Review of Robbing the One-Armed Bandits
- Title:
- Robbing the One-Armed Bandits
- Author:
- Charles W. Lund
- Publisher:
- RGE Publishing
- Date:
- 1999
- ISBN:
- 0-910575-10-X
- Pages:
- 150
- Price:
- $14.95
May 8, 2000
Recent years have brought something I never thought I'd see in my life,
the true professional slot machine player. In their quest to be ever more
seductive and appealing, the slot manufacturers have begun
producing machines that will "bank" some sort of credit that is
accumulated until it pays off. If enough of these credits
have been banked, the slot machine will turn from a negative expectation
game to a positive one. Robbing the One-Armed Bandits
is a book about how to find and exploit these machines.
Lund, a frequent contributor to Blackjack Forum, starts the
book with a basic introduction to banking slot machines, slot clubs, and
casino responses to this new breed of "slot pro". The information is
brief, but sufficient, and the reader is recommended good sources to
obtain more detailed information.
Next, the author begins listing banked slot machines, and indicates at
what point
he believes they yield a positive expectation. Lund freely admits that
his math is based on estimates, which he explains in a little more but
not overly technical detail in the Appendix, but I find his methods
sound. Frankly, I think he could have risked getting even more mathematical
for those who are inclined that way, but this is not a major gripe.
The listing of each type
of machine gets more than a little repetitive, though, with many games being
functionally identical to each other despite some variation in name and
outward appearance. However, due to a convenient table at the end of the
book, the reader doesn't need to constantly refer to the text, but even the
first time through it can get to be a bit of a chore.
The book then provides a section on "clean up" material, covering slot machine
anomalies, cheating scams, etc.. There is certainly a continuum of experience
ranging from ethical opportunist on one end, passing through legal angle
shooter in the middle, ending up with cheating criminal on the other end.
For my tastes, Lund drifts further into the gray area than I would like,
but he's careful to not recommend outright cheating. Even though early
in the book he tells the reader that he's not a legal expert, he does
present some legal opinions on some of his tactics as more factual than
might be prudent.
Nonetheless, this is a breakthrough book that exposes a new realm of
profitable casino play.
While not always a great read, it is far and away the best book on the
topic and worth looking through. There are a few more flaws, Lund's extremely
brief, yet, in my opinion, inappropriate, coverage of video poker and video
blackjack, and I believe he understates the amount of effort necessary to
find profitable machines, but I recommend the book for the good information
it does provide.
Capsule:
Lund's book is a breakthrough into a new realm of profitable casino play.
There is much about the book I would have written differently, but his
observations are solid and his methodology seems very valid. Some of his
suggestions get a little more ethically murky than I'm comfortable with,
and the text filled with lists of machines gets dry after a while, but the
charts showing when which machines become advantageous are worth the cost
of the book alone.
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