| Ace of diamonds, Jack of clubs, 10 of clubs, 7 of clubs, 2 of hearts: There are four viable choices here--the lone Ace, Ace-Jack, the three-card double-inside straight flush, Jack-10-7 and the two-card royal, Jack-10. We'll choose differently according to which game and which pay table we're playing. In Super Aces, the lone Ace is the best choice, with an expected average return of 2.52 coins per five wagered, compared with 2.30 on Jack-10-7. Ace of clubs, King of diamonds, Queen of hearts, 5 of spades, 2 of spades: With an eye on possible straights, we'll often keep King-Queen or Ace-King-Queen in other video poker games. Super Aces and Double Double Bonus Poker have something in common in that the Aces are valuable enough that with this start, we keep just the Ace. In Super Aces, the expected return on the Aces is 2.45 coins. The next best option in this game is either Ace-King or Ace-Queen, at an expected return of 2.24 coins. Those plays at least give us a shot at a miracle draw for the other three Aces. And the Aces are what this game is all about. Another worthy addition to the gaming bookshelf is Richard W. Munchkin's Gambling Wizards ($19.95, Huntington Press, 294 pages, softcover). Subtitled "Conversations With the World's Greatest Gamblers," the book collects interviews with eight big players with a wealth of larger-than-life experiences. There's a local connection here. Munchkin is a graduate of Columbia College-Chicago. He has a fascinating group of subjects in poker legend Doyle Brunson, sports bettor Billy Watson, blackjack card counter and team organizer Tommy Hyland, poker Hall of Famer Chip Reese, high-stakes backgammon player Mike Svobodny, poker pro and blackjack pioneer Cathy Hulbert, backgammon player and sports bettor Mike Tomchin and Australian horse bettor and blackjack player Alan Woods, who now does his gambling on the stock market. All have fascinating tales, but the one I really found intriguing was Hulbert, who was counting cards at blackjack at a time not many women played the tables at all. She was part of the Ken Uston card-counting team that hit Atlantic City hard a couple of decades ago, even though Uston himself had serious misgivings about women as blackjack players. There were rough times. She tells of a situation in which she had been barred from playing blackjack in a casino, and the next day carelessly chose the same shift when she went back to play. Hulbert was spotted instantly, and wasn't just asked politely to leave. Security guards grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her head to the craps table and said to her, "Why don't you play some craps with that cheating money of yours? How about some roulette? But don't you ever, ever come into this casino and play blackjack again." |
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