Page 8 - Jackpot Magazine South ~ August, 2023

PLAY TO WIN
Dumb luck in the casino is better than no luck
“I stopped trying to understand fate and destiny a long time ago, but dumb luck seems to be my specialty.”
~ Singer Dave Grohl
Slot machines used to be rather simple. There were some fruits and some bars, maybe some large 7s, on the reels and when three of the symbols matched on a straight line it was a winner. Simple, huh?
As the years went by and technology increased, three reels became five or more and the fruits, bars and 7s became pandas, butterflies, princesses and even Willy Wonka or Quick Hit symbols. What about those wins with the symbols all in a straight line? Well, forget that. Now wins come in all sorts of patterns and designs and you don’t necessarily need three to win.
The best thing to do when playing a slot machine that is unfamiliar to you is to go through it and see what the winning lines and symbols are. Find out how what happens when you get more than
three of a kind or a special
symbol that takes you into a
whole new game. You do this
by pressing the buttons on
the machine that say “More
Games” and “Game Info.”
Of course, doing this might not
give you all the information you need, as Henry Tamburin, gaming expert and author of many best-selling books on gambling, including Blackjack: Take the Money and Run, found out. Tamburin once talked about the dumb luck he had playing a game he had never seen before. In a past column in Jackpot!, he shared how he switched to a new machine and saw the main screen was not what he was used to. He hit the buttons and... well, I’ll let him explain what happened.
Tamburin recalled, “I’ve had some wild experiences in casinos throughout my 30-plus years of gambling but nothing like
what happened to me
recently. Here’s the true
story. My father-in-law
and I were playing video
poker on two adjacent
machines. He was steadily winning and I was steadily losing.
I don’t normally change video poker machines when I’m losing. But for some unknown reason I got the urge to move to the machine to my right. It was similar to the machine that my father-in-law and I were playing so I hit the cash out button on my machine, grabbed my payout ticket, moved one seat over and inserted the ticket and my players card into the new machine.
The credits registered just like they were supposed to. But on my display screen was a game I had never seen before. It wasn’t a video poker or a slot game. The screen showed a lot of vertical numbers. For a moment I thought it was an electronic
keno game but it didn’t look like any electronic keno game I was familiar with. No sweat, I thought, I’ll just touch the More Games button on the bottom of screen and it will take me to the main screen where I can select the video
poker game that I was anxious to play.
But something wasn’t quite right. I touched the More Games button but nothing happened. Strange. I touched it again, in fact several times, but still nothing happened. Something seemed to be amiss here because normally when you touch this
button it returns you to main screen.
I was starting to get frustrated because I had my money loaded into the machine and I wanted to play some video poker but the darn machine wouldn’t cooperate. I was perplexed as to why the button wasn’t working and this unknown game was still on my screen. I noticed another button on the bottom of the screen labeled Game
Info, so I touched it and again nothing happened. Now I was getting angry so I started touching both buttons back and
forth when all of a sudden, to my surprise the game started to play.
I watched in shock as different numbers lit up on my screen of this unknown game. I certainly didn’t want to play this game that I knew nothing about but, dang, here I was unknowingly playing it. Now I was starting to get upset with myself because I didn’t have a clue how much I bet on this game (heck, I didn’t even know how I started the game or how it works).
Then suddenly the numbers stopped lighting up and music started to play. I stared at the screen wondering what was going on when the word Jackpot appeared in large letters at the top of my screen. I was in a state of shock!
I finally turned to my father-in-law and said, ‘You are not going to believe this, but I just hit a jackpot on a game that I know nothing about.’ He thought I was joking but within a few seconds $4,200 in big numbers appeared on the screen. I had just somehow hit a $4,200 jackpot on a game that I had no idea what it was or how to play it.
It turned out I was unintentionally playing a 25-cent multi-keno game and I must have accidentally touched the play button when I was trying to go back to the main screen (at least that’s my theory of what happened). I never play multi-keno games simply because from my past experiences with electronic keno, the house edge, with a few exceptions, is too high.”
So, what’s the moral to this story? Tamburin is a firm believer that to be a smart casino player you’ve got to play the games that offer the best odds with sound playing strategies and understand what you are playing. But, as his experience showed, sometimes a little bit of dumb luck helps.
Play To Win Again
The Best of... Series
8 JACKPOT! MAGAZINE • August 2023
THE SOUTH’S LARGEST GUIDE TO GAMING & FUN • www.jackpotmagazine.com