Bob Dancer wrote:
Dan wrote: It's time to document your statements or shut up.
I'm not clear why Dan wishes to continue this "debate." I
certainly do not, and I will not participate if there are any further
posts in this thread.
I have never wanted this debate. Bob is always restarting it. In his
last post, Bob said, "I didn't start this thread." But actually he
did. I wrote only in response to his statement in a post on June 9,
"I will say, though, that it is not a one-way street between Dan and
me. Dan has made his share of anti-Dancer provocative remarks along
the way." I had not posted or written anything about Bob for quite
some time before that. Just what did I write that prompted that
comment?
In late Summer 2005, Dan posted here comparing me to Rob Singer.
(I was not a member or lurker of vpFREE at the time and I had done
nothing to provoke such a comment. Dan's comments were sent to me by a
member here.)
Actually, someone else made that comparison. I agreed on some points.
Take it as you like.
I find that comparison offensive. Rob Singer and I agree
on very little video-poker-wise, whereas Dan and I agree on probably 95%
of things video-poker-wise. According to Dan in that post, I have never
published nor created any strategies (in truth I have likely written
more columns about accurate video poker strategy than anybody else ---
probably more than all other authors put together).
In a later post I corrected the statement that Bob had never
published nor created any strategies and apologized for the error.
I'll agree that Bob has been very prolific, but I seriously doubt
that anyone has written more columns on video poker than Lenny Frome.
He wrote that I
regularly overbet my bankroll (he has no idea about how many million
dollars are in my bankroll or exactly what games I play and the
associated slot club and promotions.
Again, twisting my words. What I said was that Bob sometimes likes to
take a potshot. This is well documented in his book, including in a
section titled, "Taking the Occasional Potshot."
In 2001 I was taking a potshot at
the MGM Grand under pretty rigid "stoploss" conditions. Dan wrote as
though I did that frequently and currently. He was wrong). He wrote that
I care about nobody else (which is surprising --- he surely doesn't
think I talked the Fiesta into adding a lot of good nickel through
quarter games for ME to play, does he?)
I don't recall reading anything about those rigid "stoploss"
conditions. Most mathematicians agree that a stop loss is not a good
gambling tactic. It seems that more good low limit games have
disappeared from the Fiestas than have been added back. And if I ever
said that Bob doesn't care about anyone else (which I doubt), then
Bob should quote it instead of just making an assertion.
He criticized me for talking to
casinos (which is a fair criticism, however one that Dan wouldn't make
if casinos felt he knew enough to pay him for advice. But since they
don't, he criticizes people who casinos DO feel are knowledgeable enough
to pay for advice.)
Again, twisting my words. But several others have commented
frequently about playing both sides of the fence.
We reviewed one of Dan's strategies here recently, although much
of the thread got shunted off to FREEvpFREE because Dan could not
discuss it without shouting. I demonstrated to him that his claim of
Jazbo saying the strategy was within 0.01% of perfect was incorrect by
manually proving it was actually something like 0.014% off. Dan never
admitted he was wrong. He said "an analyst showed it was only 0.014%
off", refusing to acknowledge that I could figure out how inaccurate his
strategies were even if he couldn't.
I acknowledged that Bob may be right that it was 0.014% off, but at
his request he was reviewing a strategy that was 11 years old, not my
more recent publications. Most recreational players (my target
audience) would lose much more than 0.004%, or even 0.014%, through
errors when trying to follow a complex near-perfect strategy.
(Even 0.01% isn't anything to brag
about in that game. FVP has it down to about a third of that. Better
penalty-free strategies than FVP are possible.)
What? Where does FVP offer rules comparable to my Precision Play
rules? Are you comparing the PP rules to a hand rank table? Let's
compare hand rank tables to hand rank tables.
If we would have
reviewed Dan's KBJW strategy, we would have found it to be substantially
worse. In his first edition of "Optimum Play", Dan provides a test for
KBJW of about 20 questions and then proceeds to give the wrong answer to
4 of them. Accurate strategies are simply not Dan's forte. His
strategies are more accurate than Lenny Frome's (which was relevant when
Dan first started publishing, but Lenny's been dead for eight years and
isn't still publishing), but the standard has risen considerably since
then and Dan's strategies haven't.
Bob is always talking about strategies that were published years
before any program such as Video Poker Tutor was available. Now he's
going back 14 years to find something to criticize.
Anyone who thinks that Dan's strategies are simplified and/or
easy to use hasn't looked at instruction 6 of his Jacks or Better
strategy recently. This instruction is filled with and's, or's, and
semi-colons, and is quite torturous. In addition to being inaccurate, it
is quite confusing.
I have never received a complaint from a customer about how that rule
is written. Perhaps Bob is the only one who is confused.
When I hinted at Dan's plagiarism, you might want to ask him why
his publisher of the first edition of "Optimum Play" refused to let him
include a strategy for 10/7 Double Bonus --- clearly the best over-100%
game for dollars and higher at the time, and in some casinos the best
game for quarters.
Wow! Where did this come from? No publisher has EVER refused to
publish my strategies. This is an outright fabrication!
I did not include Double Bonus in that first edition because I was
(and still am) writing primarily for recreational players. Bob
himself said on page 191 of his book that "10/7 Double Bonus is very
difficult to master," so it's clearly not a good game for a beginner.
I did include it in later editions due to requests, but with the
comment that it is rarely attractive for recreational players.
If he's honest in his explanation (fat chance!) he'll
tell you that there were credible charges that Dan copied the strategy
from me and that Dan himself was incapable of creating a strategy for
the game from scratch. (Dan DID put a picture of 9/7 Double Bonus on the
cover of the book, a curious choice for a booking calling itself
"Optimum Play," but not a word about the game inside the book. For the
"rave review" that most authors include on the back cover of a book, Dan
got Jean Scott to say, basically, that she hasn't seen the book but if
she ever does, she thinks she will probably like it. As rave reviews go,
this was extremely weak.)
I have never copied a strategy from anyone else. I did publish an
improved strategy for All American which was developed by "The
Fireman" and gave him credit for it. All other strategies that I have
published I developed myself, the early ones with the help of Chris
Meyers, and later with the help of TomSki's VPSM.
We asked IGT for a photo of a full pay Deuces Wild machine, but that
was the only photo that they would supply. I didn't like using it,
but the publisher wanted a photo on the cover. I don't think anyone
else has ever commented about it being a short-pay game.
There are currently no good beginner's book on video poker. In
"Million Dollar Video Poker," I described Dan's book as the best of a
bad lot. I stand by that assessment.
In Bob's book, he wrote, "Today, Dan Paymar's Video Poker Optimu Play
... is currently the best book on how to play video poker on the
market."
Jean's book on the subject will be
coming out relatively soon and hopefully will be much better. Jean
herself isn't particularly knowledgeable about the fine points of video
poker (she freely admits this, but downplays its importance), but she
has friends who are (many on this site), a co-author, and a hands-on
publisher with a history of very good gambling books. It at least has
the potential to become the best beginning video poker book out there.
We'll see. Being better than "Optimum Play", though, isn't a very high
standard.
I consider Linda Boyd's "The Video Poker Edge" to be a pretty good
beginner's book, especially when used in conjunction with VP-OP and
OpVP. I'm sure that Jean's book will be excellent.
This process of criticizing Dan's work is not fun for me. I
didn't start this thread. I do not wish to continue it. Anyone who wants
to criticize me for bashing Dan please remember that Dan demanded I
explain myself. I did. I would appreciate it if this thread just dropped
off the planet --- or transferred to FREEvpFREE where I will not
participate.
If it's not fun, why do you keep doing it? And again, you claim to
not have started this thread when you did start it on 6/9. More
significantly, you STILL have not supplied a quote or any other
documentation of your repeated statements that I have written that
one should modify the strategy in response to how a machine is
acting. Why? Because I have never written any such recommendation.
Dan
···
--
Dan Paymar
Author of best selling book, "Video Poker - Optimum Play"
Editor/Publisher of VP newsletter "Video Poker Times"
Developer of VP analysis/trainer software "Optimum Video Poker"
Visit my web site at www.OptimumPlay.com
"Chance favors the prepared mind." -- Louis Pasteur
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
