Video Poker Beginnings

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Video Poker Beginnings

            This past week, with my son in town, I found myself sitting at a blackjack table.  When I was in my 20's that is what I played when I went in to the casino.  It had a good payback (99%+) and it required a fair amount of skill in the form of strategy to earn this payback.  When video poker came along, I slowly found myself playing more of that and less blackjack.  Nowadays, I almost never sit at the blackjack table except when my son is in town and drags me over.  My experience this past week only reinforced why this is so. 

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Analyzing Games

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Analyzing Games

            I was asked this past week about the process of analyzing a game.  I was caught a little off guard when I was asked in front of a room full of people.  My answer was probably a little jumbled.  But now, with some time to think about it some more, I think I can explain it better.  The real trick is not coming up with the payback of win frequencies.  What I'm really in search of is the proper strategy for the Player to play.

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The Big Fish

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The Big Fish

          If you wanted to learn how to hit a baseball who would you go to?  Personally, I'd want a lesson from Keith Hernandez.  As a die hard Mets' fan, I hear him on the broadcasts about hitting and the guy knows what he is talking about.  Combine that with his lifetime .300 batting average and his overall stats and I think my decision makes sense.  The bottom line is that I'm going to an accomplished major league HITTER for advice.  While there are many others you could go to, if you told me you wanted to talk to Ruben Tejada (a lifetime .250 hitter?), I'd really have to question your judgment.

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Leave the Math to the Professionals

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Leave the Math to the Professionals

           I've always been good at math.  Well, at least for as long as I can remember.   When I was 8 or 10 years old, this meant that I could quickly add numbers together.  When I got to my pre-teens, it meant that I could quickly multiply numbers together.  I still have these skills.  I pretty much take them for granted and admittedly sometimes am amazed that most everyone else can't do the same.  I don't expect everyone to be able to multiply two 2-digit numbers together, but the numbers of times I'll hear someone ask something like what's 500 divided by 25 and not be able to do the math in a split-second is mind boggling to me.

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Risk Reward

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Risk Reward

            A few months ago, I had the opportunity to observe a focus group that was reviewing several new table games.   My area of expertise is the math and some of the technical constructs of a game.  I have to admit that if I have any weakness in game design it is in getting inside other Player's heads to see the game the way they do.  I like games that require you to think.  As soon as I sit down to play a new game, the math concepts of the game start going through my head and I try to figure out what the strategy is and/or how I would go about analyzing the game to get to that strategy.  In other words, my thought patterns about a new game are probably very different from the average Player.

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Tips for Inventors

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Tips for Inventors

 When I decided to go into gaming analysis more than a decade ago, I did my best to tell prospective clients that I wasn't just "the math guy", but rather a true consultant.   I'm now in my late 40's, and I started doing this professionally in my mid 30's.  But, I've been doing this for 'fun' for over 30 years.  It started by programming the high school computer to analyze blackjack.  I started going to Atlantic City casino (with my parents) when I was in my mid teens.  They bought me a fake ID so that I could get in without issue.  My first trip to Las Vegas was when I was 18.  Hopefully the statue of limitations has run out on these offenses.

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Different Strokes

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Different Strokes

           Over the years, I've worked with a lot of inventors and seen a lot of games.  Most of the games never made it into a casino at all.  While casinos are more receptive to new games today than they were years ago, the odds of getting your game into a casino are pretty long.  The odds of the game being successful are even longer.  If you look at the games that are in the casino, most of them are poker based and nearly all the rest are blackjack variants.  Once in a while, I'll get an inventor who will try and convince me how desperately the casino needs a game based on neither of those - whether it be dominoes, backgammon, 3 dice or a 14-sided die.

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