comienza con Your One Sure Thing, la línea de ayuda para problemas de juego multilingüe y confidencial las 24 horas del día, los 7 días de la semana, 888-ADMIT-IT. Aquí, las personas que experimentan dificultades con las apuestas y las personas cercanas a ellas pueden encontrar los recursos necesarios para dar sus primeros pasos en la recuperación; y recuerde, nunca es demasiado tarde o demasiado temprano para obtener ayuda.

I received the following email. It requires more analysis than I normally do without charge for strangers, but since I can get a column out of it, why not?

Upcoming video poker excursion commencing Friday, leaving Saturday evening.  

 Playing exclusively $1 9/6 JOB 99.54%.  

 My Offers for this Trip:

 1 night comp’d in the best tower on a Friday night, no taxes or resort fees.  

1. $50 Walmart Gift Card to pick-up (Friday)
2. $50 Bonus Slot Play (not sure if this can be played on VP since I’m fairly new to the casino) – Saturday only
3. 4x Tier Credits all day Saturday 7a-midnight – likely all of my play will be Saturday

 How do I calculate whether I have an advantage or not, or is it even mathematically possible? 

Okay. I wasn’t given enough information to completely analyze this, but let’s give it a shot. The following are things to consider in no particular order:

9/6 Jacks or Better does indeed return 99.544% — if you play it accurately. Many players do not play it accurately. You don’t automatically receive that return by showing up. So, how well do you play this game?

A free room is nice, and a nicer room is better than a standard room, but I don’t include this in my calculation as to whether or not I have an advantage. I have a place to stay at home that I’m paying for whether I’m there or not. Just because other people might be charged $200 to stay in that room doesn’t mean that me not paying for it adds $200 to my equity.

On the other hand, how much is it costing me to get to this casino? If it’s 15 miles away, I’m not taking that into consideration (other than for tax reasons.) If it’s 1,500 miles away and I have significant expenses to get there which are not being reimbursed by the casino, then that definitely should count as negative Expected Value.

If you view playing video poker as a hobby, and hobbies cost money, then it can be easy to justify an airfare expenditure as part of the cost of enjoying your hobby. But this does not mean that you’re gambling with an edge. It means you are, maybe, paying less than retail to enjoy your hobby.

I include the gift card and free play at face value. To be sure, I’d rather have $100 in cash than a $50 gift card and $50 free play, but it’s “close enough.” If it were a $50 Chevron card, however, that’s not worth so much to me. Nothing against Chevron. It’s just that I drive an electric car and don’t buy gas.   

This letter stipulates that he picks up the gift card on Friday but isn’t going to play until Saturday. Are you going to spend the rest of Friday costlessly? 

Picking up a gift but not playing on a particular day may or may not sit well with the casino. Doing this occasionally is no big deal. Making a practice out of it may well cause the casino to stop giving you these gifts. Remember, even though players generally see these gifts as a reward for past play, casinos generally see these rewards as an incentive to get you to come in and play more. If you collect the gift but do not play more, and do this regularly, some casinos will punish you by not giving you these rewards in the future. 

Playing 9/6 Jacks or Better costs you, on average, $45.60 per $10,000 coin-in. It isn’t specified how much is going to be played. If you only play $1,000 that weekend, it’ll cost you $4.56 on average, but you’re not likely going to get these offers in the future. If you play $100,000 that weekend (not likely on a $1 single line game), your expected loss is $456, which swamps the offers you are scheduled to received.

The $50 in free play and the $50 gift card are “one time stock amounts.” The losing of $45.60 per $10,000 coin-in is a “recurring flow amount.” You can’t really add up stock amounts and flow amounts. If you say, I’m going to play $xxxx amount of coin-in, and that is going to cost me 0.00456 * $xxxx, then the Expected Value of what you’re going to play becomes a specific stock amount which can be offset by the other stock amounts. But so long as it’s a nebulous amount of play, the amounts are not addable.

You mention that you’ll receive 4x tier credits. That’s nice. That’s clearly better than 2x tier credits. But I have no idea what tier credits are worth at this casino to you. (I don’t know which casino or even in which state this casino is located.) Are you planning on playing enough to reach a particular tier level in the requisite time. (Usually, tiers are recalculated annually or semi-annually. January 1 through December 31 is perhaps the most typical time interval to calculate tiers, but it can be April 1 – September 30, or any other interval.)

If a free (actually “highly discounted”) cruise is part of your tier benefits, is this something of value to you? Some people like cruising. Some don’t. Some have a cruising partner. Others don’t and may not like taking a cruise unaccompanied. If a daily free buffet is a tier benefit, and you’re only going to be at this casino for four days the entire year, then this isn’t such a big deal. Even if you plan to be at this casino fifty or more times, eating at the same place so frequently gets to be rather tiresome. If free internet is a benefit but you’re wary of using free internet and always travel with your own secure hot spot, then this benefit isn’t worth anything to you. You get the idea. A list of benefits in a brochure is not the same as the value to you – which may very well be different than the value of the same tier level to me.

You mention tier credits. Do you earn other credits and how much are they worth? The Caesars system, for example, gives you Reward Credits as well as Tier Credits. You can spend these RCs for food, merchandise, and other things. You can even turn them into free play — discounted 50%. Is there anything similar to this at this particular casino?

Are there other benefits you didn’t mention? Perhaps drawing tickets for a new car at the end of the month? You’re not likely to earn enough tickets playing one day of single-line dollars to give you a meaningful shot at this, but if you’re going to be at this casino anyway when the drawing is going on, surely this drawing is worth something.

Finally, unless this is your last time at this casino ever (in which case your tier level is irrelevant), you’ll be earning benefits down the road for your play this time. You might get free play in the mail. You might get future offers similar to the current one. You can’t take this one weekend in isolation. It’s part of the overall package.

I go through this kind of calculation for every offer I get. I play at enough casinos that I frequently have choices of offers at more than one place. I use the process described here to rank these offers. Sometimes I can take advantage of two or more offers in the same time period, but usually they are mutually exclusive.

And whatever answer I come up with this weekend, next weekend I’ll go through the same process again to decide what to do then.

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling under Older Adults, Problem Gambling Awareness

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling under Older Adults, Problem Gambling Awareness

No guest this week as we answer questions from our mail bag. 

We welcome your questions – send them to us at [email protected], or you can find me at @RWM21 on Twitter or https://www.facebook.com/GamblingWithAnEdge.

podcast – https://www.spreaker.com/user/7418966/mail02132023

Show Notes

[00:00]  Introduction

[00:26]  Playing without card inserted

[00:56]  Failures in advantage play

[12:54]  What is the best way to earn free play?

[14:18]  Dealers offering advice, playing hands without instruction

[15:14]  Tips for building a bankroll

[16:50]  Social engineering to prolong plays

[18:09]  New video poker variant

[19:29]  Maintaining Seven Stars status at Caesars

[20:22]  Testing blackjack team members

[24:48]  Wonging and back counting

[26:10]  Craps betting system

[28:13]  Losses at high variance video poker games

[30:19]  Dealer errors at Free Bet Blackjack

[32:55]  Is video poker still beatable in casinos today?

[33:27]  Playing blackjack at third base

[35:42]  Switching video poker variants due to short-term outcomes

[36:29]  Explaining advantage play to family and friends

[40:59]  Commercials

[42:54]  Bankroll management, planning for living expenses

[45:58]  Free play strategy

[47:05]  Banking issues for advantage players

[49:33]  Emotional bankroll and other tips for increasing blackjack stakes

[50:58]  Does using a food comp hurt offers?

[52:46]  How do APs cash out enough chips to generate income without ID?

[55:21]  Recommended:  Blackjack Apprenticeship Podcast (Episode BJA100), David Baldacci audiobooks

Sponsored Links:

http://Unabated.com

http://VideoPoker.com/gwae

http://BlackjackApprenticeship.com

Books Referenced:

Video Poker for the Intelligent Beginner by Bob Dancer – https://amzn.to/3YCRQQ8

Recommended:

http://Blackjackapprenticeship.com/blackjack-apprenticeship-podcast/

http://Audible.com/author/David-Baldacci/B000AQ0STC

Bonnie and I took a trip to Reno and played at the ROW, the threesome of connected casinos (Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus) that are now part of the Caesars system. I’d played there previously but this was Bonnie’s first trip.

When we swiped our cards at the kiosk at the start of our visit, we discovered that we each received 20,000 bonus drawing tickets for a drawing coming up in several weeks, and a 20x ticket multiplier for all of our play that day. Every day we were there, we got another 20x multiplier. When we departed Reno, we each had several hundred thousand drawing tickets. I’ve never had so many drawing tickets in my life!

Turns out we got so many bonus tickets and such large multipliers because we are Seven Stars members. Diamond members get 15x multipliers and 15,000 tickets. Platinum members get 10x and 10,000 tickets. And Gold members get 5x and 1,000 tickets. 

Generally speaking, I only show up at drawings where I have a good chance to win. Lots of tickets generally mean a good chance. And now we both have a lot of tickets. Actually, what I just said isn’t exactly true. It’s not just the chance to win. It’s also the size of the win. A really, really good chance to win $50 wouldn’t be worth getting on an airplane to go and try to win. A moderately good chance to win $100,000 just might be.

So, do we go back for the drawing? 

Most likely not. 

If all players who show up get so many free tickets and there are such big multipliers every day, everybody will have a lot of tickets. If we have 500,000 tickets out of several billion in the virtual drum, that’s really no different percentagewise than having 500 tickets out of several million. If the second situation isn’t a “must attend” event (which it isn’t), the first one isn’t either.

To be sure, our Seven Stars status earns us tickets at a more rapid rate than lower-tier players get. But not that much more. It’s true that you only need one ticket in the drum to win, but the odds favor the players with lots of tickets. As a general rule for me, if everybody is getting free tickets, I’m not interested. No matter how much I play, if tens of thousands of players receive free tickets, I can never earn enough to have an excellent chance of winning.

There are players who will attend as many drawings as possible, no matter how many entries they have. Not me. It takes time and energy to attend drawings. Since Reno is hundreds of miles away from where we live in Las Vegas, it’s easy to see it’s not free for us to get to that drawing. But even for drawings in Las Vegas, it’s time-consuming to attend the drawings. And you can only be in one place at a time.

Turns out this drawing in Reno is a three-night affair. On Thursday, 20 players get $500 each. Since they say the number of players winning is guaranteed, I guess that means if not all 20 prizes are claimed within a certain time limit, they’ll keep drawing until they are. Friday night another 20 players get $500 each. Saturday night, 60 players win $500, and one of those 60 wins a $50,000 Mercedes Benz in addition to their $500. (I might be misstating the rules. I don’t have the exact rules in front of me. Still, this blog is about the thought process involved in deciding whether to attend a drawing rather than this particular drawing.)

Bonnie told me we didn’t need a new car, which is true, but I tried to explain that this wouldn’t be a problem. The odds of winning the car are very small, and even if we do, they usually have a cash option instead of forcing you to take the car. And even if they don’t have that option written into the rules, it’s not that difficult to sell a car. It’s better to win a $50,000 car than to not win a $50,000 car.

Bottom line for us is that while these drawings create a small amount of equity, in and of themselves, they wouldn’t be valuable enough to make a special trip. If there were other significant reasons to spend three days in Reno over that time period (which there might be, depending . . .), then yes, we’ll have enough equity to be present when the drawings take place.