Las Vegas Advisor

Posted on October 11, 2022August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 9 Comments

Help Me Make Sense of This

I received the following email. It was originally intended for the Gambling with an Edge mailbag, but I felt it was too technical to be discussed over a podcast:

I know video poker has a ton of variance, but I recently endured a hellish series of events on $5 NSU Deuces Wild at a tribal casino.

Posted on October 10, 2022September 26, 2023 by David Mckee — 1 Comment

Atlantic City update; G2E convenes; Penn upgrades

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, especially to our tribal readers. We’re spending it nursing a nasty case of strep throat and distantly following Global Gaming Expo, which convenes today at the newly expanded Las Vegas Convention Center. This year’s G2E, like last year’s and every one before it will be smoke-free … that is, no discussion of smoking in casinos whatsover. Rest assured that Americans for Nonsmokers Rights will show up and make a fuss over what seems an unconscionable oversight. Now to the main business of the day …

In another triumph for the Marty Small (D) administration, the first anniversary for groundbreaking of Atlantic City‘s subsidized ShopRite has come and gone without a shovelful of sand being turned. The megamarket was proposed three years ago and seems no closer to happening now than then. Mind you, ShopRite is not only juiced in for annual rent of $1, it gets a yearly subsidy of $500,000. At least that would have been the sleazy deal had the Casino Reinvestment & Development Authority signed off on it. Fortunately, wiser heads at the CRDA prevailed. It’s not clear why Atlantic City needs subsidized supermarkets anyway, as it already has two Acme marts (one near the Marina District) and a Save A Lot. But the Small administration never saw a bad deal it didn’t want to make.

Posted on October 7, 2022September 14, 2023 by David Mckee — 9 Comments

Killing spree on Strip; Tilman’s newest erection revealed

Alas, today’s top story is of the “If it bleeds, it leads” variety and is written out of sheer necessity, not desire. A thirty-something Latino man, Yoni Barrios, is in custody after going on a knife-wielding spree in front of Wynncore. It seems that the individual, who was packing a large kitchen knife, didn’t take well to being spurned in his request to have his photo taken with a group of showgirls. The latter, who were employed as Wynn Resorts greeters, were among the eight people who were subsequently stabbed, two fatally. Several tourists also fell victim to this Sin City iteration of Jack the Ripper, who fled the scene only to captured in front of Venelazzo, slashing one person during his attempted getaway. The assailant’s sleeves were coated in blood, so he’ll have a hard time explaining that away in court. We thought we’d seen the last of the Las Vegas Strip as a lawless frontier once tourists starting returning en masse but evidently not. And with that … words fail us.

Posted on October 4, 2022August 29, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 6 Comments

When is a Wild Royal Flush not a Wild Royal Flush?

Using a W for wild card to indicate a deuce, assume you are dealt W W Q♦ J♦ T♦ on a Triple Play version of Deuces Wild. This is not a tough play. You hold all five cards for a wild royal flush. (Other terms for the same hand are royal flush with deuce and dirty royal.) Usually this pays 100 or 125 coins, depending on the pay schedule, and in the specific version you’re playing it returns 100 coins.

Posted on October 4, 2022September 18, 2023 by David Mckee — 3 Comments

Station goes off its meds; Hochul names casino pickers

Richard Schuetz writes today that “the reality of casino company board rooms is that they are overwhelmed with way too much testosterone.” That certainly seems to be the case at Station Casinos, which has announced seven projects to be executed over the next seven years. Overreach much? A company that took 39 years to reach its present size intends to double it in less than eight. Company President Scott Kreeger told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “There’s no one more bullish on Las Vegas than Station Casinos.” That much is obvious. And the economic auguries are positive, with credit card delinquencies in the Las Vegas Valley running very low, among other favorable economic indicators. The area population is 24% larger than it was before the Great Recession and gross gaming revenue is 15% higher than before the pandemic (but 8% lower than in 2007).

Posted on October 3, 2022January 25, 2024 by Arnold Snyder — Leave a comment

According to Snyder . . .

The Radical Blackjack Story . . .

I had made my living for more than 25 years from blackjack, primarily by writing about it, but also by playing the game to formulate and test theories, while making money in the process. But I haven’t written a book about blackjack since The Big Book of Blackjack, which was published in 2006.

A good portion of Radical Blackjack was written ten years ago and it was even offered for sale on Amazon in 2013. But I decided to hold off on publishing it, partly because I felt some of the material was too sensitive, and partly because I needed to do a lot of analyses on the rebate material and I didn’t have access to the software I needed to do it.

Radical Blackjack contains a lot of my personal gambling secrets, plus secrets I learned from other pro gamblers. The version of this book that was almost published in 2013 was a much different book from this 2021 version. In fact, the prior unpublished manuscript was a lot less radical. In that version, I used pseudonyms for most of the characters—many of whom are well-known pro players, authors, and experts in the Blackjack Hall of Fame. I was also very careful in that 2013 version of this book not to reveal too much about the actual plays and strategies, many of which had never been published, or at least, not in any great detail. I did write in detail about my own discoveries and experiences, especially with regards to shuffle tracking, loss rebate plays, and online gambling, But I left a lot of details out on plays I was involved in, but had mostly learned from other pros.

But my Huntington Press publisher and longtime friend, Anthony Curtis, encouraged me to go ahead and use the real names of the characters in the stories I told because it would make the book better. He said we could just run everything by those whose names were revealed to make sure we weren’t stepping on anybody’s toes. So, I started changing pseudonyms to real names, and once I started doing that, I figured what the hell, since we’re going to run the whole thing by these guys anyway, I might as well tell a whole lot more of the story, since they would be offered the right to veto anything about them or their strategies they didn’t want in print.

It didn’t surprise me that some players wanted to remain anonymous, requesting pseudonyms. But many said, fine, use my name. What really surprised me was that the players who were vetting this book requested very few cuts regarding the details of the tactics and strategies that we used, many of which have never been exposed in print. So, Radical Blackjack should prove to be one hell of a revelation for many serious students of the game.

Rather than attempt to describe the contents of Radical Blackjack, I’ll just post a version of the Table of Contents here. I put this together by listing the chapter titles, headings and subheadings. Information on purchasing the book follows.

1 Shuffle Tracking

Does Shuffle Tracking Work in Today’s Casinos?
What Is Shuffle Tracking?
Shuffle-Hopping at the Calgary Stampede
One Good Slug
Hammering the Lakeside Inn
Playing for the Camera at the Atlantis in Reno
Outrageous Favors at John Ascuaga’s Nugget
Winning Big and Getting the Boot at Palace Station
Tracking with the Dealer’s Help at the Tropicana in Atlantic City
Dodging the Cutoff Plugs at Paris
Going South
Short-Shoed at a Sawdust Joint

2 Radical Camouflage

Beating High-Tech Surveillance
The Griffin Snitches
Hot Game Reports
Ambush Warning for the Greeks
Cellini: The Ultimate Double Agent
Back to Beating Blackjack Survey Voice
The Insurance Flaw in the Survey Voice Software
The Double-Down Flaw in the Survey Voice Software
Keep Track of Your Camo Costs
Will These Techniques Work Today?

3 Playing with a Partner

Pillaging Aladdin’s London Club
Enter the Rainbow People
Playing Multiple Simultaneous Hands
Using a Partner to Explain Your Nutty Logic
Radical Misplay Camouflage
Let’s Change the Order of the Cards

4 Milking Loss Rebates

The Legend of Don Johnson
The $140,000 Shoe
The Insane Super Bowl Comp
The Comp to Beat All Comps
How to Win by Losing
Rebate Theory (Oversimplified)
Overall Value of Loss Rebates to a Winning Player
The Camouflage Value of Loss Rebates
The Best Rebate Strategy to Maximize Dollar Wins
The Time Factor
The Terrible’s Loss Rebate for Low-Rollers
The Aladdin Rebate Deal
The MGM Grand’s Loss Rebate
The Real World Chart
The Paris Casino’s Two-Tier Loss Rebate
Like Tarzan Swinging from Vine to Vine
Bet-Sizing and Bankroll Requirements for Loss-Rebate Games
Getting a Rebate on a Win at Stratosphere
Loss Rebates at Other Games for Low(er) Rollers

5 Playing on Other People’s Money

Max Sends Me to Play the Tribal Casinos in California
“Mr. F” Backs Me to Attack the Big Rebate Games
The Blackjack Forum Dream Team
Avery Cardoza Backs Me in WSOP Tournaments

6 Hole-Card Play

Illegal Hole Card Strategies
Obsolete Hole-Card Strategies Worth Knowing About
Spooking
Tell Play
Einbinder and Dalben
Steve Forte’s Last Big Play
Playing Warps
Steering Strategies
Legal and Still Viable Hole-card Strategies
Can Hole Carding Be Learned?
“The Turn”—a Legal Hole-Card and Steering Strategy
A Bit of History
Tips on the Turn
Is the Turn Legal at Blackjack?
The Easiest Hole-Card Play of All

7 Beating the Online Casinos

A Better Kind of Loss Rebate Play

8 Off-the-Wall Outtakes, Tangents, and Gossip

How Jesse Morgan Became James Grosjean
Everyone Knows Munchkin
How Henry Tamburin Saved Tommy Hyland’s Teammates from Prison
Why Revere Tricked His Students into Returning for More Lessons
Whatever Happened to Keith Taft’s Computer Shoes?
Jack Newton’s Story About a Big-Money Roulette Play
Wheelin’ and Dealin’ with Ken Uston
The Night Al Francesco Showed Up at My Apartment
Stanford Wong’s Secret Advantage Play on Lodging in Vegas
An Unauthorized Review by Peter Griffin
Bill Benter’s Book Gets Trashed on Amazon
My Dinner with Julian Braun
The Mysterious Ian Andersen
Bob Loeb and the FBI

Just 33.95

Posted on October 3, 2022September 14, 2023 by David Mckee — 1 Comment

Report from the shore; Cretins win in Alabama

While Bally’s Corp. may not be the laughingstock of the casino industry, it isn’t for want of trying. You would think that Bally’s Atlantic City (above) would want to pimp nearby Bally’s Dover Downs to its customers. Instead it sent a lengthy mailer touting all the great deals to be found … at Bally’s Vicksburg. We mean, if you’ve driven to Atlantic City regularly, what’s a quick little runout to Vicksburg, the vacation capital of Dixie? (Not.) Don’t get us wrong. We’ve been to Vicksburg. We like Vicksburg. But it’s not exactly the destination that Bally’s customer base is slavering to be incentivized towards. Actually, Bally’s apparently needs to induce players to stay in Atlantic City anyway. Through the end of the month it’s offering room rates starting at $19 a night, though one wag suggested that was $15 too much (and yes, he’s stayed there).