I did what most people do, played a few slots here and there and, of course, not winning anything.

So I decided to put all the Blackjack practice and tweaking I’ve done to the test and… Came out $55 ahead. The next day I tried it again and $55 bucks ahead and tomorrow I’ll try it again.

First, don’t play slots it’s 100% chance. Play a table game, others may give better odds, but blackjack is my game.
Here are my tips:

1) LEARN TO PLAY! If you do stuff like hit on 16 when the dealer has a 5 showing, or split 10s… These hints won’t help. There are LOTS of the little cards that show you how to bet. Learn the chart and practice for free on the computer, your phone, online, whatever. Learn the chart!

2) Always have AT LEAST 10 times the amount of the minimum bet.
For instance, if the table is $10 minimum, make sure you have AT LEAST $100.
You’re going to lose some hands, no way around that, you need to have money to float until you start winning.

3) Come up with a betting strategy. DO NOT double your bet when you lose to try and make your bet back. Here’s my method that works well:
- Bet the minimum
- Next bet (win or lose) bet the minimum again.
- next bet, if you won twice, double the bet. If you lost, bet the minimum.
- keep adding the minimum to the bet (if you win) but don’t get greedy, you’re going to lose eventually. I usually keep adding up to four bets in a row, then will reset to minimum bet.
- any time you lose, reset your betting.

For instance, let’s say it’s a $5 minimum and I keep winning hands, here is my betting:
$5 - $5 - $10 - $15 - $20 - $25 - $5

This way, after that second minimum, you’re playing with their money.
If you get a blackjack, count it as a regular win.

4) Dont get scared! Stick to the betting method, even if you’re low.

5) if your money is gone, walk away. You can’t win every single time so only bet with what you can afford to lose and don’t fall into the trap of trying to win it back, save it for the next day or next trip.

6) SET AN UPPER LIMIT! Your lower limit is zero, but make sure you set an upper limit as well. A good rule of thumb is to stop when you’ve won 1/2 the amount you started with.
For instance, if you sit at the table with $100, walk away when you have $150.

Some do not dos:
Don’t get greedy, walk away at your upper limit.

Don’t try to win your money back if you’re out, walk away.

Don’t Drink when playing, I know it’s fun but you’ll start doing dumb things.

That’s about it, again you have to learn to play first. Go find one of those charts.

Good luck!
I wrote this on my iPhone, so if it needs editing I’ll fix it when I get home.

** update 9/26
Another $50 this morning, that’s 3 days in a row.

First Spore Origins came out for the iPhone, which focuses on the first stage of the full blown Spore.

Then on 9/7/2008 the full blown Mac / PC version was released. Not only is it supported for both Operating Systems, but it’s just one disk that has both versions.

There are several stages that you bring your creature through, from an amoeba to a space faring civilization.

Each stage is a different type of gameplay.

• ‘Cell’ stage - Like an old school arcade game, eat the good stuff and avoid the bad guys.
• ‘Creature’ stage - 3D game (almost a first person shooter). You can make friends or make / attack you enemies.
• ‘Tribal’ stage - Real Time Strategy (RTS) game with limited weapons
• ‘Civilization’ stage - RTS with more weapons, vehicles (air, see and land) and spice mining
• ‘Space’ stage - Space exploration and trading. Again make friends / allies and enemies.

I’ve read some complaints that the different stages aren’t as good as other games that do that type of game. For instance the Civlization RTS isn’t done as well as a full blown RTS game. They’re right, it doesn’t and it’s not meant to be.

It’s important to look at Spore as a whole game, not the individual stages.

The most fun part about Spore is you build you creatures and items as you go.

In the early stages you evolve your creature as it grows to make it more adaptable. In the later stages, you build your buildings and vehicles.

Along these lines, there’s also the Sporepedia. This is an online database of things that other players have built that you can download and use in your game!

For me, I played with the creation tool for a while, but in the later levels I would just go to the Sporepedia and browse through the thousands of creations out there until I found one I like.

This game is a blast as you can follow your creature up through the different layers of evolution and shape the path you want the creature to go down - You can have a peaceful herbivores, war-like carnivores, explorers, etc… or any combination of them, it all depends on your (creature’s) actions.

I personally love the game, the Space stage is my favorite but I really loved all the stages.

This is definitely a game I could see myself playing over and over, creating more creatures and leading them down different paths.

I’ve had my 360 on a shelf since I got my Wii. I don’t have a whole lot of time to play anymore with a 2 year old, and I like the interactive aspect of the Wii.

Then GTA IV came out!
I’ve been a fan of the GTA series since it was a 2d, top-down game. I’ve owned GTA, GTA II, GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, the first game I got for my PSP was Liberty City Stories and now I dusted off my 360 for GTA IV… and here’s my review.

Graphics

The graphics for this game are just awesome. Very crisp visual, very engaging environments. The textures and LOD is just a great combination to keep the game smooth while allowing for a lot of eye candy.

The zonal damage on the cars is sweet. If you slam the side of your car into a wall or pole, you’ll have a huge dent (or more) where you hit… on the other hand if you lightly brush up against a similar object or a mailbox, telephone booth, etc… you’ll just have some scratches.

The in game character models are good, but re-used quite a bit, there are a lot of twins walking around Liberty City. The cut scene models are OK and the animation is pretty good, but I appreciate they concentrated more on the gameplay than smooth animation in the cut scenes.

Sound

The sound in the game is also very good.
The environmental sounds are very good, the use of doppler effect is awesome. Even the sound in the car, if you’re listening to music in the car and then get out and leave the door open you’ll still hear the music but much fainter. Nice touch.

Gameplay

Just like the other GTA games, this game is just plain fun. I haven’t tried any of the multi-player stuff yet (I’ll update this when I do), but single player is great.

Just like everyone else that plays these games I like to play the missions for a while, the enter in cheat codes for full weapons and go on a rampage.

There are a lot of nice touches in this respect.
For example, you can injure parts of pedestrians bodies. If you shoot a leg, the person will go down, if you shoot the chest it’ll take a few shots to bring them down, if you do a head-shot they’ll be down and out.

Try this:
Jack someones car, wait until then come back and try to open the door then drive away. Instead of leaving them standing there they’ll still be holding onto the door and you can drag them around for a while. ]:)
Be careful though, this can happen to you as well!

Easter Eggs

I won’t really go into these in detail, but the game is packed with these. From commercials on TV, to billboards and posters and radio commercials to the beating heart inside the Statue of Happiness. They’ve been listed on hundreds of websites, so go ask Mr. Google about it.

Overall Opinion

This game is a blast, there are a lot of bells and whistles that aren’t in the other versions and the overall game just feels more immersive.

When I first started playing the game I got several lockups, but it hasn’t done that in a while. I don’t know if it had to do with something on the disk, something in the game itself or if my 360 just had to get the dust out of its gears.

I would recommend going out and buying this game, yes I said BUYING.. you know who you are.

Besides the fact that I shouldn’t be blogging since I’m working, all I can think about doing is playing Halflife 2 Episode 2!

Yes I know it’s been out for a while now, but I just got a chance to get it recently.

In this entry I stated that I was sick of First Person Shooters, but Halflife 2 is in a different class. It’s not the typical space setting where something went wrong with some outpost.

The thing I really like about the Halflife series is that it’s a REALLY fun FPS, but you also have to figure out puzzles and stuff. Granted the puzzles aren’t anything overly challenging, but it’s still more fun than strictly run and gun.

Also, in my opinion, Halflife 2 and both episodes have the best levels of any shooter, both in layout and visually. Plus for some reason I really like that it takes place on Earth.

Anyway, the last work day of the year and “I don’t want to work, I just want to play Halflife 2 (episode 2) all day..”

We opened gifts in the morning and then had dinner and drinks with some friends and family.

I got some really cool stuff, but the thing I’m writing this entry about is Guitar Hero III for the Wii.

First of all, my wife was going to get this for my birthday back in September, but the game wasn’t out yet, so she decided to get it for me for Christmas.

Well, easier said than done, she looked ALL over for it and couldn’t find it anywhere. Finally a friend, who was watching the manufacturer’s website, told her they had like 5 in stock… so she snagged one.

I thought this game would be “cool”, but I didn’t realize how fun it actually is.

The guitar has the right feel, comes with a strap and bag and even has the Gibson name on the head (nice touch).

Here’s an unboxing video by ’stealaline’ on YouTube if interested:

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You need your regular Wii remote, but it snaps into the body and plugs into the guitar with the same type of connection that the nunchucks have

I really like this game because I like rock, modern and classic, and this has a lot of REALLY good songs performed by the actual bands.. it’s not some cheesy karaoke version.

I played the thing so long that I started to get a little nauseous from the scrolling screen.

I play a little (real) guitar and this is nothing like playing guitar, if anyone thinks they’re going to get better at guitar by playing Guitar Hero, think again.

Actually, it will help you with timing and rhythm, so I guess in a way it would help you play better…

If no one has seen this or played it, it’s kind of like a takeoff on Dance Dance Revolution. The difference is that instead of hitting the right “keys” with you’re feet, you pressing the correct button with your left hand and hitting the strum bar with your right.

There are power ups you can get and you activate them by tilting the guitar up in a classic “rocking out” move.. I got a kick out of that. This is also the way you activate attacks when playing against bosses or other players.

All in all the game is a blast and I can definitely recommend it.

I would imagine that it’s just as fun for any of the other systems it’s available on.

There are a few reasons I decided to do this and I’m actually happy I did, I personally like the Wii better than the 360.
I’m not even going to write anything about the PS3 as I’ve never tried one.

This is by no means a 360 bash, and I’m sure I’ll get a lot of flack.. but here it goes.
Just keep in mind this is not a recommendation, just my story.

First of all, I’ve been a gamer since back in the day, the first game system I ever played on was the Odyssey.
This thing was the shiznit back then!

It was so basic it didn’t even have any background, it just had these sheets of plastic that you stuck to the screen.
For instance I remember this one car racing game and the track was a sheet that you stuck to you TV by static cling.
It’s cheesy by today’s standards, but it was bad ARS back then!

Ok, so now that I’ve dated myself, let’s get on with it.

First, I have a 21 month old son, so I don’t have enough time to play to get good enough to survive more than 1 minute when playing online.
Because of that, Xbox Live was not a factor for me.

I’m sick of First Person Shooters, I’m sick of racing games, I’m sick of games that look beautiful but are lame or ridiculously easy to beat.
I would DEFINITELY sacrifice visual quality for rich, in depth, intriguing gameplay.

First of all I must say that, for the most part, the 360 games look AWESOME!
There are a few games out there that just don’t take advantage of the power of the console and that’s really a shame. They’re like rehashed Xbox games.

Speaking of rehashing, a LARGE portion of the games out there are just the same old story lines, same old games just much better graphics.
Take two games I was REALLY excited about for instance - Gears of War and Halo3.
Both of these games are basically using a theme that’s been around since the original Doom - A space marine fighting aliens.

Yes I know that they weren’t really aliens in DOOM, more like minions of hell and in GoW and Halo3 they’re not “Space Marines”, but come on.. it’s the same basic story line.
Both those games are cool, but I’m just bored with the same old rehashed story.

That being said, there are some really lame games for Wii as well.

What I LOVE about the Wii is the controller, even if you’re an Xbox or PS fanboy/fangirl you’ll have to admit that’s the best designed controller ever.

Before I got the Wii I read a lot of complaints about the graphics on an HDTV.
I have it hooked to my HDTV and it looks GREAT, yes it’s not as good as the 360 but still looks pretty damn good!

What sold me on the Wii is two points:
1. It’s family-centric
2. It has unique games

Family-centric was very important for me as my little guy grows. Plus this is the only game system I’ve ever been able to get my wife to play with me on!!
There are a few games that make it great for parties as well, we’ve used it several times when we had company over and it’s a blast!

Basically, I think I was looking for a different approach to gaming and found it in the Wii console and the games.
In my opinion the Xbox 360 and the games are the same old thing in a gorgeous package.

There’s not much doubt though, if you’re a hard core gamer you’re probably going to want the 360.