• Never stick with a cold machine because you think it is due to hit. • Never leave a hot machine because you think it is played out. • Do not flee a machine after a big score. Spend another $10 or $20 before confirming it is on a downswing. • If a player abandons a machine after a jackpot or major pay-out, jump on it. • Do not bank your winnings in a machine. Cash out and start another run. • Leave on your first inclination to leave. Steven Hepker has been a professional writer for 30 years, much of the time as a deadline crime reporter. He grew up on a dairy farm and was co-captain of the Hudson High School Tigers football team that won a national record 72 consecutive wins. Hepker graduated from Hillsdale College, where he later taught journalism. He won three dozen state and national awards from 1980 to 2009 at four daily newspapers in Michigan and Pennsylvania. His first casino visit was in 1984 at age 28, in Atlantic City. Hepker and his wife, Sandy, have four children and three grandsons. They live on a farm near Hudson, an hour from the nearest casino. Hepker raises or harvests much of his family's food, farms about 110 acres of grain and hay, and is a freelance writer. He has published about 15,000 by-lined stories since the late 1970s. "Casinos of Michigan" is his first book.