Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 192

Best field bet

One of the more popular bets at a craps table is the field bet. It is a onetime bet that wins if a 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 or 12 is thrown. That is the reason for its popularity – it pays on all but four numbers. Never mind that the numbers that cause you to lose this bet are those that appear most frequently.In most casinos, the field bet pays 2-to-1 when the 2 or 12 appears, and it pays even money for the other numbers...read more

Blackjack dealer shows his hole card

QUESTION: I was at a blackjack table and one dealer was exposing his hole card on every hand. When he rotated off our table, I was really tempted to follow him, but I resisted.I don't want to get into a whole thing about whether I should or shouldn't have told him he was tipping his card...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Are the machines in New York's racinos Class II?

Announcement: I had the privelege of being the guest on Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin's podcast Gambling with an Edge a few weeks ago. The podcast was recently posted. You can listen to it at https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gambling-with-an-edge/podcast-guest-gaming-writer-john-robison/. Question: I listened to your recent podcast with Bob D...read more

Money management at slots

Many casino players believe that there are ways to manage one’s money to prevent the casino from having an edge on them. This is a totally wrong assumption. If the casino has an edge at a game, which it does at just about all games, no money management system is going to take that edge away.With the faraway exceptions of some mostly long-ago banking machines, the house edge on slot machines exists and is often the biggest of the house edges in the casinos, running upwards of 10%...read more

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