Funny, you should ask the question.
when my Dad (Lenny) retired to Las Vegas with my Mom, he certainly
never figured he'd wind up doing what he wound up doing (becoming
the 'godfather' of video poker!). They went to retire. He knew he
could never sit around and do nothing, so he bought himself a
computer (an Atari 520 ST) and began to teach himself some
programming.
For those of you who recall, the Atari and the Compaqs that came out
then were among the first of the color monitors and color printers
and now you could 'print those gorgeous pictures in color'. Well,
in theory, anyways. They had the monitor and they had the printer
but someone forgot to write working software that moved the picture
from the monitor to the printer.
So, my Dad literally 'dumped' one of the picture files and came up
with the scheme used for storing the colors. He then figured out
how to send that information to his printer. Basically, he coded
the first printer driver for color printers for an Atari 520 ST.
One problem, it took like 12-15 hours to print one picture! So, he
started looking for compilers for the Atari Basic he was using. I
came out to LV from college and started cleaning up the code, and by
the time we were done it was down to 12 minutes (for 1986 or so, not
too bad).
My Dad was sure he had found his new 'retirement' profession. He
would rent one of those kiosks in the mall and print color pictures
on calendars, t-shirts, etc... Hence, COMPUTER FLYERS or Compu-
Flyers. Over the next year, he found those first video poker
machines with identical paytables but supposedly different paybacks,
and my Dad chose to spend his time working on that. Las Vegas has
never been the same since!
I use the same name for the company, because, it is still the SAME
company. My Dad set up the company and registered the name and all
that stuff and never bothered to change it when his work went
towards gambling. Oh well.
Thanks for your kind words about my Dad. I know he strived very
hard to be the 'playerspal' his old prodigy ID identified him as.
Be well
Elliot
Elliot, I always wondered what 'compuflyers' refers to. I recall
the late
Lenny Frome used that (your father?) too. As an aside, I'm glad
to see you
posting here. I learned a great deal from Lenny Frome's work and
always
appreciated the times when he would occasionally post in the old
Prodigy Las Vegas BB.
I'm sure I've still got some of his books around the house.
Bill in Henderson
In a message dated 4/24/2005 2:29:20 PM Pacific Standard Time,
compuflyers@p... writes:
The title is Winning Strategies for Video Poker. it can also be
found at Amazon.Com, Bn.com or thru our website at
www.vpheaven.com.
···
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, ezfromnwon@a... wrote:
Thanks
Elliot Frome
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