Author’s Note: I wrote a similar blog recently, with some readers requesting more information. I think there’s enough different between that piece and this one to make this one worthwhile.
The title of today’s blog comes from a mid-90s song “Baby Likes to Rock It” by the Tractors. I’ve liked that lyric since I first heard it when the song was new, and think that it’s a perfect fit for explaining Bonnie’s gambling.
Continue reading She Don’t Know What She’s Doin’ but She Tries to Do Her BestBonnie and I’ve been together for about 10 years — with our ninth wedding anniversary coming up next month. We knew each other, more or less, for about five years before that in that we both belonged to the same square dance club. Bonnie would come with her husband Fred and I would be there with Shirley. There were about 100 “regulars” and we all knew each other. Each “square” consisted of eight dancers who would dance together for about five minutes, and then the squares would get shuffled and you’d dance with another group of dancers. While I thought Bonnie was a nice lady, I had no thoughts of us ever hooking up together. We were both married and I thought Shirley and I would be together so long as we both lived.
Continue reading Betting With BonnieThis 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.”)
Continue reading Time to Be a Good Samaritan?At the recent World Game Protection seminars, casino expert Sal Piacente said: “Advantage players don’t want to cheat and aren’t doing anything illegal, but instead use their minds to beat the game, whether watching to see if a dealer exposes a hole card or by card counting.”
I’m not so sure.
Continue reading Do APs Cheat?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.
Continue reading As Good as I Once WasA 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.
Continue reading Maybe we Will GoI received the following email. It requires more analysis than I normally do without charge for strangers, but since I can get a column out of it, why not?
Continue reading How Do I Figure?Bonnie and I took a trip to Reno and played at the ROW, the threesome of connected casinos (Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus) that are now part of the Caesars system. I’d played there previously but this was Bonnie’s first trip.
When we swiped our cards at the kiosk at the start of our visit, we discovered that we each received 20,000 bonus drawing tickets for a drawing coming up in several weeks, and a 20x ticket multiplier for all of our play that day. Every day we were there, we got another 20x multiplier. When we departed Reno, we each had several hundred thousand drawing tickets. I’ve never had so many drawing tickets in my life!
Continue reading A Different Sort of PromotionI 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.
Continue reading Comparing Bonus Poker with Super Aces Bonus PokerBonnie 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.
Continue reading This Made Me Uncomfortable