Most of my readers know that I married Bonnie last May. As in every marriage, you need to learn to adapt to each other’s peculiarities. Bonnie and I are both senior citizens which is good news and bad news. The bad news is that seniors are pretty set in their ways and have had time to develop a LOT of peculiarities. The good news is that neither of us sweats the small stuff quite as much as when we were younger. At least most of the time we don’t.
Continue reading Conditional Approval
Comparing Quarter Ten Play — 9-6 Jacks or Better versus 9-7 Double Bonus
I’m going to talk about a friend named “George” in this article. George is actually a synthesis of three different people. I’ve incorporated certain words and ideas from each of them into George.
George plays about $3,000,000 a year of quarter 9/6 Jacks or Better (JoB) Ten Play at the Palms. He plays about $7,000 per hour through the machine, so that much play requires about eight hours a week at that casino. Or, more likely, George plays sixteen hours a week twice a month with no play at all for the rest of the month. Continue reading Comparing Quarter Ten Play — 9-6 Jacks or Better versus 9-7 Double Bonus
Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part II of II
This is the second part of a story about this year’s Blackjack Ball. If you didn’t read last week’s installment, check it out here
The game of 21 Questions as devised by Max Rubin is very difficult. Success requires some specific knowledge, often some mathematical ability, and a lot of fortuitous guessing. In 2013, I won this part of the competition (only to blow out quickly in the skills contest). In 2014, my guessing hat must have been on backwards and I didn’t do well at all. In 2015, I barely missed qualifying for the finals. In fact, if I had only correctly answered the question that I had submitted, I would have advanced to the skills contest. I’ll soon describe how this happened. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part II of II
“Ken Uston Ruined Atlantic City”—Discuss.
For those of you who have been sleeping under a rock, Ken Uston was a notorious card counter who, decades ago, sued Atlantic City casinos. The end result was a ruling that AC casinos could not bar players for being skillful. The card counters all rejoiced—or did they? Continue reading “Ken Uston Ruined Atlantic City”—Discuss.
Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part I of II
Every year, somewhere in Las Vegas, there’s a gathering of blackjack professionals, past and present, along with some gambling attorneys and a few other miscellaneous gambling professionals, including one video poker writer. Predominantly male, many bring wives or dates, but most come alone. Perhaps it speaks poorly of how often I get out of the house, but it’s a high point of my social calendar. The 2015 version of this event occurred recently. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part I of II
Going Down in Stakes
I’ll begin this article by discussing live poker. Some of what I’m going to tell you is hearsay. I’m not a strong player at poker — but I believe what I am saying is true. When we discuss video poker later in this article, I’m on more solid ground. Continue reading Going Down in Stakes
What She Thinks Makes Sense
Bonnie, my wife of almost eight months, knows very little about intelligent gambling. Although she has assisted during a few semesters of my free video poker seminars, she concentrated more on running the projector accurately rather than evaluating what I had been teaching. Learning about gambling is simply not a priority to her.
After we returned from our cruises on December 14, I decided to start sending her text messages showing every jackpot I hit that was more than $8,000. That was a number picked somewhat arbitrarily–although it’s a target hit with some regularity, it’s still rare enough to be special. Continue reading What She Thinks Makes Sense
FRS, NSA, Salamanders and Scapegoats
Every few months, some rookie posts online about a surprising backoff incident, and then speculates, “I probably got nabbed by FRS (Facial Recognition Software).” I think I’ve got a soapbox sitting around here somewhere. Continue reading FRS, NSA, Salamanders and Scapegoats
You Can’t Hope Your Way to Victory
I recently saw a Northwestern Mutual commercial which aired during the college football playoffs. Although it ended as an advertisement for their insurance company, the part that interested me said:
There are no accidental champions.
You can’t hope your way to victory.
Titles aren’t won at the end of the season.
They are won in the offseason. Continue reading You Can’t Hope Your Way to Victory
I Can’t Bet
The death of Eric Garner is disturbing. If you haven’t seen the video by now, you spend too much time counting in casinos! Here’s one of many links to Youtube clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jtXXf4tMM. What you may not have seen are the videos of card counter Justin Mills getting backroomed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBdk1yG2pmU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlMexfd2e8s, and http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-card-counting-20141027-story.html. We’ll get back to those. Continue reading I Can’t Bet