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Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part II of II

This is the second part of a story about this year’s Blackjack Ball. If you didn’t read last week’s installment, check it out here

The game of 21 Questions as devised by Max Rubin is very difficult. Success requires some specific knowledge, often some mathematical ability, and a lot of fortuitous guessing. In 2013, I won this part of the competition (only to blow out quickly in the skills contest). In 2014, my guessing hat must have been on backwards and I didn’t do well at all. In 2015, I barely missed qualifying for the finals. In fact, if I had only correctly answered the question that I had submitted, I would have advanced to the skills contest. I’ll soon describe how this happened. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part II of II

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“Ken Uston Ruined Atlantic City”—Discuss.

For those of you who have been sleeping under a rock, Ken Uston was a notorious card counter who, decades ago, sued Atlantic City casinos. The end result was a ruling that AC casinos could not bar players for being skillful. The card counters all rejoiced—or did they? Continue reading “Ken Uston Ruined Atlantic City”—Discuss.

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Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part I of II

Every year, somewhere in Las Vegas, there’s a gathering of blackjack professionals, past and present, along with some gambling attorneys and a few other miscellaneous gambling professionals, including one video poker writer. Predominantly male, many bring wives or dates, but most come alone. Perhaps it speaks poorly of how often I get out of the house, but it’s a high point of my social calendar. The 2015 version of this event occurred recently. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part I of II

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What She Thinks Makes Sense

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

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You Can’t Hope Your Way to Victory

I recently saw a Northwestern Mutual commercial which aired during the college football playoffs. Although it ended as an advertisement for their insurance company, the part that interested me said:

There are no accidental champions.

You can’t hope your way to victory.

Titles aren’t won at the end of the season.

They are won in the offseason. Continue reading You Can’t Hope Your Way to Victory

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I Can’t Bet

The death of Eric Garner is disturbing. If you haven’t seen the video by now, you spend too much time counting in casinos! Here’s one of many links to Youtube clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jtXXf4tMM. What you may not have seen are the videos of card counter Justin Mills getting backroomed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBdk1yG2pmU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlMexfd2e8s, and http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-card-counting-20141027-story.html. We’ll get back to those. Continue reading I Can’t Bet

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Whose Money is it Anyway?

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?