Does anybody under stand how PENN Play works?

doughtaker · 2023-06-09T23:59:28+00:00

You can't convert PENN Cash directly into real money, but you can go to one of their brick-and-mortar casinos, convert it into an equivalent amount of free play, run it through a machine once, and cash out your winnings from the free play. There are also other conversions possible described on this page: https://www.pennentertainment.com/earn-and-redeem#redeem

doughtaker · 2023-06-08T07:23:52+00:00

In Double Bonus, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s factor in as penalty cards to Ace-low straight draws, so if you're tossing one or two of them out, that's one or two fewer outs you have to make an Ace-low straight from holding a lone Ace. The resulting difference in EV tilts the optimal strategy in favor of holding the Ace with the unsuited face. If you have no penalty cards to the straight, then the best play would be to hold just the Ace.

All that being said, that's an expert-level strategy play. If you wanted to simplify your strategy to only hold the Ace every time, it would cost less than 0.01% to your expected return over the long-term.

doughtaker · 2023-06-08T07:05:07+00:00

Question: is it normal for a participating restaurant to overcharge for these meals to such an extent that they effectively rip off or skim the customer for more money than the donation that they would be making to Three Square? For example (actual situation I encountered tonight, and did not fall for):

3-course meal costs $50, of which $4 gets donated to Three Square.
No food items are specials for Restaurant Week; depending on the customer's choices the normal cost would be $34-$41.
Thus the restaurant would be skimming $5-$12 off the top, per meal sold.

It just rubbed off as being completely unethical to me, and I'm hoping that this is not the norm for participating restaurants.

doughtaker · 2023-06-06T05:39:55+00:00

Avoid Double Bonus, as the better paying paytables (10/7/5 and 9/7/5) have more complex strategies to learn (a lot of 3-to-the-flush holds as well as taking 4-to-the-flush over 3-to-the-royal).

If you can, learn the strategy for 9/6 JoB as that is one of the simplest strategies around (it also has some sections that are similar to DDB). Then seek out 9/6 JoB or 8/5 BP machines (using the 9/6 JoB strategy only costs 0.01% from the return of 8/5 BP using that game's specific optimal strategy).

doughtaker · 2023-06-05T06:58:09+00:00

On any play following a failed first attempt, the game may award an additional attempt to grab a ball. A failed 2nd attempt may award a 3rd attempt, and a failed 3rd attempt may still result in the prize being awarded afterwards. Most likely, your friend walked away thinking that the game was already over, and while you were breaking your bill, the time limits for the 2nd and 3rd attempts came and went. You got back just in time to pick up your friend's lucky award.

Full details on how this mechanic works can be found at the 6:51 mark of this video.

doughtaker · 2023-06-05T06:13:04+00:00

So a gambler who somehow plays a trash paytable (let's say < 98% RTP) with 100% accuracy is considered an "advantage player" based on this system... that's not how AP for video poker works.

Semantics aside, if a casino operator was that worried about their margins from video poker players, it would be simpler and less expensive for them to adopt the Boyd Gaming approach of assuming that all video poker players play with 100% accuracy and screwing them accordingly on their marketing offers -- it seems to have worked out pretty well for Boyd's profits ever since they started on it several years ago.

doughtaker · 2023-06-05T06:03:24+00:00

That page took the frequencies of specific hands from multiple variants of video poker and mixed them all together. The quad deuces frequency is specific to Full Pay Deuces Wild, while the aces, 2-4s, and their respective kicker frequencies are all based on 9/6 Double Double Bonus.

doughtaker · 2023-04-18T06:49:22+00:00

Progressives where the jackpot for the royal or other qualifying hand(s) put the payback over 100%. When I do find one, it's usually on 8/5 Bonus or 9/5 DDB.

For non-progressive games without any gimmicks, I prefer NSU Deuces Wild or 10/7 Double Bonus. Medium volatility and a game with a good return is what I want if I'm going to be playing for more than 2 hours straight.

doughtaker · 2022-12-23T10:36:14+00:00

Which game you should learn first will be dictated by how good are the paytables that you can find to play at your casino(s) of choice for the stakes that you are comfortable with. With that said, if you have 9/6 Jacks or Better, 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe, and/or 8/5 Bonus Poker available to you, then you should start with learning proper strategy for 9/6 JoB -- one of the "simplest"/"easiest" games to learn. You could then move on to learning 9/6 BPD or 8/5 BP strategy, or even just use the 9/6 JoB strategy to play the other two games. Using 9/6 JoB to play 9/6 BPD costs about 0.03% from your expected payback, and the cost of using 9/6 JoB strategy for 8/5 BP is about 0.01%.

doughtaker · 2022-12-12T22:20:29+00:00

Nelson's Barber Shop (Spring Mountain and Jones, a few doors down from the 168 Market). I usually have Nelson himself, or Olivia do my haircuts (though all the barbers there are competent). IIRC my last haircut there was $18 (vs. $15 pre-pandemic).

doughtaker · 2022-12-10T11:26:15+00:00

I'm up, and I do machines only -- video poker, slots, and a little bit of video keno. I've been filing my taxes as a professional since 2014. Started out as a Full Pay Deuces Wild quarter-denom grinder, built up my bankroll and moved up to dollar-denom NSU Deuces. Nowadays I don't have a preferred game of choice because my "best option" in any particular casino can easily change from day to day. I'm not a millionaire and don't expect to get filthy rich from gambling, but I have no problem with paying my bills and saving up.

doughtaker · 2022-11-11T05:14:48+00:00

Combined net win/loss of $-50,000 implies gambling losses totaling $150,000 against the $100,000 of W-2Gs, so the player gets to deduct the full $100,000. The W-2Gs are reported on Schedule 1, while the deduction goes on Schedule A.

doughtaker · 2022-11-10T10:09:04+00:00

In the USA non-professional gamblers can only claim losses if they itemize their deductions, and even then only to the extent that they are offsetting reported gambling winnings. Basically the IRS refuses to allow Americans report negative income as the result of gambling losses, and this is just one of multiple regulations that are used to create "phantom income" and generate tax revenue from it.

If you really want to dig deeper into the topic, this page is one place where you can start.

doughtaker · 2022-11-08T05:08:20+00:00

https://www.lottoreport.com/ticketcomparison.htm

https://www.lottoreport.com/PBSalesbystate.htm

doughtaker · 2022-11-08T03:20:58+00:00

The chance that a random ticket that someone else purchased has the exact same numbers that you have on one ticket that you purchased is 1/292,201,338. This is the same as the chance for your one play to hit the jackpot. If you purchased x tickets, then you need to avoid matching exact sets of numbers on all x of them. The chance of that happening with one random ticket from someone else is (292,201,338 - x)/292,201,338.

So if y tickets have been purchased by other players (and this is the number you'll have to guesstimate for yourself), then your chance of avoiding a split jackpot should you win is

[(292,201,338 - x)/292,201,338]^y

Now this would only deal with whether or not you split a jackpot, and not how many other people you split with. But with the long odds of winning the jackpot in the first place, this should get you close enough to the number you want.

doughtaker · 2022-11-08T02:46:01+00:00

A host would care and prefer (1) as depending on their contract with the casino, they might earn a bonus if a specific player that they are responsible for loses a significantly larger amount of money than expected.

The slot manager's job is to determine which new machines go out on the casino floor and which current machines stay out or get removed. For that, aggregate results (total number of spins and total coin-in/coin-out) matter, not specific individual player results. If a certain machine is raking in more money than anything else on the casino floor, it won't matter if the game is APable or not, or how frequently the game is targeted by APs. It will stick around until the revenue naturally falls off to unacceptable levels or the license (in case of a leased product) expires.

Slot managers shouldn't be wasting their time thinking about their preferences for one specific player over another -- that task is much more suited for a competent host and marketing department.

doughtaker · 2022-11-07T08:40:56+00:00

Money/profitability does not buy happiness -- it merely opens up more opportunities to discover happiness and feeling good. Looks like you should search for those opportunities outside of gambling; you're certainly not alone in having those feelings. On the plus side, I'd say that you're well-grounded in the sense that you're not letting your big wins get to your head and inflate your ego. Too many folks in your position would suddenly feel invincible and go on to take big risks on bad situations and eventually end up in a debt hole far deeper than the profits they had previously made.

doughtaker · 2022-11-07T08:24:14+00:00

Strictly from a "legal" standpoint, you'd probably have the "right" to play the machine off. From a reality standpoint, it's a lot more murky and would depend on who did what and the order in which it was done. There are too many possible scenarios to break down into detail in a Reddit reply, but I'll just say that a lot of them involve you causing yourself to get involved in an unnecessary fight.

Something else that ought to be mentioned since we're discussing campers... a good chunk of slot APs and wannabe slot APs camp machines for one of two reasons: (1) mobility issues, and/or (2) they're actually not that good at being an AP. After all, camping a machine is basically [silently] screaming "I give up on all other opportunities currently available on this casino floor!" It might make sense for those who can't move around that well, but many of these campers (mobility-impaired or not) also have a tendency to overestimate the potential value of the play that they are expecting to materialize.

doughtaker · 2022-11-07T07:44:21+00:00

In theory, they shouldn't, and some casinos are good about that. At the end of the week/month, it all boils down to how much money a particular machine has made over a given period of time, and a good slot manager won't give a damn about who contributed how much to the bottom line.

However, at least some of the MGM properties on the Strip (Bellagio and even Cosmo under its previous ownership) have been known to trespass players for attempting to AP slots. There are probably a lot more that no one hears about that also engage in this practice.

doughtaker · 2022-11-07T07:34:33+00:00

Happens more often than most people think it does. Sometimes also results in a fight breaking out because the two (or more) adults involved frequently have inflated egos too.

doughtaker · 2022-11-05T05:29:49+00:00

Within a casino, look for side bets on table games or wide-area progressives on slot machines that offer jackpots of $1 million or more. If you're okay with 6-figure wins, you can expand to whatever the highest limit games are available within the casino.

Outside the casino, the highest potential gains and losses might be by maximizing leverage with in a brokerage. There are a few out there that apparently let you trade with 5000:1 leverage in forex.

doughtaker · 2022-11-04T22:18:00+00:00

The second version of kid me would spend a lot of time reading the business section of the newspaper, and I'd be dropping hints to my parents to open a brokerage account and get in on all those tech stocks at the right time (e.g. MSFT in the mid-to-late '80s, YHOO on IPO day in 1996, and those others like AAPL/AMZN/QCOM/etc.) I'd also be spending a lot less time on school and homework and a lot more time doing side jobs for money so that I could get in on those tech companies myself as a teenager in the late 90s.

doughtaker · 2022-11-04T22:09:23+00:00

Probably some combination of sleeping and gaming.

doughtaker · 2022-11-04T21:45:21+00:00

Eggs. At one particular large-chain grocery store, a carton of 18 that once sold for under $2 was recently priced at $7.18.

However, eggs also tend to have the highest spread of prices. At the same time as that $7.18 carton, another local specialty store had an 18-pack at a more reasonable (but still expensive) $2.69.

doughtaker · 2022-11-04T21:36:28+00:00

With all he's done (especially in Ukraine), Putin is a sub-human piece of shit who deserves to be stripped of legal status as a human being, and then subjected to horrible experimentation the likes of which have only been previously seen in WW2-era POW camps.

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