Reuss's previous novel, _Horace Afoot_, was wonderful; this one is...pretty good. The difference? The narrative technique. In both books, Reuss explores the way people use the stories they read to make sense of the world they see. In the first book, we heard Horace in his own witty words; in the second, we hear the child Henry in the third person and it unfortunately comes off as condescending. "Oh, isn't he cute with his big words and his big ideas -- let's chuckle at him." It's really too bad, since _Henry of Atlantic City_ deals with serious moral and theological questions in possibly funny situations. Who's responsible for the world? What powers do we have in it? I wish I could say that I found the narrative a gripping medium for these problems, but I didn't.

On the other hand, the allegory -- reminiscent of _The Pilgrim's Progress_ and eighteenth-century moral novels like Sarah Fielding's _David Simple_ -- is an interesting form and deserves more attention. Bravo to Reuss for trying.

This weird book about a brilliant kid stuck in the weirdest family situation is set, like many contemporary novels, between the old world (the church, an orphanage) and the bright, shiny, new one (Atlantic City). Many authors are using playlands -- Las Vegas for Tim Powers, theme parks for George Saunders -- as metaphors for contemporary society. Thus the bizarre casino land in which Henry is raised, and the makeshift families he moves between, are something he may need to escape from but can't. And Reuss perhaps says this is a good thing. What is this novel saying about gnosticism and faith? And what's that whole zoo thing? Of course, in every novel there's a supreme intelligence hovering over the action -- that of the writer. Here the writer's hand seems to be forcing the action into the form of an allegory. Don't get me wrong; it's an enjoyable read. Do the good guys win? Not necessarily.

This was an unusual story, but also very well written. This is the story of a young boy whose life is very confusing. He is being raised by his father in a big Casino and then things rapidly change. The young child is intelligent and has read many books. The problem is that at his age he confuses reality, history and fantasy, and therefore lives in a world that is rather strange to the reader. Staying with the story is while at times difficult was worth the time. This is a very different type of story from any that I have read before.

I red the first edition of this book. First of all the basic stratedgy slightly differs from what other books say (like doubling 9 against dealer's 7).
The main idea of the book is to bet on a series of wins/losses. If you win first bet you should increase you bet K times, if you lost your unit bet (and after that other 2) you increase you bet K times again. If it doesn't help, you keep loosing a unit bet at a time.
The simplest way to proove the authour is WRONG is the following: he claims that every unit you add to K increases you chances to win by 0.5% (you probable win). Take K = 1000. Do you get 500% edge? No it can not exceed 100%.
The author makes the fallowing mistake: if you average probability to wit is p=0.47 then the probability to loose is 1-p. Our edge (in bets) is -(1-2*p)=-6.0%. We are loosing. The probability to win 2 times is p*p, to loose the second time is p*(1-p). So he says the edge is -p*(1-2*p) is less than -(1-2*p) in absolute value and theirfore (due to blackjack and doubling) he says you can win money. What'a wrong here? It's not an edge. An edge in this situation would be -p*(1-2*p)/p. Because out of 100 bets we only will apply this stratergy p*100 times. And our edge is once again exactly the same -(1-2*p) = -6.0% in bets or (-0.3% in money under playing conditions he describes). You could just increase your everage bet once again with the same result.
A word of causion. If you want to try geometric progression system (doubling you bet every time you loose), it would work, provided you could place an unlimited bets. But as long as maximum bet is restrected, in everage, you will loose onse again. If your chances to win were 50% (much better then 47), your mathematical expectation would be exactly 0.0 dollars to win. The problem is that every time you win the doubling chain you only regain 1 unit bet, when you loose your maximum bet you loose double your maximum bet minus unit (taking into account account what you lost already from the start). You can triple, the result would be the same (when the maximum bet is fixed).
If there is a lawer who belives he could make this guy to pay for deceiving people, I'd be more then happy to help (tol60@hotmail.com).
It doesn't mean you can not win with this strategy. I could give you another one. If it works, you might get reach, if it doesn't, you won't loose much time in a casino: take all your money you have for betting and bet it all (no more then you are redy to loose). If you win, drink free coke and go home, if you loose, do the same. And you save those 10$ for the book.

I play blackjack for a living, and that means before I decided to do so you need to seperate the good from the bad books. I'm not the person to tell you what to do relating towards your goal playing blackjack, but one year after me trying to get it done the easy way, I,m glad that I switched to cardcounting. Remember do no think that blackjack is a easy money program. Many system sellers are making only money from selling books, or working indirectly for casinos. Any form of progression betting will get your cash in the longrun. I know from the early years of me playing blackjack that playing any form of progression you are able to winn money in the short run, but it will burn you out playing into the longrun, and I played too Popik's theory. But you can't compare a flip of a coin with 2 outcomes with a game of blackjack where you have 13 different outcomes relating to your hands.

I play about 100 hours a month, 1200 hours a month. It is not about the no. of sessions you winn, but the no. of hours.

Using Popik's system I won a majority of the sessions playing it in 1991, but the sessions I lost, I lost all what I won related to my winning sessions before. This is happening to all forms of progression play.

Therefore I would suggest you to start reading work from Stanfort Wong, Lance Humble, Arnold Snyder or Peter Griffin.

Again, I want you to winn but If you will ever decide to choose the profession I choosed you will realise that playing fulltime any progression system will hurt you playing about 1200 hours a year.

This book is fantastic. It is an easy read and a logical system based purely on mathematics. It does require some discipline, but when followed the system has proven to be profitable and substantially easier than learning to count cards. Will be useful to the occasional player as well as the consistent player.

The book describes a method for rating horses that is very time consuming, with results that do not justify all the work. I did a dry run, handicapping several race cards, and had I bet real money, I would have been very upset with the results. Although I am not an expert, I hold my own when I study the past performances in the track program or The Daily Racing Form. By following the book's method, I did significantly worse than I would have on my own. Not recommended.

Unless your a novice this book will give you little. It is one of the few books on handicapping harness races that is readilly available but this is a weak work. Ms. Kulleck consistently contradicts herself and she seems to only skim the surface on most topics. Also it seems most of her research with her husband were done years ago and have probably become irrelevant over time.

Considering myself a beginner, I find Ms. Ada Kulleck's book one of the best book for beginners. I like Chapter 2 especially because there are some great tips on eliminating horses that don't have the potential to win. By eliminating the potential losers, the few horses that stand out gives you the opportunity to narrow your focus to find the potential winner or to play them collectively on exotic wagers. I combined what I learned from Ms. Kulleck's book and also established my own system. One handicapping system will not work all the time. This is a good [$$$] investment.

Wow, dude!
Like just watch where the real cool tables full of happy players are and go sit there with the winners! Ride the wave, the force will be with you, trust your inner Jedi . . .

Sure over a zillion tosses a coin will fall 50-50, but does that mean it'll be heads-tail, heads-tail,heads tail? Of course not, dummy!, So there! Get it? Go where it's sizzling! And if you lose switch tables.

Because cards have memory or magic or something. And there's no such thing as luck but play it as if there is, and you won't go wrong, because, hey, when you're hot, you're hot

Heavy . . .

This is the only blackjack book needed. J. Phillip Vogel covers everything needed in order to beat the casino. He includes basic strategies, easy to read charts and even card counting. No gambler should play without reading this first.

I enjoy reading about gambling almost as much as I like playing it, and I have found Vogel's work to be an excellent source for any player, especially a novice. His basic strategy methods are right on the money when you compare them to every recognized strategy, any he even includes a basic section on card-counting which is important for beginner players. Some of his discussions on trends and probability will probably confuse some players who are less-than-mensa material, but he tries somewhat successfully to make them read easy.

The basic breakdown of the book is a separation into what he terms "The Successful Six" which is generally a breakdown of the six most important weapons in a gambler's arsenal: proper bankroll, knowledge of the game, self-control, strategy, understanding probability, and patience. All of this information is highly useful, and it is presented in a thorough, enjoyable manner.

As a semi-professional gambler myself, I would recommend this book to any gambler, and call it essential reading to any novice.

The basic information which he outlines is good,but somewhat outdated.His "system" for winning flat out doesn't work. I tried it for two weeks. I tried it on different games, different casinos,no,the losses out numbered the wins.It isn't that difficult to learn so its not like I wasn't doing it right.This book is a little dated so maybe the casinos changed their programs since he published. I don't know,but bottom line you can not come out ahead using his system,believe I wish you could.

The concept behind this book is to visit as many internet casinos as you can collecting the sign-up promotional cash bonuses along the way. As the online casinos require that you bet some multiple of the bonus or your initial deposit in order to actually withdraw the bonus, the book recommends a conservative roulette or craps strategy. The problem lies in that most online casinos do not allow you to wager on craps or roulette in order to fulfill the terms of the bonus, thus requiring you play higher risk games. In conculsion, this is a pretty good ... book with some useful casino lists and gambling links, but I'm still not sure what makes this a ... book.

"Beat the Internet Casinos" is nothing less than a complete manual on how to win at Internet gambling. It is packed with interesting invaluable information for anyone who wants to develop a regular reliable source of income from his home computer. This manual -

1. Covers all risk issues and shows you exactly how you can safely play and win at online casinos.

2. Reveals the precise steps you will take to find the best casinos and then beat them!

3. Describes every aspect of playing against the I-casinos, including setting up your account, how to monitor it and how to get regular "pay checks" from online casinos.

4. Tells you in no-nonsense language which casinos to avoid and why.

5. Reveals exactly why you can beat certain casinos while you must avoid playing in others. He even furnishes a list of "beatable" casinos so that you can start playing and winning right away.

6. Gives you the complete winning strategies for roulette, craps and baccarat. These strategies alone are worth the price of the book and they can be used in land-based as well as online casinos.

7. Has complete examples you can follow including games the author played. This manual is the closest thing to having a personal tutor to show you exactly how to play and win.

8. Shows a very powerful "hit and run" strategy you can use to earn $5,000 a week for 10 hours work.

9. This manual publishes the most complete list of Internet casinos I have ever seen. Once you have this information, you can start playing and winning almost immediately.

10. The "Play for Blood" chapter is my favorite. The author pulls the complete strategy together and demonstrates with real life examples how he and other players win from $150 to over $700 an hour off the Internet.

I have been using these techniques for over two months. I have been winning very consistently and I have had little problems getting paid. I am at the $2,500 a week plateau and rapidly closing in on making $5,000 a week.

If you want a proven way to make money with your computer, this strategy will beat all others hands down. Just try it. When you finish this book you will have complete knowledge to how to win on the Internet and the exact strategies to do it!

This comprhensive book is insistant on teaching a conservative method of craps and ignoring, indeed vehemently disdaining, the more tempting and colorful craps bets that the author proclaims to be money loser tbat glitter like tempting gold coins on the craps table. These and other tips are forcefully ingrained into the reader until they are nearly mantra-like in the mind. Still, by the time I arrived at the craps table I found myself wishing I could reach for this book to help me out with a bet or a question. I don't think the dealers and other players would have appreciated my referring to a "How To Play Craps" paperback in the middle of a roll. So later I read the book again and I'm still referring to it. Only complaint; the depiction of women as less than perfect craps players. I'm a less than perfect craps player. My first roll went flying off the table and sailing across the room like I was throwing darts. The author attributes such a wild throw to women and often refers to them as some kind of good luck charm.

I have won money using the techniques outlined in this book. Need I say more?

I liked this book so much, I usually keep two copies just in case
I loose one. Just bought another copy again this year to give to another friend, thats about the fifth copy given away in the last three or four years. (For the money), I'll guarantee the only way you could not win your investment back is if you stood at the craps table with you eyes closed. The book is straight forward but not dry with just a touch of humor. It explains every thing you should know, or could want to know about Craps,
yet is extremely easy to read, and hardly even a half inch thick.
I've read the book several times from cover to cover, and wouldn't think of going near a craps table without first brushing through the book one more time...

Please keep in mind this "book" is not really one per se. It is a rag-tag grouping of previously written columns by McCune and neither the book nor the columns were apparently edited as there are numerous spelling and wording errors throughout. Similar content is repeated throughout the book many times. Also the author feels the need to introduce each section with a REALLY bad poem and often goes quite off-topic in trying to establish a point related to sports betting.

This might be a decent book for somebody who is just starting out in the world of sports betting. You learn what juice is, how a local bookie might shade a hometown line etc. However all the information was written at least 10 years or more ago. As sport-betting moves into a new era, the usefulness of this dated information is questionable but it was frustrating to sit through reading.

In short, there is very little worthwhile about this book for a more advanced player with a semi-decent understanding of mathmatical probability.

I took a gamble buying this book on positive feedback from others - I lost.

Lots of ryhmes, many words in CAPITALS, even a picture of the author circa 1949 but unfortunately very little useful information on how to systematically implement winning sports betting methods.

... I have only been a sports bettor for the past 3 months and this book has changed everything for me. I used to just look at some statistics and I thought I knew what I was doing, but my winning percentage was still hovering around .500. Now that I've read this book and learned how to bet like the pros do, my winning percentage is .765! I've also learned how to manage my money and when to bet big. This is the sports betting bible, and only those that don't know about it are probably just guessing when they bet.

I will never bet on a "hunch" ever again. This book has really opened my eyes to what is possible when betting on sports.

There are good books on horse race betting, this just isn't one of them. You do need to have deep pockets to follow this guy's advice, and a large bankroll at home.

After you strip away that which is intuitively obvious...there's not much here. There are some betting strategies if you're the type to bet $300 on a Pick 3 or $2,500 on a Pick 6. Otherwise, I'd give this book a miss.

For a serious starter in horse racing, this book tells you how you should manage your wagering money and how to bet effectively and efficiently. However, this book will be too simple for a horseplayer who has been serious in horse racing for quite a long time.

I must admit after reading some of Sklansky's other books I was a little disappointed. As other reviewers pointed out this book seems more for beginners than for "advanced" players. If you are a beginner this is certainly a book for you. However if you have read some other books on poker and tournaments in general and have played some tournaments then this book will not be very helpful

I play a lot of tournament poker-- about a hundred small- to large-buyin live tournaments, and hundreds online, each year.

David's book has excellent, easy-to-understand explanations of key tournament concepts. His description of why the value of a chip changes during a tournament is clear, concise, and spot-on, and what he calls the "gap concept" is something that every solid tournament player understands intuitively.

"Advanced Players" is a misnomer, though. If you've played a few dozen tournaments, you probably know most of what is in this book. I was hoping to see a mathematical analysis of such things as tournament equity, all-in equities, and special considerations for different games and tournament formats, and it wasn't there. I think the book is moderately good, though technically light.

David isn't really a tournament expert, and it shows. He places far too much emphasis on moving up the payscale, and not nearly enough on playing to win. I understand that he gave exactly this sort of performance in the 2002 WSOP main event-- getting into the money, then basically blinding off his stack without playing many hands.

If you're serious about tournament poker you should read this book, but you should do so with a critical eye-- I believe it does contain some misinformation. It's certainly better than the first embarrassing tournament offering from Two Plus Two.

The ambiguity in the name of this book is something that confuses a lot of people, including some reviewers. The target audience of this book is ADVANCED poker players who have NOT played much in tournaments. Experienced tournament players might get something out of it too, or use it as reference, but they are NOT who the author had in mind. So, if you are looking for advanced tournament tips, skip this one, save some money and aggravation, and drop me a "thank you" note. :-)

This said, the book accomplishes what it is set to do rather well. There is a large number of very solid poker players who almost never play in tournaments simply because the price of learning tournament basics through first-hand experience is rather high. On the other hand, explaining tournament basics to an advanced player is easy, or at least Sklansky makes it seem this way. If you are a good player thinking of playing tournaments, read this book -- it has answers to most of your questions.

This is the worst book in the Nightmare Room series up to date. A kid called Alex is a betting freak.He gets this new desk and walla,there is a diary in the desk drawer that tells the future. So he starts winning bets and knowing the future.I am disappointed in the plot,it's so unoriginal.I'd suggest you skip this one.

It's OK. I really didn't like this girl Tessa. She got on my nerves big time. The idea was really cool. I kept wanting to read. But the ending made me say "huh?" I was a little disappointed there. Some of the book is laughable; a lot more could've been done with this great idea.

Alex likes to bet. It's his habit, and it often gets the better of him. He wants to be a millionaire when he grows up, and he can't wait to be one. But in school he likes to compete, too. He can't take the fact that a girl in his class can be so much better then him. So when his teacher asks him to write a diary, he's going to prove that he really can be the best in the class. But when he finds a strange, old diary in his basement, everything changes. This diary can predict the future -- and soon, Alex is winning every bet in the school. His peers think he can predict the future. And he really can -- and it's all because of his mysterious secret diary. Alex wants to get more and more money, but sometimes it's better not to know the future. Because the future can contain very unwanted surprises. I liked The Nightmare Room #5: Dear Diary, I'm Dead by R.L. Stine, but it wasn't the best because of the ending. That was just too expecting of R.L. Stine, reflecting his poor Goosebumps writing. But it was still very enjoyable, and a lot of fun to read.