Originally Posted by
redietz
During the '90s, while doing the Gaming Today column, Rob was probably taken seriously by most tourists and civilians. On one hand, Gaming Today was clearly not The Mensa Guide to Gambling, but it was distributed in many of the biggest sports books in the city, so I'd guess it was reaching 10K people every week, and Rob often had a front page slot with his photo.
An AP video poker author was frequently in the same issue, so it made for some diverse reading. And there were business and entertainment columns. Anybody just coming in off a flight was likely to pick up a copy.
In the 90's I was working my way through Jr high and High school, so obviously before my time in the gambling community. So I have never understood this Gaming Today column part of the story. Can you help me out with this? I don't want to get the dates wrong and have mickey or coach belly call me a liar, so lets just say, by my understanding sometime in the mid 90's Rob attempted to play video poker for a living, supposedly using VP AP techniques, supported by math. He says he failed at this to the tune of several hundred thousand lost over 4 years. Apparently this failure is what turned him off to the math and the math based and proven ways of playing with an advantage in favor just general voodoo thinking.
So how exactly did that qualify him to write a column in a gambling newspaper? I get that this Gaming Today wasn't an AP publication, but even so, how does
"I am a losing player, who lost several hundred thousand dollars over the past few years" translate into writing a column as a supposed expert.
That would be like hiring a chef, who's restaurant closed due to bad food reviews, to write an expert column on being a chef? Or a lifetime .196 hitter in baseball write a column on the art of hitting. I just don't get it.
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