I recommend you get started with this article by reading last week’s post first. I’ll be happy to wait for you while you do that.
On Day 7 of my trip, a Monday, I showed up in my lucky shirt, hoping to take another big bite out of the casino’s assets if the game was still around. If it had been removed, I’d go back to the $5 game for as long as I was there.
Continue reading My Lucky Shirt — Part 2 of 2This true story happened some time ago, but so far, I haven’t written about it. I was playing $25 single line Double Double Bonus (DDB), rather heavily, at an out-of-town casino for more than a week. What casino, pay schedule, slot club, and promotions that made this a good play in my opinion are for another story, another day. Suffice it to say that I believed it to be a play where I had enough of an advantage to warrant playing hard.
If you can figure out where and when this took place (perhaps you saw me — a lot of players know what I look like), please keep it to yourself. There are reasons I don’t specify all the details of the game here, and please don’t undermine my reasons.
Continue reading My Lucky Shirt — Part 1 of 2I was associated with WinPoker for many years. It was, and is, a good product. Our breakup happened when Video Poker for Winners invited me along and promised to have a strategy calculator — a feature I think is important.
So I left WinPoker. I’ve remained on good terms with Dean Zamzow, the man in charge of all things related to WinPoker, but have no remaining financial interest in that product.
Continue reading Adding Triple Double Bonus to WinPokerI was leaving the South Point one morning in early June and “Sam,” a man who has attended many of my classes over the years, approached me and said, “Bob, I have to ask you. How long can a losing streak last? I haven’t hit a royal flush since November.” For occasional players, a six- or seven-month royal-free streak would not be that unusual. But I’ve seen Sam in casinos dozens of times, so I assume it’s been several 40,000-hand cycles. Always painful. Always expensive.
Continue reading How Long Can It Last?Richard Munchkin and I received the following question for our mailbag show on Gambling with an Edge. I think my complete answer is too involved to answer on the podcast, so I’m going to attempt it here. The question was:
Both of you were active APs (I think, anyway) during one of the worst recessions of the last century, in 2008. What meaningful effect did this have on casinos and on your work? Did games tighten up? Comps? Do you have any advice for APs in the event of a deep recession (hypothetically of course…)?
Continue reading In Case of RecessionI was walking through Sam’s Town here in Las Vegas on a Tuesday in June. The casino offers 10x points (worth 0.5%) for seniors on Tuesdays and I was scouting the place looking to see if anything might be of interest. Even after all these years, scouting is part of my routine.
I’ve been restricted from receiving mailers for more than a decade at all Boyd properties (including Sam’s Town), so anything I find has to be good enough by itself to be worthwhile, because there won’t be additional benefits coming down the road.
Continue reading It Might Not Scratch My ItchThis is a non-gambling trip report begun last week. Bonnie and I spent a week traveling in Western Canada. We decided that we’re both getting older, maybe we won’t be able to travel in five years, so let’s go out and have some fun. This is the first trip under that program. We had a Panama Canal trip scheduled, but that was cancelled due to the pandemic. We’ll probably do that one next.
We spent 36 hours in Jasper, which is in the Jasper National Park. The only excursion scheduled by our travel agent was a 2-hour motorcycle sidecar trip. This was definitely NOT on my bucket list of things I wanted to do, but it turned out to be one of the best parts of the trip. Our driver/guide was driving a Harley-Davidson with an attached sidecar. Bonnie and I took turns sitting in the sidecar and sitting behind the driver.
Continue reading Traveling Through the Canadian Rockies — Part II of IIIn a recent column, I mentioned that Bonnie and I were taking a week-long train trip through the Canadian Rockies. Turns out we didn’t. We only spent two days on the train, and only about three hours of that was in the Rockies. I didn’t intentionally mislead you. I just didn’t understand the nature of the trip for which we had signed up.
We arrived in Vancouver on Monday May 23, checked into our hotel, had a nice dinner, walked a bit through the downtown area, and went to bed early.
Continue reading Traveling Through the Canadian Rockies — Part I of IIThe last week in May, Bonnie and I will spend aboard a railroad traveling through the Canadian Rockies. We’re scheduled to travel east from Vancouver and fly home from Calgary eight days later. Although we will be back in Vegas before you read this, and I may well write about that trip, I’m writing this blog while still in Vegas.
Why that’s important is because more than one of the casinos I frequent had monthly “playups” in May of various sorts, where for so many points during the month, I get certain prizes. One that takes a lot of time is the South Point half-price Chevron or Walmart gift cards, requiring almost $167,000 in coin-in for Bonnie and me combined. And I only have three weeks to get in that play instead of four.
I received the following question for Richard’s and my mailbag show on Gambling with an Edge. It’s too involved to answer on the air. I thought I’d give it a go here.
Can you describe the steps you take to prepare for a play that may require you play during a time of day (graveyard for example) that is not a normal time for you to be playing? How far in advance do you start to adjust your schedule, and what other steps do you take?
Continue reading How Do I Prepare to Stay Awake?