Bond, James Bond

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Bond, James Bond

          The casino floor is the epitome of the expression “to each his own”.  When guys try to invent games, many think that they can get the casinos to remove all the other games and place just theirs.  This shouldn’t even remotely be the goal, because it isn’t going to happen.  You could give a game away for free and it still won’t happen.  I’ve never taken to Pai Gow Poker or to Baccarat.  I’ve played the former perhaps twice (for a total of 20 hands?) and the latter not at all.  I find the games very slow, and well, boring.  To me, they are the casino equivalent of watching paint dry.  But, these games are very popular overall.  People play hundreds of dollars on a single hand.

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Follow The Leader

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Follow The Leader

           I'm not sure where the idea came from.  But, it would appear that lacking any real knowledge of casino table game strategy, someone came up with the idea of just following what the Dealer does.  In some games, it is not a horrible idea, but it is still not ideal.  In the game of Pai Gow Poker, playing the House Way will get you very close to the best possible payback.  Given what it would take to memorize the few exceptions to the House Way rules would likely cost you more in errors than it would save you in added payback, following the Dealer here is not a bad idea.

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Unperplexing Pai Gow Poker

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Unperplexing Pai Gow Poker

           I remember my first trip to Las Vegas, when I was 18.  It was between my Freshman and Sophomore years at college.  My parents had just announced that they were going to retire to Las Vegas and they wanted my brother and I to see what all the fuss was about.  We stayed at the Tropicana (back when it was still gold and only had one tower!).  The goal of the week was to show us around as much of the city as they could.  Since they were planning on moving here, you would have thought the emphasis was on the residential areas.  We saw that too, but as a first time visitor to Las Vegas, we spent most of the time doing what tourists do and saw about everything there was to see on the strip and downtown.

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The Commish

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The Commish

            Despite being around casinos since I was about 14 years old, I have to admit that it was only the past decade or so that I learned anything about Pai Gow Poker and Baccarat.  All I knew about Baccarat was that James Bond seemed to like to play it and apparently you play it for a lot of money.  With 007 playing it, I always assumed it was a game a lot like blackjack which relied on a good deal of strategy and potentially card counting, which would be why the suave super spy loved it so much.  Little did I know that it is a game of essentially no strategy, albeit there are some similarities to blackjack.

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The Commish

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The Commish

          Despite being around casinos since I was about 14 years old, I have to admit that it was only the past decade or so that I learned anything about Pai Gow Poker and Baccarat.  All I knew about Baccarat was that James Bond seemed to like to play it and apparently you play it for a lot of money.  With 007 playing it, I always assumed it was a game a lot like blackjack which relied on a good deal of strategy and potentially card counting, which would be why the suave super spy loved it so much.  Little did I know that it is a game of essentially no strategy, albeit there are some similarities to blackjack.

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