I have two good friends, “Thelma” and “Louise,” who are married to each other. I’ve been friends with Thelma for more than a decade, Louise about half that long, and Bonnie and I happily attended their wedding last year. Thelma is very bright and has been successful at a number of things. She’s also very […]
Posts in category Video Poker
My Wife Thinks This is Cheating
Dear Mr. Dancer: My wife Doris and I regularly play at a Mid-West casino. I’d rather not tell you which one. Near the end of last year, they had a “Twelve Days of Christmas” promotion which was pretty good. On each of twelve days, if you had an Elite card and played $500 through on […]
How Good Do You Want to Be?
Bonnie and I traveled to Los Angeles several months ago and, among other things, spent an afternoon visiting Margo, a platonic friend of mine going on 35 years. The ladies got along great and the visit reminded me of a story I wrote about Margo several years ago.
Churchill was Right
Winston Churchill was the British Prime Minister during much of World War II. Unlike modern politicians and their political correctness, he smoked a big cigar and enjoyed drinking alcohol in public — sometimes too much so.
Life as a Master
The title of this article is somewhat tongue in cheek. A few years ago, someone called me a master because of something I’ll explain shortly. It occurred to me that many players don’t understand the day-to-day activities of a successful professional player — whether that player deserves to be called a master or not. Striving […]
Breakeven Point Analysis Leads to Some Strange ...
A version of this article first appeared in 1999, but I haven’t written about it for a long time and many of my readers are newer to the game than that and didn’t see it the first time.
Drivers, Pilots, Artists, and Perfectionists
Perhaps twenty years ago, I attended a series of motivational lectures by Dr. William Kerley. Near the end of the last lecture, he spoke of the time when he was hired by Continental Airlines to give classes to their non-pilots on how to deal with pilots. To properly understand what pilots went through, he spent […]
Going Down in Stakes
More than a decade before I started playing video poker, I was doing my best to make it as a backgammon player. In the 1980s, I regularly played at the Cavendish West, located in West Hollywood, California, right where the Sunset Strip met Beverly Hills.
How Do You Figure?
I receive a lot of mail addressed to [email protected]. These are primarily from podcast listeners who hope I can answer one of their questions.
Opportunity versus Circumstance
I recently was reminded of a quote by George Bernard Shaw. “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.”