Las Vegas is THE party destination. The bachelor party is probably the biggest attraction in town. Two or three people together is just a party, but whenever you see more than four guys or girls together, I guarantee you it's a bachelor or bachelorette party. It's about the 24-hour town that you can't get back home; it's about the female and male strippers that you can't get at home, all the topless clubs, all the lounge bands playing all night. It's about the hours and hours you can spend going from casino to casino, incredible hotel to hotel, from club to club, from bar to bar - what you can't get anywhere else. Not Chicago, New York not back home, not anywhere else in the world.

This story is about just that, a bachelor party that takes place over a three-day weekend. There are six guys together from Norman, Oklahoma, a university town, and certainly a party town - or at least their version of a party - that is, if you've ever partied in Norman, where the party starts around 8 and is usually over by 12. There are the town's three college bars and you somehow have to figure out how to spend four or five hours doing three bars. But the gambling thing is definitely out of the question. All the gambling in Oklahoma is seen on the Discovery channel, re-runs of the movie "Casino" (bad words removed of course.) or the occasional Saturday night five- and ten-cent poker games, maybe even a game or two of blackjack. The only time the word "crap" is used is when the college football team loses.

A week before the party came to Vegas, I got a call from Allan, the best friend of my nephew. Simply stated, he says: "Ya know I never gambled in Las Vegas before and I don't have a clue on what to do, what to play, how to play it and all. I'm really going to be lost out there."

"And I suppose you want me to give you a crash course on how to gamble?" I said reluctantly.

"No, I just want to know how to find out how to gamble, it wouldn't be right to ask you, besides with all you probably know I won't be able to remember most of it."

He was right, after about five or ten minutes it would all be lost in total confusion. "Well I can't hang out with you guys to show you anyway, since I work the weekends and it's your party, but I have a way you can learn everything: the hows, the whys, the whens and wheres," I said.

"I really don't have time to read all those books on how to gamble." Allan replied.

I told him: "I'm talking about a web site that will teach you everything you need to know."

"Yeah and they want you to pay them for everything, they want you to put up money in advance to play and then you're up against the best players if it's not fixed altogether," he said.

"No, Allan, this is free, totally free. You don't put up money, you don't play anyone or anything, and it's a school, a gambling school, a learning kit; a tool to use to help you play to win. All the strategy is there in plain English, just read, practice a little, and for sure take your laptop in case you need a reference."

"What's it called?" He asked.

"It's called "The GameMaster Online.", I told him.

"That's the online magazine you write for; come on man, I really mean it, I need help on how to not make a total ass of myself and give myself a chance to win. I know you write for them, so do you get paid if I log on?"

"Like I said, go to www.gamemasteronline.com and read - you'll see what I mean - and no, I don't get a dime to send you to the site and the GameMaster doesn't get a dime when you go on their page."

The guys came out from Oklahoma, Allan brought a notebook with him, and I didn't know if he was going to take notes or make paper airplanes. "Here, check it out," Allan said, and there in his notebook were pages and pages of copies of GameMaster pages. I think two stories were mine but the rest was everything from strategy on blackjack, craps, roulette, poker. Every game in town had a section copied from the GameMaster.

"I know I told you to read it but I really didn't expect you to copy it and bring it out with you," I said.

It was a good question. I re-read the opening home page of the GameMaster and I can't begin to tell you how much I read, how much information they gave without asking for anything in return except to read. If there was a catch, I haven't been able to find it in the six years I've known the GameMaster people.

The first part was of poker and poker tournaments. When to play certain hands, when to throw out others that I would swear was wrong, until I finished the column and realized the guy was right on. There was a section on blackjack about when to hit and split hands that most people never even think of, except he was right. By the end of the column I understood why doubling on a soft 16 against a 5 was a good move, or why splitting 8s wasn't always the right thing to do. There was a part on money management that explained it was all right to walk away a loser if you did it at the right time; how not to chase a losing night, but how to sometimes wait it out and take those chances when the cards were right. It told me the best places to play, which games to play over others that were virtually the same games and certain places to avoid. How to pick the right slot and poker machines based on their payout schedules. Places I would have never known the slight changes from one game to another, the slight advantage one place offered over another. I stayed away from the players' cards until I read a story about how much perks and comps some people got at certain casinos over others. They spoke about entering low cost and sometimes free tournaments at casinos I haven't been in for years.

Here I was, writing for an online magazine since 1998 and had no idea all this information was right there at my fingertips and I never bothered reading much more than my own two columns. The editor has given me free hand in all I write and at times I get off the subject of gambling altogether; I tell stories of old Las Vegas, the old gamblers, the owners that used to run this town, and not once has a story been rejected. So here is the GameMaster giving everyone with a computer a free school on everything from playing the easy and hard games, how to beat the best players out there at their own games using the very same strategies they use themselves. It's like a book about the stock market giving you every large and small strategy on how to beat the market without asking you to invest a dime if you want to just practice, until you feel ready to take on the real casinos.

They're not paid by the casinos to give you just enough information to get you in trouble; they're not paid by individuals that could possibly take advantage of you. So why then do they offer their service? It's simple, too simple, but true. They've been there before. They've lost their share of money and made their fair share of mistakes and through trial and errors have found the best ways of fighting the casinos odds. They don't care which casino you play at, which game you decide to take on, if not all of them. They just want to see one thing; they just want to see you win, to give you a decent chance against the millionaires that take your money without a thank you or come again. The casino owners think free drinks, tits and ass, loud music and lights are enough to beat anyone of you and to a degree they're right. But the GameMaster will teach you how to ignore all that glitz and noise and hype and keep your mind on the real game.

So what was the outcome of all of this? The guys came out from Oklahoma, three of them studied the copies of sheets they made off the GameMaster site, and two of them came home with over $300 in profit, that's after the airfare and room were paid for. They learned how to ask for and get comps, so two of the rooms were free. Most of their food was also comped, which they never knew about before reading the GameMaster.

I got a call after they got home and was offered some money for turning them onto the GameMaster. My answer was simple; "I didn't give you fish, I taught you how to catch your own fish and take care of yourself. The Game Master doesn't just hand out free fish, but they're just as willing to give you fishing lessons for free and ask for nothing in return. There's several sites available on their page, they don't push any one of them for any casino so if you feel up to trying it for real, there are sites available to try your hand at online gambling or if you want a real casino, they don't push that on you either. Their motto is: "Learn as much as you can and show them what you learned, and it's all on us."

So if you haven't read the GameMaster, give it a try, better yet, give yourself a chance, a real chance the next time you walk into a casino. The odds for even the best players are very small, the less you know the bigger and bigger the odds against you get. Let the GameMaster give you back those same odds the best players have on their side.

The casinos might not like it, but fair is fair, and the GameMaster gives you fair for free. You can't beat that price anywhere in Las Vegas. You can find it easy enough, just go to www.gamemasteonline.com/, put it in your favorites list and even if you're not ready to put up cash to gamble yet, at least let them teach you a lesson, maybe they'll even talk you out of gambling altogether, or better yet, maybe they'll teach you what you didn't know before and make you rich and that's for free, too.

And like the guy in the balloon said to the guys on the ground when the balloon got away from them: "There's only one problem, there's no strings attached."

-Ken Pearlman

Oh yeah, and while you're at it don't forget to read "The Vegas Dealer" and "The Felt Top Table." Those are my columns, and I'm sure I can teach you something and that's free, too.