Category: Video Poker

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There’s a Reason

The following is a true story, other than the names of the gamblers. It happened at Harrah’s Atlantic City a number of years ago. Since I’ve played little at this particular casino, and always as a tourist rather than a local, I might have some of the details wrong. But the gist of this story is accurate and might provide fodder for thought and discussion.

Amy and Bo lived not too far away from Atlantic City, and drove to visit this casino perhaps three weekends a month — except when they were on cruises (which they enjoyed a lot) or were otherwise busy. They played single-line $1 Double Double Bonus mostly, but sometimes went for the $2 game or perhaps $1 Triple Play.

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I Almost Threw It Away

Bonnie and I have been married nine years now, and she turned 80 years old June 3. From the get-go, she knew I was a professional gambler, and it became clear to me early on that she had no potential to understand advantage gambling. But she enjoys the meals, cruises, and other traveling that my profession brings me, and my life works better with her in it. 

One of the things we did early on was to insulate her from the gambling swings. The bulk of each of our assets are not commingled and file taxes separately. She had some assets of her own coming in — as had I. Our wills are set up that she gives her money to her heirs, and I give money to mine. We have a “Bob and Bonnie account” for household expenses and we each contribute to it.    

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Hospitals Are No Fun

I missed my blog for May 30. Sometimes I have a number of blogs “in the bank,” but not at the moment. My cupboard was bare and I was too incapacitated to refill it. I thought I’d share with you what happened. It has nothing to do with gambling (although there was one AP move during triage), but perhaps you’ll find it interesting anyway. At a minimum, most of you have probably gone through your own version of hospitalization, and/or been close to others who have done so, and this blog might inspire all sorts of comments. 

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Which One is Better?

I’m going to present a case about a Caesars property with conditions that may not exist anywhere. I’m trying to address how I would figure things out if this property did exist. I know many of my readers would prefer I do all the calculations for their particular casino and tell them, “Just do this.” I can’t do that. There are thousands of casinos out there with a different game mix at each one. And the game mix is different for quarters than it is for dollars than it is for higher denominations. And to top it off, I have readers who insist on playing Double Double Bonus even if there are numerous superior games EV-wise.

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Betting With Bonnie

Bonnie and I’ve been together for about 10 years — with our ninth wedding anniversary coming up next month. We knew each other, more or less, for about five years before that in that we both belonged to the same square dance club. Bonnie would come with her husband Fred and I would be there with Shirley. There were about 100 “regulars” and we all knew each other. Each “square” consisted of eight dancers who would dance together for about five minutes, and then the squares would get shuffled and you’d dance with another group of dancers. While I thought Bonnie was a nice lady, I had no thoughts of us ever hooking up together. We were both married and I thought Shirley and I would be together so long as we both lived.

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Time to Be a Good Samaritan?

This blog suggestion was sent to me by a friend, “Al.” It happened at a casino somewhere in the Mid-West. I honestly don’t know where exactly.

Al was playing video poker near a bank of Quick Quad machines that weren’t very popular. Possibly players knew how to play the machines and avoided them because they had lousy pay schedules, or maybe they just didn’t know how to play. I don’t know. I haven’t seen them. (If you’re in the latter boat, you can get a free copy of “Quick Guide to Quick Quads” on www.videopoker.com.”)

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Random Number Generator Explained

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

A.C. says: This article addresses one of the most discussed topics relative to machine play: How does the random number generator (RNG) create results? While the fact is that it really doesn’t matter in terms of strategy considerations for players, the workings of the RNG have always been of major interest for one reason, which is how it affects the timing of jackpots. This article explains when the RNG stops and how that affects jackpots, bringing home the reality that when you walk away from a machine that immediately pays a jackpot to the next player, it almost certainly wouldn’t have hit for you had you played longer.

This article was written by Jerry Stich in association with 888Casino.

Random Number Generator Explained

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Maybe we Will Go

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a drawing at the ROW in Reno (a Caesars property where the Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus are all connected indoors), where Bonnie and I had each accumulated more than a half-million tickets during our stay. While that is a lot of tickets, everybody gets free tickets and daily multipliers, depending on their tier level.

I mentioned in that article that probably we won’t attend the three nights of drawings because the combination of prizes and probability of winning them wasn’t all that high. I said that would be my decision, “depending” on other factors.

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