City

High pairs, low pairs, any pairs are powerful - more powerful than many video poker players realize.

It's not merely that after a draw, pairs can turn into three of a kind, full houses or four of a kind to boost your credit meter.

Click here to read Part 1 of this article

As promised, at the end of this article you will find the questions with the answers to the challenging 21-question test given to the elite blackjack pros at the Blackjack Ball. Give yourself one point for each correct answer. (If you got 12 or more correct, you did better than all the blackjack pros that took the test.)

It was a beautiful evening in Las Vegas for the 22nd Blackjack Ball, co-hosted this year by Max Rubin and Richard Munchkin. The gala was held at a secret location and security was tight.

It' s long been said that the players who get the best deal on the offline and online slots are those who bet bigger. Casinos generally put higher payback percentages on slot machines with higher coin denominations, and at least on three-reel games, payback percentages usually are highest with maximum bets.

One former casino company even had a cartoon character called "Max Coins" to remind players that bigger bets brought increased returns.

James Grosjean has never been one for mincing words or suffering fools. Still, several years ago, when I bragged to him about having strong card counting skills, I couldn’t help but be taken aback by his response. He told me that he thinks of casino advantage players - that is, sharp people who deploy strategies to beat the games - as evolutionary. “Card counters are salamanders crawling out of the water,” one of the most brilliant, most lauded advantage players in history told me.