Gambling With an Edge - guest Bob Nersesian 2

Bob Nersesian returned this week, and was as passionate and interesting as his first visit.  This week we discuss your rights in Indian casinos, (you have none) silver mining (whether it is legal for you to take credits you find in a slot machine), earning comps under a fake name, and much more. Click the podcast link on the right to hear his first visit, and the interview link to see my print interview with Bob.

Bob Nersesian podcast 2

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Gambling With an Edge - guest Steve Cyr

Our guest this week was Steve Cyr, Super host. He is the subject of the book, Whale Hunt in the Desert which contains many of his crazier exploits.  On the show we talk about loss rebates for big players, his controversial quote, "Stars are stiffs," and what a host can do for you.

Steve Cyr podcast

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Gambling With an Edge - guest Michael Konik

Our guest tonight was Michael Konik.  Michael is an actor, singer, and painter, but mostly Michael is a writer.  For over 5 years he was the gambling writer for Cigar Aficionado magazine, and has written 7 books.  Tonight was focus on his book, The Man With the $100,000 Breasts.  The title character won a $100,000 bet by putting in breast implants and keeping them for one year.  It is now 15 years later and he still has the implants!  What is up with that?

Michael Konik podcast

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Gambling With an Edge - guest Steve Fezzik

Our guest on the show this week is sports handicapping legend, Steve Fezzik.  Steve has won the Hilton Football Super Contest not once, but twice.  In this episode we talk about the difference between betting for a contest, and betting to get the money.  We discuss sports bettors being barred from casinos, and what happened when he won 4 ten-team parlays.

Fezzik podcast

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The Raiser's Edge

I was in college in Chicago in the 70s.  When not in class I would spend my time at a bridge, and backgammon club called The North Club.  The club was filled with bridge bums, backgammon sharks, gin rummy kibitzers, and in the afternoons we would get an influx of options traders.  At that time the Black–Scholes formula was new, and the smart guys, the guys who understood the math, were vacuuming up the money. Huge edges were to be had because these guys were playing the game at an entirely different level.

That was what I kept thinking about as I read, The Raiser's Edge: Tournament-Poker Strategies for Today's Aggressive Game.  Because of the internet where players can play 10 or 20 tables at a time at double the speed of a live table, and tracking software that has databases of millions of hands, and quants applying game theory to poker, the game has taken a giant leap forward.  This book is not for beginners.  It is dense, has many charts, and will need to be read many times to be fully understood.  But this is the future of poker.  10 years ago you never would have seen a chapter like, "Equilibrium solutions for 3 and 4-betting."  I believe you will start to see more and more chapters like that.  Just as computers are now the best chess players, and backgammon players, within 10 years I believe computers will be the best poker players.

The authors in this book talk about how fast the game is evolving.  Things that were working and profitable a year ago no longer are.  If you want to try to ride this wave, to get on the curve since no one can be ahead of it anymore, then you need to read this book, and the avalanche of books like it that are sure to come.

Gambling With an Edge - Guest Andy Bloch

Gambling With an Edge for September 1, 2011.  Our guest is Andy Bloch, professional poker player with over $5 million in tournament winnings.  He is also a former member of the MIT blackjack team.  This is the team portrayed in the movie 21.  In this episode we talk about the movie, about Andy being arrested in Monte Carlo for being a card counter, and about his famous heads up match against Chip Reese in the WSOP HORSE event a few years ago.

Andy Bloch podcast

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