Million Dollar Video Poker by Bob Dancer

Bob Dancer's book, Million Dollar Video Poker, has been the #1 best-seller among video poker books since its publication in 2003. After one of the most notable winning streaks of the past generation, Bob Dancer has become the preemnent video poker expert on the planet. Million Dollar Video Poker remains one of the chief doorways for new video poker players to learn about the game.

Million Dollar Video Poker by Bob Dancer Million Dollar Video Poker tells the story of 6 years in the lives of Bob Dancer and his wife, Shirley. The two of them showed up in Las Vegas in 1994 with a $6,000 bankroll. From late 1994 until 2001, Bob and Shirley Dancer made their living in Las Vegas by playing video poker. As he continued to play, Bob Dancer constructed a system for beating the casinos at his chosen game.

A Million Dollars in Six Months

The story culminates in the period from September 2000 until March 2001, when Bob Dancer and his wife won an astounding $1,000,000 at the video poker machines. Two years later, Bob Dancer set down his story for other to learn. Million Dollar Video Poker explains how Bob won and gives players ideas on how to become better video poker players.

Million Dollar Video Poker

Million Dollar Video Poker is part-biography, part-gamblers guide. Bob Dancer introduces new players to video poker strategies and video poker tips. Dancer tells how he won his million dollars and why he was able to do so. In the midst of the video poker lessons, the reader is entertained with stories of life in the Las Vegas of the very late-20th century.

The 1990's were an "old west" time for video poker players. Players and thinkers like Bob Dancer, Lenny Frome and Stanford Wong were studying the way video poker was played, testing new theories about how to beat the game. These men realized that certain video poker machines had positive expectations in the right circumstances. By crunching the numbers, smart video poker players were able to set the odds in their favor.

Not Another Just Video Poker "Expert"

It's standard to hear about some crazy new way of winning at the casino. If you search around the internet, you'll find all kinds of "systems" for beating the odds. You might read about money management or zig-zag methods or finding patterns in the lottery. Most of the advice you'll find is written by con men.

Video poker is different. Like blackjack in the early days of card-counting, video poker can be beat. Let me say that most other casino games will have a house edge, meaning you are going to lose if you play long enough. But that isn't the case if you play video poker the right way at the right time on the right machine.

If you find machines with high yields on their flushes and straights, with payoffs around 9x or 6x the original bet (respectively), then you have a chance at playing positive expectation video poker. In the days of 10/7 machines, finding the right payoffs were even easier.

Video Poker - Behind the Numbers

As Bob Dancer points out, you'll need to find the right machines and have a large enough bankroll to ride out the standard deviation. This requires a good deal of legwork and a knack for figuring out the expectations on machines.

Not all of the conditions exist today that existed around the turn of the 21st century. For one thing, video poker game designers have read Bob Dancer, too. Casinos have consistently taken 10/7 video poker machines off of casino floors. This makes research and numbers-crunching more important than it's ever been, because you are treasure hunting in the casinos.

For instance, many lesser machines hide their lower expectation by burying the bad numbers further down the chart. If you look at an "ugly" Deuces Wild machine which pays 17-to-1 on a Five of a Kind, it's natural to think it is better than the Full Pay Deuces Wild machine with 16-to-1 payouts on a 5 of a Kind. So you have to learn to look at the full pay table. Million Dollar Video Poker is a good start on the road to learning, because Bob Dancer is good at talking about the math of video poker without boring the reader.

Bob Dancer the Video Poker Writer

Million Dollar Video Poker is about a man willing to go the extra mile to beat the system. It's a testament to Bob Dancer's writing that he can make something that could be tedious into an interesting story. Anything's more interesting when there's money on the line, so hearing the story of how Bob Dancer and Shirley Dancer angled to essentially win the lottery is a fascinating read.

Bob Dancer has been a contributor to various gambling publications, including Strictly Slots, Casino Player and the Las Vegas Review. If you want to check out his writing before purchasing Million Dollar Video Poker, you might browse the online versions of one of these publications.

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