vpFREE2 Forums

Smart Phones and Gaming Apps

#1

I received the following email today from a knowledgeable friend. I am posting it with permission --- however my friend wishes to remain unnamed.

Hello Bob,

FYI - Using electronic strategy Apps.

Several properties in Colorado will stop your play, and give you one warning.
They cite that Colorado statutes mirror Nevada's.
It is a misdemeanor in Colorado , and a felony in Nevada (they quote).

Bellagio, MGM, Golden Nugget, Palms, and some Station Properties will stop your play at once!

Just not worth the time, expense, and risk of getting trespassed for life, just to test it in court, and be branded a cheat.
(Sounds like an entire show for GWAE with the legal beagle guy!)

Just do it the old fashioned way, practice, practice, practice, and master the game(s),
Or just pull out a Bob Dancer strategy card for those extra difficult hands!

Bob Dancer comments: This is the first I've heard of this. Of the properties my friend listed I only play at the Palms and have never heard of or seen it happen there.

I trust my friend as a knowledgeable reporter. At the same time, if it actually happens at so many different places it strikes me as very strange that I've never heard of it before. I'm not quite sure how to balance these two things.

If anybody else has had personal experience with this I would certainly like to hear about it.

Although I've never used an iPhone video poker APP in a casino, I have used the wizard's video poker strategy calculator --- which will tell you how to play each hand if you know how to read it. I'm not sure how big of a distinction that is.

Using a strategy card you need to accurately distinguish between the following combinations, as an example: QJ9, QJ8, QT9, QT8, Q98. Some are worth considerably more than some of the others. With an iPhone APP, you don't need to know what the differences are. You just need to input the hand correctly.

Although most participants on vpFREE have the ability to correctly read a strategy card, it's not a trivial accomplishment. In my classes I get lots and lots of students who make all sorts of mistakes in identifying card combinations.

You actually have to be quite good to have a strategy card and an iPhone APP be equivalent. And if a casino wanted to press the law literally, using a strategy card is against the law.

I'm not surprised casinos give you warnings first. Were I to get such a warning, I would instantly heed it. (And would recommend others heed warnings as well.)

Bob

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

#2

Bob's friend wrote:

Hello Bob,

FYI - Using electronic strategy Apps.

Several properties in Colorado will stop your play, and give you one warning. They cite that Colorado statutes mirror Nevada's.
It is a misdemeanor in Colorado , and a felony in Nevada (they quote).

I played poker in Cripple Creek, Blackhawk and Central City in 93 and 94. And I returned to Blackhawk for a week in 97. While playing poker in Cripple Creek I got to meet the Colonel. I played poker with him. He was 82 years old. He owned one of those photo shops that catered to summer tourists. He's the one that started the movement to get gambling into the old ghost towns in the mountains. He told me he had read an article about Deadwood, South Dakota gambling and decided that's what Cripple Creek needed.

But Colorado had a very powerful three-term Governor named Roy Romer. He was a Democrat but a staunch Christian. He negated any attempts by the legislature to approve gambling. So the Colonel and others were successful in getting the issue on statewide ballot. The people of the state went over Romer's head and approved gambling in the mountain towns. There was nothing Romer could do at that point-EXCEPT-he had the right to appoint the Gambling Commission.

The Commission turned out to be just like Romer, staunch Christians. They were known for two things: their honesty....and their ignorance of gambling. They copycatted Nevada Gaming Regulations....and added some of their own.

If you were a floorperson in a poker room you were subject to being given a pop quiz by a Gaming Agent at any time. You had to know the poker regulations by heart. And they had a regulation for everything. The good side of that, for me, was any kind of misdealt hands or disputes were handled exactly the same in every poker room. It was the most consistent I've ever seen. But Gaming was a pain in the ass to poker room personnel, they were just as strict on employee's as underhanded customers.

And here is a dirty little secret. When I returned to Blackhawk/Central City in 97, I was armed with Dan Paymar's books, Precision Play and The Best of Video Poker Times, along with strategy cards for various games. I was looking for advantage video poker and advantage slots. The best I found was 10/7 with .5% cashback. No advantage slots.

That wasn't enough to hold me there with the expenses I was running. So I packed my gear up planning to take the bus down the hill that night, then Greyhound it back to Nevada. I went into a little bar/casino in Central City and promtly got drunk on Grand Marnier. Then I took the shuttle down to Blackhawk close to where the buses would be leaving from. I sat down at a bar in one of the joints and had another couple of drinks. Then I got caught up in the Gaming Commission's very strict "no visually impaired persons allowed on the premises" law. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had to leave. I was only 44 then and still willing to bang heads. The short of it is I wound up in jail for the night.

The judge let me go the next morning. So they sent me back to the jail to check out. But the jailer told me that a Gaming Agent put a hold on me. The jailer had gone through my belongings and found the Paymar books and the strategy cards. I could see out the jail cell as the Gaming Agent came in, sat down at a table, took Paymar's books and the strategy cards, and made copious notes on them.

I was still half drunk and at one point I tapped on the window of the cell. The Agent looked up. I yelled "Check out the Flush Attack! It's a pretty strong play!" He just went back to making more notes. Then he got up and left. He came back about an hour later and had them open up the cell.

"You gotta leave town" he said.
"I was planning to anyway."
"C'mon I'll give you a ride down to the buses. You're lucky we don't have you on film using those cards"
"Why?" I asked
"I would have charged you."
"Charged me with what?"
"Using a cheating device."
"You gotta be kiddin' me."
"No. We have strict laws against that sort of thing."
"Are you one of Romer's Christians."
"Something like that."
"Well, you guys don't know anything about gambling."
"Maybe so, but I do know one thing."
"What's that?"
"You're leavin' town!"

He dropped me off at the buses.

#3

5 years ago, we would gamble at the Aquarius in Laughlin. The free wi-fi signal from the Starbucks and the VIP check-in were strong.
I would sit next to my wife at the FPVP and go surfing on the internet on my rather large Toshiba Laptop.

Once needed to plug-in the laptop so left the VP and went to Starbucks for coffee. Got a call from my partner that she got the Royal holding two cards. Glad I wasn't there with my laptop when she did. Opening up a laptop is probably very unacceptable nowadays!

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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Bob Dancer <bobdancervp@...> wrote:

I received the following email today from a knowledgeable friend. I am posting it with permission --- however my friend wishes to remain unnamed.

Hello Bob,

FYI - Using electronic strategy Apps.
                 
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

#4

"No. We have strict laws against that sort of thing."
"Are you one of Romer's Christians."
"Something like that."

Read a book, go to jail.
All part of God's plan.

TC

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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Sent from my iPad
On Jul 15, 2012, at 4:24 AM, "Mickey" <mickeycrimm@yahoo.com> wrote:

#5

And they kicked me out of town for having dangerous video poker propaganda in my possession. No gambling subversives allowed in Blackhawk.

I guess it was a couple of years later that I learned through an Arnold Snyder article in Cardplayer Magazine that Colorado Gaming actually arrested a person in Blackhawk for using a strategy card at a blackjack table. I never did catch the outcome of the case. That's why, with what happened to me, when Bob announced that Arnold was going to be on GWAE, I asked him if he could ask Arnold how the case came out. Arnold said he thought the case got thrown out.

I almost became the first case in Colorado. I wouldn't have layed down on the charge either.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Tabbycat <tabbycat@...> wrote:

Read a book, go to jail.
All part of God's plan.