A three-day series looks at gambling through the eyes of seasoned veterans of the games.
Blackjack is the king of the table games, even with a poker fad going around.
Add up all the table games in any Iowa casino, and poker wouldn't come close to bettering the drop on blackjack.
At the green-topped tables, a serious camaraderie exists. The players will tell you they study the game seriously.
A teacher from a central Iowa school says he visits the Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel near Tama often during the summer and has never lost money. He has a system.
That system does not involve getting greedy or doubling down on wrong numbers. On a recent day, he won enough for a new computer, which was his goal.
A 40ish woman wearing eyeglasses and smoking cigarettes is also a very good player, but she confesses that the game is bad for her marriage.
Then there's Ben Jones, who is doing his part to stop the gaming industry in Iowa from making its record $1.1 billion profit during the last year.
Jones is much too confident at 70 to care what other people think.
"I've got a savings account for gambling, and my wife has hers," says the Cedar Rapids man, a longtime owner of a furniture store who now works part time at Carpet King to make a little play money.
"Actually, we are very conservative people except for gambling. My kids spend more than that on interest for their toys."
Jones has an erect, yet relaxed, posture at the table. Tapping the table for a hit, a steady, short sideways sweep of the hand to stand (stop anymore card hits).
He begins by not bragging. He says the game is simple because, after all, it's what grandparents play with grandkids for toothpicks. It has one basic premise: Get closer to 21 than the dealer without going over, and you win.
Get a cheap $3.99 paperback about basic strategy and off you go, cowboy. "I count cards, too," he says.
"If you have quite a few small cards, it should not be long before the big ones start coming. Players win on big cards. It takes little cards for dealers to win," he says.
Blackjack still has one of the best odds of any casino game, according to Casino Player Magazine. The game won its 2005 survey as most popular game. It has for decades because a skilled player can whittle down the house advantage.
Jones stands on a 17 and the dealer goes over. He gets two face cards and wins. He loses the next two by going over 21.
"I had bypass surgery 12 years ago and wanted something to do in my spare time," he says without fanfare. "I got a book and started studying blackjack. It just tells you the different ways to play the cards and the percentages. It's really obvious."
Among the obvious: Don't split your cards on 10s; hit on 16 if the dealer has 7 or higher.
Yes, fine, but how do you consistently win?
In his 12 years of playing two to three times a week at every casino in Iowa, he remembers only one losing year. He's not a big-time gambler, he says, but they aren't the only ones who know what they're doing.
He puts $5,000 in an account every year, and his wife doles out money to him as a check on any feverish frenzy. "She gives me my allowance every week," he says.
So he'll give a little free advice, ranging from common sense to gambler's hunch.
"There seems to be a lot of debate whether to hit on 16 or not," he says. "The pros in the books say hit 'em. The only way you are going to win against the dealer is for them to go broke."
But he's not crazy: He'll hit them only if the dealer is showing 7 or higher.
"Another thing I do that a lot of players don't: I hit a soft 18. You know, if I have an ace and a seven and the dealer has a three, four, five, six, nine, 10 or ace up, I'll hit it because they've usually got you beat.
"And I split nines against a three, four, five, six or even seven. You can make some money more than half the time." So far this year, he claims to be $6,000 in the black.
"If I wasn't doing this, where would I spend my time?" he says. "I'd go to a movie or the mall. In the winter, it's rough around here.
"Even in the summer. I've got a boat for fishing but it was cold this spring and too hot in the summer. So I head to the casino in the air conditioning. I might even win some money."
Another key for Jones: When he starts losing money on the $5 table, he downshifts to the $3 table.
Meskwaki's casino, he says, has the best blackjack games in the state. After his hourlong walk every day, he rides the gambling bus from Cedar Rapids for $3 and the casino gives him $5 in credits.
"They trap you there for five or six hours," he says. "They are the best merchandisers around. You've got to give them credit."
His challenge is not to let them get the better of him.
"You think you can beat the casino," he says. "You think you can outsmart them playing cards. That's the bottom line."
His best run was a weekend trip to a Biloxi, Miss., casino when he won $4,000.