zengrifter
Banned
Curtis read his first book on card counting in 11th grade, and that is when he decided he would move to Vegas at 21 to become a professional blackjack player. When he got here he had saved $2,600 to stake his new life. “The first day I won $29, and I was ecstatic. The next day I lost $1,800. I was counting cards playing blackjack, and I just got destroyed."
Always bet on black and white
Anthony Curtis can gamble, but prefers to make his living writing about it
"This was an amazing story.” Anthony Curtis is pumped as he relates something he reported last week in his Las Vegas Advisor consumer newsletter, a bible to gamblers both in Las Vegas and across the globe. Curtis alerted his readers with “great excitement” to a tiny bar on Valley View that had a video poker machine “that ups the return at reset to 100.17 percent ... And, get this—the quads have a progressive meter attached.”
To Curtis, reporting this story was huge. “This is the sort of story that no one in the world does but us,” he says. He is talking to me weeks later in his office, looking at the latest update he had to put on the lasvegasadvisor.com website about this video poker machine. Curtis has to explain to me the excitement about the initial story: “It is a story with the numbers on a video poker game that can return up to 102 percent.” His voice rises when he says this. And he finishes with an emphatic, “That’s a lot!”
But here is the problem with being the most renowned gambling expert in Las Vegas. Perhaps even after reading the above numbers, you may not really understand why this opportunity to play video poker was so amazing for players. Don’t be ashamed—neither did the owner of the bar, who questioned Curtis in detail when another player recognized him.
Curtis, always willing to discuss the underlying math of gambling, explained to the owner exactly why 1 percent matters so much in a game of chance. Or, as he explained it to me, switching to blackjack at the end, his actual game of choice: “If you talk about how people make money playing video poker, they do it by finding situations like this. You have to understand how to read the machine. These are things we teach in LVA, too. You need to learn about gambling. Some will say, what good is 1 percent when the stock market could give you 7 percent? But you put $10,000 in the stock market, you get 7 percent on your investment one time. You put $10,000 on a blackjack table [with a 1 percent advantage], you can go through it again and again and again and again and again.”
But—and this is what frustrates some professional gamblers sometimes—Curtis alerts not only players but also the gambling properties, almost all of whom pay close attention to what Curtis writes about gambling on their premises.
And, unsurprisingly, here is what happened, as happens almost every time Curtis makes a discovery that gives the player an advantage over the house. The next time Curtis came in to play the video poker game, the bar owner, Curtis recalls, the very person to whom he had explained the math behind the machine in such detail, was not thrilled to see this teacher return: “The guy who ran it and who I talked to, who I explained the situation with the game, ran up to me and told me to get the F out of his place. We found out he was kicking everyone out after talking to me. ”
The machine was then adjusted to eliminate the perfect play advantage for players, and, after a reader tip, Curtis informed his subscribers on a lasvegasadvisor.com update that the machine now pays out to players at 97.35 percent. This is no longer a machine of interest to advantaged gamblers; the edge is gone. And, of course, neither players nor the bar are exactly lining up to thank Curtis. Curtis is still irritated at being recognized on his first visit. “I blew my cover. I didn’t do it on purpose.” But he says nothing about regretting explaining the game to the owner, because explaining the intricacies of gambling in Las Vegas is what Anthony Curtis does, and not just to those who subscribe to the Advisor. Curtis’ real influence as a gambling expert comes from being the king of all media covering Las Vegas on the topic.
It might not be fair to call Curtis the only consumer gambling expert on Vegas, but no one else approaches his profile.
MORE- http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/may/07/always-bet-black-and-white/