Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 890

Cutthroat Craps - Part 2

A TALE OF TWO SHOOTERS You are watching a craps game in action. Shooter A is on the come-out roll. Everyone places his or her Pass Line bets except for one weaselly-looking guy who's betting on the Don't Pass. Then Shooter A picks up two dice and flings them unceremoniously down the table where they hop, skip, jump and careen all over the layout until finally coming to rest several feet from each other...read more

Leaving Lake Tahoe?

Well, the saga of Star takes yet another twist... in the "beat the bank" race, it looks like the win goes to my side of the fence. After ten days on the housing market, the house, my home, my life for the past 16 years has sold. It sold in what I consider record time.....read more

Double Pay and Three Card Draw Poker

A couple of weeks ago, I was playing a little video poker when the casino slot director stopped by. "Have you seen our new video poker room?" she asked. "We have Double Pay Poker and Three Card Draw Poker. You ought to check it out." I assured her I was on my way to see it...read more

Witless Winners May Need Advice but Prefer Applause

Here's the gist of Lesson 36 at the Hardnox Academy of Punting Pedagogy and Yogism (HAPPY): gambling gurus should take breaks occasionally from practicing what they preach, and stroll around the casino floor. The idea is to a) monitor the action; b) note the sublime, the ridiculous, and the range in between; c) observe results of various ploys and the attitudes and reactions of the involved parties; and d) stay inconspicuous, avoiding the urge to smirk superciliously or blurt out unsolicited gratuitous advice...read more

A Final Look at Good Casino Manners

Today I conclude my series on proper casino etiquette by taking a look at how good manners apply to the game of craps: 1. Craps, more than any other casino game, is filled with superstition. Never, EVER, talk about the number "seven" or even cheer for it on the comeout roll...read more

Cutthroat Craps - Part 1

Most gambling writers are cautious, timid souls and with good reason. We don't want to offer information that might lead players to jump off the deep end of the casino diving board, whooping and hollering as their bankrolls go "splat!" on the concrete floor of the empty pool below...read more

Barney Vinson's World

September 11, 2001. The date brings a chill to the soul, and most of us will never forget what we were doing when we heard the news. I was vacuuming my wife's car when she called me to the TV set. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center," she said, and of course at first we all thought it was a terrible accident...read more

The Percentages Underlying the Games Are Fact, not Opinion

Many casino buffs wonder where the gambling gurus get the house advantages they blithely bandy about. And, since the authorities don't always seem to concur, how much of the information is hard fact as opposed to opinion or inference from cursory observation...read more

Mike Tyson May Never Fight Lennox Lewis

Just the other day Mike Tyson got into yet another public display of his violent temper when he hurled some Christmas decorations at a couple of reporters who had the temerity to photograph him while he was on vacation in communist Cuba. Sporting a new tattoo across his belly of Che Guevera, a communist guerrilla fighter who helped Castro enslave Cuba, this tattoo was a fitting mate to his other tattoo of Mao Tse Tong (or Mao Zedong), the mass murderer of almost 60 million Chinese...read more

Like It or Not, Coin-Free Gaming Is the Future

On January 2, 2002, IGT issued a press release announcing seven new installations of their EZ Pay Ticket system for slot machines. There are now more than 34,000 machines in 58 locations worldwide with the system. Last December, Park Place Entertainment installed EZ Pay on 54 slots in one of their Atlantic City casinos on a trial run and, if successful, they intend to install the system on all the other slots in that casino and on all the slots in all their other Atlantic City casinos in the next few months...read more