My History in Video Poker

[mickey crimm]

I've been requested to write on video keno plays I've had and will do so when time permits. 

[mickey crimm]

I just received a PM asking if I know Ron Harris  No I don't know hin personally.  But I know who he is.  Ronald Dale Harris.  It's my business to know who he is.  But I dont' like the inference by the person who sent me the PM.  You kind folks must understand.  Anyone who accuses me of being a cheater is playing with their own life.  I WILL NOT TOLERATE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I use legitimate strategy and all available information.  Those of us who have been in this racket for so long understand one thing:  You must conduct yourself with honor.   And any idiot who can't figure that out should be summarily executed. 

[oej719]

I can just about guess who sent you that. Was it this bozo wizard?

[royal flush]

i like your style u like i are trying to gain advantage on various games from waiting to attack the bonus slots when bonus is reached to mistakes in setting games. i played 21 when game was good now live poker on weekends and some vp although vp only small advantage

[mickey crimm]

When I got home last night I read that PM and it sent the steam rolling out of my ears.  It didn't help that I had 2 Budweisers and five shots of V.O. in me.  I'm known for overreacting when I got a little booze in me.  While I'm too old to fight anymore I can still spew verbal venom with the best of them.  Perhps it was just an innocent question and I overreacted. 
If so then I apologize. 
 
This is what I know about Ronald Dale Harris.  He worked for the Nevada Gaming Commission.  He was somewhat of a computer genius. 
 
 He set up machines in casinos where he could could use a betting pattern, something like this:  bet one coin, then bet three coins, then bet two coins, then bet five coins and voila!  A royal flush appeared on that five coin hand.  He only did it on quarter machines where the royal paid $1000 so he wouldn't get any W2-G's and leave a paper trail. 
 
One of his duties was sitting around the Lab trying to crack RNG's.  I guess the reasoning was if an NGC programmer with insider knowledge couldn't crack them then no one else could.  Harris did somwhat crack an RNG but didn't inform his superiors. 
 
He took a friend to Atlantic City.  I don't remember which casino was involved.  Their live Keno didn't use balls and a Keno tank.  They used RNG's to produce the numbers.  And as you know, in most casinos you can sit up in your hotel room and watch the keno games on TV. 
 
Evidently, Harris could get a good idea of what numbers would appear next by looking at the numbers of the current game.  Harris sat up in the room watchng the numbers and sent his friend down to the Keno lounge.  His friend had some kind of audio device in his ear.  Harris fed him some numbers and the friend wrote the tickets and made the bets.  Voila!!!  He hit a ticket for $100,000. 
 
Now, this is another example of dumb genius.  Anytime a jackpot of that size is hit there is always at least a cursory investigation by casino personnel.   His friend DIDN'T EVEN HAVE HIS ID ON HIM!!!!  Bumbling crooks!!!  Security took him up to his room to get his ID.  And there sat Ron Harris, NGC employee, along with some computer equipment laying around. 
 
Dumb and Dumber!!!
 
Ron did some time in the klink, and he made the Black Book.  He's banned from all Nevada casinos.  I think he still lives in Las Vegas. 
 
I've posted about some of the shenanigans I've seen going on in casinos, like the overpayer guys.  I even know 3 former slots cheats.  Slot cheats abounded in the days of the old mechanical slots.
 
One friend, Allen, told me the story of him getting caught stringing in the Horseshoe.  (Stringing is drilling a hole in a coin or toke and tying a string to it.  Then you just drop the coin in the coin slot and keep pulling it up and down to register bets.  It doesn't work on today's modern equipment.)  They took him down in the basement and asked him "do you want us to call Gaming or take an ass whooping?"  He said "give me the ass whooping."  They were beating him up pretty good when Jack Binion stuck his head in the door and said "break his f...... ribs!!!"  To  which they obliged. 
 
In defense of the heavy handed tactics of the Horseshoe at the time, in those days houses were losing up to 20% of their win to slot cheats.  And it was very hard to get convictions.  The beatings Benny Binion gave the Vegas slot cheats sent a clear message:  Stay the hell out of the Horseshoe!!!!
 
Allen was one of the lucky ones.  He never did time at Indian Sprigs.  And he reformed himself.  He went straight and became an advantage player. 
 
One of the other friends, Tom,  related the story of the blue lights to me.  This was some kind of pin light that when shined up the coin chute blinded the coin counter and the hopper would empty out.  Two guys would go into a neighborhood bar on graveyard shift when it was slow.  These bars had bartop video pokers.  One guy would get on a machine on one end of the bar and the other guy would get on a mahine on the opposite end. 
 
Then one of them would get the bartender into a conversation while the other guy used the blue light to empty his  machine.  Then that guy would tie the bartender up with cashing out while the other guy emptied his machine with the blue light. 
 
Tom eventually went straight too.  But not until after he did 5 years at Indian Springs.  They broke him of the habit. 
 
The other friend did two stretches of a year and a half at Indian Springs before they broke him of the habit.  I met all of these guys long after their slot cheating careers were over.  But they had some colorful stories to tell. 
 
I've been in the casinos for 17 years now.  While I have known of some shady things going on I myself have never ever done anything illegal in a casino.  And I never will.  In the words of the Cincinnatti Kid "I don't have to cheat to win."
 
 

[mickey crimm]

STATELINE, NEVADA--A KID IN A CANDY STORE
I was in and out of South Shore Lake Tahoe from early 1998 until early 2000.  I was there at the millenium.  This is what the inventory looked like when I got there. 
 
Harrah's
Williams, Silicon, and IGT advantage slots. 
Video Poker:  10 unlinked Flush Attacks, quarter and dollar Bonus Playoff, Jackpot Cards, quarter and dollar FPDW
 
Casear's
Williams, Silicon, and IGT advantage slots
Video Poker:  Deuces Deluxe, 6 unlinked Flush Attacks, 4 unlinked House A Rockin', 2 unlinked Maxx, quarter and dollar Bonus Playoff
 
Harvey's The Meter Capitol of the World.  At least it was then. 
Silicon advantage slots
Video Poker: Jackpot Cards, quarter and dollar Bonus Playoff; Mountain Bar progressive,  Player's Bar progressive, 7-6-5-4 Jacks or Better progressives everywhere,  Deuces Deluxe. 
 
Bill's
Video Poker:  6 unlinked Flush Attacks
 
Lakeside
Video Poker; 6 unlinked flush Flush Attacks, quarter Bonus Playoff
 
Horizon
Video Poker:  8 unlinked Flush Attacks
 
It was pretty tough to sweep thru all those Flush Attacks in one day.  But I usually didn't try to do that.  My start everyday centered around the Mountain Bar and Player's Bar progressives in Harvey's. 
 
The Mountain Bar was 6/5 Bonus Poker with 1% meters on the 4 Aces, Small Quads, and Generic Quads.  I jumped in if the Generic Quad Meter hit $225.  That put the game at breakeven, plus the extra money in the premium quad meters, plus 3% worth of meters running while I was playing.  I also jumped in if the Small Quad meter hit $500, or if the 4 Aces meter hit $1200. 
 
The Player's bar was 6/5 Jacks with a 2% Quad meter, a 1.25% Straight Flush meter, and a 1% Royal meter.  My standard play was to jump iwhen the Quad meter doubled. 
 
When I first found these games I had just gotten to Tahoe for the first time and was a stranger to the local pros.  I was getting snide remarks because I was jumping in and getting my share of the quads.  Remarks like "who the hell is that?", "where did he come from?", etc.  But I guess they finally figured out I wasn't going anywhere.  I eventually made friends with them. 
 
We all had similar numbers where we would jump into the game.  You had to buy tokes from the bartender and handfeed but the machines held credits.  When a number developed we would all go flying to the bar, buy 3 or four hundred apiece in tokes and play like a bat out of hell for the quad.  When someone hit the quad you would hear:  Clang!  Clang! Clang! all up and down the bank as we all hit the cashout buttons at  the same time.  Then we racked up, cashed out, and went about other business. 
 
I was a regular in the 10-20 Holdem game on Friday and Saturday nights.  The poker room sat right next to the Player's Bar.  Several of us were always eyeballing the meters at the bar.  Many a time the holdem game went down as we all bolted to the bar for the quad race.  The dealer would sit there patiently waiting for one of us to hit the quad, then the holdem game was back on. 
 
One evening I walked into Harvey's to catch the Mountain Bar 4 Aces at $1200.  I jumped in.  Several locals pros were already there.  The 4 Aces ran away on us.  It went on for hours.  I was over $1000 stuck and the 4 Aces just topped $2400 when I held 2 Aces and caught the other two.  I actually came in fourth for the money that night as three royals were hit during this race.  The record runaway for the 4 Aces was $3600. 
 
With no number on the dollar progressives I would check the quarter progressives, make a bonus machine lap  trying to find a little easy money, then sweep out a bank of Flush Attacks in one of the joints, then make a bonus machine lap, then sweep out another bank of Flush Attacks, then go check the progressives, etc, etc.
 
Harvey's also had several quarter banks of 7-6-5-4 Jacks.  The payscale looked like this: 
 
RF........................800 plus 1% Royal meter
SF..........................50 plus 1.25% SF meter
4K..........................25 plus 2% Quad meter
FH...........................7
FL............................6
ST........................... 5
3K............................4
2P............................1
HP............................1
 
I looked for a $70 quad to jump into this game.  This game was in some of the bars, a few slant top banks out on the floor, and a few upright banks on the walls. 
 
Harvey's put multi-game machines in the Mountain Bar and Player's Bar in the summer of 1999.  The progressives were still there but buried up with the other games so the plays got hard to come by. 
 
That same summer Harvey's advertised on TV and all the local rags that bartop royals would pay double all the way to Labor Day Weekend.  There were 9/6 Jacks in the multi-game machines.  We switched back and forth from the 9/6 Jacks to the progressives depending on where the numbers were.  Guess how long the promotion actually lasted.  THREE DAYS!!!  They cried uncle. 
 
You would think Lake Tahoe would be an expensive place to live.  But it wasn't.  Harrah's and Harvey's butted right up to the California line.  On the California side there were dozens of Mom and Pop hotels.  A hustler could get a nice room with king size bed, cable, refrigerator/microwave for $100 to $130 a week.  And, of course, I ate for free in the casinos off my slot cards.  Harrah's had an upscale deli on the California side of the casino.  Some nights I would make it  my last stop  before calling it quits for the night. They kept my refrigerator well stocked, comped, of course. 
 
Stateline is pretty much a video poker wasteland now.  Too bad.
 
 
 

[royal flush]

try live poker on weekends like me omaha 8 or better check it out you will be a solid player with emotional self control as long as no booze during play

[mickey crimm]

try live poker on weekends like me omaha 8 or better check it out you will be a solid player with emotional self control as long as no booze during play

I never drink when I'm working. 

[royal flush]

i did not think so

[oej719]

I never work when I am drinking.