Dear Mark: Per your advice, I’m learning blackjack on a video machine at 25 cents a hand versus live play at $5 a hand. I was wondering if I am allowed to use a blackjack strategy card in the casino while I play? Does it matter how many coins I put in? Any other advice would be appreciated. Paul G.

One of the primary reasons for blackjack’s immense popularity is that when played with skill, it offers the best odds of all casino games. Blackjack also offers two sweet little bonuses. You are paid an extra half of your bet on natural blackjacks—no skill or monetary risk involved—and you get to put more money down on favorable doubles and splits. As long as you select the correct video blackjack machine, these rules still apply even against a cybernetic one-armed bandit.

As for using a blackjack strategy card, yep, it’s absolutely allowed, and a must for newbies learning the game. As in the table game, the idea behind using basic strategy is to reduce the casino's advantage, and by using a blackjack strategy card you can whittle the house edge down to less than 1%.

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Have you ever heard of a blackjack game where you are allowed to switch cards between two of your own hands? My friend says he’s played it, but I can’t believe a casino would allow you to do it. Tim A.

Yes, Tim, there is such a game where casino allows the players to do what would normally put them in the slammer, swap cards between two hands.

Called Blackjack Switch, it is a mutant form of blackjack where a player is dealt two hands and is allowed to trade cards between hands.

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Three-card Poker -- for any reader who may have forgotten -- is a poker-based game that uses just three cards per hand and is played on a blackjack table using a 52-card deck. The differences from standard poker are: no further cards are drawn, and players do not compete against each other, but against either the dealer, or against a posted payout schedule.

It’s not only the easiest poker game, but by using a very simple strategy, the house edge drops as low as 2.01%.

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by Mark Pilarski

Dear Mark: Do you have any blackjack money management tips on how to discipline myself on holding on to winnings? It seems all the money I win ends up back in the dealer’s tray. Hardy K.

Teaching people to walk away with some vestige of their winnings can be an exercise in futility. Excuse me while I sigh and roll my eyes. A writer for the Journal of Experimental Psychology I am not. But I can offer you a money management tip that, if you make – no, if you KEEP -- the pledge to stick with it, will work wonders in your ability to leave with a profit.

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by Mark Pilarski

Video poker is based on the classic game Five Card Stud, which challenges players to compose the best possible five-card hand. The player is dealt five cards with the option of discarding any or all of them for replacement with newly dealt cards. Although video poker and Five Card Stud are kissing cousins, good video poker players don’t necessarily make for good poker players, and vice versa.

There are many important differences, Gary, between video poker and its table game relative. For starters, video poker payoffs are based on a scale, paying players for hands as low as a pair of tens or Jacks all the way up to a Royal Flush.

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by Mark Pilarski

Don’t try to go blotto on me and forget to attach those W2-G’s along with your occupation’s W-2 form(s) because any single-win amount in gambling over $1,200, is required to be reported to the IRS by the casino. Luckily, you can offset the taxes on your win(s) by reporting your losses if you keep flawless records.

Gambling losses, so long as you itemize rather than take the standard deduction on your tax return, can be used only to counterbalance gambling wins during that same tax period. So even though your overall losses for the year are $4,700, to date, you can deduct only $2,700 of your total losses in the Other Miscellaneous Deductions section on your Schedule A.

by Mark Pilarski

Let It Ride is a variation of five-card stud poker where the player wagers on a poker hand consisting of three cards in the player's hand and two community cards in the dealer’s hand.

Play begins with each player making three bets of equal denomination in spaces labeled (1), (2) and ($). The dealer then gives each player three cards, and two community cards are dealt face down. After seeing his or her first three cards, each player has the option of pulling back their first bet, or, as the game is eponymously named, saying “Let it ride.”

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Click to Enlarge.The Mega Moolah progressive jackpot has reached and surpassed the $5 million mark.Mega Moolah is a five reel, twenty five payline, and one hundred and twenty-five coin slot machine. The multiple paylines increase your chances of winning.

Mega Moolah has a wild, multiplier symbol, a scatter symbol, a Free Spins bonus game and a randomly activated Mega Moolah Progressive Jackpot bonus game.

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