Originally Posted by
Rob.Singer
First of all, Chuck sought me out by contacting my publisher; I never inquired about doing a column for GT.
He was a slick operator who had what I thought was a GIANT office for that style of paper, and he brought his French Bulldogs in with him every day. Being someone who has always believed dogs are this planet's most angelic living creatures, I saw he and I would get along right away. He was direct and bold and he wanted no BS when discussing business. I was told he had had it with the stale writings of Bob Dancer and Skip Hughes, and he wanted what he called "sensible controversy" in his video poker columnist's weekly articles. Naturally, that was me.
He took me to dinner at the steakhouse at Circus Circus and that's where he offered me $$ for a weekly column. I accepted the offer to write but refused to be paid for it, since I wanted him to understand that I only made money on VP from playing the machines. Yes I profited from my books, but how do you get around that? I gave that money to my kids anyway. But before the handshake Chuck wanted to go with me to a casino of my choice and witness me playing what hopefully would be a successful complete session using my Play Strategy--"successful" meaning winning at least $2500 in the session. He was blunt: do what I said I would do about having an 85% chance of winning and I'm his new writer; lose and we part ways.
I chose Terrible's because of their $1/$2/$5/$10/$25 machines, and I brought the required $57,200 session bankroll. I said if I needed to go to the $100 machine then I'd do that at MGM. I was concerned he'd get bored watching me play but that was short-lived as I hit a dollar royal less than an hour into what was a very complex strategy for a newbie to have to sit thru.
As time went on Chuck loved my work, and The Undeniable Truth became GT's most popular column ever. Compared to what it was back then, it's almost like a pamphlet today. I quit due to disagreements with Chuck's widow Eileen after nearly 8 years, and I never missed a week during my time there. But that was easy compared to how I felt masking my years of double-up glitch play while sometimes making up Play Strategy results in my columns. I have training for situations such as this so I plodded thru it all flawlessly. I did finally admit this to GT last year but they really didn't care about something over a decade old.
Other than that, I met and chatted with Frank Sinatra in the mid-'90's at the Tower of Pizza. His interest in talking to me was in my 100% wop ancestry, and the fact that my uncle ran the Hialeah track in Florida.
I didn't read that publication very much(once in a while when eating a meal alone), I only have an idea of what you wrote about from what others have said here and there. Whatever the case/ content, even if it's in direct contradiction to my own beliefs regarding VP I have to give you props on getting a gig with such a well-known publication and making your articles popular with many readers. You are a skilled writer (somthing I envy in a way) and wrote for a major publication, no one can take that away from you.
Aside from that, we AP's should be happy with the content you were writing about. Guys like Bob and Skip(especially skip) took money out of our/MY pocket by giving out information for "free" by teaching and encouraging others to get involved in AP.
There are many guys that won't fault guys like that since that kind of stuff is what helped them learn and encouraged them down the path of Advantage Play.
I had been bitter towards that kind of stuff since I never got my knowledge, information, or motivation from any of that stuff, I figured stuff out as I went(I'm no longer bitter, I have learned to accept what I can not change). To this day, I have yet to read any AP books. Various things published did confirm what I suspected, or already knew, and software helped me dial exact numbers and strategies.
Reply With Quote