13 May 2008 - 10:29Maneuvering

Whenever the tournament format restricts the session to a fixed amount of time, the players who get in the most amount of pulls or spins have the advantage. Here are three strategy tips from the Las Vegas Advisor for playing in a “timed” tournament:
- Prepare. Before playing, familiarize yourself with the combinations that produce large payoffs and rest when you hit one. Take care, however, to resume play as soon as the meter stops registering credits. Players who sit for close to a minute without realizing that their machine is ready to play again aren’t uncommon.
- Play fast. Stay focused and concentrate on your own play. If you stop in the middle of a round to cheer for someone else who’s hit a jackpot, you reduce your own spin total.
- Conserve energy. If you frantically pound the spin button, even when the credits are tallying, you tire and lose spins. Tapping the button lightly is more efficient.
The preceding tips help give you an edge, but the best strategy is to look for tournaments that have overlays (see “Taking advantage of overlays” earlier in this chapter) or other enticements. In addition, many tournaments routinely offer free rooms, hats, T-shirts, or some meals, all of which add extra value to the event.

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13 May 2008 - 10:26Slot and Video-poker tournaments

Slot tournaments are popular because they retain the fun and competitive elements of a sporting event but require little or no skill. Video poker, on the other hand, does offer some mental challenge. Slot and video-poker tournaments differ from table-games tournaments in several aspects. You start with a fixed amount of credits rather than chips, and play either for a set time (usually 10 to 30 minutes) or for a certain number of spins. The object is to accumulate as many credits as possible, so hitting big jackpots or royal flushes is the ticket to winning.

In slots and other machine games, you typically compete against all other players in that session. For example, 50 players compete in the round, and the overall ten highest scores from that session advance to the next round.

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6 May 2008 - 10:18Calculating the Odds in Casino Games

If you’re good at math, you often can detect when the casino payout odds are lower than true odds (see the section “Factoring in the odds” earlier in this chapter). With dice, for example, you have 36 different combinations, and the odds are 35-to-l for each combination. But with other games, the odds can be impossible to calculate. Take casino slots, for example: The thousands of possible reel combinations and ever-changing progressive jackpots make it difficult for anyone to calculate the odds of winning.

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