These are all great questions and thoughts. We do have an existing thread that touches on some of this, seen here, but I’ll add what I’m thinking of today.
In poker, I think tracking is extremely important because game conditions change all the time. Say you’re a moderate winner in a small player pool. All it takes is a few whales to stop playing, or for the pool in general to get tougher, and you can go from a winner to basically break-even.
As a non-record-keeper myself and fellow poker player, I would say, In a game with a small player pool with a couple of whales, I am going to notice the moment whale one is MIA. Why do I need a spreadsheet to tell me that? If anything, I’ll notice that before my w/l takes a noticeable hit. That’s more just playing devil’s advocate, as I know many pro or semipro poker players swear by this.
Or say you have 2,000 hours logged in Poker Journal with a $35/hour win rate at 2/5, but some of those hands are from 2020. So much has changed in the poker world, the economy, etc. that it would be dumb to say, “I’m going to make $35/hour tomorrow in 2026.” While tracking in poker is far from perfect, I think it’s still extremely valuable data.
Very true. It would be even more extreme for slots in my opinion. Not that it would be an arrow pointing downward, but conditions change all the time in a casino as games are added or removed, some APs are kicked out or move on, new APs come in, etc.
If you’re going to log data for slots, I think you’d want to at the very least separate info by casino. Likely day and time of day as well. If I am comparing the Las Vegas Strip to some hole-in-the-wall place in Black Hawk, Colorado, I am doing myself a disservice by calling all of it “slots.” It’s apples and oranges.
In sports betting, I can’t beat the market, but I have a pretty robust process for abusing promos and making a small but consistent amount of money.
Sounds interesting. I never really got into sports betting, other than being a small-but-steady loser on mostly NFL parlays, but one of my friends is big into “sharp betting,” which probably doesn’t need quotes but shows my level of knowledge in the subject.
I do track every bet in sports, but that’s largely because of the seamless tracking available through apps. I love Pikkit, FWIW. I would love a Pikkit for slots.
Maybe it’s possible. I’ll have to check out Pikkit more.
The edges don’t disappear in the same way they can in poker or sports betting. … So where is the good middle ground? … What is your process for tracking results, and what would you recommend I do as someone relatively new to this?
I’ll tackle the last one first because I thought of a reply first: It depends what your goal is. I mean, heck, I have a website that tells you “play this; don’t play this.” So it depends if you want to really develop an understanding beyond the surface-level slot stuff. I don’t mean to sound any bit judgmental or anything, as depending on the subject, I’m often quite all right with not investing any more mental energy than I have to.
That said, I make mistakes sometimes. Or, phrased more positively, my data improves as I get more of a sample. I also don’t have every AP game included—yes, I have the majority of them, but never all. New games are also added frequently, so it will take me time to get to those. The point is, if you only read what I have and don’t fully learn what you’re doing, you might not be able to take advantage of other slotting opportunities.
Tracking results if you’re relatively new to this could help you better retain concepts. Or maybe not. It depends how you learn best.
My process for tracking results: These days, I try to track longer-run games and especially newer games. As you said with Ultimate X, there’s no way I’m tracking games like that. Unless there’s some sort of software change, it doesn’t matter if I lose 100 straight hands if I’m playing it when I should be. I can group 150-plus games into that category. (Now, maybe UX isn’t the best example since maybe I just suck at video poker and am making errors on that front, but you get the idea.)
The edges don’t disappear in the same way they can in poker or sports betting.
I’m not so sure I’d be as black-and-white. Maybe not in the “same” way, but the slot landscape is constantly changing.
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Here’s where I give a disclaimer that I know very little about taxes even though my wife is an accountant: Keeping records of expenses could be useful on that front. I actually have an LLC associated with this now, and again, she had to hold my hand through that whole process. But from the sound of it, it didn’t seem that hard to create one. If you’re a gambling juggernaut: poker, sports betting, slots, whatever else, maybe you become Raymond’s Gambling Consulting Emporium LLC.
If it’s not obvious, I am saying that mostly tongue-in-cheek, but who knows, maybe keeping records of expenses associated with gambling could be useful on your end.
I’d also suggest checking out that existing thread, as we had some interesting thoughts there. If anyone has anything to add, here is the place!
Ben Rosenthal
