Discount Gambling

I just learned that all casinos are required to provide a player with an annual win/loss statement on request. This is to provide a player with an estimate of his net win or loss at the casino for the calendar year, in case you need to write off gambling losses against a W2-G win. The casinos seem to take this regulation pretty seriously, since I see that every $100 buy-in needs supervisor approval, as does every color-out at the end of a session. The floor supervisor enters the data at the console (usually attached to the table), and everyone is tracked.

So yesterday, I was playing Ultimate Texas Hold’em (UTH) as usual, at Harrah’s, on my usual route of the four north San Diego county casinos (Harrah’s, Pauma, Pala, and sometimes Pechanga). I’d been playing exclusively UTH at these casinos for about three months now, logging in about 300 hours total. I’d been doing well, and I knew I wasn’t just donating to the casino (i.e., ATM -> UTH -> casino). So, I just decided to see if I could get my 2009 Win/Loss Statement at each of these casinos.

As far as discount gambling goes, I’m claiming success. On average, I should lose about $3.50/hr ($.12/hand), so my 300 hours in 2009 should have totaled to a $1000 loss. So I’m way ahead of the mean here. Also, from what I see at the tables, I’m sure most players don’t want to see their win/loss statements for the year. That’s because most people are afraid to 4x raise preflop according to basic strategy. They’re constantly checking monsters like ATo, KJo, 66, QJo, etc. Then they still check their pairs on the flop, I guess waiting for their hands to improve at the river. They make so many mistakes, they’re probably giving the house an average 10%+ edge. They never bet their hands, and they forfeit the huge +46% Play bet edge. I just see people play passively, re-buying until they bust out. And these people are regulars, who see me all the time, but they won’t stop checking. Maybe if they read this post, they’ll start betting.

I’ve been doing fine playing UTH over the last two weeks, and I’m also finding Six Card Dealer Bluff fun and fair to play. I’ve noticed that in UTH I often have a decision to call at the river with 2nd nut kicker on an unpaired board. It looked at little weird to call sometimes, especially against a board with a possible flush. So I tried out a few cases, and found that I shouldn’t call with 2nd nut kicker unless there was no possible flush, or if both my cards played. I updated this to the main Ultimate Texas Hold’em page, and the basic strategy card.

I also checked that calling 1x with 5th nut kicker against a double-paired board is okay, as long as the pairs are 7′s up or better. Otherwise, for 6′s up, you need 4th nut kicker to call.

Finally, I found that on the flop, you can bet 2x with nut kicker, as long as you have a gutshot straight draw.

After completing basic strategy for Ultimate Texas Hold’em (UTH), I thought I’d look into the effect of knowing your neighbor’s cards. My program computes the EV for a players down cards, the board, and any known cards, so it’s really easy to analyze the effect of collusion. I didn’t think there’d be much EV gain by sharing info with a partner, because the Ante bet requires dealer to qualify, and the Blind bet pays only for straights and better. Furthermore, you’re only getting even money return on your Play bet; the effect of collusion might be greater for a paytable with odds, like in Mississippi Stud.

I broke the rough analysis into the three decision points, preflop, flop, and river. I kept the analysis to two players, since it’s hard to manage and rely on more than one other player. Also, its harder to formulate a collusion strategy for multiple players.

Overall, collusion only helps when you have a borderline decision, and your partner also happens to have cards that helps your decision. In these relatively rare cases, you’ll pick up an EV gain of about 10% of your Ante bet. So, if you experience these conditions in 1% of your hands, you’ll only gain an overall EV boost of (.01)(.10) = 0.1%, which is negligible. However, it’ll make you feel better when you don’t raise K6o when your friend has a K or 6, and you end up saving 3 Ante bets (the hand is likely to call 1x anyway).

Preflop

The following table shows some examples of using partner info to change your preflop decision. Each table entry takes me around 16 hours of compute time to analyze. For pairs, partner info can only slow down your raise for pocket 3′s. Otherwise, pocket pair decisions are not affected. Borderline raising cases are influenced by partner cards if you’re within 2 kicker levels of the raising threshold. E.g., K5o +/- 2 means consider raising K3o if partner has an Ace; conversely, consider checking K7o if your partner has a K or 7.

Flop

There are very few situations where knowledge of your partner’s hand will change the way you play your hand on the flop. Such cases will rarely come up in actual play (e.g., minimum flush draw bets).

River

Partner information may occasionally help your minimum kicker requirements on the river. If the board is paired (i.e., qualifies the Ante bet), when your partner has 2 keys cards, you may decrease your kicker requirements by one.

I finished my first week of playing Shuffle Master’s Ultimate Texas Hold’em in 4 of the casinos in Temecula Valley, and thought I’d post my take on the game. Of course, I was playing as I always do: grinding out minimum bets ($5 Ante and $5 Blind) and near-optimal EV decisions. I played every day, drove a lot, stayed up late, and probably logged around 40 hours of playing time. Usually when I play some game like this, I end up losing some amount near the house expected house edge. But UTH played so well, I just kept accumulating winning sessions, and I ended up net +$2000 for the week.

I’ve never had as much success with a game as I have with Ultimate Texas Hold’em. I notice the game plays very well, since you bet when you’re ahead (either with a good starting hand, or with a made hand), and you check otherwise. But I was really surprised that I won like this. Some of it’s due to session management. I’d end a session when I was up a few hundred. I might drive down the road to another casino and start another session, but I’d make a point to log a session win.

I saw that no one else played correctly, and they preferred to bet the bonus Trips bet instead of raising 4x preflop with good hands. They all thought I was crazy playing basic strategy. Of course they lost, not because of their Trips bets (only a 1.9% house edge), but because they wouldn’t bet their hands (Play bet). They refuse to raise 4x preflop without some monster like QQ or AKs. When you show them a basic strategy card (raise K5s, JTo, Q6s, 33, etc.), they just think you’re crazier. They don’t want a copy of the card, they just want your seat when you leave a winner.

I’d sit for hours and play. On the weekend sessions, I’d play all day, and find a time to leave when I was up. I never got stuck worse than $200 in a session, and that was rare.

While I just grinded away, I played two sessions with my friend G, a high-limit blackjack player (average $100-$200 bets). In UTH, he played $25 Ante bets, and grinded out one session for an $800 win. In the other session, he grinded for a few hours at this level, but at the end pressed his bets to $50 Antes. He hit a good streak of winning a few 4x ($200 Play bet) hands, then cashed out $1450 ahead.

So, my take on the game is that its good for the grinder, using session management. The game plays well, with a lot lower variance than blackjack, because you bet more when you have a good hand. It’s also good for hit and run play, for the same reason. And with an overall element-of-risk of about 0.5%, it’s a better game than blackjack, even though the house considers it a carnival game.

UTH is my new favorite game. I’ve never had success with a table game like this. Unfortunately, I have to drive about 50 minutes to reach the game, so I probably will stop playing it during the week. It’s not like the game is +EV or anything, I just got lucky, and cashed out winners. But if I do go, I’ll choose to play at Casino Pauma, essentially a tiny local’s casino, because the hand rate is much, much faster there, as you’re typically heads-up with the dealer. The worst thing about UTH at a busy casino is the game is slowed down tremendously by people entering and leaving the game, buying in and coloring out, and by inexperienced dealers and players. It can get painfully slow at a table full of these delays. Otherwise, I highly recommend you learn basic strategy, and try the game out.