Customer Reviews

Fell's Guide to Casino Gambling

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For those who enter a casino to gamble but do not do their homework first, there is an invisible sign over the front door that reads: Abandon all hope all those who enter. In FELL'S OFFICIAL KNOW IT ALL GUIDE TO CASINO GAMBLING, Dennis Harrison writes some pretty basic advice that will be of interest to those who have not yet examined the more advanced technical books on the subject. Harrison covers the primary casino games: Pai-Gow Poker, Caribbean Stud, Let It Ride, Blackjack, Red Dog, Craps, Baccarat, Keno, Roulette, Slots, and Video Poker. He admits up front that except for Blackjack, no casino game offers even a theoretical player edge. Thus, there is no playing strategy or betting strategy that can compensate for the house edge which varies from game to game. His advice does offer the rather tenuous hope that if you play for a short time--perhaps only a few hours--you can still win modest sums before the house edge kicks in. My own area of expertise is in blackjack, and I have read many texts on it. Harrison is on strong ground on the basics of sitting at a 21 table. The game is more complicated than one might think and he does a good job of explaining the rudiments. He has two tables that I found relevant: the percent of times that a dealer will bust given the dealer's up card and the percent of times that the player will bust given his two cards. These tables are useful in reinforcing the basic strategy, which is always of supreme importance in beginning one's blackjack education. I do have some quibbles with his basic strategy matrices. His advice on doubling both hard and soft hands is inaccurate in a few places. I also disagree with some of his splitting rules. Yet, for the novice, these discrepencies probably will not matter in the short run. I have a bigger beef with his counting section. Card counting is not the key to the casino vault. Even if one were to master the relatively uncomplicated simple Hi-Lo count that he discusses, that in and of by itself is only part of the Big Picture. There is a common stereotype maintained by blackjack authors like Harrison and Hollywood movies like 21 that blackjack card counting involves a roller coaster ride of huge bet variances. The greater the ratio of tens remaining in the shoe to non-tens, the more these authors urge the player to wager. The problem that I see here that Harrison ignores is that when one has a bet variation of more than 1-5 chips (whatever the actual value of a chip may be) the more likely it is that one's starting bankroll will vary enormously, thus necessitating a very large initial bank. If one wants any sense of longevity in this game, then one must learn that underbetting, (flat betting) rather than overbetting is the key. Still, Harrison's guide is a reasonable choice for one's first foray into the world of texts that purport to explain how to play the game.