Deal Me In: A gaming column for those who feel lucky

Mark Pilarski, special to reno.com, tahoe.com
December 28, 2007

Dear Mark: My husband and I read your column every week. It has a lot of good information and we enjoy reading it. I believe you can settle a disagreement that my husband and I have about slot machines at the casinos. I believe that the casino can and does change the odds of the payoffs that the machines give out. He believes that the machines are set at the factory and are not touched thereafter. Do you know the answer to this? June S.

How about, you both could be right. You see, June, because this column is syndicated nationwide and gaming rules and regulations are not always uniform from state to state, I will have to give you a generalized answer as to who controls the payback of a slot machine, the slot manufacturer or the casino.

All of today’s cybernetic one-armed bandits contain a random number generator (RNG) that controls the payback percentage of each machine. So, June, generally speaking, when a casino purchases a slot machine, it tells the manufacturer what percentage it wants that particular machine to return to its customers and the necessary arrangement is pre-programmed into the RNG at the factory. A casino can always change the payback percentage, but by and large, it must go back to the manufacturer and have it reprogram the RNG.

Dear Mark: If in Jacks-or-Better video poker you are dealt a non-paying pair with an open-ended straight, how should it be played? Mary Jo H.

I am glad to see that you are one of those alert players who see the value of discarding certain cards to optimize the win potential of your hand. What you’re doing, Mary Jo, is called perfect basic strategy, and it’s the secret to winning at video poker.

Each hand dealt has what’s called an “expected value,” which is the average value of all the wins attainable after the discards are replaced, assuming that the optimum cards are retained and that each possible draw occurs.

Per your inquiry, Mary Jo, the correct strategy for the hand you were dealt is to keep the low pair if your open-ended straight has no high cards, or just one (6-7-8-9-9, or 8-9-J-10-10). But if your four-card straight has two or three high cards (9-9-10-J-Q, or 10-10-J-Q-K) you would keep the open-straight and discard one card of the non-paying pair.

Dear Mark: I’m a 20-year-old US citizen who has lived abroad for most of my life, and I have been able to gamble in most casinos as well. I'll be going to the U.S.next year and I need to know if you'd know where I can play poker in a casino, because so far I have heard that most casinos have a 21-year age limit. Dann J.

Up here in the northern woods of Michigan, you can gamble at 18 years of age at the Native American Indian Casinos, although at present we’re knee deep in snow with arctic-like temperatures so possibly you might be aiming elsewhere.

If so, Dann, I would recommend that you get what I consider the best all-inclusive guide of casinos nationwide, and that’s Steve Bourie’s, American Casino Guide. Updated yearly, the 2008 American Casino Guide indexes every casino/resort in the U.S., plus all the toll-free phone numbers, web sites and e-mail addresses, age requirements (that’s what you’re asking about), a whole slew of gambling tips, techniques and winning strategies, a comprehensive listing of room and suite rates, riverboat cruise schedules and cost, buffet prices and detailed maps. Additionally, you get more than $1,000 in valuable casino coupons within its 500 pages.

You can find the 2008 American Casino Guide at all major bookstores for $16.95, or check out Bourie’s web site at:

Gambling Wisdom of the Week: “I won my ticket on Titanic in a lucky hand of poker...a very lucky hand.” -- Jack, in the Movie Titanic

A recognized authority on casino gambling, Pilarski survived 18 years in the casino trenches, working for seven different casinos. Mark now writes a internationally syndicated gambling column, is a university lecturer, reviewer and contributing editor for numerous gaming periodicals, and is the creator of the best-selling, award-winning audio cassette series on casino gambling, Hooked on Winning.

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