Last week I wrote about a juicy game that lasted for several years in 15-machine pubs in greater Las Vegas. If you read that article first, this one will make more sense.
Near the end of the time when this game was available, the manager of one of these pubs asked if I could meet him for lunch away from the pub. Sure. No problem. He had been to some of my classes and we were friendly.
Continue reading Gambler’s Bonus Reminiscences – Part II of IIFor a five-year period ending about a decade ago, I played a lot at certain 15-machine pubs in the southeastern section of the Las Vegas valley. Places such as Village Pub, Raye’s, Doc Holliday’s, and Franklin’s. Most of these places have changed owners and names since then. All have removed the game I played.
My game of choice was a version of Deuces Bonus in the Gambler’s Bonus system called Deuces Plus. Today, the best IGT version of this game pays 45-20-20 for straight flushes, quads, and full houses with a return of 99.45%. The version at the pubs paid 50-20-20 with the royal returning 1,000-for-1 rather than 800-for-1. This made it a 100.35% game. Plus slot club. Plus bonuses. And all these places had the game for ten-coin $5 — meaning $50 hand.
Continue reading Gambler’s Bonus Reminiscences – Part I of IIA month or so ago I answered the Question of the Day for the Las Vegas Advisor and I answered it in terms of the Binomial Distribution. There were some comments posted after that QOD indicating that people wanted to know more about it. This is a lightly edited version of a 2012 article that I published should be sufficient to respond to those questions.
I receive a lot of mail asking such questions as, “If I am dealt four cards to the royal flush (such as A♥ K♥ Q♥ T♥) and I am playing Fifty Play, how many royals will I usually end up getting?” or, “I played more than 200,000 hands of Jacks or Better and only received three royal flushes. How unlucky was this?”
Continue reading Two Simple Applications of the Binomial Distribution“S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E!” sixty people shouted as my wife Bonnie entered her sister’s house. Her 75th birthday party was off to a noisy beginning.
I sighed in relief. We had pulled it off. All the invitations and such had been sent out and responses received with Bonnie having no clue. I had ordered a cake from BabyCakes, the bakery within the M Resort, where I had a large number of comps.
Continue reading Two Sucker BetsIn Las Vegas, there was a 70-day break for the pandemic, assuming you played in the casinos on March 17 and returned on June 4. If you socially distanced before March 17, or didn’t rush back as soon as the casinos reopened, the break was longer.
Certain casino venues elsewhere in the country opened earlier or later than June 4, but for now, let’s assume we all had a 2¼ -month break, minimum. It’s close enough for today’s purposes.
Continue reading Are You Still Up to Snuff?When I was nine years old, I was an All-Star baseball player. It wasn’t part of the official Little League system. Our city parks in Gardena, a suburb of Los Angeles, had a minor league, from 8-10 years of age, a major league, from 10-12, and a pony league, from 12-14.
At the start of the summer, I was 10 years old. I could have played in the minor leagues or the major leagues. Most of my friends were a bit older and didn’t have that choice. So, I went along with them and signed up to play in the majors.
Continue reading Finding my SpotOne of the good news/bad news parts of my job as a podcast co-host is that I’m regularly offered manuscripts to read by authors hoping to land an invitation to the show. In the case of Maria Konnikova, it’s all good news. She’s an excellent writer and the first time we had her on the air was a really fun interview.
She came to Richard Munchkin’s and my attention two years ago when she won a poker tournament in Monte Carlo after picking up the game only one year previously. She was offered a PokerStars sponsorship and a number of publications, including Poker News, ran features on her. So we invited her to be a guest on GWAE for May 31, 2018.
Continue reading A Look at Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest BluffIn the middle of his famous poem “If,” Rudyard Kipling poses the condition, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” At the end of the poem filled with twenty or so other conditions, comes the conclusion, “you’ll be a Man, my son.”
Although addressed to his son, this applies equally to daughters. The phrase is etched over the players’ entrance at Wimbledon’s Centre Court. I read it recently in a book by Maria Konnikova which I will review next week. This phrase was a very small part of the book, but it speaks to me as a video poker player as surely as it does to tennis players.
Continue reading Kipling Said It BestI’ve been publishing and giving gambling advice for decades. Sometimes thinking like a gambler helps in areas far removed from gambling itself. Today I want to share such a case. (If you only want discussion of video poker, perhaps you should skip this week.)
Among other interests, I participate in Toastmasters, a group dedicated to helping you speak better. My reasons for this include being a better teacher, being a better interviewer on my podcast, practicing stories that I present in various locations, and even performing better in my Improv troupe. Insofar as following the “Pathways” programs and being awarded various designations by Toastmasters, I have no interest at all in that.
Continue reading Applying What I KnowMasterclass.com is a marvelous collection of world authorities talking about what they know best. I am very impressed with their teachers. I had heard about a 2-for-1 sale they were offering in early April, so I signed up. Usually it’s $180 per year for full access to thousands of hours of instruction, but the recent sale allowed two people to sign up for the same $180. The combination of the sale and lots of extra time due to the stay-at-home rules was enough to seal the deal for me. I sent an email out to a number of people I thought might be interested in partnering with me on this, and several responded with interest. The ones I couldn’t use, I hooked up with each other.
My primary interests are writing, comedy, and games of skill — and they have several courses in each of those categories. I’ll eventually get to classes further down my list of interests, but the courses on cooking and interior decorating will probably never make the cut for me.
Continue reading A Lesson from Daniel Negreanu