Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 270

The lucky and unlucky ones

In a former column, I wrote about a woman who had been betting one coin per hand at a 10 Play Poker game. She accidentally hit the max bet button, but her mistake paid off big when she was dealt four aces, then drew several low card kickers...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Types of slot progressives

Are the Wheel of Fortune machines at Resorts World in Queens progressive? They are really tight. There are three types of progressives. The types are differentiated by where the machines that feed the progressive are located. The smallest progressive is the Stand-Alone Progressive...read more

Why wild streaks happen in gambling

You are at the craps table and the 12 rolls four times in a row. The odds of that happening are immense. At blackjack, two people come to the table at the same time and both get blackjacks — back to back. After that you watch their play and they are not advantage players...read more

Tribal slot machines

QUESTION: A person I know goes to the Hard Rock Seminole casino in Tampa; she plays the $10-a-pull Wheel of Fortune slot machine. She claims she can tell when the machine is going to hit. I disagree; I say that the random number generator has already determined the outcome, so nobody knows when a machine is going to hit.I know the machines at the Indian casinos are different, but how are they different from the Las Vegas machines? I don't know what a bingo-type machine is...read more

Power of aces in blackjack

Many counting systems don’t keep track of aces in the card count. The reason is they don’t have much effect on basic strategy. However, there are still changes that should be made depending on how many aces have been played. Some players use external things such as chips, fingers or feet to keep track of how many aces have been played.Aces are normally valued at “zero” because we don’t use them to influence our True Count...read more

Deal Me In: Guaranteed jackpot not related to random number generator

Dear Mark: How does a casino promise that a specific jackpot will be hit within a certain time frame? For instance, say a machine starts with a jackpot of $25,000 and it is guaranteed to be won by the time it reaches $100,000. If all spins are random, how is this possible? Jim D.Guaranteeing that the jackpot will be hit within a specific timeframe or sum total doesn’t mean that the random number generator is being manipulated...read more

The 'split-flip' slot display

Here’s a term you’ll not often hear applied to slot machines: “split-flip display.”In the reel symbols on its hit game Money Rain, Incredible Technologies uses a video representation of a split-flip display. The reels don’t spin. Instead, on each new play, each of the 15 symbols on the video reel display split and flip.It’s a fun, eye-catching effect on a game with loads of differences from more conventional video slots.Why split-flip? Because as a boy, Incredible Technologies co-founder and executive vice president Richard Ditton was fascinated to watch the numbers flip on clocks at Chicago’s Union Station...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Lowering the W-2G threshold

I appreciate your letter to the IRS advocating against the lowering of the amount of reportable wins. You succinctly put the facts together above and beyond when it comes to how the IRS's forms make it dammed if you do and the same if you do not! One thing I didn't see mentioned was any suggestion for correction for inflation in the $1,200 figure...read more

Gambling message board gunfights

Anyone reading gambling message boards knows that some battles are being fought by the same people from message board to message board. There are posters who just don't like each other and their posts go into heated attack mode. If message boards were old-time western towns almost every day would be OK Corral Day.I guess it's not too hard to see why these battles occur...read more

Taxes, game creation and penny machines

QUESTION: I was playing on an electronic roulette table game machine. On one spin I made three outside bets totaling $745 and winning $1,240. After state and federal tax I got $821.11, a $76.11 profit. What's up with that!ANSWER: The federal government requires casinos to have you sign tax form W-2G on any win of $1,200 or more on electronic games...read more