Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 718

Royal Match and other treasure hunts

Dear Mark, The casino I play in offers Royal Match as a blackjack side bet. All the blackjack games offered use a shoe. I am curious as to if this is a good bet, especially on a shoe game. David H. The Royal Match is a side bet in blackjack that is based on the first two cards dealt to the player...read more

Profiling the Profile Wizard - Part 2

I recently received an e-mail from a reader asking my opinion of a slot system he had seen on the Internet. I did a little searching and found numerous SPAM postings on different websites touting the system. When I tried to visit one of the URLs selling the system, I got a JavaScript error (using FireFox)...read more

Video Slots 101: Reel Graduation

Recently I visited a casino with my dear darling mother. She settled in at a nickel video slot, stuck in a $20 and wished me good luck as I went off to win my millions. About 20 minutes later, my millions still a distant dream, I found her at the same machine with a few credits left from her original 400. "Are you having fun?" I asked...read more

Gambling Grade School #2: The House Edge

The house edge is one of two major factors that must be considered when approaching casino games and individual bets and strategies at those games. The other is speed or number of decisions per hour. What is the house edge exactly? The definition usually goes something like this: "The house edge is the percent of all the money wagered at a game that the house can expect to keep in the long run." Uh-ha, right...read more

Fascinated With Rothstein? New Book Offers Look at His Hustles, Fixes, Death

David Pietrusza's Rothstein (The Life, Times and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed The 1919 World Series) (484 pages, paperbound, $16), may well be the best book on the man since LeoKatcher's The Big Bankroll (published in 1958). The author, former president of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a historian and expert on the 1920s. The book is both history and whodunit in nature, with a massive cast of characters, famous and infamous--gamblers, ballplayers, the judiciary, corruption, in part, an unsolved mystery. Who shot Rothstein in 1928? Why was the killer never caught? Who were the suspects, what was the motive and what led up to the event? How could Rothstein get away with shooting three New York City policemen? Rothstein, the ultimate hustler, pulled off one of the most blatant and memorable betting coups in the history of thoroughbred racing, when in one race, his horse Sidereal earned him $850,000 at Aqueduct. Rothstein met Nick the Greek, Titanic Thompson and a slew of characters right out of Damon Runyon's Guys and Dolls...read more

The Value of Slot Clubs

Slot clubs are essentially the coupon system of Casinos. You provide the casino with your name and address, and the casino provides you with marketing offers, cashbacks and comps. Is this tradeoff worth it, and if yes, exactly how much is it worth? If you're someone who refuses to give anyone your name and address, then I suppose the answer is 'no'...read more

Playing Winning Poker Requires Using Your Head

I was at a local sporting goods franchise store today looking for some workout equipment. What do I bump into but a display of Texas Hold'em kits, complete with chips, cards and a green felt cloth. Apparently, lots of fitness jocks are also turning into poker jocks. Chances are, a fair share of you have been playing a little "know-when-to-hold'em/when-to-fold'em" lately yourselves...read more

Looking at the Coming Year

As an industry, Michigan's twenty casinos, seven racetracks and thousands of Lottery outlets provide huge numbers of direct jobs to those who have chosen this exciting field. The casinos alone employ close to 19,000 people and the racetracks provide over 14,000 direct jobs in this state...read more

Entertaining Games Come with a Price for Players

This columnist has never been a fan of gimmicky variations of blackjack. Give me the traditional version any day. With that caveat in mind, the Trump Casino & Hotel recently added a game called "Blackjack Attack" to its table games inventory...read more

What Would You Do If...

The camera was rolling, and the first question came to me: If you knew there was no possibility of being caught, would you cheat in a casino? No, I replied, I would not cheat --- although to some extent, this depends on your definition of cheating...read more