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229 pages
List Price: $13.95
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Get the Edge at Roulette: How to Predict Where the Ball Will Land!
by Christopher Pawlicki, Frank Scoblete
Customer Reviews
Well researched book with honest advice, March 10, 2002
Reviewer: Wolfram Arnold (San Mateo, CA United States)
Pawlicki's style stands out for its scientific approach and honesty. Yet it is entertaining thanks to anecdotes and historical primers sprinkled throughout the text.
He is faithful to the scientific principle of theory and verification. He delves in a fair bit of statistics to develop expectation values for winnings and confidence levels for a given strategy. With all theory, his text is not a theoretical one, he gives very practical advice. He's not trying to play psychological games with the reader, but is honest in explaining the skill level required for the various strategies he presents. As any well researched, scientific text, he cites relevant literature and gives references.
The author understands the kinematics of the game of roulette, although readers with a college-level background of mechanics may notice the author's imprecise use of terminology. That does not deter from the author's argument though.
The book starts off with a review of the historical origins of roulette and goes quickly into the wheel layout and betting baize. He teaches how to find your way around the wheel and how to cover sectors with a minimum number of chips, "sector slicing." He picks up this topic again later in connection with dealer signatures and presents an easy-to-learn but powerful way to cover quickly every quadrant of the wheel.
His discussion on "mathematical" playing systems and why they fail is elucidating yet not really novel as the fact that the house enjoys a negative edge when the player bets on random outcomes is common knowledge.
The guts of Pawlicki's book center on "physical" aspects of the game--a variety of factors that can produce non-random outcomes or give a predictive edge to the player. The power of its message lies not in any single technique but in a toolbox of strategies that each can apply to different conditions, such as wheel watching, biased wheel play, or dealer signatures. He carefully gauges each technique by the skill level required to apply it, by the edge it provides to the player and by the assumptions underlying it. A little bit of player and casino psychology will come handy in the heat of the battle.
This book has something for everyone: the aspiring professional player, the occasional system player or the recreational player.
My first reading on roulette was a chapter in Jerry Patterson's "Casino Gambling." While interesting and a useful overview of strategies in various casino games, Patterson frequently baits the reader with information that is consistent but incomplete and then refers to his (probably expensive) online gambling classes. In this, Patterson's book remains ultimately dissatisfying. If your interest is in roulette, buy Pawlicki's book. You get much more information and without the rhetoric.
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237 pages
List Price: $12.95
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The Casino Answer Book
by John Grochowski
Customer Reviews
Informative AND easy to read, September 21, 1998
Reviewer: A reader
This is an amazing book. It's so entertaining and easy to read you don't even realize how much you're learning. The author asks questions I'd never even thought of, then he answers them so clearly and logically that I had no trouble absorbing the information. I've read a lot of blackjack books and was never really clear on the whys behind some of the recommendations. With this book, now I know what all the others were talking about.
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336 pages
List Price: $24.95
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American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down---My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World's Casinos
by Richard Marcus
Customer Reviews
Entertaining autobiography of a casino cheater, January 18, 2005
Reviewer: James J. Lippard "skeptic" (Phoenix, AZ USA)
This book tells the author's story of how he lost everything he had gambling, took a crappy job as shill--promoted to baccarat dealer--at the Four Queens in Las Vegas, and then had the opportunity to join a group of gambling cheaters and thieves. The cheating moves described in the book are mostly "pastposting"--placing high bets after the outcome is known by swapping in a new stack of chips for the ones previously bet. The trick is that high-value chips are concealed underneath low-value chips, and the cheater often has to issue a "claim" by pointing out to the dealer that he's been underpaid for the bet. The book begins and ends with a move he calls the "Savannah" which is an opposite maneuver--a high bet is placed, with the high-value chips concealed by lower-value chips, and if the bet loses, the high-value chips are pulled off. With that move, the winning bets are legitimate and surveillance tapes show that the high-value chips were there all along.
The group also would occasionally make money with other scams, like "railing"--stealing directly out of the chip racks of their fellow players. They also narrowly avoid getting involved in a card-marking scheme, violating their own rules of not using any specialized equipment that could be incriminating.
The book is most interesting for the characters involved and how they dealt with "steam" from the casinos when they caught on to what was happening.
The author appears to have no guilt or remorse for his actions on the grounds that casinos are regularly "stealing" from people every day (though that certainly doesn't justify the thefts directly from other gamblers, and ignores that gamblers are willing participants who know the odds are stacked against them).
I read _Bringing Down the House_ about the MIT Blackjack Team about a year and a half ago, and the comparison between the teams is interesting--the MIT team's methodology was far more sophisticated (and wasn't technically cheating), but both had to use similar psychological techniques.
It's surprising that the new online casinos usa didn't come up with better countermeasures quickly (a rule that there are no payouts for high-value chips not announced in advance, for example), but I find Marcus' overall tale quite plausible, in part because of the factors he points out in the last few pages of the book--"practically all casino jobs are monotonous" (p. 369). The boredom results in lack of attention and the jobs' high turnover results in inexperienced people up against very experienced cheaters.
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272 pages
List Price: $12.95
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Casino Gambling : A Winner's Guide to Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Baccarat, and Casino Poker
by Jerry Patterson, Eric Nielsen, "Sharpshooter", Christopher Pawlicki, Sharpshooter
Customer Reviews
An excellent handbook, February 1, 2004
Reviewer: "cperry2" (Brisbane, Australia)
I found this a delightful book. It's very easy to read, covers all the major games, and contains lots of practical, useful advice.
And at less than $20, it's excellent value for money.
My only criticism (a very minor one) is that the Roulette section focuses mainly the "double-zero" wheel, used in the USA. The "single zero" wheel used in Europe and in Australia, doesn't get much coverage.
However, this is a minor issue. Overall I found this an excellent book, containing a wealth of useful advice.
Honestly Good advice, July 9, 2003
Reviewer: Keith M. Allen (Vincent, Ohio United States)
This book gives good advice. For most table games I find it nearly impossible to get the odds in my favor. However, this book gives you some hints for doing just that. I especially thought that the Roulette theory was good. Give this a try if you are new to gambling like I am.
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