No comments about Fantasy Baseball and Mathematics: Student Workbook (Fantasy Sports and Mathematics Series).

5 comments about 101 Cryptic Crosswords: From the New Yorker.

1. I've been learning to do Cryptics from Games Magazine (they have 2 in each issue), and this set from the New Yorker is, as others have said, easier. Still very nice and satisfying for those who like to roll through one in under an hour. They are light, but light in the realm of Cryptics. The instructions and tutorial puzzles are excellent for the beginner.
   The quality of the book is excellent. The pages are nice and thick (so the ink doesn't run through). For something meatier try: ISBN 0812935128.



2. This book has been my constant companion. The spiral format makes it durable and easy to use. A good first book on cryptics. Hard enough to be fun, easy enough to be solvable, although I've yet to find one I can do in an hour. (2 hours was my best time so far).
   
   I would appreciate for some a bit more elaboration on some of the answers, since the audience has been beginners.
   
   I do hope these puzzlers write another book in the same format.



3. The spiral bound format and good quality paper is great for puzzling. Two puzzles are squeezed onto every page, so there isn't loads of room for anagramming and such next to the clues, but there's space in the margins.
   
   The puzzle formats are non-standard for American cryptics--there are no black squares. Bold lines indicate the ends of words, and all the grids are 8x10. At least half the letters in any given word are also used in crossing words, but you don't have the strict every-other-letter format. So for EARTH, you'd might pick up E_RT_ from other answers.
   
   The answers have both grids and quick clue breakdowns (a couple of clues do get deeper explanations). The answers to adjoining puzzles are on different pages, so you don't accidentally see answers to the next puzzle.
   
   As everyone else has stated, the puzzles are manageable, but still challenging (and the clues are always fair!). A great cryptic crossword puzzle book.



4. Easy (in terms of cryptic) crosswords that can be solved in about 1/2 hour. Mostly U.S. style, following strict clue construction rules. Few esoteric foreign words and places. Clues are not simply constructed using a computer thesaurus and anagram program. Nicely crafted. Very enjoyable, the best "easy" book I've seen. Spiral format is great.



5. I've been learning to do Cryptics from Games Magazine (they have 2 in each issue), and this set from the New Yorker is, as others have said, easier. Still very nice and satisfying for those who like to roll through one in under an hour. They are light, but light in the realm of Cryptics. The instructions and tutorial puzzles are excellent for the beginner.
   The quality of the book is excellent. The pages are nice and thick (so the ink doesn't run through). For something meatier try: ISBN 0812935128.

3 comments about The Frugal Video Poker Scouting Guide.

1. This may seem a little pricey for what you get (3.5" x 7" inches, and 34 pages), but if you consider the time it would take you to compile 37 VP games and almost 200 pay tables, into a compact little easy to read notebook that you can carry with you to the casinos...it's really a bargain, and a necessary tool for any recreational or serious VP player.
   
   The guide is essential for separating the good VP machines from the bad ones. There are nine pay tables for Deuces Wild that range from 100.76% to 94.82% returns, eight pay tables for Jacks or Better, seven pay tables for Double Bonus Poker, nine for Double Double Bonus Poker, eight for Joker Poker, and many more.
   
   The progressive totals are also a nice feature of the guide. Most of us wouldn't touch a Jacks or Better machine that only had a 95% return, but did you know that you could play it if it was a progressive and paid $3,085 or more? It's the little things like that, and the Multi-Strike and Super Times Pay return percentages that show this was a well thought out guide.
   
   I only have one small complaint about the guide; I wish it were about one or two inches shorter so that it could fit in your back pocket without sticking out. The longer pay tables could easily be continued on the next page, and if they had to add a couple of pages to the guide to compensate for shortening the pages, that wouldn't really be a problem since it is only about an eighth of an inch thick. Jean or Viktor, hope your listening ;)



2. This book is exactly what is claims to be. It's a pocket guide that takes the guess work out of determining the payback percentage on all the popular video poker games and then some. The volatility ratings are a nice touch and are very helpful in determining what games to play based on the size of your bankroll.



3. Finally - just the book I've been waiting for. As long as I've been playing video poker, I've yearned for handy listing of the percent payback for the various games and paytables associated with them. I'd even started building the tables myself from numerous books on the subject of Video Poker. My efforts were never satisfactory because I never seemed to have the value for the machine I was standing in front of at the time - i.e. when I really needed it. This book is nearly perfect. It has numerous precentages for all (I haven't found one missing yet) each of the popular games that you find in casinos these days with various permutations of their paytables - sadly these are mostly NOT to the players advantage, but the authors' can't be faulted for that. My only complaint is the spiral-bound book is a smidge long for the average man's pocket and has a lame textual style for the little prose it contains that uses a sailor-schtick which I found a bit inappropriate. However, you don't buy this for the prose - you buy it for the NUMBERS and the numbers are just fine.

2 comments about The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms: Over 600 Mystery Codes to Be Cracked! (Mammoth Book of).

1. Elonka Dunin, one of the sharpest cryptographers of this or any other age, has created a superb tutorial of cryptography --an entire classroom in a single book! A reader can be at any level of skill in cryptography and achieve full enjoyment of this marvelous work. Excellent coverage of the latest in cryptograms, including Da Vinci codes and the hardest puzzle to challenge experts in a decade: KRYPTOS (Google it!) This book could be your training ground for solving the best of unsolved cryptograms of this and recent centuries.



2. This book is a nice enough collection of more than 600 puzzles for one's enjoyment but is hardly more than a simple introduction to the most common codes and ciphers. It repeats the same general knowledge usually found by a simple internet search on cryptography.

5 comments about Okami Official Strategy Guide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)) (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)).

1. Brady Games makes horrible strategy guides. They omit things, and make everything confusing. This is the only exception.
   
   The Okami Strategy Guide is succinct, but provides all the information for everything in the game. The guide is almost as beautiful as the game.
   
   It's just a great guide for a great game.



2. I got this for my son and he was very happy with it. He said it helped him out alot in the game, and the product came very qickly..ty



3. This guide helps me out of any jam that the game gets me in
   Love it.



4. I wrote a separate review for the game where I recommended buying this guide as well. Our own copy of the guide has now plenty of dog-ears, the corners are faded, the pages are worn... all because it is so useful. I stopped playing the game early on because I couldnt figure out what all the fuss was about. I mean, the wolf was a goddess, ok and she had special powers and had a mission to fight evil, fine so far. But when I open up the weapons screen I was overwhelmed with the various options it presented. Not being too patient with such complications (Resident Evil 4 Weapons Screen was easy to figure out=) I stopped playing and ordered the guide.
   
   Unfortunately for me, my own elementary school daughter took an interest in the game and pored over the pages of the guide. she reads this anytime she has the chance which is good since she's reading anyway. she managed to finish the game 4 times with the guide's help.
   
   The guide itself is a veritable art collection! Not just the text but the art of the game itself. It is chuck full of information, tips and strategies that in some places the text had to be written in small characters just to fit the data. This is perhaps the only "con" of the guide for me. Still, the amount of information it contains would take a while to figure out if you played it on your own. I believe, we would miss many things in the game without the guide. To give you a perspective, Resident Evil 4 was difficult play but very easy to figure out what to do or where to go, for example. In Okami, you can spend a lot of time roaming around fighting enemies without advancing into the mission, although you will gain treasures defeating enemies.
   
   In Thankfully, everything is illustrated with art straight from the game itself.
   
   Highly recommended!



5. On the whole, this is a great guide. It is beautifully printed, chock full of all kinds of extra tidbits, and it will help you get through the game with all the stray beads and stuff you need to get all of the end of game extras. However, when it comes to the many creatures you will fight, no extra information is really given beyond boss fight strategies. It was useless for me to use the guide when trying to figure out how to deal with tougher regular monsters (like those hideous clay samurai), and I had to turn to the Internet for answers. The guide is also not very well organized. I missed most of the stray beads until the point of no return because many aren't mentioned during the main walkthrough, but only in a quick list at the back of the book. It only vaguely mentions where to find most of the feedable animals (and many are only mentioned in a useless list in the back).
   
   Also, be warned that like many Brady guides, this one is absolutely horrible about spoiling every last moment of the story except for the ending. It describes every scene and every event without warning and the way it is laid out it is almost impossible to avoid missing them.

2 comments about AI Game Programming Wisdom 3 (Game Development Series).

1. Computer gaming continues to grow at a very rapid rate. In fact much of the development of the new higher speed chips and of course the high performance video cards are being driven by the needs of the gaming people.
   
   Computer gaming software also continues to grow, perhaps even faster than gaming itself. Because of the rapid state of software development, no one author could possibly keep up with all of the changes that are taking place.
   
   So in this book Steve Rabin, of Nintendo of America has gotten almost sixty of the most advanced gaming software developers to write articles explaining the state of the art as they are helping to develop it. The writers come from a mix of software companies, universities, independent consultants, and game hardware developers. This is the state of the art in the development of artificial intelligence for games.



2. i'm surprised more people haven't reviewed this book (there's only 1 review at the time i write this). It's a really, really good book, i expected more reviews.
   
   Since what this book is isn't exactly obvious from the description, i figured i should explain it.
   
   Like the first two volumes, this book is a collection of articles, generally 5-10 pages each. The book is roughly 800 pages long, so that's a lot of articles.
   
   Each article is on a different topic and most are written by different people. A handful of authors wrote two articles, but realize that a *lot* of people contributed to this, and each is an expert in different areas, have different writing styles and represent different games.
   
   i believe most of the authors are professional game AI developers who've worked on big name games. There are also articles by professors and game AI hobbyists (who shortly after writing in this series became professionals). Most write in a way you can understand, a few state things very simply, a few others use math and Greek letters and other things that give me headaches. The vast majority of articles are practical articles, not theory, and there's a fair number of examples (with code) given on the included CD.
   
   Because the articles are small, they tend to be focused on a single topic such as navmesh generation, path smoothing or player prediction through n-gram analysis. Since there are so many, the topics cover all sorts of things, from camera movement systems to baseball games to squad FPS tactics to steering race cars to generating random numbers with a normal/Guassian distribution. My favorites are the ones where a developer discusses some bright idea he had for a game and how it backfired on him.
   
   Given the sheer number of articles, it is almost guaranteed that you will find several articles that you don't like, several you don't understand, several you don't care abot and several you can't believe you lived without. If you're like me, you'll find one or two articles that are worth the purchase price of the book all by themselves.
   
   I suppose i should mention that i wrote a couple of articles in this series (though not this volume), so i'm obviously biased, but this really is a very good series. i probably should give it a 5 but i don't like giving 5s and, besides, not every one of the ~100 articles was excellent, just a lot of them.
   
   Now here's the important part: i teach a video game AI class and i don't use this book. Why? Because this is not a text book on how to write AI. It does not cover every topic a beginner needs to know to write a game. It does not build up a single example, walking you step by step through making a game. It most certainly dosn't teach you how to program. In many respects, this is a book written by professionals for professionals. It's a "tips and tricks" book. The assumption is that you know how to program or design a game. You don't have to be a genius to use this book, but it's not a cookbook or Dummies book either.
   
   There are a lot of other books on AI, most of them all-in-one, how to write AI books. Personally, there's only one or two i'd recommend, and none i couldn't live without. But i really don't think i can stress enough just how valuable this particular series is.

5 comments about Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Offshore Sports Gambling Empire.

1. This is a truly fascinating tale of the rise and fall of a Sports Gambling ring. Steve Budin was a self-made millionaire before turning thirty, and we see how he coped with the money, the drugs, the sports, and the fall of it all. The book sucks you in to the very last page.



2. A third grader could have written a better book. This guy supposedly has the father of the year who was 6 foot 4 and full of muscle with the brains of Einstein and could never make a mistake. He makes the old man out to be Gandhi.
   
   He makes himself out to be the coolest guy since James Bond. He admits that he smoked weed and cheated on his wife on a regular basis (she is also a Miss Universe clone). At the end of course he talks about how he is devoted to Jesus his savior and how he dedicated his life to him.
   
   The so called "adventures" he goes through are so trumped up with BS and tall tales that you have no idea where the truth ends and fiction starts.
   He apparently knows every mobster and wise guy in New York and Miami. He claims to be an international jet-setter.
   
   Of course one his good buddies is Stu Feiner. If you know anything about sports betting I don't need to go any further.
   
   I was really looking forward to reading this book. I did finish it out of some outside chance that the end would be better. That did not happen.
   
   I had never heard of the guy and I follow this subject very closely. He really seems to be a two-bit broken down gambler with a trifle of a story that is blown way out of proportion.
   
   If you like sports gaming and the stories that go with it find another book.



3. Fast shipping, great product, got exactly as described. I would do buisness with this seller again! :) Thank you!



4. all he talks about is how great is father is (the guy seems to be in line for the nobel peace prize) and how smart he is when all he really is is a tool for the New York mob, which called all the shots. The guy is a shameless self promoter. I am ashamed I spend money on this book and immediately tossed it in the garbage.



5. "Bets, Drugs and Rock & Roll" by Steve Budin. This book was written by the father of off shore sports book gambling and is a truly fascinating read. Having learned the basics of bookmaking from his father, who was one of the top bookies in New York City, Steve Budin demonstrated a remarkable talent for his chosen field. The book charts his rise from his early days as a high school bookmaker in Florida, who took bets from his classmates as well as their parents and his teachers, through his time as a casino host to his setting up of the first real offshore sports book in Panama and later in Costa Rica. He describes the difficulties this posed as well as his success in overcoming the many obstacles placed in his path. Steve Budin also discusses his battles with the US government, whichultimately lead to his downfall, notwithstanding that he was meticulous about paying taxes on his earnings. The book is filled with interesting tidbits about some of his celebrity clients, which included actors and professional athletes to his own philosophy about the proper conduct of a bookie. The book also provides an excellent introduction to the basics of sports betting which I found especially enlightening. I will note that Mr. Budin frequently pats himself on the back in his book and brags about his accomplishments but I think he is entitled to his pride when you realize he helped create what is now a multi-billion dollar industry. The book is a fast paced read which I finished in one sitting.

1 comments about SuperVisions: Ambiguous Optical Illusions (Super Visions).

1. There are great pictures in this compilation of optical illusions. Many hidden things and some quite obvious, but a great beach read. It'll make your head hurt to look at them alot, but it's well worth it.

5 comments about Gypsy Witch Fortune Telling Playing Cards.

1. These cards were first published in 1903 and have been around since then - not something any of the age tarot deck available today can claim! Sometimes called GYPSY LENORMAND, these cards are not meant as a game for the curious or novice reader - they are serious fortune telling cards and can reveal an enormous amount of accurate information. Just don't confuse fortune telling with "Love and Light" wanna-be readers who pick up one deck after another but don't want to tell you anything else then that your are on your way to ascension and that the angels love you! This cards deal with the light side of life as well as with the shadow - good and bad is reflected, just as it is in real life! Serious fortune tellers will have to look at these aspects and can not hind behind a romantic and fluffy velvet covered table. If people can not understand that life is not all "love and light" then they will not be able to use these cards - its that simple!
   
   4 stars for the QUALITY of the information that a serious reader can get from these cards! I can not give 5 as I am not 100% keen on the images. The more traditional 36-cards Lenormand deck is still my favorite...



2. I love these cards. I received my first deck when I was seven, and had no problem with them, so they can certainly be used by beginners. They do have some dark cards, but that is a part of life. They are very accurate and enjoyable to use.
   
   A reviewer mentioned that they were first published in 1903, true, then the reviewer said no tarot deck could claim that. There are tarot decks that are reproductions of decks made in the 15th century such as the Visconti Sforza, and then there are decks like the ever popular Rider Waite (first published in 1909) and Cagliostro Tarot (first published in 1912) so these decks definitely have been around too!



3. :) I used these cards years ago. Sold them and bought a new pack the other day. (Wished I had never sold them to begin w/, but they were getting old.) Anyway already I am getting interesting results. I find them simple for beginners tho. The layouts are easy as long as the instructions are read throughly. The instructions are much more simple for me than the Rider-Waite deck, plus the explanations are not so scattered. I love my pack and would not give them away for anything. I like the fact that you can get a yes/no resp, something you cannot get w/ the Rider Waite deck (unless there are layouts out there I have not heard of). This deck allows simple quick explanations and not 5 or 6 outcomes that do not make sense or 5 or 6 events that do not even apply to the situation. This deck is really simple and any beginner should be able to pick it up quickly. If I can, anyone can. I highly recommend them. And it takes not time at all to pick up on the images and meanings.



4. These cards are not like tarot...this is more the Grand LeNormand style. I have owed a deck for many years. I ordered these as a gift to a friend. I plan on ordering another deck for a Christmas gift.



5. The card deck was delivered as promised and in fine condition. A little too complicated for my purpose, however, which was a quick read for a fund raiser.

1 comments about Saints Row Signature Series Guide (Bradygames Signature) (Bradygames Signature).

1. Winning the game is just the beginning. Completing the game is the next challenge. This is a must have if you want to complete the game.