Author’s note: I ran this originally in December 2009, while I was teaching classes at the Eastside Cannery.
After this was published, Andy and Sharon became good friends with Shirley and me, and later Bonnie and me. Recently Sharon, real name Phillis, died after dealing with a brain tumor for years. Reprinting this article is one way to say, “Rest in Peace, Phillis.”
Continue reading A Sexy CorrelationEvery Vegas-goer is at different stages in their Vegas “careers.” I’m 49 years old and semi-retired, so a Vegas trip now is different for me than it was 20 years ago or even 10.
I love the sun, the pools, and the warm weather. That always used to be part of the appeal of Las Vegas for me. I spent most of my life living on Long Island, where pool season runs from late May/early June until late August/early September. But now I live in Florida, where pool season runs from late January until early January.
Continue reading Since You Asked — Hotel HoppingListeners to our podcast know I typically end with the line, “Go out and hit a royal flush!” Colin Jones, the owner of blackjackapprenticeship.com, one of the sponsors of our podcast, has numerous podcasts of his own in which he typically ends with, “Keep generating EV!”
Not that I’m planning on changing, but I like Colin’s ending better than mine! It’s far closer to what I believe intelligent gamblers should do.
Continue reading What’s in a Phrase?Have you ever dreamed of meeting a celebrity in Vegas? Well, you can!
I once saw Patrick Ewing playing blackjack at Bellagio. He played mostly good basic strategy, except he split 4s on one hand. That’s part of the reason he was losing stacks of $10,000 chips.
Continue reading Since You Asked—Madame Tussaud and Her Wax CelebritiesAuthor’s note: I’ve become very active recently in the storyteller community. I’ve appeared on several national shows — all via Zoom. I’ve won a few competitions, but have lost far more than I’ve won.
This story is about a video poker promotion which happened 24 years ago. Although a story is different than a regular blog, I hope my readers will enjoy it. It describes a variant about something many of you have experienced before.
Continue reading Valentine’s DayYou can actually have a good time at Circus Circus.
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Continue reading Since You Asked — A Good Time at Circus CircusAuthor’s note: Sometimes I get criticized for “bragging about my success.” The unusual feature at Dotty’s I’m discussing today is only relevant when you do have success. Like all players, I have good and bad weeks — and this one was a good one. So, if you get annoyed at me talking about one week when I was successful playing the game, better skip this week’s article.
As I write this, my last trip to Dotty’s was less than a week ago. It was a much, much better trip than average. And I still don’t know exactly how well I did! I will know before you read this, so I will note my actual results at the bottom, but this is intended to describe my thought processes before I know. That’s typically when you have to make your decisions.
Continue reading They Make You WaitI have played for more than ten years at Dotty’s, a chain of 15-machine (mostly) establishments located throughout Nevada.
While the promotions at Dotty’s vary periodically, one constant has been their Jackpot Bonus promotion where 10% of all W2gs receive a 10% bonus. That is, if you hit a $4,000 jackpot, 10% of the time you’ll receive an extra $400 in cash.
Continue reading You Can’t Do That!After making more than 50 trips to Las Vegas, which add up to more than a year of my life spent there, I’ve ventured far off the beaten path. In this post, I’d like to offer some tips on some of the best places in the Valley to take great photographs.
It may seem obvious and it’s most certainly not off the beaten path, but one of the best places to pull out your camera is the Bellagio Conservatory. The displays change seasonally, so you’re almost always likely to see something new, and the Bellagio artists do beautiful things with flowers. I’ve got tons and tons of great pictures of the conservatory; these are just a couple of favorites.
I hit a $2 NSU Deuces Wild royal recently — from left to right Q♣ K♣ A♣ T♣ J♣. It’s not an unusual royal in any respect. It was a one card draw with the queen coming in as desired.
The next day, 22 clock hours later but only four hours of video poker play, I hit a $1 9/6 Jacks or Better royal in the exact same Q♣ K♣ A♣ T♣ J♣ order. This time I needed to draw both the queen and the ace to collect.
So, I asked myself the same question that I’ve received from others so many times: How rare is this? I suggest you come up with a number before we continue.
I’m omitting the fact that the two royals required a different number of cards to be drawn — although, frankly, if they had matched there too, I’d have included that into the mix. The tradition in these exercises is to add in any and everything you can to make your event more unique than a similar situation. If you can make your event be 1-in-2,000,000, that’s twice as good as being only a mere 1-in-1,000,000.
I’m omitting the fact that it was two royals in only four hours of play. Calling it two royals in four hours starts the clock when I hit the first royal. It was also two royals in 76 hours of play. But it was about a tenth of a royal cycle before I hit the second one and you have about a 1-in-11 chance of connecting on something in a tenth of a cycle.
And I’m limiting the discussion to single line games. For all who have been dealt four-to-the-royal on Triple Play through Hundred Play and connected on more than one royal, all those royals on the same deal were alike. It can happen drawing to three-of-fewer-to-the-royal as well, but that’s not so common.
The number I get is that there is a 1-in-480 chance that your next royal be in the same suit-and-rank order as the last one you got. One way to figure this out is you have a 1-in-4 chance to be the same suit. Once the suit is determined, you have a 1-in-5 chance (queen in this case) for the first card to be in the correct position. Then 1-in-4, 1-in-3, and 1-in-2 for the next three cards. Once those have been determined, the last card is predetermined. Multiplying all of those out, you get 1-in-480.
Which isn’t that rare. Even if I multiply it by 11 because the second one happened in one-tenth of a cycle. Frequently in video poker we can come up with shots that are more than 1-in-1,000,000. This doesn’t come close to that.
Over a lifetime, it figures that a lot of us will do this. I don’t know exactly how many single-line royal flushes I’ve had, but it’s probably 400-500 or so (and probably three times that many on multi-line machines) and there are only 480 different ways for a royal to be. It’s very possible I’ve done this previously and not realized it.
I don’t have photographs of most of my royals and even if I remember that I hit two diamond royals four days apart, I wouldn’t be sure of the order of the cards. It’s just not something that makes a big impression on me.
But this time, since I happened to take pictures (Bonnie still gets a kick out of them and asked me why I sent the same picture twice), I saw them side-by-side and noticed they were the same order.
I created this article immediately after I hit the second royal described above. Nine days later I hit another single-line royal, also in clubs, with the cards in the same order — sort of. If you shift all of the cards two positions to the right (or three to the left), using some sort of wrap-around feature, the cards are in the same order.
I’m not going to attempt to figure out how likely this was for a next royal. It’s not an exact match, and there are a variety of different ways that an inexact match could be similar.
Still, I think it’s curious and interesting.
