Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 295

The art of poker

Poker is 50 percent skill and 50 percent luck. The part about skill is a given -- you need it to play successfully. The other 50 percent, luck, will come to you in various degrees. Sometimes excellent cards will come round after round, and other times you will not get any decent cards during a whole session...read more

Behind video poker paybacks

Video poker regulars know that as a basic guideline, royal flushes account for about 2 percent of their overall payback. If you’re playing 9-6 Jacks or Better, which returns 99.5 percent to those who play at expert level, you can figure it’s closer to 97.5 percent between royals.Actual percentages vary by a small amount depending on game and pay table...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Why can't I win on the slots today?

I like playing the video slots, but it seems like I never win. I sometimes left the casino with a profit playing the old machines. My friends all say the same thing. We don't win anymore. You and your friends have a complaint I've heard many times now that video slots, specifically multi-coin/multi-line machines, have taken over the a large percentage of the slot floor...read more

Professional craps play and house edges

FROM MARCEL: I have been attempting to become a professional craps player for about two years now. I started with your book, and then read everything I could. Then I set about getting in 3,000 practice throws using the eight steps to dice control from your YouTube videos...read more

Bad blackjack and bad craps

QUESTION: I have a neighbor who works for a casino, and I was bending his ear, telling him the blackjack games were getting too tight. They're still paying 3-2 on blackjacks here, but they all hit soft 17, even on a six-deck game, and some are double on 9, 10, 11 only with some other bad rules.I guess he got tired of listening to me, because he finally said, "So play something else, or don't play."Is that what it comes down to? I thought business was bad...read more

Playing Positive Machines

Positive expectation video poker can be found in casinos throughout the country. Positive expectation means that with perfect play the game will pay back more than 100 percent of what is played over the long run.You don’t believe these games are available?To be fair 100+ percent payback machines most often are progressive machines – those where the jackpot for getting a royal flush increases as a bank of machines is played...read more

Team play at slots

A few years ago, I spoke with a Wisconsin man who for more than a decade had been treating playing slots as a team sport. He and a group of friends traveled to Reno every year for the world’s largest cribbage tournament, and while they were there, they took a group plunge at an IGT Megabucks machine.It was a well-organized effort to catch lightning in a bottle, with 150 people each putting up $100 a year in advance...read more

Ask the Slot Expert: Common-sense advice for slot players

There are slot players out there who believe that the casino can dial the paybacks up and down at will, at any time and even during play. No matter how much logic and law you present to these people to show that what they believe is not actually happening at all, they believe it nevertheless...read more

More mixed nuts

They are out there. Seriously. People who in centuries past might have been thought possessed by the devil or thought to be evil witches or Bedlam beggars or in-laws.I have the (small) privilege of getting letters from such people. These people fancy themselves as wise and winning — or at least knowledgeable — gamblers or even advantage players but, in fact, they are semi-literate whack-a-doodles that actually (and amazingly) survive in day-to-day life...read more

Bonus craps bets

QUESTION: My friend and I were playing around with the idea of side bets, especially craps bets where you get a bonus if you win three times in a row. Maybe you’ve seen something like them. You bet the lucky number, and your bet stays in action until you’ve either won three times in a row or you’ve lost.If we were designing a Lucky 7s bet, how big a payoff would we have to offer before it was a better bet than just betting any 7s three times? If it’s a $1 side bet, you lose if either the first, second or third rolls is something other than 7, but you win if all three rolls are 7...read more