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Thread: Here's why good poker players go broke playing casino games

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Here's why good poker players go broke playing casino games

    Do you think skilled poker pros aren't foolish enough to throw away their money playing horrible odds casino games -- especially if better variants are easily available?

    Think again!

    Jason Somerville posted this screen shot of a nice hit at $50-per-hand video poker:



    What's wrong here? The paytables! He was playing 9-5 Double Double Bonus Poker, which returns less than 98% even with perfect play (which I doubt he was doing, as that's not an intuitive game to play perfectly). That's a HORRENDOUS paytable for such a high limit machine.


    Then some other guy responded with his own video of a win:



    This was a bit of a weird machine, as it's a 10 credit machine, meaning at $1/credit, he's playing $10 per hand (usually it's 5 credits per hand).

    Anyway, he was playing what's known as 30-6-5 Bonus Poker, which has a shockingly bad 96.18% return.



    But back to Somerville.

    Ignoring the quad aces he hit, how much could he expect to lose at such a machine?

    You only hit royal flushes on an average of once every 40,000 hands. Yet that accounts for 2% of the payback at his game. This means that the game will return 95.88% of coin-in with average luck when you're not hitting a royal.

    If he runs 500 hands per hour (which is very average speed for someone familiar with the game), he's averaging $1k of loss per hour if he's running 500 hands, running average other than failing to hit a royal!

    Even working the royal into the equation, he's still losing $533 per hour on average. Plus there's a ton of variance, and he can lose far, far more than that if he's running bad.

    Playing video poker without a full understanding of the strategy AND the right paytables is a very





    To Somerville's credit, when this was brought up to him, he quickly admitted he was unaware of the paytable thing, and claimed he won't make that mistake again.

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    Gold DonaldTrumpsHairPiece's Avatar
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    "Here's why good poker players go broke playing casino games"


    Ahhhhh maybe because its a casino, just sayin.

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    Good Post. poor guy at sams town hit the 1900 .25 vp jackpot,had No i.d./house said they would not Pay him and he was heated. said he gotta go to work and could not go home 1st....i walked away.. sad. i hope they hold it for him at least 24 hrs.......

    Great post. Jason a nice guy. i saw 9-5 i cannot play....Silverton i believe all poker machines VP are 8-5 !!!! crooks. casinos will slowly remove VP. imo.

    While we on it, a very reputable man i know was playing at JACK's casino in Ohio, asked and rcvd his Meal button which entitles him to 1 hr meal break before they remove his chips, went to Buffet w/pals and was approached by Casino staff and informed his chips were stolen and he had no recourses sorry, and comped 1 buffet. i was heated up and said i would tell Todd. he posted it on RG. site on FB. I guess i can say his name Shannon Bradley being he posted it Public .. Please help him Druff, he never is crying the blues or trying to get someone in trouble. Also they told him the guy left the building already. wow. terrible,he mentioned the supervisor lady's name there...okay..thanks...good Luck. NY.

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    Isn't VP play from these guys all about getting 7 star?

    For VP Play, is the 7 star status calculated at their theoretical ROI on your play or purely coin in?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sidewinder View Post
    Isn't VP play from these guys all about getting 7 star?

    For VP Play, is the 7 star status calculated at their theoretical ROI on your play or purely coin in?
    .

    It's purely coin in, but that's irrelevant here, as I can tell just from the picture that Jason's hit was not at a Caesars property.

    Most likely MGM.

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    Bronze RS_'s Avatar
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    The current balance thing is weird on the video. It starts at $340, starts racking up, then (I assume at $1,540 or +$1,200) it resets to $340, then once the ‘win’ gets to 8,000 credits it sets the balance to $8,340. Very strange.

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    Plutonium Sanlmar's Avatar
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    Is it correct to describe Somerville as a poker player or an entertainer/personality who also plays poker?

    Is there another player who has monetized their celebrity to a greater extent currently? Ingram? Doug Polk before he quit?

    I haven’t given any thought to the poker ecosystem for a couple of years so a lot might have changed.

    Somerville was pulling the highest level deal at PokerStars which was $300k. He also had the Twitch deal which I think he took a sabbatical from.

    Now poker might not hold a candle to the e-gamers in 2019. I got the impression some of them are pulling $1m.

    So JCarver may not know nor give a particular shit about video poker payouts. He’s not pushing buttons for hours on end. Broke? He has some guaranteed recurring revenue streams but nothing lasts forever.

    The public interest is fickle and maybe the whole poker twitch deal is over. Maybe that’s why he walked away.

    He was the most likable from what saw.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sanlmar View Post
    Is it correct to describe Somerville as a poker player or an entertainer/personality who also plays poker?

    Is there another player who has monetized their celebrity to a greater extent currently? Ingram? Doug Polk before he quit?

    I haven’t given any thought to the poker ecosystem for a couple of years so a lot might have changed.

    Somerville was pulling the highest level deal at PokerStars which was $300k. He also had the Twitch deal which I think he took a sabbatical from.

    Now poker might not hold a candle to the e-gamers in 2019. I got the impression some of them are pulling $1m.

    So JCarver may not know nor give a particular shit about video poker payouts. He’s not pushing buttons for hours on end. Broke? He has some guaranteed recurring revenue streams but nothing lasts forever.

    The public interest is fickle and maybe the whole poker twitch deal is over. Maybe that’s why he walked away.

    He was the most likable from what saw.
    $300K, jesus that's nuts...he worked his ass off for it so it was well deserved...when he was at the peak of his powers he was streaming like 6+ hours everyday of the week and getting like 6000+ views...peanuts to e-gaming, but he was the endboss of twitch poker...

    think he did the most with his celebrity...he has his own company (runitup) that incubates poker streamers and does live events...when you get older that fucking online grind gets fucking old and so that's why he said, 'fuck it, im out'...

    I watched a lot of him when he was streaming because I was trying to learn NLHE since I was just playing O8/PLO and i'd say while he was a "personality", he was still a really competitive poker player...he wasn't like these high roller GTO bot tourney guys, but he held his own in the hardest tourneys online and i'd still put him as a winner in almost any tourney you put him in...he'd get crushed by the high roller guys, but let's be honest, who the fuck wouldn't?

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