Thanks for your answer about Bobby Singer and his card-counting system. Wasn't there a Bob Singer who wrote about video poker? If so, whatever happened to him?
That would be "Rob" Singer, obviously a takeoff on Bob Dancer. He was a controversial figure in the video poker community who wrote about video poker strategy, notably the book The Undeniable Truth About Video Poker (published circa 2000).
In his day, Rob Singer was well known -- some would say infamous -- as a video poker iconoclast. He espoused a philosophy (we hesitate to call it a strategy) that video poker paytables are largely irrelevant. Instead, his concept involved setting modest session goals for winning and progressing in stakes until that goal was met.
He was consistent in casting merciless aspersions on knowledgeable, respected, math-based gambling professionals in video poker and other betting realms. We remember looking at The Undeniable Truth and thinking, first, everything in it could easily be denied and second, Singer sounded more like a motivation speaker than a gambling expert.
He wrote a second book (circa 2008), Ramblin’ and Gamblin’ Thru Nevada. We never bothered with it, but we found one review.
"In places, Ramblin' and Gamblin' Thru Nevada almost works as either a travelogue or an examination of the psychology of video poker players. However, the few instances where something worthwhile shows through are drowned out by a mess of illogic, bad math, and confused themes. This book is better than Singer's first, but that's faint praise. I still can't recommend it to anyone."
What happened to him? Singer's activity in gambling forums and communities declined noticeably around 2010. We heard at the time that he'd been pushed off forums, having lost all credibility among VP players. We found no reporting, verified or otherwise, that he disappeared mysteriously, had health issues, was involved in legal trouble, or died. It appears that he simply faded away. Since his nom de plume was obviously a sobriquet, it's pretty much impossible to know anything more than that.
