Conquer the Casinos: A Computer Analysis of Successful Gaming Strategies
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • For William Gardner or anyone else to respond to
  • question
  • A revealing statistical anaysis
  • Useless book
  • Simple yet powerful
Conquer the Casinos: A Computer Analysis of Successful Gaming Strategies
Phillip Koetsch
Manufacturer: Barricade Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1569802491

Book Description

Whether your game is craps, blackjack, baccarat or the slots , this book is filled with information that will help turn you into a winner.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars For William Gardner or anyone else to respond to.......2005-08-04

William I too was wondering how the progression of bets work when using some of his strategies.
When using G3M2
lets say the follow occurs
WWLLWW
The bets would go?
W(1)--W(2)--L(4)--L(1)---W(2)---W(1)

(...)
Thanks !
B

5 out of 5 stars question.......2005-05-19

I am not sure about when you combine the linear and geometric bets with the Martingale. If you lose 1 chip and then use the Martingale and win 2, do you then go back to 1 or do you double the 2 to make 4 in a geometric system and add 1 to make 3 in a linear system? [...]

5 out of 5 stars A revealing statistical anaysis.......2005-02-03

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because it provides a revealing statistical analysis of several popular betting strategies. I have not seen this type of statistical analysis elsewhere. Koetsch has written computer programs to run the numbers with millions of trials to give statistically significant results. The results are clearly interpreted and explained in the book. Tables are also included for those of us that prefer a glance at the numerical results. If you are interested in an analysis of the best betting strategy to use based on statistical evidence, then I heartily recommend this well-written book!

2 out of 5 stars Useless book.......2004-09-30

As a programmer, I also interesting in different betting system. When I first look at the title of the book, I feel lucky enough that I finally find a correct book to conquest the casino, as a programmer, we can program a betting system to see is working or not.

After I finish reading, I feel very disappointing about this book, there are no any systems in this book can win money in the long run, and all the analyse information in this book can be done in one day!

The author suggest "QUIT" when you ahead the casino. Yes, in 86% of the time, it works, but there are still 12% remaining that never get ahead the casino, once you together all the short section into a long section, you can find you still lose your money by the odd and the "law of large number".

Don't waste your money, try the other authors like Fred Renzey, Frand Scoblete, Peter Griffith, Stanford Wong and Ken Fuchs.

5 out of 5 stars Simple yet powerful.......2004-06-18

For all of the analysis done the book is remarkably simple and easy to follow. The main message of the book...KNOW WHEN TO QUIT! Koetsch shows you when.

Linux Pocket Guide
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • An excellent reference
  • good handbook
  • Great Product!
  • Best reference book for Linux
  • If you own one reference book for Linux, this should be it.
Linux Pocket Guide
Daniel J. Barrett
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596006284

Book Description

O'Reilly's Pocket Guides have earned a reputation as inexpensive, comprehensive, and compact guides that have the stuff but not the fluff. Every page of Linux Pocket Guide lives up to this billing. It clearly explains how to get up to speed quickly on day-to-day Linux use. Once you're up and running, Linux Pocket Guide provides an easy-to-use reference that you can keep by your keyboard for those times when you want a fast, useful answer, not hours in the man pages. Linux Pocket Guide is organized the way you use Linux: by function, not just alphabetically. It's not the 'bible of Linux; it's a practical and concise guide to the options and commands you need most. It starts with general concepts like files and directories, the shell, and X windows, and then presents detailed overviews of the most essential commands, with clear examples. You'll learn each command's purpose, usage, options, location on disk, and even the RPM package that installed it. The Linux Pocket Guide is tailored to Fedora Linux--the latest spin-off of Red Hat Linux--but most of the information applies to any Linux system. Throw in a host of valuable power user tips and a friendly and accessible style, and you'll quickly find this practical, to-the-point book a small but mighty resource for Linux users.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars An excellent reference.......2007-03-25

This book is exactly the type of excellent work one comes to expect from O'Reilly. Tons on useful information in a handy pocket reference size. I bought it because I had been away from Linux for awhile and was rusty on all of the commands. This filled the bill perfectly.

4 out of 5 stars good handbook.......2007-03-17

A good, standard handbook for Fedora and other Linux flavors. A good reference when you already know the OS and need a reference back to refresh your memory on command syntax, etc

5 out of 5 stars Great Product!.......2007-03-08

This book has helped me to have a better understanding of the Linux commands.

5 out of 5 stars Best reference book for Linux.......2007-01-15

This is the second copy of this book that I have. It is true that in the latest distributions of Linux (Suse 10, Fedora 6 or Ubuntu 6.+) you do not need to enter almost any command via the terminal, but there are two main reasons to learn to use the terminal line:
1. you want to become a power user and customize your linux distro, or
2. as an open source system, you are likely to broke something trying to install the latest applications, as Beryl for example, and you broke the graphical server.
In both cases, this book is a must have.
You can have access the same (or more) information via the 'man' command, but is useful to have some writen examples on how to use some commands. This book is very well organized and the size is really 'pocket'. It is a little outdated (2004) and oriented to Fedora (I'm an Ubuntu user), but useful anyway.

5 out of 5 stars If you own one reference book for Linux, this should be it........2007-01-06

I am a linux newbie, though I have an extensive computer background in other operating systems, and I wanted a comprehensive, yet brief reference book for Linux. This is indespensible! I have other detailed, how-to Linux books, but this is the one I continue to use on a regular basis. THe book is arranged in a very logical way, and the table of contents in conjunction with the index allows me to quickly find the command I need. Essentially all Linux commands are included, and for a given command, the most commonly used options are explained.

If I need more detail, and I infrequently do, I can go to those other books, or most likely I just use Linux available documentation (command help, man pages, etc.)

Alot of information for just a few bucks -- again, indispensible!
Regular Expression Pocket Reference
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • if you know reg exps and switch languages a lot...
  • Easy to use due to excellent organiztion
  • Excellent concise reference for regular expressions
  • Second Edition Arrives
  • Handy compilation of regex
Regular Expression Pocket Reference
Tony Stubblebine
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 059600415X

Book Description

Regular expressions are such a powerful tool for manipulating text and data that anyone who uses a computer can benefit from them. Composed of a mixture of symbols and text, regular expressions can be an outlet for creativity, for brilliant programming, and for the elegant solution. While a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill, all there is to know about them fills a very large volume, and you don't always have time to thumb through hundreds of pages each time a question arises. The answer is the Regular Expression Pocket Reference. Concise and easy-to-use, this little book is the portable companion to Mastering Regular Expressions.

This handy guide offers programmers a complete overview of the syntax and semantics of regular expressions that are at the heart of every text-processing application. Ideal as an introduction for beginners and a quick reference for advanced programmers, Regular Expression Pocket Reference is a comprehensive guide to regular expression APIs for C, Perl, PHP,Java, .NET, Python, vi, and the POSIX regular expression libraries.

O'Reilly's Pocket References have become a favorite among programmers everywhere. By providing a wealth of important details in a concise, well-organized format, these handy books deliver just what you need to complete the task at hand. When you've reached a sticking point and need to get to a solution quickly, the new Regular Expression Pocket Reference is the book you'll want to have.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars if you know reg exps and switch languages a lot..........2007-08-20

"Regular Expression - Pocket Reference" is just as high in quality as it's big brother ("Mastering Regular Expressions.")

The book begins with a very brief review of regular expression concepts and patterns. For each language/tool, the book includes tables to reference the metacharacters, a reference for the API/syntax/library and four examples. A few of the languages have additional examples tailored specifically to that language.

The languages/tools included are: Perl, Java, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PCRE, Apache Web Server, vi and awk/sed/egrep. If you use a number of these, the book is a concise reference. If you only use one, you would be better served by printing out the relevant reference charts from the website of your language of choice.

If you are learning about regular expressions or only going to buy one regular expressions book, I recommend the "Mastering Regular Expressions." If you are knowledgeable about regular expressions and just need a review or reference, this book does the job nicely.

5 out of 5 stars Easy to use due to excellent organiztion.......2007-07-30

This book is the best reference for regular expressions. The second edition came out in July 2007 and has several updates over the previous version. The reason for the books ease-of-use lies in the organization. The chapters represent one language each. For each language, listings of the meta-characters and examples are shown. Depending on the language being displayed, there are other subjects covered such as unicode support, object orientation, and different topics unique to the language. The primary parsing engine is listed at the beggining of the chapters with the examples arranged at the ends of the chapters. I generally need to look up expression for JavaScript and [...]. Both of these are covered plus perl, java, php, python, ruby, pcre, apache, vi and shells. I just bookmark the 2 areas I need and I can lookup the expression listing in a few seconds.

5 out of 5 stars Excellent concise reference for regular expressions.......2007-07-27

This is a handy little guide for common regular expression fundamentals and odds and ends. The intro chapter does a nice job of giving you the regex elevator speech and hits all the important fundamentals: different engines, metacharacters, and general pattern rules. There's also a regex "Cookbook" section; however, that bit is only two pages and the "recipes" there are so rudimentary that they're nearly useless and would have been better left to a different book.

The remaining chapters hit regex support in major languages, Apache, shells, and Vi and Vim editors. These sections are very well done and give you great guidance to regex implementations on that platform, plus give you guidance on the APIs you'll need for working with regexes. Languages covered include Perl 5.8, Java 1.5/1.6, .NET framework with examples in C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, Python and JavaScript. The Perl Compatible Regular Expression library (PCRE) is also covered.

Each chapter is concise, well-written and hits the major things you'll need to refresh your memory on from time to time.

Overall it's a very well done book.

4 out of 5 stars Second Edition Arrives.......2007-07-26

§
Gawd, I hate doing regular expressions. Don't you? As far as I am concerning, any help is good help.

The new edition adds sections on Ruby and Apache web server and a few updates on previous existing language content.

One of the best things about this book is that the author synchs the content with the authoritative reference Mastering Regular Expressions. In a welcome convenience, the author provides page references to that book to point to elaboration.

One section of the book I really liked (but wished was much more extensive) contained 2 pages of cookbook examples. Learning by example is easier for most of us. It would have been nice to have many more practical examples, esp. regarding Web applications.
§

5 out of 5 stars Handy compilation of regex.......2007-06-06

This reference book is very handy for anyone doing text manipulation.

With this book you don't need to be constant user of regular expressions to take advantage to their robust abilities.
sed and awk Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • Serves the purpose.
  • a must have
  • Key text searching programs
  • A super fast lightweight reference
  • All you need to use sed or awk well.
sed and awk Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Arnold Robbins
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596003528

Book Description

For people who create and modify text files, sed and awk are power tools for editing. sed, awk, and regular expressions allow programmers and system administrators to automate editing tasks that need to be performed on one or more files, to simplify the task of performing the same edits on multiple files, and to write conversion programs. The sed & awk Pocket Reference is a companion volume to sed & awk, Second Edition, Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition, and Effective awk Programming, Third Edition. This new edition has expanded coverage of gawk (GNU awk), and includes sections on: This small book is a handy reference guide to the information presented in the larger volumes. It presents a concise summary of regular expressions and pattern matching, and summaries of sed and awk. Arnold Robbins, an Atlanta native now happily living in Israel, is a professional programmer and technical author and coauthor of various O'Reilly Unix titles. He has been working with Unix systems since 1980, and currently maintains gawk and its documentation.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars Serves the purpose........2007-08-04

Handy for those who don't use sed and awk every day. I keep it in my cube.

5 out of 5 stars a must have.......2004-03-19

This little book is great. I've only had it for about a week. I needed to match some text today with a pattern that was a little bit more involved than my usual simple needs. I flipped through a few pages and found some examples that quickly helped me derive the search pattern I needed in a few minutes.

I have the full "sed & awk" second edition book, but I went to the pocket reference instead. I would not have been able to find what I needed in the larger book as quickly.

Some have complained about some of the pocket references lacking indexes. This one doesn't have one, but it's so easy to use that it doesn't need one. Just flip and few pages and you'll find what you need. As far as I'm concerned time is money. This little book has paid for itself in one weeks use.

4 out of 5 stars Key text searching programs.......2004-03-07

Sed and awk are the mainstay for those of you who write shell scripts on unix/linux machines that manipulate text files. It is difficult to overstate the usefulness of these two programs.

So O'Reilly and Robbins decided to help you by providing this pocketbook reference that encapsulates the online help for the programs. The book is aimed at someone who programs, but still prefers a traditional hardcopy reference as an aid to human memory. It assumes that you basically already know how to use the programs, but just need some reminder as to the exact syntax and all the possible options.

4 out of 5 stars A super fast lightweight reference.......2000-12-20

I use this pocket reference more then any other reference for sed and awk. This is mostly a syntax guide for folks who already know sed and awk. If you don't know sed and awk, get the Ellen Quigleys 'Unix Shells'(for beginners) followed by O'Reillies 'Sed and Awk' reference. (Big book.) I tend to forget exactly how to do something, so I will just quickly look at my bookmarked pocket reference, and flip quickly to an example of syntax to get that bash code going correctly. If your desk has as many papers and books on it as mine, this is nice for freeing up some elbow room, while keeping the big books on the bookshelf most of the time.

5 out of 5 stars All you need to use sed or awk well........2000-09-13

I bought this "book" because I am writing a program that deals extensively with strings and text (natural language parsing). I was having some difficulty mastering sed, and understanding how it works. For example, "s/[^A-Za-z]//" was not working (to remove non alpha chars). After five pages in this little gem, I knew what I needed. A trailing "g".

The book is rich with examples, explanations, and really just cuts straight to the chase.

This is not a book for the casual user. It is, after all, a reference, not a tutorial. Unix users (and administrators) who already have a basic grasp of regular expressions and just what sed and awk are (and grep/egrep too) will find this most rewarding.

While I have a hard time paying this much for what amounts to less than toaster oven instructions, it is absolutely invaluable to me, and it doesnt take up space on my desk or bookshelf.
Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • All you need to use Oracle regular expressions
  • Cool small booklet on new ORACLE 10g feature
Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference
Jonathan Gennick , and Peter Linsley
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596006012

Book Description

Support for regular expressions in SQL and PL/SQL is one of the most exciting features of Oracle Database 10G. Oracle has long supported the ANSI-standard LIKE predicate for rudimentary pattern matching, but regular expressions take pattern matching to a new level. They provide a powerful way to select data that matches a pattern, as well as to manipulate, rearrange, and change that data. This concise pocket guide is part tutorial and part quick-reference. It's suitable for those who have never used regular expressions before, as well as those who have experience with Perl and other languages supporting regular expressions. The book describes Oracle Database 10G's support for regular expressions, including globalization support and differences between Perl's syntax and the POSIX syntax supported by Oracle 10G. It also provides a comprehensive reference, including examples, to all supported regular expression operators, functions, and error messages. O'Reilly's Pocket References have become a favorite among developers and database administrators everywhere. By providing a wealth of important details in a concise, well-organized format, these handy books deliver just what you need to complete the task at hand. Whether you're using regular expressions for the first time or applying your skills from other languages to the latest version of Oracle, the Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference is the book to have close by.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars All you need to use Oracle regular expressions.......2007-01-19

This pocket-sized 60-page booklet covers only one topic: the regular expression support in Oracle Database 10g. And it covers it well. Though the book's cover says "pocket reference", the book actually contains both a short tutorial and a reference.

The tutorial does a good job of explaining basic regular expression concepts. It doesn't provide a lot of examples or detailed explanations. But if you're apt and don't mind to experiment a little, it'll probably be all you need. Oracle's regular expression flavor is fairly limited, so there aren't many tricky concepts to explain.

The second half of the book is the actual reference. The first part of the reference lists all of the available regular expression tokens, along with a brief but clear description of what the token matches, and one or two examples. The examples use only literal text, so you can try them in Oracle without needing a particular example database.

The second part of the reference describes Oracle's four regular expression functions: REGEXP_INSTR, REGEXP_LIKE, REGEXP_REPLACE and REGEXP_SUBSTR. All the parameters that these four functions accept are fully explained, with clear indications of what all the possible values for these parameters will do. The book shows several examples for each function, again using only literal text. You can easily replace the strings with column names in your actual SQL code.

The final part of the reference lists all 10 error codes that the regexp functions can trigger, along with a one-paragraph description explaining exactly what the error is about (which isn't always obvious from the error messages themselves).

All in all this is an excellent little book. It's probably all you need to successfully use regular expressions with Oracle.

Many people recommend Mastering Regular Expressions to go along with the Oracle book. I disagree. Oracle implements POSIX regular expressions, which are a fairly limited subset of modern Perl-style regular expressions. (Actually, Perl's regex syntax is a significant extension of POSIX.) Mastering Regular Expressions barely mentions POSIX, and never mentions Oracle. It mostly talks about the advanced regex features in Perl, Java, .NET and PHP. If you use any of these languages, buying both Mastering Regular Expressions and Oracle Regular Expressions is certainly a good idea. But if you're a database administrator working solely with Oracle, the Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference is all you need.

4 out of 5 stars Cool small booklet on new ORACLE 10g feature.......2003-11-14

"ORACLE Regular Expressions" is a booklet about the new ORACLE 10g SQL functions that work with regular expressions:

- REGEXP_INSTR
- REGEXP_LIKE
- REGEXP_REPLACE
- REGEXP_SUBSTR

The authors describe the new functions and the ORACLE regular expression dialect (what kind of patterns the regexp engine handles).

The book consists of five chapters:

- Tutorial (an introduction into regular expressions)
- ORACLE's regular epression support (the functions, NLS support, Perl vs. ORACLE regular expressions)
- Regular Expression Quick Reference (explanation of the regexp dialect that ORACLE understands, what metacharacters does what and so on)
- ORACLE Regular Expression Functions (who to call the four functions mentioned above)
- ORACLE Regular Expression Error Messages (the new ORA- errors related to regexps)

Unfortunately I had no access to an ORACLE 10g database at the time of writing this review (ORACLE 10g was not available for download the "normal" users yet), so that I was not able to test the new functions and the examples in this book (although I am looking forward to do this sooon).

I think that "ORACLE Regular Expressions" is not sufficient to learn Regular Expressions from scratch but this was not the goal of this book anyway. If you are new to regular expressions, get J. Friedl's book "Mastering Regular Expressions" (the very best book about regular expressions in general). Afterwards "ORACLE Regular Expressions" will be perfect as a small reference book for the ORACLE regexp implementation.

I liked the comparison between ORACLE and Perl Regexp Support (I am a big Perl fan, and did lots of DBI programs on ORACLE with Perl). Unfortunately this book is missing an example on how to create a function based index to support REGEXP_LIKE queries (the possibility was mentioned) and get no full table scan.

The pocket reference book from O'Reilly does not contain an alphabetic index. However because of the good table of contents and the small size of the book, having an index is not really necessary.
Regular Expression Pocket Reference
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Regular Expression Pocket Reference
    Nathan Torkington
    Manufacturer: O'reilly
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback
    ASIN: B000K74VTY

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