Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 178

Pop culture slots

Pop culture themes on slot machines have been regularly attracting players since the rise of video slots in the late 1990s.There were a few licensed themes before that — Bally's Betty Boop and IGT's Wheel of Fortune three-reel games come to mind — but video really opens the door for designers to show off what movies, TV, board games and music themes bring to the slots.This year will be no different, with a number of pop culture themes on new slots...read more

Lottery winners

Lottery by definition is a game of chance in which subscribers (players) buy numbered chances in hopes of winning prizes. The winning numbers are chosen by lot, in which the total lot can vary from a small amount to a large amount of numbers.Lotteries have been around for hundreds of years.The first “government” lottery was in France in 1539...read more

Electronic craps

QUESTION: I found a craps machine game with bouncing dice, and the odds look pretty enticing. Instead of 30-1 on 2 or 12, it pays 31-1 and instead of 15-1 on 3 or 11 it pays 16-1. Hardways pay 10-1 and 8-1 instead of 9-1 and 7-1.What does that do to the house edge? Does that make these viable bets, instead of sucker bets?ANSWER: Before getting into edges with higher-than-usual payoffs, let me caution you to check whether you're getting odds-to-1, and not odds-for-1.It's common for machine games to pay odds-for-1 because the game has already taken your bet before the roll takes place...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Does speed in hitting the bills matter in the Money Catch bonus on Crazy Money?

Question: I asked a pit boss once if the shufflers were truly random or used an RNG. He said it did not use a RNG and was random. I was playing with someone once and he said the shuffler can read the cards because they can hit a button and have the shuffler put out the cards in sorted suits...read more

Simple rules of baccarat

Baccarat presents you with an almost 50-50 game against the casino – the bank bet will actually win more than 50% of the time.Baccarat is dealt from a shoe. All 10s, jacks, queens and kings equal zero. The ace equals one. All the other cards equal their face value...read more

Gambling and the Law: Supreme Court oral arguments in NJ sports betting case analyzed

On 4 December 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in the New Jersey sports betting case. Almost every Justice was actively involved in the questioning, which touched upon everything from obscure statutory interpretation to the importance of states not controlled by the federal government.The case revolves around a statute, the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which is unlike any other act of Congress passed before or since...read more

Asian games abound

Asian themes have become slot machine staples, with images of Far Eastern gardens, koi fish, pagodas and more taking their places along symbols of good luck and progressive jackpots.Nearly every game manufacturer has Asian-style offerings, and there are a number of such themes on their way to casinos for 2018.Everi, a company that resulted from a merger between Multimedia Games and Global Cash Access, has a whole family of games with Asian sights and sounds...read more

Chat with champion Sammy Vaughn

Sammy Vaughn made history when he won a lump sum of $1 million in the first ever million-dollar blackjack tournament, at the Las Vegas Hilton. I interviewed Sam after he won and thought you’d enjoy reading what he had to say after making history.Henry: When did you play your first blackjack tournament?Sammy: In the 1980s, craps was my primary game and I used to play the craps tournaments at the Four Queens on a regular basis...read more

Those various side bets

QUESTION: Is there ever a time to make a side bet like 21 + 3 or Lucky Ladies at blackjack, the Dragon Bonus bet at baccarat or the Prime bet in Three Card Poker you wrote about a few weeks ago?It seems to me that when you describe these bets, they always have house edges that are higher than the regular game...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Is the deal of cards on a video poker machine as random and unbiased as someone dealing a real deck of cards?

Question: Prior to the recent amendment to the New York Constitution, casino gambling in New York was illegal — thus, video lottery terminals (Class II) were utilized to get around the prohibition. After the amendment to allow gambling in New York, the Rivers Casino in Schenectady, and now the Montreign in the Catskill Mountains, opened...read more