RebelDiceMan
VIP Whale
I got to thinking about this while doing my daily walk this morning. When I first started going to casinos twenty years ago, I was pretty much an exclusive table game player. My focus was on blackjack for a long time. When Caribbean Stud came out I added that to my regular gambling schedule. Eventually I added 3 card poker to the mix. After a while, I backed off CSP and 3CP some but added Craps to my reportoire. For the next few years, blackjack and craps were about all I was playing. I read a pile of books about anything that I ever played with any regularity. Of course there is no way to beat the math of any casino game but I wanted to lower that house edge as low as I could get it by being as knowledgable as possible. Like most of us, I had good days and not so good days. This may be selective memory but it seemed to me that I had more winning days mixed in back then and when a day was a winning day, the totals were higher.
These days I play much more video poker to the tune of probably 75-80% of my gambling time is spent sitting at some bartop chasing Royals. My overall results seem to be that I am a lot less likely to have a winning day than when I was playing almost all tables. It is relatively rare to have a winning day if I play VP all day. The exceptions are when those elusive Royals pop up. Then everything is great.
Still, I have averaged about one Royal a year for the last 7-8 years that I have been playing VP as my main game so that gives you an idea how frequently my days of VP have been profitable. Not that they are my only profitable VP days but it takes a lot of straight flushes and 4OAK's to overcome the math of the multi-hour sessions I put in.
The biggest thing is that I am starting to look at is that some VP sessions seem more like drudgery than excitement. My memory tells me that I had more fun playing tables. Even now, I still shoot dice just about every trip and that is usually one of the highlights of the trip. We are going to Harrah's New Orleans for three days starting Monday. While I will almost surely devote a chunk of my time to VP (I need a couple thousand tier credits to remain Diamond with CET), I plan to dramatically increase my time spent on tables to see how that affects my profitablity and more importantly, my enjoyment level of the casino experience. Part of that table time is going to be blackjack for the first time in a couple of years. It's funny in a way. The reason I moved away from blackjack in the first place long ago was that it was becoming more like a job than a fun time. Now I am going back to it because of the tedious nature that sometimes overtakes VP. I am anxious to see how I feel about things next Friday.
That is a lot of background for this one question. Have you ever noticed changes in your own playing patterns and levels of enjoyment while doing so?
These days I play much more video poker to the tune of probably 75-80% of my gambling time is spent sitting at some bartop chasing Royals. My overall results seem to be that I am a lot less likely to have a winning day than when I was playing almost all tables. It is relatively rare to have a winning day if I play VP all day. The exceptions are when those elusive Royals pop up. Then everything is great.

The biggest thing is that I am starting to look at is that some VP sessions seem more like drudgery than excitement. My memory tells me that I had more fun playing tables. Even now, I still shoot dice just about every trip and that is usually one of the highlights of the trip. We are going to Harrah's New Orleans for three days starting Monday. While I will almost surely devote a chunk of my time to VP (I need a couple thousand tier credits to remain Diamond with CET), I plan to dramatically increase my time spent on tables to see how that affects my profitablity and more importantly, my enjoyment level of the casino experience. Part of that table time is going to be blackjack for the first time in a couple of years. It's funny in a way. The reason I moved away from blackjack in the first place long ago was that it was becoming more like a job than a fun time. Now I am going back to it because of the tedious nature that sometimes overtakes VP. I am anxious to see how I feel about things next Friday.
That is a lot of background for this one question. Have you ever noticed changes in your own playing patterns and levels of enjoyment while doing so?
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