I live in Hawaii and like many folks here love to go to Vegas to eat and to gamble. I am writing because my friend just told me our state Legislature just passed a law so that they are going to tax me now on anything I win when I gamble – even if I lose overall! Do you know about this and can you explain?

If you are lucky and win a huge jackpot, one that pays annually, say, $50K or so, what happens if the casino or game manufacturer files bankruptcy or goes out of business?

You write about a "basic strategy advantage" in blackjack of .40% or .56%. What exactly does that mean?

A friend is thinking of filing for bankruptcy, primarily due to credit card debt plus some casino markers. He was told that most debt can be erased by bankruptcy, but not debt owed to casinos. Is that correct?

Last month Megabucks doubled from about $15 million to $30 million, instantly. The jackpot has since been hit, but I’d still like to know what happened to cause that jump. It reset at the usual $10 million, so nothing fundamental seems to have changed.

Having had success playing Texas hold 'em tournaments online, I'm now ready to tackle a live tournament at a casino. What advice can you give me so that I won't be spotted as a live-game rookie?

I enjoy collecting casino playing cards and was just wondering how many decks of cards does any one casino go through in a day, week, month, year?

I recently watched a TV program called "City Confidential" concerning the now-defunct Las Vegas company named American Coin. It seems the company was rigging video poker machines and was shut down. I know the machine chip programmer was murdered and the suspect was acquitted and later confessed. What happened to the other two conspirators in the murder investigation? One was named Vito and another was some gal. Also, this whole case stunk of Mafia involvement, especially with the seemingly large number of cover-ups involved to protect the two family owners of American Coin, who it seems were never named as suspects and who had the most to lose in the criminal trial!

Informative question/answer on the term "suckout" in poker (QoD 3/22). But there was no mention of a "bad beat." Would a suckout basically be the same thing?

Have the casinos/manufacturers tightened the hit ratio on video poker? While the pay schedule on top of the machine may be attractive, it seems winning hands occur less often than in the past. Have the machines gotten tighter?