About

For years, I’ve been asked how my company got the name Compu-Flyers. As many of you know, the company was started by my father, Lenny Frome. My dad spent decades as an aerospace engineer before retiring with my mom to Las Vegas. It didn’t take long for my dad to get completely bored with retirement. So, he was one of the first people to buy one of the ‘new’ full-color computers/monitors and an expensive color printer. He thought that he would open up a kiosk at the local mall and print out color t-shirts and calendars and thus, he registered a company called Compu-Flyers.

My father always found the math behind casino games to be quite intriguing and this probably explains why I was programming Blackjack on my high school computer when I was about 15. Before he got a chance to rent a kiosk, my dad was walking through a casino when he came across a video poker machine, which at the time was relatively new to the casino. A short time later he was in another casino, saw a video poker machine with the same paytables but they were advertising different paybacks. “Impossible!”, my father thought.

He decided to put his ‘color’ computer to different use. He created the first analysis of video poker. While there were probably a couple of bugs in it, it was based on the same concepts that every gambling analyst has used since. Look at every possible outcome and assign an expected value to each possible play. Whichever play resulted in the highest expected value is the proper way to play the hand. My father soon discovered that there was not much written about video poker, so he began going to some of the gambling magazines and offering to write about the topic. Little by little it caught on.

It was suggested that he write a little tipsheet on video poker. Rather than create another new business, he simply used the name of the one he had already created for any potential buyers. When the checks started to come in for his 50+ tips on Video Poker, and later on for Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas – the name was a permanent fixture. It had absolutely nothing to do with gambling, but Compu-Flyers was here to stay.

It’s been more than 20 years since then, and my dad passed away in 1998. When he died, my family decided to keep the company going. In reality, this meant that I would keep sending out orders, maintaining his website and try to keep his articles in circulation. In 2003, I decided to opt for a career change. I left my job as a Senior Director of Information Technology and decided to follow in my dad’s footsteps. I’ve been privileged to write for Gaming Today, Midwest Gaming and Travel, Midwest Players, Gaming South and others. I’ve helped launch numerous successful games including Ultimate Texas Hold’em, Mississippi Stud, Rabbit Hunter, Imperial Pai Gow, Mini Pai Gow and several sidebets for these and others.

It is 2011 and the world has changed a bit. The internet and Social Media (facebook, twitter, et al) have changed the game a good deal. The notion of “what’s in a name?” may be more important than ever. After searching for a new name for Compu-Flyers for a while, I finally came up with Gambatria.