Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 198

Ask the Slot Expert: Why do some casinos have both Class II and Class III slot machines?

Question: Why is it that some casinos have both class II and class III slots? Four Winds in Michigan is an example. They seem to have both types of slots. Do they do this because one type of machine has lower payouts? Answer: One class of machines does not necessarily pay back more or less than the other class...read more

Betting a bushel

FROM BARNEY: I have to disagree with you about betting. The more bets a player makes, the better the chance he or she will win one. That counts. If we follow your advice and only make one bet per game like at craps and roulette, what is the point? That makes the game dull...read more

To Egypt and beyond

Anyone who's spent much time playing video slots has encountered ancient Egyptian themes. When it comes to pyramids, the Sphinx, scarabs and asps, there seems to be a strong archeologist strain among slot players.Incredible Technologies is the latest slotmaker to delve into the ancient mysteries with its new game, Rays of Egypt.The sun god Ra comes to the fore in a 40-line video slot in Incredible's GoldLink game family...read more

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