Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 393

Chances of hitting the royal flush

Video poker players hope the next hand will give them a royal flush because the payoff for a five-coin bet is an immediate 4,000-coin payoff. A reader sent me a question about the player’s chances of hitting a royal if a player held three cards to the royal and drew two cards, or held two cards to the royal and drew three cards...read more

Long-term payback on Megabucks

Hi John, I've read what the odds are of hitting Megabucks, and know that it only makes sense to max bet in order to qualify for the progressive. My question is if somebody does not play the max, how much would the payback percentage actually decrease? I would think that when casinos report a 90 percent-plus payback for this game, that this would include the infrequent but massive progressive payouts...read more

Combination bets are usually bad bets

Roulette and craps are very different games, but they have something in common: a large number of betting options, leading to players trying to figure out combinations of wagers that will guarantee success. They'll try to use one bet to cover up the weakness in another...read more

Scoblete's new blog recounts true adventures by Melissa A. Kaplan

Casino City Times columnist and America's best-selling gambling author, Frank Scoblete, has a new blog which recounts his adventures both in and out of the casinos. His first two blogs concern wild trips he took to Memphis, Tennessee, to teach his dice control class in April 2011 and to Atlantic City, New Jersey, in May 2011 with his dice control team where they attempted to play craps in every casino...read more

Qualifying when to bet

Casino players are always trying to figure out when is the best or most propitious or most advantageous time to place their wagers. Should I wait for two blacks to appear in roulette before I bet red since red is now due? Or should I wait for two blacks to appear before I bet black since black is hot and may continue to be hot? If numbers appear in one column on the roulette layout, should I bet that column or jump to a different column? Decisions, decisions. Whatever system a player uses to determine the correct time for wagering is called a "qualifying" event...read more

A shuffle through the gaming mailbag

Q. I sometimes play in an Indian casino where they have the Class II games. You know, the ones that look like regular slots, except there's a little area where they show bingo numbers. I know you're really playing bingo against other players in those games, no matter what the rest of the game looks like...read more

Advice for the Owner of the New Golden Nugget in Atlantic City

The Trump name recently came off the Trump Marina casino in Atlantic City. It will now become The Golden Nugget. The casino owner, Tilman Fertitta, is a business and financial genius and certainly was well aware of the shrinking Atlantic City casino market when he agreed to purchase and renovate the aging Trump Marina...read more

Craps Was a Hazard Long Ago

Gaming historians argue the origins of craps and will continue to argue it for all time. Archaeologists discovered dice the were made of bones in Egypt. Ancient games dating back to 3000 BC were played with five- and six-sided dice. Many people mistakenly deduce that craps must have started during the days of King Tut or Moses...read more

What do those "suits" do?

I received an interesting question from a blackjack player who wanted to know "what all those people in suits that work in the pit do." Most of the time a blackjack player interacts with only one casino employee, the dealer, whose job is to ensure that the game is run by established procedures, and to provide customers with a pleasant gaming experience...read more

A shuffle through the gaming mailbag

Q. I have heard a couple things concerning video poker. First is that royal flushes hit roughly every 48,000 spins. I also have heard that when a machine is not being played, that it still continues to "spin" maybe hundreds of times per minute...read more