About Your Dealer

I had worked my way through many casinos and positions including as first a dealer then a casino host at the Desert Inn, then the apex of the industry. The D.I. was bought by Steve Wynn and closed August 29, 2000. Several years later, the next recession found me and my family back in Tacoma. As the recession deepened I began employment as a dealer at an Indian casino outside of Seattle. One day an event was announced that a new games symposium was being held and in which I made a point of attending. As I walked around the games and their presenters, I viewed the games and layouts as over complicated or variations of the same old games. There was nothing new or unique. This was several years before high card flush which I considered brilliant because it was absolutely different. I had walked out of the event thinking “why doesn’t someone invent a game based on the color of the cards. Cards are red/black, high/low, odd/even, hello!” I knew right then and there that I had the formula for a casino card game. As I thought of it further, I decided to make flip~it a one card continuous game out of a multiple deck shoe by first exposing four cards and players betting on the next card to flip. I played flip~it with my elderly mother and Aunt who got it with very little explaining. I knew I had created something special but knew little more about designing a casino game and the idea laid dormant for a few years until I was back in Las Vegas and supervising at a casino downtown when a double ball roulette game showed up. It was again a same game variation, over complicated and more a gimmick than a viable casino game. I knew then that it was time for flip~it. I went to Walmart that night after work and picked up colored felt squares and press on numbers and letters and designed my betting spot prototype and glued it into a shoebox lid. I subsequently showed it to my current Casino Director who informed me of the critical elements that casino operators desire in a casino game. It was that information and my shoebox lid that inspired me to develop and patent a dynamically unique, skill based casino game and launch the project of a lifetime. The people and events that followed are truly enchanting and providential. I am thrilled to tell this story to you today. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I am.

The information I received from John V. (Rio Casino Director) resonated as I continued to develop flip~it. He said that the operators want a game with an flexible house edge percentage that they can expand or contract depending how more or less liberal they want their game to be. He also said that the mathematics in support of those percentages need to be certified by a recognized Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) agency and recommended the Gaming Laboratory International as the golden ticket of certification agencies. Within a short time, I had secured my first investor. He came to me as a player on my blackjack game at the Rio one afternoon. He was playing two hands of black chips of about 500 to 2000 each and quite animated about losing and wanting to win. After a series of expletives and the other players distancing away, I decided to see if I could calm him down and then said “ your game play is excellent Sir, let’s talk a little about money management and playing this second hand.” He looked at me and said “ I know about this stuff, I own 20 casinos!” I know the look on my face was of surprise and I blurted out “ Oh really!! Do you want to invest in a casino card game?!” He looked at me with a returned look of surprise and said “Yes!” I told him I get off work at 8o’clock and I would meet him in the main bar. I raced home and picked up my shoebox lid and we played flip~it. He told me to open a business bank account and an LLC and he would put $10,000 on deposit. That is how flip~it got started. The guy turned out to be the Tribal Counsel Chief of a major Indian Casino Operation. My next call was to the Gaming Laboratory when an intake representative said it would be prudent of me to find a mathematician to calculate the quantification of the game before the laboratory because if we have a mathematical issue it would be cost prohibitive to have their staff solve it. And indeed we did have a gut wrenching issue. I will expand on that as the story goes by. The solving of it was riveting. Next, in the series of remarkable happenstances and influencers is meeting Alex and Wayne. At the time I was supplementing my income with 3 part time jobs as a way to remain flexible in order to pursue the developing of flip. I was dealing at the Rio, secret shopping and driving Uber when I picked up a young man here to play poker in the World Series. He asked me to take him around to a variety of extended stays when I said “come and take a look at the spare bedroom at my house and you can rent it while you’re here.” He did and moved in. He became instrumental in helping me with computer design and we have been the best of friends since. He still helps me today. As the story goes, his best friend was getting out of the military and was moving to Vegas. This young man turned out to be a super mega genius and helped me design the mathematics for flip~it which we turned over to the gaming lab for certification. The story of the design and working with Wayne was a captivating experience and I am going to give you an eye witness account of how that happened.Wayne was 29 years old when he got out of the Air force. He went in with four degrees from Michigan University, mathematics, physics, computer science and computer engineering. They made him a nuclear proliferations probabilities expert and a Captain at 25. After 8 years he turned down a $150,000 recommission bonus to play poker in Las Vegas and apparently to help me with the math for flip~it. I sat with Wayne at his computer station which consisted of 4 monitors and two key boards. Once the initial design of the game was input we then had to tweak the numbers and ratios in order to observe and modify results to fit the NGCB guidelines. In Nevada any casino bet of any type including table games, all side bets as well as slot machines must have a maximum house edge of 25% and a minimum of 75% return to player ratio in order to be approved for play. In actuality, those percentages are a very delicate and critical close balance because a player has to have enough return in order to willingly play and enough house edge for which the casino is willing to offer. For instance, the house edge on craps is .08 and blackjack is 1.6, roulette is 5.26. Most of the poker variations are in excess 5% on the ante bet but more than 17% on the bonus bets. Flip~it has a house edge of 4.5%, considered an excellent number for the house as well as the player. It was engrossing to sit with Wayne and watch him change a figure of input data into the algorithm and watch it travel across the monitors with the result on the last screen. As I said before, we had a mathematical issue because flip~it has a poker bonus but a five card poker hand has never been quantified out of a multiple deck shoe. We found that every hand we input had the same percentages of odds, so that a flush paid the same as a 4 of a kind. This is why the payouts on different poker variations pay differently such as 3 of a kind pays more than the straight or flush on crazy 4 poker and the same thing on 3card. The joker in paigow poker makes the straight easier to get than the 3of a kind. That is how I came up with using the jokers in flip~it because as we were doing the calculations we realized we needed more house edge. With flip the joker provides the house edge but Wayne and I designed the flip~it progressive utilizing sequential jokers. I got that idea when during the 2018 NGCB field trial one of the dealers came over to me and said he had a guy buy in $100 and put some $5 chips on the betting spot and the first joker flipped out and all bets lost so he tried again and another joker flipped and tried again with his last chips and a third joker flipped. The guy made a disgruntled remark as he walked away when in reality he would have won the mini jackpot. We solved the math issue by omitting several of the payouts from the flip~it bonus bet pay chart. The next call I made with certified math in hand was to Howard and Howard Patent Law Firm. The patent was submitted in November 2016 and issued October 10, 2020. When the world entered into pandemic shutdown I was furloughed from the Rio. I decided to take an online product management certification course which opened up the world of influence marketing. You are now experiencing the results of that. I am introducing skill based flip~it by marketing a tutorial on playing better skill based blackjack. We consider blackjack the only skill based game on the casino floor because it is the only game where the player makes their next bet based on the information previously displayed. Where as the skill in craps comes from knowing how to bet into a hot roll but the odds on the dice remain the same and independent from the last toss. Roulette is much the same as each spin is independent from the last. With baccarat the next cards have nothing to do with the last cards but players believe they can be intuitive while the poker variations use one deck at a time. Those games are house banked. Player banked poker is skill based and one player can posses more skill than another. Flip~it is categorically a skill based game where the players can track, use a score card and make their next bet based on previous information as it is continuous until the cut card shows indicating the shuffle.

I feel like each experience and step along the way since the beginning of my journey so long ago has brought me to where I am with this project. If I had not gone back to Tacoma and eventually ended up at the Indian casino I would not have attended that new games event and the idea for flip~it would not have flown into my head like a spark. If I had not come back to Vegas and worked downtown I would not have been motivated by double ball roulette. And had I not gone to work for the Rio and started driving Uber I would not met my first investor or Alex and Wayne. Now I am working at the Green Valley Ranch and a whole new group of influencers have come into my life. It is a great and wonderful series of fortunate circumstances that find me where I am today. My particular expertise lies in observing the habits of players and knowing how they think. I believe the gaming industry is craving for a new skill based game. Flip~it is that game. It has all of the qualities players desire in a casino game such as easy to play for beginners but with the intuitive aspects an advanced player seeks to master. And conversely to blackjack, the other players cannot negatively influence the outcome of another players bets. I hope this brief synopsis of the game of flip~it has sparked your interest. Please continue to peruse the website and learn more about flip~it and how to play better blackjack.