Bob Dancer

Posted on June 16, 2020August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 2 Comments

A Look at Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff

One of the good news/bad news parts of my job as a podcast co-host is that I’m regularly offered manuscripts to read by authors hoping to land an invitation to the show. In the case of Maria Konnikova, it’s all good news. She’s an excellent writer and the first time we had her on the air was a really fun interview.

She came to Richard Munchkin’s and my attention two years ago when she won a poker tournament in Monte Carlo after picking up the game only one year previously. She was offered a PokerStars sponsorship and a number of publications, including Poker News, ran features on her. So we invited her to be a guest on GWAE for May 31, 2018.

Posted on June 9, 2020August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 7 Comments

Kipling Said It Best

In the middle of his famous poem “If,” Rudyard Kipling poses the condition, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” At the end of the poem filled with twenty or so other conditions, comes the conclusion, “you’ll be a Man, my son.”

Although addressed to his son, this applies equally to daughters. The phrase is etched over the players’ entrance at Wimbledon’s Centre Court. I read it recently in a book by Maria Konnikova which I will review next week. This phrase was a very small part of the book, but it speaks to me as a video poker player as surely as it does to tennis players.

Posted on June 2, 2020September 18, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 11 Comments

Applying What I Know

I’ve been publishing and giving gambling advice for decades. Sometimes thinking like a gambler helps in areas far removed from gambling itself. Today I want to share such a case. (If you only want discussion of video poker, perhaps you should skip this week.)

Among other interests, I participate in Toastmasters, a group dedicated to helping you speak better. My reasons for this include being a better teacher, being a better interviewer on my podcast, practicing stories that I present in various locations, and even performing better in my Improv troupe. Insofar as following the “Pathways” programs and being awarded various designations by Toastmasters, I have no interest at all in that.

Posted on May 26, 2020August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 6 Comments

A Lesson from Daniel Negreanu

Masterclass.com is a marvelous collection of world authorities talking about what they know best. I am very impressed with their teachers. I had heard about a 2-for-1 sale they were offering in early April, so I signed up. Usually it’s $180 per year for full access to thousands of hours of instruction, but the recent sale allowed two people to sign up for the same $180. The combination of the sale and lots of extra time due to the stay-at-home rules was enough to seal the deal for me. I sent an email out to a number of people I thought might be interested in partnering with me on this, and several responded with interest. The ones I couldn’t use, I hooked up with each other.

My primary interests are writing, comedy, and games of skill — and they have several courses in each of those categories. I’ll eventually get to classes further down my list of interests, but the courses on cooking and interior decorating will probably never make the cut for me.

Posted on May 19, 2020August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — Leave a comment

A Look at 9-5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus — Part 3 of 3

Today I want to look at the advanced strategy features of 9/5 TBPP. Unlike the previous two weeks, I’m not comparing this game to another. I’m just listing exceptions to the intermediate rules.

I assume you’re generally familiar with penalty cards and the difference between ‘when’ and ‘with’ inside parenthesized exceptions. These are common for all the Dancer/Daily Winner’s Guides and strategy cards. If you’re not familiar with our notation, this might be tough going. It would take several thousand words to explain all the features of the notation, and that’s kind of tough for 800-word columns.

Posted on May 12, 2020August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 4 Comments

A Look at 9-5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus — Part 2 of 3

Today I want to look at some of the interesting features of 9/5 TBPP at the intermediate level. If you’re not comfortable at this level, you probably should review last week’s column before you dig into this one.

I’m not going to print a strategy here. If you have Video Poker for Winners software, you can get a strategy there. If not, www.wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/strategy/calculator/ provides an accurate strategy free of charge. I’m not crazy about the format of the WOO strategy, but when you start with free and accurate, it’s probably unfair to be too nitpicky.

Posted on May 5, 2020August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 14 Comments

A Look at 9-5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus — Part 1 of 3

This game returns a robust 99.80% with perfect play, is found in a number of Las Vegas casinos, and for some reason I have neither taught nor written much about the game. That is about to change.

Today I’ll discuss the basics of the game. Next week I’ll talk about some Intermediate-Level peculiarities to the game. And in two weeks I’ll discuss some of the advanced penalty card situations.

	1 coin	5 coins

Royal Flush	250	4,000
Straight Flush	100	500
Four Aces	240	1,200
Four 2s thru 4s	120	600
Four 5s thru Ks	50	250
Full House	9	45
Flush	5	25
Straight	4	20
Three of a Kind	3	15
Two Pair	1	5
Jacks or Better	1	5

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Bob Dancer — 5 Comments

Something Good from Backgammon

As many of you have noticed, I’ve been reading some backgammon books recently to interview Gambling with an Edge guests. This is not going to become a backgammon blog. My main gig remains video poker.

Also, to prepare for the interviews, I watched some YouTube videos of international championship tournaments to see what had changed since I last played the game seriously almost 30 years ago.

Posted on April 21, 2020August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 14 Comments

Another Lesson from Square Dancing

I’ve been writing these articles for more than 20 years and sometimes need to draw inspiration from all sorts of different places. Today’s inspiration comes from square dancing — but the subject matter will soon shift to gambling successfully.

The square dance callers (the people who stand up in front of the dancers and tell them what to do) in Las Vegas are probably adequate. Nothing special. It’s rare when one of our callers is paid to call somewhere else. At big conventions, when dancers from several states come together and dance to the best callers, our callers are never among those asked.

Posted on April 14, 2020 by Bob Dancer — 1 Comment

A Look at Bill Robertie’s New Series on Backgammon Openings

It was not my intention to spend a lot of time on backgammon, as backgammon is not my game of choice — nor is it really much of a gambling game anymore. But just as we were preparing to air two GWAE shows with Bob Wachtel on his Backgammon Chronicles, Richard and I received a review copy of Bill Robertie’s first book in his series How to Play the Openings in Backgammon.

Robertie is a two-time world champion in backgammon and author of numerous books on the game. In addition, he’s published several books on chess and co-authored a popular series of poker books with Dan Harrington. He’s the publisher for Gammon Press and moderates the backgammon forum on the Two Plus Two website. Simply put, he’s at the pinnacle of gaming/gambling writers.

Author: Bob Dancer