I recently had a discussion with a colleague of mine that orbited around the Hollywood portrayal of gamblers, and the casino culture in general. Specifically, how wrong the writers get it when determining how advantage play actually goes down in casinos. In general terms, the Hollywood description is romanticized to the point where anyone who actually […]
Posts in category Advantage Play
Why Did You Even Ask Me?
My office at home includes a nice chair for reading and sometimes Bonnie will come in and read quietly while I’m working at my computer. It’s not “together-time,” but it’s closer than spending all our time in separate rooms. Such was the case on a recent Saturday when I opened an email from a friend […]
Dollars and Sense
This column is written primarily for beginners and low-intermediate players. Readers more advanced than that should give it a once-over as well. There’s a chart here you’ve likely never seen before. You’re playing Double Double Bonus, receiving 45 for a full house. How much you get for the flush is irrelevant to this discussion. If […]
The Cheating Game
I learned many things about the game of poker from Jim McManus’ excellent history of the game, Cowboys Full. One thing that surprised me was that, in the early days of poker in America, cheating was so rampant that poker was widely known as the “cheating game.” On Mississippi riverboats and throughout the Old West, […]
There’s More to EV than Just EV
“EV” stands for expected value, which is a type of weighted average. The exact definition I’ll leave to the probability and statistics textbooks. As cut and dried as the definition is in the math books, there’s plenty of wiggle room in the way it’s applied to video poker. Before we discuss this wiggle room, let’s […]
The End of Days for CGT
Cantor Gaming, subsequently Cantor Gaming Technology (CGT), was formed in 2004 and in 2009 made a big splash in the Vegas sports betting market with it’s outlet at the newly opened M Resort. Over the next few years they became known as the place to go if you wanted to bet big and gained the […]
Was She Talking Like a Woman or Talking Like a ...
Using stereotypes to say “women are this way and men are that way” in today’s political climate is a formula guaranteed to generate multiple negative comments. Rightfully so. There is very little interesting where you can say that every female (or every male) is a certain way. There are always exceptions. With that said, there […]
Are Women the Dutch Book?
Last week, as part of the celebration for International Women’s Day (March 8), a statue of a defiant girl staring down the Wall Street bull appeared. Count me among those who love the statue and hope it will stay. It is no secret that women are under-represented in many fields, including the AP world, as I discussed […]
Whom Do You Trust?
I’m showing my age, but I remember the “Who Do You Trust?” television show hosted by Johnny Carson before he got the Tonight Show gig. He always said later that the first word should have been “Whom” rather than “Who,” and if you can’t trust Johnny Carson, whom can you trust? Many of the people […]
You’re Not Ready Yet
Immediately after one of my classes at the South Point, a man, “Joe,” came up to me and asked if I would mentor him in becoming a professional video poker player. He told me he had plenty of bankroll and wanted to turbocharge his learning process. He had heard that I would do private consulting […]
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