Category: Advice for Players

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It Goes Both Ways

In January, I had an incident at the Harrah’s Cherokee casino that I wrote about. I started my trip by taking a $20,000 marker, consisting of eight $2,500 TITO tickets and began to play $5 Deuces Wild. When I hit four deuces, I got two more of the same size . When I hit royals, I collected eight more.

It was a very successful trip and at the end, I had far more than eight of these tickets. I had signed for every one of them. At the end of the trip when I cashed out, the cage said one of the $2,500 tickets had been cancelled. They weren’t going to pay it until they figured it out.

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Slot Machine Roulette

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

A.C. says: This article mixes a few themes. It begins with an interesting walk down memory lane, comparing some of the old-style games with the current offerings (for better or worse). It’s a fun read. Then there’s commentary on the move toward electronic table games, which brings to light the likely inevitability of this style of gambling continuing to increase its footprint. The article concludes with a discussion of roulette, featuring a listing of the different bets. Pay attention to the warning to be alert that proper payouts are being made on the electronic versions; it’s something that most players don’t pay attention to.

This article was written by Frank Scoblete in association with 888Casino.

Slot Machine Roulette

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Time to Be a Good Samaritan?

This blog suggestion was sent to me by a friend, “Al.” It happened at a casino somewhere in the Mid-West. I honestly don’t know where exactly.

Al was playing video poker near a bank of Quick Quad machines that weren’t very popular. Possibly players knew how to play the machines and avoided them because they had lousy pay schedules, or maybe they just didn’t know how to play. I don’t know. I haven’t seen them. (If you’re in the latter boat, you can get a free copy of “Quick Guide to Quick Quads” on www.videopoker.com.”)

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As Good as I Once Was

In 2005, country music star Toby Keith released As Good as I Once Was, a wonderfully self-deprecating song about a guy reaching middle age and not being as good as he was in his prime. In a clever twist of words, Keith sings that he’s not as good as he once was, but he’s as good once as he ever was.

If you haven’t seen the video, check it out on YouTube. It’s cute.

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Maybe we Will Go

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a drawing at the ROW in Reno (a Caesars property where the Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus are all connected indoors), where Bonnie and I had each accumulated more than a half-million tickets during our stay. While that is a lot of tickets, everybody gets free tickets and daily multipliers, depending on their tier level.

I mentioned in that article that probably we won’t attend the three nights of drawings because the combination of prizes and probability of winning them wasn’t all that high. I said that would be my decision, “depending” on other factors.

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Comparing Bonus Poker with Super Aces Bonus Poker

I recently came across a dollar 8/5 Super Aces Bonus Poker game and it’s been years since I played it. I know 8/5 Bonus Poker cold, and because the full house, flush, and straight are the same between the two games, the strategies must be similar. Still, they differ in the amount of the straight flush, quads, and two pair — all of which affect the strategy as well.

I thought it would be instructive to give you ten hands — three of which are played the same in the two games and the other seven are played differently. Even if you haven’t mastered both games, you might find it an interesting exercise trying to figure out which four are played the same before you look at the answers. 

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This Made Me Uncomfortable

Bonnie and I were at Harrah’s in Cherokee, NC for a Caesars Seven Stars trip. Cherokee is in the Smoky Mountains and a world away from Las Vegas. Plus, they have $5 NSU Deuces Wild.

For a Seven Stars trip, you get up to $1,200 airfare, $500 in resort credit, and transportation to and from the airport. The airport means either Asheville (about 50 miles away, but not a direct flight) or Atlanta, which is 160 miles away (which is much easier to get to). We usually fly into Atlanta.

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Figuring the Return for 8/5 Bonus Poker with Four Progressives

Note to reader: The original version of this contained an arithmetic mistake. It was pointed out to me by a man who posts under the name “New2vp”. The error, which affected one of the tables in the chart, are in the section relating to quad 5s-Ks. The corrected version follows. Thank you New2vp.

I received an email:  Sam’s Town in Las Vegas has three different banks of 8/5 Bonus. Two of those banks have progressives on the royal flush only. The third has that progressive, plus three additional ones for the quads: aces, 2s-4s, and 5s-Ks. Since the game starts out at 99.17%, sometimes these games must be pretty good. How do I figure out how to calculate the return of these games quickly if I don’t bring computer software into the casino?

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The Old Man

Today’s column is less technical and more about “how I do things” that aren’t specifically related to video poker.

Most of you have heard of Adele, one of the premier singers of our time. She is performing a series of concerts at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and I was invited to receive two tickets. Bonnie’s daughter, Joyce, is a huge fan, so we arranged for Bonnie and Joyce to attend the concert on December 3, while I played enough in the casino to “keep those offers coming.”

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