Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 153

Blackjack blues

From Mike,My wife and I go to the casino at the same time, play at the same $5 blackjack table for the same amount of time. We both use basic strategy but I also use the Speed Count and tell her what to do. She also sometimes bets on hunches – and wins...read more

Bad blackjack plays

QUESTION: I get that you and many others who write about blackjack say it doesn’t make a difference when someone makes a bad play and takes the dealer’s bust card. I still hate it.Just this week, the third baseman had 9-3 for 12 and the dealer had 2, and that guy hit, got a 10 and cost everybody...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Someone cashed out money I left on a slot machine

Question: My wife and I have been playing slots for over 20 years. We almost always play Q Hits, the three-reel, old-fashioned type. Three Q Hits on the center line used to pay out $5,000. Now most pay out $10,000. Over the years my wife has been quite lucky...read more

Jerzy questions

FROM JERZY: I have to take issue with you on some of your ideas. I know you are a conservative player – to say the least my friend! – but you seem to enjoy taking the fun away from gambling in a casino and I am assuming you feel about this in all gambling anywhere.Most of us want a thrill but making conservative bets such as blackjack and safe bets at craps are a waste in my opinion...read more

Money management

At a dinner party recently, I fell into conversation with Kerri, a blackjack player. I’d recently been asking players about the best and worst advice they’d ever received, so I put the question to Kerri.She immediately gave me a discourse on money management, a topic near and dear to players’ hearts...read more

Missing cards

To have the advantage over the house when playing blackjack, you have to be able to count cards. You have to see every card that is played and add or subtract it from the count. But sometimes you might miss a card because of the action at the table.For example, you are playing a double-deck game, and you can’t see all the cards until the hand is finished and exposed on the table...read more

Two jackpots

QUESTION: In February, I was playing a 25-cent Double Bonus machine in Blackhawk, Colorado. It dealt me a royal flush in clubs. In mid-March, the same machine again dealt me a royal flush in clubs. In the intervening three weeks, it dealt me four aces, plus a few other four-of-a-kind.I understand the odds of being dealt a royal is 1 in 649,740...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Do machines that share progressives also share RNGs?

Question: I regularly play at MGM National Harbor and noticed that there is often a "bank" of three to five similar machines which "share" progressive amounts. Recently while at the Borgata in Atlantic City I noticed that similar "banks" of machines are independent as to both progressives and red envelope values...read more

Magic of the machines

I want magic. Yes, yes, I do; I really do.I don’t want the kind of magic that is merely illusion as performed by the stage magicians in casino showrooms or on glittery stages. No, I want the real thing. I want Aladdin’s lamp; I rub it and a genie appears and grants my wishes, magically bringing the universe to heel and then bow and kneel before me...read more

'Hot' and 'cold' tables

Within the large set of casino table games players, there’s a much smaller subset of those who scout tables before they play.They look for hot tables and happy players with large stacks of chips in front of them. They don’t want to be stuck with cold tables and vanishing bankrolls.I belong to the non-scouters...read more