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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

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Nov. 14, 2006

Types of Discipline

As I write this, Shirley and I are on the Norwegian Sun, on a 7-day cruise out of New Orleans to the Yucatan Peninsula and vicinity (Cozumel, Belize, Guatamala, and Costa Maya). As is true for most of our cruises, we were invited by a casino so we said "Why not?"

I wasn't expecting much from the casino on board the ship. Casinos at sea tend to have much tighter than average machines --- primarily due to the lack of competition. There might be another ship with a casino a quarter of a mile away, but once you're on one ship, there's no way to get to the other.

Still, our host told us that the cruise ship promised good pay schedules, so I brought along some money "just in case." As it turned out, the best game I found was 9/5 Jacks or Better --- which returns 98.45%. There was a slot club, but not nearly enough to make the game playable. If we played enough, they would give us a "free cruise" that they sold to the general public for $3,500. The catch was that our expected loss on that much play was about $4,000. Great bargain!

So I didn't play a hand in the casino, which wasn't traumatic at all. After all, I live near Vegas and have gambled more than 1,000 hours already this year, so taking a week off was not such a big deal to me.

When we had a group photo for everyone that Caesars Palace brought on the trip, another couple agreed that there were no good games, but they played anyway because it was "the only game in town." When we told them we didn't see any reason to play if there were no decent machines, they complimented us on our "discipline" Perhaps they weren't used to being around winning players, but I didn't see this discipline as such a big deal. This form of discipline is an absolute must for a winning player.

One of the good-new-bad-news features of cruising is food, food, food. The quality was decent enough, a few steps away, and in never-ending quantities. Even though I am intentionally trying to lose some weight, I found myself eating more than was necessary to support my weight-loss goal. I wasn't terrible about it, but eating entirely appropriately, on this cruise anyway, required more discipline than I possessed. Still, if my career depended on me maintaining my weight (say I was a television newsman, or perhaps a Chippendale dancer NOT!), I'm pretty sure I would have found the discipline to count calories.

Shirley and I committed to regularly taking the stairs on the cruise ship instead of the elevators. We did so so on this one. Although we don't drink alcohol or soda, so skipping these wasn't a big deal, another couple in our group promised to give up both for the week --- and didn't make it past the first day.

Discipline is a funny thing. Some people have discipline in everything, I suppose, although I don't believe I've met such a person. Others are disciplined about almost nothing, but most people are better disciplined about some things than others. And the discipline comes from setting a high priority on whatever it is.

In whatever field you want to succeed in, there is a considerable amount of discipline involved in doing an excellent job. The only problem arises when people want to enjoy the fruits of success, without having the necessary discipline along the way. I don't know how to do that.

If you can figure out how to do that, you should bottle it and sell it. There will be a lot of buyers for your get-rich-with-no-effort formula. Of course, you'd have to have a lot of discipline to market this formula successfully. Which if you had this discipline, you wouldn't need the formula. Go figure.

One aside is that even successful gamblers frequently have one area in which they are undisciplined. It may be they must bet on the New York Giants every week (which has been "smart" so far this year, but over time hasn't been so smart), or play a few hands of craps every day, or perhaps gamble in the casino even after indulging in some of the "free" alcohol. Whatever. Feet of clay are pretty typical. If you have these too, you can still be successful if you keep your excesses in moderation.