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A few interesting items:
• If you enjoy spending an afternoon or evening in a casino and you live in our Tri-State Area, you don't have to make a very long trip.
Whether you're looking to play some roulette or blackjack, toss the dice at the craps table, play a slot machine or two or are just looking for a place to enjoy a good meal or a drink or two or see some live entertainment, you don't have to drive very far.
Within a 45-minute drive or so, you can find yourself in one of four casinos -- Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort; Wheeling Island Hotel, Casino and Racetrack; Rivers Casino on Pittsburgh's North Shore; or Hollywood Casino at the Meadows in Washington, Pa.
Everyone has a favorite -- and that choice usually is tied to many variables, from atmosphere to the pour on drinks to the hardest one to pin down, luck.
That's what made a study released last week by Casinos.com interesting. The website that says it does reviews on everything casino took a look at the five casinos in West Virginia and, according to Colm Phelan, the digital PR manager, determines that the luckiest casino in the state is Mountaineer.
When all of the data was crunched, the study shows, Mountaineer was tops with a luck percentage of 39. That was based on data collected that included keywords related to luck in Trip Advisor reviews, the study shows.
Hollywood Casino at Charles Town was second at 37.10 percent and the Casino Club at the Greenbrier was third at 27.5 percent. Wheeling Island finished fourth at 25.8 percent, just ahead of Mardi Gras Casino and Resort in Cross Lanes, which finished at 25.24 percent.
Phelan said similar information was not yet available for the casinos in Ohio or Pennsylvania. He said they hope to be compiling similar information about casinos in every state in the future.
• Rivers Casino, though, is one place you can feel lucky even if you are faced with one of the worst possible fates at a poker table.
Just ask Scott Thompson. The Washington, Pa., man had to have felt pretty good when he found he had four aces while playing eight-no limit Texas Hold 'Em there on Nov. 28. That's until Brent Enos of Jefferson Hills, Pa., showed a royal flush in hearts to win the hand.
The way it happened, though, activated the bad beats jackpot at the Rivers. While each casino offers its own variation of a bad beat, at Rivers, the jackpot kicks in at four-of-a-kind, 10 or higher. So, to put that into a little better perspective, the chances of four of a kind losing to a royal flush in any specific game is one in every 165 million hands, according to Bicycle Playing Cards.
Because the bad beat was triggered in that game, Thompson earned $362,250.13, while Enos claimed $272,686, and the other six players at the table each collected $45,281.
While those numbers are impressive, November's bad beat was not a record. That was set on Aug. 22, 2022, also at the Pittsburgh casino when Benjamin Flanagan of Huttonsville, W.Va., collected $490,708 of the $1.2 million bad beat jackpot while playing $1 to $3 no-limit Texas Hold 'Em. Those winnings came after his four aces were beaten by the royal flush in spades held by Raymond Broderson of Wexford, Pa., who claimed $368,029.
The remaining players at the table that night each took home $61,338.
In case you're wondering, the probability of getting any four of a kind is one in 4,165 hands, while the probability of getting a royal flush is one in every 30,940 hands.
It's interesting information, and just another reminder that while you are, for example, facing 1-in-38 odds every time you place a bet on a single number when you sit down to play roulette at Mountaineer, Rivers or Caesar's Palace, you still feel better making that decision at the place you feel you are the luckiest.
(Gallabrese, a resident of Steubenville, is executive editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times.)