Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 513

Don't Underestimate the Blackjack Dealer's 7 Upcard

You see it so much at the blackjack tables. The dealer has a 7 showing, and the player steps out of line and makes a bad play. Why? It's because most players don't respect or fear a dealer's 7 up. A fellow player just the other night stood with 7/5/2/2 against a 7 saying, "If she doesn't have a 10 or an Ace in the hole, she's gotta' draw." He said that as if drawing means she's going to bust. Well, do you know how often the dealer busts when she has a 7-up? The answer is 26% of the time...read more

What do you think of this blackjack option?

Dear Frank: I was recently in a Colorado casino where you can play your blackjack hand multiple times against the dealer. After a game for all the players, the dealer keeps his/her up card to draw again against any player who chose to replay...read more

Poker tournament championships are all in the family

Just as any wife would be, Mary Jo Belcore-Zogman was proud of her husband Dan when he outlasted 422 main event players and took home top dollar of $227,811 in the Heartland Poker Tour Tournament held at the Majestic Star Casinos in Gary, Indiana in the spring of 2007. The championship and the serious money which came with it was so compelling for Mary Jo that she, too, developed an interest in playing tournament poker. Last month she became only the second woman in Heartland Poker Tour Tournament history to win a No-Limit Texas Hold'em championship...read more

Playing It Smart: Why most casino gamblers finish sessions below average

Casinos profit on the advantage they have on every bet. This advantage is generally expressed as an edge, expected value, or return (sometimes called payback) percentage. Edge is the fraction of a bet the casino expects to earn, averaged over many trials...read more

The mystique of slot machines - part 1

A woman once asked me to lunch to discuss a book idea she had. "Slot machines have this aura, this mystery," she said. "I want to capture the mystique of slot machines." What slot machines really have, I told her, are mathematics and electronics...read more

Does short-circuiting the awarding of credits affect the RNG?

Dear John, Thanks for your great articles! My question is when you hit a large payout or bonus and the player has the choice to either wait while the credits are being added in or hit the play button and begin the cycle again, does the player's choice affect the RNG? I guess the net-net question is — will the next spin have a different outcome based on whether the player chooses to wait or to play-on? Thanks, Lin P.S...read more

Tipping the craps dealers

Dear Frank, First, thanks for all your books and articles on gambling – especially craps! I've enjoyed them all immensely and as a recreational gambler have learned much that has helped improve my personal odds. I blew into Atlantic City this weekend...read more

No-Limit Poker Raises the Stakes

Until the World Poker Tour tournaments burst onto the TV scene in the early 2000s, the most popular kind of poker was two-tier "limit-betting" stakes. A low stakes Texas Hold'em game, for example, might have had $3/$6 limits, where all bets and raises in the early part of the hand were $3, and all the later bets were $6...read more

Deal Me In: The dangers of the 'any craps' bet

Dear Mark: Is there any chance that you could spend a portion of your column explaining the "any craps" bet on a craps game? In all the years you've been writing your column, I don't believe you have ever covered it. Buck D. Yes, Buck, I have not explained the "any craps" bet in any drawn-out answer to a reader's question, but I have in the past briefly mentioned that it is a wager that you should definitely avoid...read more

Should youbuy what the casino is selling at craps?

The best and worst of the "buy" bets in America. Craps is a fascinating game. It is the only casino game where you can influence your own fate. The casino allows you to select two dice from an assortment of five, and then you are allowed to throw the dice, determining the outcome...read more