Babe asked a lot of questions about a marathon.
I lost $14,000 before the $20,000 first prize. Had my opponent quit
trying to overtake me three hours earlier, I would have been up $23,000
--- in addition to the prize. I won $2,000 in electronic drawings based
on this play --- and I played no more for the month (which gave me $450
in bounce back the next month). The Palms allows you to sell points won
in High Limits for 0.125%, so the $3.4 million I played was sold for
approximately $4,000.
There were strong rules against anybody else playing for you. Doing that
would amount to instant disqualification. Shirley did create $3,000
"tickets" to insert into the machine, though. This kept me from having
to continually create more tickets. Shirley massaged my shoulders and
otherwise supported me, but she didn't play. I did all of my play in the
high limit slot room, and there were always three or more employees
there to support the marathon. Any cheating would have been quickly
detected.
Yes I was having trouble concentrating at the end. The last two hours
Shirley was telling me what the correct play was. I overruled her
sometimes (like she wanted to hold KQ from Kh Qh Js 6c 3h in NSU and I
was still awake enough to know to throw everything away. )
I expected to win (I'll explain more in my upcoming novel. The
preparations beforehand and the subterfuges involved were rather
complex). I predicted it would take $3 million of play to win. At 99.85%
(including selling points), I figured my expected loss was $4,500 ---
and i'd probably win something in the electronic drawings as well. I set
a loss limit of $200,000 (If I lost that much I'd quit). I didn't
calculate it precisely, but I ballparked the chances of being behind two
royals in 0.6 royal cycles ($5 million is one cycle) to be quite small.
And losing $200,000 wouldn't have been disastrous. (It wouldn't have
been any fun, though, and Shirley would have been grumpy for a week.)
A funny story that didn't get described in the novel. Shirley and I knew
and liked my only two serious opponents. At one point Shirley went and
bought three turkey sandwiches and gave one to each of us. One guy
wanted to trade sandwiches with me because he thought that maybe Shirley
put some sleep-inducing-drugs in his. [That would never occur to Shirley
---- not to mention it'd probably be a felony to drug someone.] I
refused to trade sandwiches, but said if he didn't want his sandwich
that I'd eat both. He ended up eating it, slowly, and every fifteen
minutes thereafter I would ask him if he'd starting feeling drowsy yet!
He did take a bathroom break shortly after we ate the sandwiches. I
don't know if he upchucked "just in case."
Bob Dancer
For the best in video poker information, visit www.bobdancer.com
or call 1-800-244-2224 M-F 9-5 Pacific Time.
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