The goal of the book Kill Phil is to allow novice players to have a chance playing in No Limit Texas Hold’Em tournaments. This is done by moving “all in” more frequently than “normal” players do and force the smart players to make a guess for their tournament lives. Most strong players want to avoid these guesses, figuring they can cream these novice players in other parts of the game, so they fold the all in bets and let the novice players win these particular hands. Continue reading A Look at Kill Phil
A Look at The House Advantage
Jeffrey Ma is the real-life inspiration behind the novel Bringing Down the House and the movie 21, both of which tell the story of the MIT Blackjack team. Since retiring from blackjack, Ma has worked as an options trader and an advisor to professional sports teams. The House Advantage represents Ma’s advice as to how to apply the lessons he’s learned in his career towards other business situations. Since I’m in the gambling business, I was most interested in how those lessons would help me improve my bottom line. Continue reading A Look at The House Advantage
A Review of One of a Kind
One of the pleasures/responsibilities of hosting a radio show where gaming authors are interviewed is that I get to read some of the author’s work before the broadcast. When we scheduled Nolan Dalla, media director of Harrah’s World Series of Poker, it was to talk about the WSOP and not about his book, One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey “The Kid” Ungar, the World’s Greatest Poker Player.” Still, I vaguely knew Ungar, was familiar with his story, and decided to read Dalla’s book about him. Continue reading A Review of One of a Kind
Good Play or Bad?
Mid-week in early May, I received an email from the Palms talking about a $15,000 Rock and Win series of drawings the following Sunday, May 15. There would be five drawings, every two hours beginning at 11 a.m., where the prize structure was first: $750; second and third: $500; third through tenth: $250 down to $100 — where the total prize pool amounted to $3,050 every two hours. You could win up to two times on Sunday, and you could begin earning drawing entries Friday midnight. Continue reading Good Play or Bad?
How Lucky Was It?
I was playing at South Point for double points on Memorial Day, Monday May 30. Double points at that casino are valuable to me. A rather infinitesimal bonus for being there at 8:20 p.m. is that if they called my name for first prize in the “$800,000 Win A Toyota A Day” promotion, I’d get an extra $500 in gas cards if I claimed the prize within 25 minutes. If I won second or third place ($250 in gas cards apiece), an extra $250 in gas cards would be mine. But since there would likely be 4,000 entries in the contest, the chances for any of this were pretty slim. Clearly less than an extra $1 in equity for being there and I wouldn’t make a special trip if the play wasn’t otherwise attractive. But it was, so I was there. Continue reading How Lucky Was It?
A Different Sort of Breakpoint Calculation
In last week’s column, we looked at the standard way of calculating royal flush breakpoints (BPs) on progressives. If you didn’t see that column, I suggest you review that one first before tackling this one. https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/bob_dancer/2011/0524.cfm Continue reading A Different Sort of Breakpoint Calculation
How to Calculate Breakeven Points
Frank Kneeland and I are creating progressive strategies for a number of games which are now in the M casino. If you don’t know which games I’m talking about, see www.lasvegasadvisor.com/bob_dancer/2011/0510.cfm We are giving you a list of numbers saying that you should change your strategy if the royal flush is higher than a certain number. Today’s article discusses how we came up with those numbers. Continue reading How to Calculate Breakeven Points
New Semester of Free Video Poker Classes at Sam’s Town Beginning June 14
 I will be teaching a six-week semester of classes at Sam’s Town, on Tuesdays, starting in the middle of June. The schedule is listed below: Continue reading New Semester of Free Video Poker Classes at Sam’s Town Beginning June 14
A Different Type of Progressive at the M
Frank Kneeland, my co-host on my “Gambling with an Edge” radio show on Thursday evenings, primarily plays video poker progressives. He and I challenged ourselves to come up with a type of progressive that is good for the player and profitable for the house. And we wanted to avoid the boom-or-bust cycle that makes a progressive playable very occasionally for a very short period of time — and then unplayable for weeks until the progressive built back up again. And the biggest challenge, of course, was to convince a casino to put this sucker in after we designed it. Continue reading A Different Type of Progressive at the M
A Look at Scorecasting
Scorecasting is a non-fiction book by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Moskowitz is an economist at the University of Chicago, and Wertheim is a regular contributor to Sports Illustrated. Continue reading A Look at Scorecasting