[vpFREE] Jean Scott's Frugal Vegas LVA BLOG - 22 FEB 2012

 

Jean Scott's Frugal Vegas LVA BLOG - 22 FEB 2012

"Updates"

http://jscott.lvablog.com/?p=1850

<a href="http://jscott.lvablog.com/?p=1850">
http://jscott.lvablog.com/?p=1850</a>

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Re: [vpFREE] Re: Build A Wheel and Spin Fever Poker

You are thinking of Hot Pursuit. Race for Trips is the splash byline. I
know about that game too, it's a lot of fun.

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:47 PM, dealt4oak <dealt4oak@yahoo.com> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Im not much of a carnival game player but build a wheel is fun. I gave it
> a couple of tries for kicks. I saw a new game the other day that I cant
> find listed anywhere. I believe its called "Race to the Trips" or something
> like that. Anyone know of it? Every time you get dealt natural trips you
> complete a lap around a race track, on your third lap you get some kind of
> bonus round. I didn't try it because of the horrible pay tables but Im very
> curious about it. I wish I could remember more about it but I was in a rush.
>
>
> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Jason Pawloski <jpawloski@...> wrote:
> >
> > Anyone play either of these newer IGT/Action Gaming games? If so, what
> are
> > your thoughts?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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Re: [vpFREE] Build A Wheel and Spin Fever Poker

 

on build a wheel - yes its fun ...but
a. only play 3 wheel not 5
b. if you would not ordinarily play the pay scheduled offered, the wheel
feature only adds about .25 , so its not worth playing
c. All the ones I've checked out , have lousy pay schedules and none over
99.0%
d. the action of the game is typically , lose, lose, keep on losing, keep on
digging, finally spin the wheel and get 80% of your money back,
go to ATM for more money, continue playing, etc.
e. the 5C pay schedules are far worse than quarter - i think this games days
are numbered ( thank you greeedy casino's for offering only unbeatable and
no-hope pay schedules ).

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Pawloski" <jpawloski@gmail.com>
To: <vpFREE@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 8:33 PM
Subject: [vpFREE] Build A Wheel and Spin Fever Poker

> Anyone play either of these newer IGT/Action Gaming games? If so, what are
> your thoughts?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>

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[vpFREE] Prelude to Post of Dr. William G. McCown Q&A

 

Prelude to Post of Dr. William G. McCown Q&A
or
Why Should I Care?

If you are unfamiliar with Dr. William G. McCown, he is one of the foremost authorities on problem gambling in America, and author of several books on the subject. His book Best Possible Odds, published in 2002, was a call to arms for the entire psychological community to give problem gambling more attention. The call was heard. In the decade since, more research and advance in the field has occurred than in the century before.

But why should you care?

If you are a frequent follower of Video Poker related forums, the odds are you don't currently have a gambling problem. But could you ever, and do you perhaps know someone that might? The intention of the interview, which I will be posting soon, was not to help people who already have gambling problems. Its primary intent is to outline and highlight risk factors for developing problems and to detail some basic good practices to avoid issues. What this means to you:

If you are new to gambling and want it to always remain fun and guilt free, the information in this article may be able to help improve your gambling experience and your enjoyment...and...

Turns out, many of the things that have the potential to make us better gamblers help us in all aspects of life; quantifying risk, making good decisions, not judging decisions by their outcomes, being free from biases, etc... The current and amazingly successful new treatment strategy for problem gambling involves something called cognitive behavioral therapy, which has grown out of psychology's new understanding of heuristics. If you haven't heard of heuristics before, here's something to whet your appetite.

Heuristics: How it got started.
The Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman had just finished doing a great deal of research into positive and negative reinforcement and had concluded that in all cases he had looked at, rewarding good behavior worked better than punishing negative behavior. He took his research on the road and found himself on an Israeli Air Force base explaining to flight instructors about his findings to help them improve military training. The reception he got was not as expected. Just short of calling him a complete idiot, the consensus between all the instructors was as follows:

1.You may have done all this research in your lab, but that's not how it works in the real world. (Sound familiar?)
2.If someone does great and you compliment them they always get worse.
3.If someone screws up and you scream and chastise them they always get better.

Proving his strength as a scientist, he did not ignore this real world information in lieu of his laboratory results. He asked the Air Force if he could conduct a study into what the instructors were telling him and they consented. Three and a half years later, here's what he found.

1.The instructors were absolutely right about what they had noticed. People did get worse after being complimented and they did indeed get better after being screamed at.
2.The instructors were completely wrong as to the source and causation of the facts.
3.The reason people tended to get worse after being complimented was because the instructors were only complimenting them after exceptionally good performances. Did you catch the word, "exceptionally" in that last sentence? By definition, exceptional things are rare and uncommon. Simple regression to mean indicates that it was highly unlikely that the student pilots would do as well after having done exceptionally well.
4.The exact same dynamic was true for the people being screamed at. Though a strong talking to might be in order after flying a plane into the base commissary, it's just not that likely that the same pilot would do it two days in a row.

He proved unequivocally that positive reinforcement was indeed better for training military pilots, though not by much. The study concluded that nothing the instructors did had much effect on the pilots at all. Their innate ability had more to do with their performance than anything else. That ability was simply being obfuscated by random factors, like the weather or equipment failure, over which neither the instructor nor the pilots had any control.

Dr. Kahneman's final conclusions were that people can grossly misinterpret information and come to not only wrong conclusions, but in some cases answers that are diametrically opposed to reality—all thanks to the normal common ways our brains process information. Did you catch the words "normal" and "common" there? This was a case of sane normal healthy people being 100% totally wrong, due to nothing other than normal thought. He found this very interesting.

He teamed up with Doctor Amos Tversky and now, after nearly half a century of research, the human race finally possesses the knowledge of why intelligent healthy people don't always make the best decisions, and why people come to different conclusions with identical information.

That information, combined with other research, has given us cognitive behavioral therapy, and it's useful information to ALL...not just problem gamblers...not just would-be gamblers...not just gamblers...

Gambling helps us in the identification of cognitive biases. They are very hard to detect in everyday life, but they become obvious if not omnipresent inside casinos. Find a person making a bad decision in a casino, and the smart money says you have found someone employing an error prone heuristic, with at least mild cognitive distortion. Identification, of course, is only the first step because the very self-same heuristics that gave rise to the bad decision often make it hard or impossible for people to understand what they've done wrong, even if it is explained to them...as was the case with the flight instructors in the story above. As always, the first step to solving any problem is knowing you have one. And if you do manage to beat the odds and identify a thought process that is less than optimal in a casino, the odds are very good that the information will help you for the rest of your life and the lives of your children as well.

Heuristics is a new science and its application in cognitive behavioral therapy has the potential to be one of the greatest turning points in the history of mankind. Turns out the very same things that are being used so successfully to treat gambling problems also work to prevent them, and could help us all think better.

If there is any aspect of life that wouldn't be improved by thinking better, I can't think of it.

I'll post the interview in one week. ~FK

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[vpFREE] Re: Build A Wheel and Spin Fever Poker

 

Im not much of a carnival game player but build a wheel is fun. I gave it a couple of tries for kicks. I saw a new game the other day that I cant find listed anywhere. I believe its called "Race to the Trips" or something like that. Anyone know of it? Every time you get dealt natural trips you complete a lap around a race track, on your third lap you get some kind of bonus round. I didn't try it because of the horrible pay tables but Im very curious about it. I wish I could remember more about it but I was in a rush.

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Jason Pawloski <jpawloski@...> wrote:
>
> Anyone play either of these newer IGT/Action Gaming games? If so, what are
> your thoughts?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

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[vpFREE] Build A Wheel and Spin Fever Poker

 

Anyone play either of these newer IGT/Action Gaming games? If so, what are
your thoughts?

Thanks.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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Re: [vpFREE] Big Hit!

 

The e-mail refers to the universtiy of michigan. I am a good Michigan
State Spartan fan! I hope this clears things up for everyone!


In a message dated 2/22/2012 12:46:51 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
mothra4@cox.net writes:

Hahahaha....anyone with that email address deserves to win big! Hopefully
it does not stand for Maryland, Montana, Mississippi or Missouri!

----- Original Message -----
From: _uofmsucks1@aol.com_ (mailto:uofmsucks1@aol.com)
To: _vpfree@yahoogroups.com_ (mailto:vpfree@yahoogroups.com)
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 8:45 PM
Subject: [vpFREE] Big Hit!

I enjoy reading people's big hit stories. Now I have one to share! I was
playing at Bellagio, Saturday morning. I play for pure entertainment,
trying to become a good VP player, but realizing my limitations. I
primarily
play 3 lines quarter video poker (Super Times, Ultimate X, etc...).

It was around 4:15 AM and I was getting ready to go to the room for the
night. I had a $200 ticket, that I said, I was going to play down to $100,
and off to sleep. Something drew me to a 50 line play Double Bonus game
(8/5). I played dimes, not really thinking out that I was playing $25 per
push (way over my comfort level)! With about $115 in credits left, I got
dealt the Royal! I looked down, and saw that I had 200,000 credits. I
thought to myself, hey good job, $2000! Obviously, my math skills were
dulled by
the lateness of the hour, because holy moly! It was actually $20,000!

It was big fun, and I wish the same success for the rest of you!

Steve

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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[vpFREE] Re: Big Hit!

 

Freakin NICE!
That's definitely the kinda hit to make you lose your bowels (considering you'd of been happy with $2000)

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, uofmsucks1@... wrote:
>
> I enjoy reading people's big hit stories. Now I have one to share! I was
> playing at Bellagio, Saturday morning. I play for pure entertainment,
> trying to become a good VP player, but realizing my limitations. I primarily
> play 3 lines quarter video poker (Super Times, Ultimate X, etc...).
>
> It was around 4:15 AM and I was getting ready to go to the room for the
> night. I had a $200 ticket, that I said, I was going to play down to $100,
> and off to sleep. Something drew me to a 50 line play Double Bonus game
> (8/5). I played dimes, not really thinking out that I was playing $25 per
> push (way over my comfort level)! With about $115 in credits left, I got
> dealt the Royal! I looked down, and saw that I had 200,000 credits. I
> thought to myself, hey good job, $2000! Obviously, my math skills were dulled by
> the lateness of the hour, because holy moly! It was actually $20,000!
>
> It was big fun, and I wish the same success for the rest of you!
>
> Steve
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

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[vpFREE] Re: Hollywood @ Kansas Speedway

 

The Emerald cards we got last year were only good for about 9 months, the ones we got this year I think is good for a year -- I don't have one available right now. We have no Boyd casinos in our area so the account gets no play between visits. Sam's Town was one of the original casinos in Kansas City when Missouri legalized gambling but, alas, they only lasted a couple years.

We left LV for Tucson (son and DIL live there) then to Kansas from Tucson. I-10 to Las Cruces, US 70 to Alamogordo, US 54 to central Kansas, I-135 & I-70 to KC area. The last night on the road we stopped at Greensburg, Kansas, first time since the tornado wiped it out. They are bouncing back, town looks great, and they provide electrical hook-ups in their city park.

Rick

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "pumsparky" <dianalnagy@...> wrote:
>
> I thought Emerald tier was good for a year for out of state players?
> Also, what route did you take to get to Kansas with the motor home, 40?
> Thanks
>
>
> >
> >
> > We were there last winter for 6 weeks, same song. When we left in March we had Emerald status with green cards. Ten months later were back and had to start all over with red cards. Seems to me the tier status should last at least a year. We did hit Emerald status again, but just before we left.
> >
>

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[vpFREE] Re: Brief Trip Report From Sam's Town

 



you are correct

I deleted the post so it does not confuse anyone

I was trying to say what you just said

but clearly failed to do so

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "vp_wiz" <harry.porter@...> wrote:
>
> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "drwusa" <drwusa@> wrote:
> > FWIW --
> >
> > a binomial distribution is appropriate for the distributions
> > produced by frequent events like coin fliping.
> >
> > for rare events like getting deuces-- poisson is appropriate
>
> FWIW - Everything I've grasped to date would have suggested that given a fixed trial and a known probability of the event in question, binomial will yield a precise probability of "n" occurrences of the event (as well as probabilities for questions such as "at least" and "no more than"), whereas poisson yields only an approximation.
>
> But I'm always looking for an education ... I'll review the topic further and report back.
>
> - H.
>

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[vpFREE] Re: ultimate x poker

 

You do have to examine every game and every denomination. For example, the other day I saw something interesting at $1 level for Double Bonus.

If you selected Ultimate X Five Play, the paytable was 10/6/4. But if you chose Ten Play, the paytable changed to 9/6/5.

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[vpFREE] Re: Brief Trip Report From Sam's Town

 

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "drwusa" <drwusa@...> wrote:
> FWIW --
>
> a binomial distribution is appropriate for the distributions
> produced by frequent events like coin fliping.
>
> for rare events like getting deuces-- poisson is appropriate

FWIW - Everything I've grasped to date would have suggested that given a fixed trial and a known probability of the event in question, binomial will yield a precise probability of "n" occurrences of the event (as well as probabilities for questions such as "at least" and "no more than"), whereas poisson yields only an approximation.

But I'm always looking for an education ... I'll review the topic further and report back.

- H.

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[vpFREE] Re: Hollywood @ Kansas Speedway

 

I thought Emerald tier was good for a year for out of state players?
Also, what route did you take to get to Kansas with the motor home, 40?
Thanks

>
>
> We were there last winter for 6 weeks, same song. When we left in March we had Emerald status with green cards. Ten months later were back and had to start all over with red cards. Seems to me the tier status should last at least a year. We did hit Emerald status again, but just before we left.
>

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[vpFREE] Re: Brief Trip Report From Sam's Town

 



FWIW --

a binomial distribution is appropriate for the distributions
produced by frequent events like coin fliping.

for rare events like getting deuces-- poisson is appropriate

if you had just gone to the link I posted you would learn that.

(the is a boatload of useful info there)

as you found out there is little practical difference in most cases.

but there is no doubt that using the poisson distribution

for this problem is the correct way to solve it.

good luck to you---I will not comment again

DrW

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "bogus" <boguslumber@...> wrote:
>
> I don't mean to be picky, but your formula doesn't solve the question exactly (your word). The poisson distribution is an approximation. In this problem the difference is as follows:
>
> using # of hands = 28710 and prob of 4 deuces = 1/4900
>
> exact answer using binomial distribution
> (1-1/4900)^28710 = 0.28518...%
>
> approx answer using poisson
> (1/e)^(28710/4900) = 0.28535...%
>
> Again, I mean no offense but when you said exactly I just wanted to point out that the poisson is an approximation. As we see, it is a very accurate one!
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "drwusa" <drwusa@> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ??? FWIW
> >
> > here is the complete equation for solving this problem exactly
> >
> > (1/e)^6= 0.25% where e = 2.718 (natural log)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "bogus" <boguslumber@> wrote:
> > >
> > > The spreadsheet just looks complicated in xml format. It is a very simple spreadsheet and more importantly, people can see why and how it works. Most online calculators just give you an answer and you have no idea how or why it works. In excel you can look at each formula and figure out what is happening.
> > >
> >
>

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RE: W2Gs - was [vpFREE] DIAD (long and probably too much info for most)

You are correct. Half of your social security income is used to determine whether you meet the threshhold, but up to 85% may be taxed. I stand corrected.

To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
From: hard16@gmail.com
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:35:49 -0500
Subject: Re: W2Gs - was [vpFREE] DIAD (long and probably too much info for most)


Not true. Up to 85% of your social security can be taxed.
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 12:59 AM, David Silvus <djsilvus@hotmail.com> wrote:

> In other words, the half of your premiums that wasn't taxed (the
> employer's contribution) can be taxed upon receipt of your social security income.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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[vpFREE] Re: Re: ultimate x poker

 



In a message dated 2/21/2012 8:45:53 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
vpFREE@yahoogroups.com writes:

>>While at a high-roller lounge in Las Vegas, I sat down to check the
Ultimate machines for multipliers when a guy sits next to me and must have
thought I was a tourist. He said he could get a 4-of-a-kind any time he wanted
because a buddy of his who was a technician, had shown him a "glitch" in the
machines. He said he would be glad to show me how to exploit the glitch.
When I said OK, he told me to put some money in the machine. I said "Why
don't you just show me with your money on the machine your on now." His reply
was that he had won too many times in that casino and didn't want to get a
tax form because management would recognize him and he might get banned.<<

So Mickey's made his way down to Las Vegas now, I see.....

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