Some people will never get it. They simply want to make believe they have some sort of an edge over the casinos while believing they are just a little bit more cunning...more capable, and even more resourceful than the people and the entities that they go up against on their gambling forays. In other words, they are as blind to that issue as they are to comprehending the most intelligent way of approaching the video poker machines.

Let’s take a quick look at the make-up of these so-called “experts”. Are they really smarter than those who’ve been in the casino business all their lives, and who make their living and retirement based on their performances against the gambling public? Can these people really claim they ever have an “edge” when they walk through those casino doors, when the masses know full well that the machine pay tables, the slot club benefits, and the special casino promotions that are MADE to appear lucrative, actually are in place for the first and foremost purpose of reeling in as many of these “advantage players” as humanly possible?

Actually, I've got the best of both worlds going for me....at least today. That, however, was not always the case, as for almost 7 years I too was a rock-solid advantage-playing expert who BTW, lost every single year. Most of these gurus and experts go around yapping incessantly about "the math this" and "the math that". But because I spent my years of education as well as nearly 25 Governmental & Corporate America years constantly working with mathematics, it's of little doubt that I have more of the advanced knowledge necessary to understand the video poker machines and the methods of beating them consistently, than do most or all of my critics.

Yes, 95% of the game is solidly based on pure mathematics. But if you go any further than that, all you're doing is playing right into the hands of the casinos every single time. No one beats the casinos at their own long-term math game without extraordinary & continuous luck, which is why in-depth risk analyses must be performed on approximately 5% of the deals in every type of game to be played. If you don't believe me, go ahead and ask the most famous player of all - Bob Dancer - why he claims to be a professional gambler, yet he works at multiple jobs and in fact, asked the Eastside Cannery to employ his services after one of those "lucrative" +EV promotions that, according to one of his columns, was like a "red meat affair" for advantage players everywhere. Too bad the red turned out to be the wrong blood, and too bad the money-making came from good old fashioned American employment.

The resulting "special plays that deviate from expert strategy" provide the edge the player is looking for, but only within a structured and very disciplined style of play that assimilates proper bankroll, absolute determination, and a progressive method of betting that requires the winner to either go down in denomination or quit and go home - and the loser to climb in denomination until either the winner appears or the set amount of session bankroll is depleted. Catastrophic bankroll-ruining losses will never occur using this approach, while it is common for huge winners to appear that form the basis for consistent overall success.

And again, when you win, you either go back down in denomination if your win goal is not yet met - or you quit and start at your lowest denomination the next time you play a session (which can be any time at all, as long as you're rested, comfortable and relaxed). There is none of the nonsense associated with "it was a good play that was worth $70/hour". Nothing is worth anything until you leave the casino, and only then can it be determined how good a play it really was. Win a little then is was good. Lose some then it was bad. It is as simple as that. There's your choice: either live in a world of theory - or live in a world of reality. Phantom bucks aren't even accepted at Starbucks.

I’ve spent years exposing and identifying the names of self-proclaimed experts who have left their scalps on the streets of Las Vegas, Reno and Laughlin. When I wrote for Gaming Today there was a never-ending outcry by the famous names and math gurus whenever I did that, simply because it did not sit well with them at the end of the day when they were left on their own contemplating the truth. Many times my publishers were threatened with slander suits, only when I got into their faces with “Feel free to sue if you like – all you’ll do is go up against someone who probably has more resources than you, and at the same time you just might find yourself having to dispute what I’ve said with the impossible task of trying to prove me wrong.” Of course, because most of these people live on the edge of P-A-I-N anyway - and losing their money to gambling problems with the vp machines is already costly enough – just as in how they’ve always walked out the back doors whenever I challenge them to bets, they simply fade into the security of their comfy blankies here too.

So goes the lives of the experts. They live in a world of theory and have a very hard time identifying with reality. Rather than proclaim the poundings the machines give them, they instead find solace by saying how much this or that particular play was worth per hour. Then there’s the issue of making believe that because a certain promotion along with the theoretical machine payback percentage comes out to over 100%, EVEN IF THEY LOSE, THEY BLAB ABOUT HOW IT WAS WORTH THE EFFORT BECAUSE IT WAS A “POSITIVE PLAY”! Have you ever heard of a more pathetic rendition of what a losing addict goes through?

Now let’s talk about what it’s like to be a true-to-life winner, without the spin, fantasy or illogic. Sure, I lose sometime, but I win on around 85% of my trips. Right here the math people like to stop what’s next in its tracks, because all they want to do is accept that I will win more sessions that I will lose playing my strategies, but those many “little wins” will all be wiped out by the few “large losers” that I’ll experience. But still, to this day, I have never read where one of these math genius critics will admit to there ever being huge winners, and the fact that all the winners together far more than compensate for the few large losers. And with the denominations that I progress to, there’s always multiple very large winners that are far beyond the amount of the biggest session losses I could ever suffer. Instead, these critics prefer to pretend the giant winners never occur. That way they can go on making it up on the go and feel good about it.

This latest trip to Las Vegas that I just came back from is a good case-in-point. It also shows that I am not yet backing down in the face of overwhelming evidence that machines are not – and may not have ever been – 100% random in their operation. For the first time this year I played actual for-profit sessions with my Advanced Romp-Thru-Town (ARTT) strategy – 4 to be exact. Three were played at the South Point on 4-level 25c thru $2 machines. I had a $100 win goal for each session. I lost the first two sessions and was down $1588 before I won $967 on my third after hitting for 3’s on $2 TBP+ in the high limit area. How’d I do that? Here’s where one of those “special plays that deviate from expert strategy” that are an integral part of my success came into play. The deal was 3388X. Because this deal came within my first 100 credits of ARTT, if I had been playing DDB I would have only held the 3’s if I were within my final 100 credits.

But this was TBP+, where four 3’s pays 600 credits, so whenever a small special pair (2’s, 3’s or 4’s) are paired with another low pair on the deal, it is ALWAYS the correct play to hold just the special small pair. There is simply no other intelligent way to play that hand. The quad appears infrequently, but when it does it is always on the top denomination, meaning anything I’ve given up along the way by making that play over ANY amount of time, is simply dwarfed by the huge wins that, like this time, do happen. The math people don’t want it to be that way, but then again, there’s just another reason why they will not bet me on any of it. Of course, lack of funds is the other.

OK, so I’m down about $620 at this point, and now I’m off to the new M Resort to play an ARTT session of 5-level 25c thru $5 on one of their new widescreen bar top machines. My goal was to win a simple and modest $200 before taking off. I started out on a machine that, once into the 100 credits of $5 BP seemed cold, so I switched to the one next to me after waiting for the occupant to leave. I put the remaining $1700 ticket into that machine and promptly lost $200 on BP.

Now it was time to change to the advanced BP game, and the only one worth playing my strategy on was a 9/6 DDB game. This wasn’t going so well either, until with $350 remaining I was dealt 4 Aces with a 5. That’s $4000 and a reason to walk out right there, and because I’m usually playing TBP+ or SDBP I almost held all five cards and pushed “draw”. But after holding the 4th card I somehow remembered what game I was playing, and upon holding just the four Aces I drew a 2 for a $10k win and a session profit of $8525. FYI: I do not tip hand pays for any reason anywhere because there IS no reason to, so that’s exactly what I walked out with.

My profit for the trip was around $8000. BTW--I put in 4 hours to play these sessions, and if you can do the math you'll find that comes out to my effort being worth about $2000/hour....for REAL, not theoretically as the dreamers would rather have it. Hey, I was playing all "negative EV" games to them, so as far as their spin goes, I was LOSING X amount/hour! Haha! Had I been like one of those feared “advantage players” and stayed on 25c for my entire session, I might have walked out of there with a $300 profit if I didn’t hang around long enough to play through the win like most of them do out of a compulsion to keep on playing. Trip #1 for 2009 was a resounding success, and once again, ARTT combined with the superiority of methodically calculated special plays and the discipline to quit playing and go home exactly as planned in advance, continues to contribute to my ability to win when others just wonder what’s happening to all their “+EV machines”. Man, are those guys smart...or WHAT?!

Note: This week's lesson on intelligent video poker play has more. Saturday I left for the Rio at 8pm where upon check-in I went to the cashier to collect $400 in "travel cash" that came with the offer, went straight to bed, and in the morning I left immediately for Planet Hollywood to check in and get the $300 in free-play that came with the offer. Once thru that play gave me $439, and that's exactly what I walked out of there with as I got my car from valet and drove home. Another $839 in my pockets with 15 minutes of play. So what's THAT come out to per hour, advantage-playing geniuses?!