Ask the Slot Expert: Where have all the gurus gone?

Question: I really enjoy reading your articles. Your style of writing makes me feel that I am playing the games you are describing in your columns.

I've noticed lately that the other columnists' articles are reruns from many years ago. Are they on hiatus or have they followed Aaron Todd and moved on to other endeavors or retirement?

P.S. In the Midwest NSU Deuces Wild is almost extinct.

Answer: Thanks for the kind words.

I was fortunate to get interested in gambling and the casino life during the Golden Age of Casinos -- at least I consider it to be the Golden Age.

I was also fortunate to have lived most of my life in New Jersey.

For 40 years, if you wanted to legally place a bet in a casino, you had to go to Nevada. Then New Jersey, in an attempt to revitalize America's Playground, voted to allow casinos in Atlantic City.

Now gamblers had both a west and an east coast choice for gambling.

Fifteen years earlier, Mickey Mouse fans gained an analogous situation with the opening of Walt Disney World. East coasters could now take a relatively short flight to Orlando instead of a transcon to LA.

I lived about two hours north of Atlantic City, just at the upper limit for a day trip (at least for me). Many visitors made day trips because rooms were scarce and usually expensive.

Back in the 1990s, gambling writer John Patrick bought time on my cable company's local access channel for his call-in show, So You Wanna Be a Gambler, which was his brand. He produced a number of books and tapes and published a newsletter. I got my start in gambling writing by proofreading, editing, and eventually writing for the newsletter.

I call the 90s and the aughts the Golden Age for a number of reasons. First, states followed Nevada's, New Jersey's, and Mississippi's lead and passed legislation enabling casino gambling.

Second, third, fourth, and so on, technology reinvented the slot floor. Computer control not only made slots more secure, it enabled features that would have been impossible to implement in a mechanical machine. The computer in the slot machine talked to central servers making the modern slot club possible. Those slot clubs made it possible for slot players to more easily get comped. Bill acceptors let us feed a machine with currency instead of coins or tokens. Credit play let us fund a spin from our credit meter instead of having to drop in coins. Ticket systems got rid of the coins and tokens and kept our hands clean.

The expansion of gambling across the country exploded the demand for gambling books, newsletters, videos -- and websites. A company approached Frank Scoblete to set up a consumer gambling website to complement their industry site, and Frank asked me to help him with it because I worked with computers.

The site, RGT Online, had a new article every day. I was in charge of editing, scheduling, and posting the articles. Most of the big names in gambling journalism contributed articles at some time.

Frank must have had the first article that appeared. Even though I have all of the content from the site, my naming convention at the time left something to be desired so I don't know which article was first.

I checked Frank's archives on this site. The earliest entry is on June 2, 1999 and is entitled A Conversation with Frank Scoblete (Part 2). I don't know where the first part is.

After a few years, RGT had some problems and the consumer site was sold to Casino City, its current home.

Writers and came and went over the years, for all the reasons you can imagine. Some started their own sites, some went to other sites, some stopped writing about gambling, some retired, and some died.

I'm the last one still contributing to this site. My first article appeared on June 25, 1999. I think this makes me a strong contender for having the longest-running, weekly column about gambling.

So yes, you are right, all of the other Gaming Guru columns were posted a year or more ago.

High-paying video poker is on the endangered species list. How can the slot floor increase its prices? By lowering long-term paybacks, i.e., increasing the house edge.

I had hoped that a slew of slot players pumping multiple dollars per spin into video slots paying percentage points less than a dollar machine a few years ago would have taken the pressure off of video poker, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

A casino executive speaking at a seminar I attended said, "Look at your biggest players. If they're playing video poker, you have a problem."

If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org.

Ask the Slot Expert: Where have all the gurus gone?

Books by John Robison:

Books by John Robison: