| I've seen loads of players make more common mistakes, such as splitting 5s, splitting 10s and standing on 16 when the dealer shows a 7. Despite all the strange plays I've seen, I was taken aback not long ago when a fellow in his 30s signaled to hit his hard 17--a 9 and an 8--with the dealer showing a 10. The dealer certainly wasn't expecting it. "You have 17," he pointed out to the player, who insisted he wanted another card. Other players at the table groaned. One woman tried to tell the man he should never hit hard 17. He wouldn't budge. The dealer called out "Hitting hard 17!" and a pit supervisor strolled over to watch the strange play. Out of the shoe came a 6--the player busted, the dealer rolled his eyes, the supervisor shrugged and walked way. And, as it happened, the dealer had a 3 face down, drew a 9 and busted. The last draw before the dealer was a 10, so he'd have busted regardless of whether the fellow with the 17 had decided to hit or stand. Nevertheless, that the dealer did bust and the rest of the table won probably saved one poor player from a tongue-lashing from the less tolerant folks at the game. That would have been that had it been an isolated case of poor judgement. It wasn't. A few minutes later, he hit hard 18 against a 10. And a few hands after that, he hit hard 17 against a 9. By now the table was restless, the dealer was puzzled and the pit supervisor was half piqued, half curious as to why he was being called over so often for these odd decisions. Pressed to explain, the player detailed a method behind all this madness. "You have to assume the dealer has a 10 down, right? That's what he'll have most of the time," he said. "When he has a 10 up, then that's a 20, and I'd better hit 17, or I'm going to lose it most of the time." At that point, the others at the table did get on his case, trying to explain that he was costing himself a lot of money. The dealer told him the face down card wasn't a 10 as often as he thought, and the pit boss said there was a lot of good advice at the table, and the fellow would do well to follow it. I kept silent through the episode. The last thing the guy needed was one more voice telling him his plays were awful. But if he'd come to me later on, I'd have explained that there was a fault in his basic assumption. It is more likely that the dealer will have a 10-value card face down than a card of any other denomination. After all, there are four 10-values--King, Queen, Jack and 10--for every card of any other denomination. But it's quite a leap to say the dealer will have a 10 down "most of the time." There are nine denominations of cards that are not 10-values, and only four that are. The dealer will have a 10 face down 4/13--or 30.8 percent--of the time. That's nowhere near enough to base a strategy on the assumption that the dealer will have a 10 down. Having looked at the latest wares from most of the major slot manufacturers lately, I've been eager to move on to other topics again. It appears I was a little too eager for some tastes. A couple stopped me in a casino, and the woman let me know she wanted more. "Isn't there anything new from Aristocrat?" she asked. "The Aristocrat games are our favorites." Her husband nodded in agreement, and I told them a little of what I'd seen from Aristocrat at the Global Gaming Expo in September. Aristocrat, an Australian firm that has found success throughout the United States, is a pioneer in multiline bonus slots, and this couple's request wasn't the only one I've received. Several others have come via e-mail. So let's get back on the new games beat for one last week. Aristocrat's big push this time around is toward a random bonus feature using a character called "Mr. Cashman"--a smiling gold coin with top hat and white gloves. Mr. Cashman links several machines, just as many progressive systems link several machines to a common jackpot. But with Mr. Cashman, the link is for a bonus event, rather than for a big jackpot. There are five bonus rounds on the link. Mr. Cashman is designed to go with several base games and each also has its own bonus round. On an average of once every 40 spins at the whole bank of machines, the link brings the extra bonus to one machine. Three of the link bonuses are second-screen events. In one, Mr. Cashman has the player choose between a box containing free spins and a bag holding bonus credits. Another shows 10 stars on the screen--the player touches stars, revealing numbers of credits or free spins, until two stars match. The matching stars determine the bonus. A third second-screen event has Mr. Cashman pull the handle on a slot machine to show a bonus amount. Two of the bonus rounds are played out on the first screen. On one, Mr. Cashman points to the credit meter to add bonus credits, and on the other he picks reels to give another spin. |
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