Category: Video Poker

I lived in greater Los Angeles from my birth in 1947 until 1993 when I moved to Vegas. I was a fan of the local sports teams — primarily Dodgers and Lakers, not so much the Angels, Kings, or Ducks. Perhaps 40 years ago I was listening to a Lakers basketball game on the radio. The main announcer would have been Chick Hearn but I’m not sure who his sidekick was at that time. Probably Keith Erickson but it might have been Lynn Shackleford or even Pat Riley before he traded in his broadcasting job for a chance to be a coach — a career move that worked very well for him.

After two minutes of play, the Lakers had not scored and were behind 12-0. Their coach called a time out. Hearn’s sidekick deadpanned, “If things keep up like this, the final score will be 288 to zero.” Chick almost fell on the floor laughing. Continue reading Comparing Video Poker to Basketball

I’m going to talk about a friend named “George” in this article. George is actually a synthesis of three different people. I’ve incorporated certain words and ideas from each of them into George.

George plays about $3,000,000 a year of quarter 9/6 Jacks or Better (JoB) Ten Play at the Palms. He plays about $7,000 per hour through the machine, so that much play requires about eight hours a week at that casino. Or, more likely, George plays sixteen hours a week twice a month with no play at all for the rest of the month. Continue reading Comparing Quarter Ten Play — 9-6 Jacks or Better versus 9-7 Double Bonus

Bonnie, my wife of almost eight months, knows very little about intelligent gambling. Although she has assisted during a few semesters of my free video poker seminars, she concentrated more on running the projector accurately rather than evaluating what I had been teaching. Learning about gambling is simply not a priority to her.

After we returned from our cruises on December 14, I decided to start sending her text messages showing every jackpot I hit that was more than $8,000. That was a number picked somewhat arbitrarily–although it’s a target hit with some regularity, it’s still rare enough to be special. Continue reading What She Thinks Makes Sense

You’re going on a two week vacation and back home you frequent a number of casinos. Let’s say they give you $40 a week in free play. How do you deal with that?

Some casinos, not many, will hold the money for you and let you collect it when you get back. Some casinos, again not many, allow at least some of their customers to pick up their free play any time during the month. If your regular casinos are like this, there’s no problem. You simply pick up your free play before and/or after your trip. Continue reading Whose Money is it Anyway?

As I wrote last week, Bonnie and I recently returned from a comped cruise on the Norwegian Dawn. Laundry service was included in the package, and on one particular night both of my long pants had been sent to the laundry. I had expected the laundry to be returned prior to dinner, but such was not the case. I had some clean Bermuda shorts, but no long pants.

There are two main dining rooms on the Dawn — the Venetian and the Aqua. The Venetian is larger and has windows overlooking the bow of the ship, but the restaurants themselves share the same galley and have identical menus. As far as most of the passengers are concerned, the two dining rooms are equivalent. Continue reading How Do You Interpret?