“S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E!” sixty people shouted as my wife Bonnie entered her sister’s house. Her 75th birthday party was off to a noisy beginning.
I sighed in relief. We had pulled it off. All the invitations and such had been sent out and responses received with Bonnie having no clue. I had ordered a cake from BabyCakes, the bakery within the M Resort, where I had a large number of comps.
Continue reading Two Sucker BetsMasterclass.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.
Continue reading A Lesson from Daniel NegreanuToday 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.
Continue reading A Look at 9-5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus — Part 2 of 3This 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 |
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.
Continue reading Something Good from BackgammonI’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.
Continue reading Another Lesson from Square DancingIt 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.
Continue reading A Look at Bill Robertie’s New Series on Backgammon OpeningsSeveral years ago, I was attending a series of motivational lectures by Dr. William Kerley. Near the end of the last lecture, he spoke of when he was hired by Continental Airlines to give classes to their non-pilots on how to deal with pilots. To properly understand what pilots go through, he spent many hours in flight simulators for a variety of airplanes. (This happened before 9/11).
Kerley said he developed a great appreciation of how good all airline pilots really have to be, but as in everything else, there were some of these pilots who barely got their license, some who were average, and some cream-of-the-crop pilots. Kerley said the pilots themselves categorize these groups as drivers, pilots, and artists.
Continue reading Drivers, Pilots, and ArtistsRecently in Las Vegas, more than 60 of the sharpest blackjack players from around the world, with a few other successful gamblers invited as well, got together with their guests for an evening of socializing, drinking champagne, and competing against each other. We voted to select the newest member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame. The last man standing in the skills contest won the Grosjean Cup. The names of both of these winners will be recognizable to most of my readers.
The ballot for the Blackjack Hall of Fame, alphabetized by first name, included Anthony Curtis, Blair Hull, Cat Hulbert, Lance Humble, Maria “The Greek,” Mark Billings, Mike Michalek, Norm Wattenberger, and Richard Dougherty.
Continue reading The 24th Annual Blackjack BallNot too long ago, here I wrote an article about when to hold a kicker to three aces while playing a Double Double Bonus progressive. The thumbnail conclusion was that if four aces pay 800 coins, and the aces-with-a-kicker (AWAK) progressive is at least 2285 coins, from a hand like AAA53, you should hold AAA3.
Whether you understood the article or not, assume for today that the previous sentence is true and that you and Al (whom you’ll meet shortly) both believe that and play that way.
Continue reading Is it Good for Me or Good for Us?