What You Need to Win at Video Poker

Bob Dancer is probably the greatest video poker player in the world. He turned $6,000 into $1 million in just six months, from September 2000 to March 2001. If I want to do the same thing, I need to learn everything about what they do and how they do it.

If you know what Bob Dancer knows, then you can do what he does, at that’s to win at poker.

The key to this is to read everything the individual has ever written, listen to every interview with them that’s ever been recorded, and to find out who their influences were and study them, too.

You need to consume all of the available information about these mentors.

I’ve started to do just that with Bob Dancer, and here’s some of what I’ve learned about what I need to win at video poker.

The Easiest Thing to to Win at Video Poker

Different people have different perspectives on what’s easy and what’s hard. It’s easy for Justin Tucker to kick a 35-yard field goal, for example. But I’d be lucky to even touch the football with my foot, much less send it that far down the football field.

My new video poker mentor suggests that for him, the easiest part of winning at real money video poker is knowing how to play the hands perfectly — not just close to perfect, but perfectly.

He gives the following example:

You have two hands in a Jacks or Better game.

The first is the king of spades, the jack, 10, seven of hearts, and the five of clubs.

The second is the king of spades, the jack, 10, and five of hearts, and the six of spades.

Most people would play these two hands identically, but the correct decision in the first example is to hold onto the jack and the 10. In the second example, the corrected play is to hold the king and the jack.

Dancer doesn’t explain why there’s a difference in tactics there, but you could learn this from his guide to playing Jacks or Better.

It’s besides the point for this post, anyway, as I’m just writing about the things you need to win.

And according to my “mentor,” the easiest thing to get is the knowledge of how to make perfect decisions mathematically while playing video poker.

How to Get the Easy Part Taken Care of

The reason that this part is so easy is because you can find how to play video poker flawlessly through a wide variety of sources now. You can buy books and computer programs that explain the perfect strategy for every hand. Some video poker training software will even correct you when you make a mistake.

It might take some people longer than others to learn how to do this perfectly, but unless you have a learning disability, you can learn to play perfect Jacks or Better video poker strategy if you’re willing to put in the time and effort. It might take you 100 hours, while it might take me 1,000 hours, but either way, we can both master video poker strategy.

Withstanding Swings in Your Video Poker Bankroll

If you’re serious about video poker, you’ll have a bankroll set aside for your gambling. This is money that you have earmarked just to play video poker with. You don’t need it to pay rent or other bills. You’re caught up on your child support payments, and you’re not in debt.

The thing about video poker, though, is that even with an edge over the house, you can still suffer wide swings in the size of your bankroll. It’s still a game of random chance. My new mentor suggests that I should be ready to lose up to $500 a day for three days straight playing perfect Jacks or Better at the quarter level. If I’m playing for a dollar, I should be prepared to potentially lose $2,000 a day three days in a row.

And if I’m married, I need a spouse who understands the swings involved in gambling even when you have an advantage.

If you’re always in debt and can’t raise a bankroll, you probably have no business playing video poker seriously. In fact, for most of the people I know, getting together a bankroll big enough to play video poker seriously is the hardest part of it.

You also need to be able to keep perspective when you go on the inevitable winning streak. It’s tempting to go out and blow some of that money because you think you’ll win more the next day or the next sessions. That’s not always true, but it sure seems true when you seemingly can’t lose.

Mental Toughness and the Ability to Focus

Casinos are, by design, distracting. Some of those distractions include most of the games. You need enough focus to ignore most of the games so that you can focus on the tiny percentage of profitable opportunities when gambling in the casino. This means staying away from the craps table in favor of playing video poker, regardless of how much fun they seem to be having while hooting and hollering over there shooting dice.

You need to be strong enough to turn down all the free alcohol.

You need to be able to focus so intently on the game you’re playing for 40 hours a week that you don’t make mistakes. Playing video poker perfectly for an hour isn’t a big deal, but can you do it nearly full-time?

Analytical Abilities to Win Big at Video Poker

You’ll need to analyze more than just the video poker pay tables to determine which games to play. Here are some examples of data you might need to analyze to play well.

The marketers working at the casinos dream up new promotions all the time. Their goal is to attract gamblers to their properties. Some of those promotions are valuable to the aspiring video poker millionaire. Others aren’t. You need to be able to distinguish one from the other.

Every serious video poker player is a member of the players’ club at one casino, usually more. You need to be able to study the differences from one players’ club to another to figure out whose promotions are offering you more value on your road to video poker riches.

New video poker games and variations are launching all the time, too. You need to be able to analyze these new variations to find profitable opportunities and to avoid opportunities that only seem like a good deal.

Staying Healthy as a Video Poker Player

Casinos are full of cigarette smoke, for the most part. Secondhand smoke is a killer, both in terms of your cardiovascular health and your pulmonary health. You probably can’t offset that much by eating right and getting plenty of exercise, but smoky casinos are worse for your health if you eat lousy and don’t get any exercise otherwise.

And that’s not even to acknowledge the possibility of cancer. You should focus on getting plenty of antioxidants into your diet, even though they probably won’t prevent cancer caused by cigarette smoke.

You might even look for opportunities to play video poker in non-smoking casinos or non-smoking sections of casinos. These are becoming more common.

Even if you accept the health risks involved in smoky old casinos, you should do what you can to minimize the smoke’s negative effects on your health.

Casinos offer you free food at some of the best buffets in the world. Maintaining a healthy weight requires a plan and the discipline to carry that out, too. Is it worth it to make a million dollars playing video poker if you acquire life – threatening health issues?

Conclusion

Winning a lot of money playing video poker isn’t just a matter of studying a couple of video poker strategy charts. There’s a lot more to it than that.

Learning how to play the hands might even be the easiest part of the process. Getting the focus and self-discipline and bankroll management skills is what separates the elite from the average in the casino.