Don't tell others how to play

19 July 2014

By John Marchel

Follow casino players will love you when they win after you helped them. They will love you even more as they win hand after hand based on your advice. However, when they lose, even one hand, even after five wins, they will sometimes turn on you.

“Your suggestion made me lose” will be their comment.

It doesn’t matter that you helped them numerous times before; they will only remember the one that lost. I know that helping others play a hand is very tempting, but you should avoid it.

By giving good advice to a fellow player, you can also alert management that you are an above-average skilled player and maybe one who should be watched more carefully. You don’t want that.

Let others give advice, or tell them to ask the dealer. Most of the time a dealer will suggest a course of action if a player asks. It boils down to this: If people want to risk their funds at a blackjack game, they should know a little bit about the games strategy before they play. It’s not your place to be their trainer. This advice holds for all games.


BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

• When the current Monte Carlo casino facility first opened Monaco in 1879, Sarah Bernhardt read a symbolic poem. When the Flamingo casino in Las Vegas opened in 1946, Bugsy Siegel hired the comedy team of Abbott and Costello.

• An anonymous 66-year-old Nevada resident became a multi-millionaire when his penny investment paid off on Penny Megabucks at the Nevada Pahrump Nugget Casino. He hit the MegaJackpot on Feb. 1, 2007 for $18,799,414.00, the largest penny slot jackpot ever won.

• Children can gamble! Well, kind of. They can mark a keno ticket in a casino, but the person who pays for the ticket must be 21 or older.

• A one-inch stack of $100 bills is worth $21,000. A stack four feet high is worth one million dollars and a stack three quarters of a mile high with $100 bills would be one billion dollars.

• Today, there are 192 members in the UN. Of that total, 164 of those counties have casinos, race tracks or lotteries. What that means is 85 percent of all the countries in the world allow some type of gambling.

• In Nevada, it is a crime to knowingly take advantage of a malfunctioning video or slot machine by playing it. In fact, it’s considered a felony.

• Australians are the Western world’s biggest gamblers, spending over $2,000 a year per person of population. A close second are Americans at $1,800 per person.