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How Happy Do You Get with a Royal Flush?

I recently read Michael Craig’s “The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King,” which was about a banker from Texas, Andy Beal, taking on the best poker players in the world, one at a time, in heads up limit Texas Hold’em poker.

For a discussion of the book, you can listen to the March 5, 2015 podcast of Gambling with an Edge, which is available for free download from both bobdancer.com and richardmunchkin.com. Today I want to talk about something mentioned in the book that we didn’t cover in the radio interview. Continue reading How Happy Do You Get with a Royal Flush?

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A New Way to Answer an Old Question

I teach a lot of classes and one of the most frequently asked questions I get is, “If I’m having a bad session, when do I change machines?”

My answer was always some version of, “It doesn’t matter. Changing machines has absolutely nothing to do with the winning process.”

Several years back I started trying a different answer. Not that the old answer was wrong, it’s just that the newer answer stressed things a little differently. Continue reading A New Way to Answer an Old Question

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False Conclusions

This column was inspired by the following article: fivethirtyeight.com, although the author of that article shouldn’t be blamed for the direction it inspired me to take.

The fivetirtyeight.com website, one of my favorites, takes a mathematical and statistical approach to analyzing a number of different types of situations. The particular article cited above looked at the case of a child having a seizure 5 minutes before he was supposed to receive an unrelated vaccination from his doctor. The parents in this type of case typically do not see any correlation between the impending vaccination and the seizure. If, however, the child had the seizure 10 minutes later—immediately following the vaccination—many parents would erroneously conclude that the vaccination caused the seizure simply because the injection came first. Continue reading False Conclusions

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Comparing Video Poker to Basketball

I lived in greater Los Angeles from my birth in 1947 until 1993 when I moved to Vegas. I was a fan of the local sports teams — primarily Dodgers and Lakers, not so much the Angels, Kings, or Ducks. Perhaps 40 years ago I was listening to a Lakers basketball game on the radio. The main announcer would have been Chick Hearn but I’m not sure who his sidekick was at that time. Probably Keith Erickson but it might have been Lynn Shackleford or even Pat Riley before he traded in his broadcasting job for a chance to be a coach — a career move that worked very well for him.

After two minutes of play, the Lakers had not scored and were behind 12-0. Their coach called a time out. Hearn’s sidekick deadpanned, “If things keep up like this, the final score will be 288 to zero.” Chick almost fell on the floor laughing. Continue reading Comparing Video Poker to Basketball

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Conditional Approval

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

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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

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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

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“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.

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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