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Casualties of the Progressive Slot Machines
Dear Mark, Every month or two I take a discretionary £20 and play the Progressive quarter slots, hoping to hit the big jackpot of a few hundred thousand. (Would like to leave my kids something). I have frequently won a few hundred but put it back in, hoping for the big one. Am I being realistic or foolish? Dick M.
Dick, granted that there's no law against being foolish, there are still two significant deficiencies in your playing strategy, and in view of your familial aim, one of them might rise to the level of culpability.
The first is in not quitting when a few hundred dollars ahead. Better to stash the century note for the kids and play on with whatever is left. The other big flaw is in thinking that gambling could rationally be a part of any investment portfolio. (I'm overlooking Enron, of course.)
On the plus side, you are paying with discretionary income, and there is nothing wrong with having a little fun, at £20 a pop, so long as your bets remain within your means. No surviving casino that I know of has ever returned money to the player who lost more than he could really afford to lose.
Casinos can only be beaten, Dick, by astute players who patiently settle for small victories, like your few hundred. With knowledge of the odds, probabilities, and correct strategies, you can eke out small wins, but no such luck when it comes to funding your own or your heirs' retirement accounts by trouncing progressive slot machines. Can't happen.
Playing progressives is a colorful but mortal combat against a supreme opponent with virtually infinite resources, who also stacks the deck: the probability of your hitting a progressive stands at 16,777,216 to one in the best case. And this, Dick, is the struggle that you have chosen to invest in? Tell me NO. Gambling on the off-chance of hitting a progressive for your progeny compares with David squaring off against Goliath, shy the slingshot.
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