Gaming Gurus: Strategy Expert Article Archive - Page 895

Michigan's Tribal Gaming Industry Continues to Grow

During the past year, the three Detroit casinos have demonstrated the power of casinos to stimulate the economy by creating thousands of jobs and bringing in millions of dollars for the community. Although the Detroit experience is still relatively new, Michigan's tribal casinos dotting small town landscapes throughout the state have been proving the value of gaming for several years now...read more

The Slot Expert's Guide to Winning at Slots and Video Poker

You can hear me give my slot and video poker tips live on The Good Times Show, hosted by Rudi Schiffer with Frank Scoblete, which is broadcast from Memphis on WMC 790AM Saturday morning from 10-12 CT. You may not have known it, but the advent of multi-coin/multi-line slot machines and multi-hand video poker led manufacturers to put shortcircuit keys on their machines...read more

Gambling's Greatest Wins, Runs, Records and Legends - Part 1

"Daddy, tell me a story," said my little son so many years ago when he was seven. I always told my kids stories at bedtime. "Once upon a time there was a regular guy named Joe and he went to work every day at the local school where he was a teacher...read more

You Can't Rely on Averages when You're Dealing with Small Chances

When casino outcomes have high or moderate possibilities of occurrence, it doesn't take a Methuselah's age of action before actual frequencies home in on statistically expected averages. As an example, there's around 21.5 percent chance of ending with a high pair at jacks-or-better video poker, so in 1,000 tries you'd expect 215 of 'em and would almost surely get between 200 and 230...read more

The Preferential Shuffle

The preferential shuffle is a legal cheating technique used by many casinos. When a dealer in a pitch game, instead of dealing some fixed number of rounds, seems to vary his shuffle point widely, be very suspicious. He may be counting the cards and dealing out more rounds when an excess of low-valued cards remain to be dealt, which puts the player at a huge disadvantage...read more

Make the Best Decisions in the Short Run

When you read gambling books and articles, you sometimes see a distinction made between the "short run" (tonight, this weekend, this week, this month) of a few hundred or a few thousand decisions, and the "long run" (a few years or more) of millions of decisions...read more

I'm Sick of Blackjack Players Who Criticize Everyone Else

There are three basic classes of blackjack players: Those who are trying to learn and politely watch, look and listen. Those who know exactly what they're doing and have the class to just watch, look and listen. Those who think they know it all but don't -- and continuously criticize, blame and fear others for their own misfortune...read more

Bonus Slots Update: Ripley's Believe It Or Not, Money In The Bank, Winning Riches, Yukon Gold

Lucky Post #13 follows, dedicated to those slot players who believe (with fingers crossed) that the number 13 can indeed be lucky. One of the slot manufacturers--Mikohn, who has become a slot designer of note, offers up their version of Ripley's Believe It or Not and Konami, a new name to some, presents Money In The Bank to begin this post. 1) Ripley's Believe It Or Not: Unlike other bonus slots where a player randomly chooses buttons or pokes the screen, this game actually involves strategy...read more

How Many Cases Must You Count to Detect Bias or Preference?

What if you have a coin you suspect is biased? That is, chances may not be precisely 50-50 a flip will yield heads or tails. You might care to know how many times you'd have to toss the coin and count results before you'd be confident that measured frequencies were acceptably close to the true but unknown probabilities...read more

Ask The Slot Expert

Are the paybacks the same on each machine in a carousel of machines that are linked together to share the same progressive jackpot? Thanks. Good question. The best answer I can give is: Maybe. I would guess that in most cases they are, but there's no reason why some machines can't have higher or lower long-term paybacks than the others...read more