In January of this year, I began to play a lot of All American Video Poker on the 25-cent machines available at two local casinos in order to sharpen my skills at the game in preparation for playing the dollar games that I knew one of the casinos would be installing. That casino did install the dollar versions, but I've basically stuck with the quarter games for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, I realized that the vast majority of our readers are quarter players and I wanted to show all of you how one can make playing Video Poker a nice part-time 'job'. I've talked about that before and even chronicled the adventures of a friend of mine who was between jobs as she lived the life of a 'professional' gambler. You really can play Video Poker for a profit, if you go about it the right way.

Expecting to make a profit from your Video Poker play requires several essential elements, not the least of which is time. You cannot expect to play 3 or 4 hours a week and make $10,000 a year at this. As you'll see, the pay for all this is not much above that of a job flipping burgers, but it is more interesting and a helluva lot more fun. Making a profit also requires that you play a game where you have an edge and you must play it correctly. but that's no mean feat when it comes to All American which has, undoubtedly, the most complicated strategy of all the Video Poker games. I mastered the strategy only through a lot of practice on my favorite VP software, "Bob Dancer presents WinPoker" by Dean Zamzow. In addition, I discovered some 'tricks' to speed up my play and you can read about them in my continuing series, "The Expert's Guide to All American" which is in the Video Poker Bible section of this site. So, I developed the accuracy and the speed, but of course I needed the $$$. I set aside $4000 for this venture and have come nowhere near using more than $1000 of it, but I like to know it's available should it be needed.

My plan for this venture was to average about $8 an hour from my play. I realize that's not very impressive, but when you consider that I was actually planning for a profit at an activity where 99.9 percent of all the participants lose, it' s brought into perspective. I arrived at that figure by expecting to play about 700 hands of All American each hour. Since I'd be betting $1.25 (5 coins) per hand, my total bets would be $875 an hour and the long-term return of All American is 100.72%, so I was expecting to make about $875 X .007 = $6.13 per hour from the play alone. My other income source would be the cash back from the two casinos where I'd be playing and that would average about 0.25% of all the $$$ I bet or about $875 X .0025 = $2.19 per hour. Add the two together and it's just over $8.00 an hour. With the occasional double-point day and other such bonuses thrown in, the cash back figure would be at least that high and, as you'll see, was actually somewhat higher.

So, how have I done? Below is a chart which is pretty much self-explanatory. A "session" is one day's play at one of the two casinos, so it's possible to have two sessions in a calendar day, since I may have played in the morning at one casino, then the afternoon at the other. This really began in earnest about January 15, 2000 and session #35 represents my play on March 26, 2000. Take a look at the results and I'll meet you down below for some analysis.

The sessions marked with an "R" shows the ones where I hit a Royal Flush which pays $1000 at this game. It naturally follows that had I not hit those Royals, I'd be on the loss side of the game, but even then, it would be only to the tune of $1500 or so, far short of my $4000 bankroll. But, the Royals have to come sometime and two of mine showed up virtually back-to-back; one was on a Friday, the next on the following Monday. That comes from living a clean life, as I often say.

Anyway, you can see that I've played 35 sessions for a total playing time of 153 hours. Remember, that is a measure of the time I spent at the machine pushing buttons. Breaks for lunch or dinner or the bathroom, etc. are not counted as playing time. If I played at an average rate of 700 hands per hour (that might be a smidge high, but it's close), then my 153 hours represents 107,100 hands of play which totals $133,875 in bets. That's a pretty amazing figure when you think about it; in less than 3 months, my little 'business' generated an annualized cash flow of over half a million dollars! If I was the 'usual' gambler, the casino would expect to keep about 2-3% of all my bets, so I'd be worth $10,000 a year, or more, to them.

But, that's not how it's working, at least to this point. With a profit of $1575 thus far, I'm averaging $10.29 an hour from play alone. I'm 'ahead of the curve' here and at some point that figure will settle down to the 'expected' $6.00, but it may be hundreds of hours away, or it may begin tomorrow; no one can say for sure. The cash back and bonuses which I've collected has totaled $474 during this time and that works out to $3.09 per hour, thus giving me a total average income of $13.40 per hour. You know, that's not bad at all. The cash back and bonuses amount to 0.35% of all my bets and that's about right, because I've tried to take advantage of all the double-point days and other incentives which the casinos have offered. My average session length is 4.37 hours and I try to play 3 sessions per week. With an income of $13.39 an hour, and three sessions per week, the average week's earnings so far is about $175. Maybe it's not great, but the work is pleasant and you meet a nice class of player at the All American machines.

See you here next time.

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