"We have a new game for ya!" he says, and they nod and smile agreeably. "It's called Two Two One. It's also called Triple Hand Poker, but the sign says Two Two One. I represent the same company that brought you Three Card Poker and Twenty-One-Plus- Three, so we've already had two winners for ya, and we hope this will be another one."

Webb is either being excessively modest or excessively cagey. He's actually the sole inventor of Three Card Poker, which will soon surpass Caribbean Stud as the most successful new proprietary casino game of the 1990s. When he takes a break a little later in the day, a big round jolly dealer says, "So who did you say invented Three Card Poker?"

Webb cocks an eye mischievously and grins.

"You did? You did it yourself?" The dealer rises up out of his chair and sticks out his hand. "You da man!"

Later I find out why Webb doesn't always tell people he's the inventor of the other two games. A day later he's standing off to the side while his wife Hannah O'Donnell is conducting a Two Two One training session at Harrah's.

"We're the company that brought you Three Card Poker and Twenty-One-Plus Three," she says.

"I hate that game!" explodes a fortyish female dealer, who seems suddenly embarrassed by her own outburst. "I mean, I'm sorry, but I don't think you'll find many dealers who like that game. NO TIPS."

Alas, it IS a problem with the game. Because the player plays two hands at a time--one blackjack and one Three Card Poker--he frequently loses a chip or two even when he's winning. You're not likely to tip when the dealer is raking chips toward the tray.

"One reason we launch new games in Mississippi," says Webb, "is that there's dealer resistance to them in Las Vegas. When people play new games, they don't have any established tipping habits. The dealers think they're not going to make any money, so they try to avoid the new games. Mississippi is less jaded, more open to new things. You'll notice that a lot of these dealers haven't even been working a year yet."

Only three new patented games have broken through in the past decade--first Caribbean Stud, then Let It Ride, followed by Three Card Poker, which Webb introduced at the Grand Casino in Gulfport, Miss., in 1994. It was the success of Caribbean Stud that gave Webb the idea to become a games inventor in the first place. He had been a high-stakes poker player for years, first in his native England (he's from Derby and speaks with a charming Midlands accent), later in Las Vegas.

After 20 years of competitive poker, he was reaching the burn-out stage, and at a particularly low point someone told him about the people who had gotten rich off Caribbean Stud.

"I can't really do the math on these games," he says. "I have two people who do that for me with computers. But I can sort of come up with ideas or concepts that would make interesting games, and then we can see if the math checks out. I like to create a game that's fair for the player, with a low house edge. These other games might be successful for a while, but if you have a 4 or a 5 percent house edge, or you have an expensive side bet, then eventually people will lose too much money and they'll turn away from the game and it will start to decline. The goal is to create one that people want to play forever, like blackjack. Or at least for 20 years, which is the term of the intellectual- property patent."

Two Two One is actually a simplified version of Pai Gow Poker, just as Three Card Poker was a simplified version of real poker. Many players are turned off by Pai Gow Poker, because a) the complicated seven-card hand-sorting is intimidating, and b) you have to pay a 5 percent commission when you win. Two Two One eliminates the commission and cuts down the number of cards from seven to five. You play only against the dealer, and even if you arrange your cards incorrectly, the downside is not that great. You can even ask the dealer to arrange your cards for you-- although, once you become skillful, this would be a mistake.

First you make three equal bets. At a typical learning table, your bet would be three five-dollar chips. Then five cards are dealt face down to each player and the dealer. The goal is to arrange those five cards into three hands that will beat all three of the dealer's hands. The first hand has two cards, the second has two cards, and the third has one card. The first hand must always be higher than the second, and the second must be higher than the third.

So basically you're dealing with pairs and high cards. Three-of-a-kinds are meaningless. Flushes and straights are meaningless. Once everyone has arranged his hand and placed it in three separate piles marked by squares on the felt, the dealer turns over his hand and arranges it as follows:

If he has a pair, he has to play it as the high hand. He can't split it.

If he has two pair, he has to play both of them.

If he has no pairs, then he places his highest card in the first hand, his second highest in the second hand, his third highest in the one-card third hand, his fourth highest in the first hand (as the kicker), and his lowest card in the second hand (as the kicker).

Then, one by one, he matches each player's first hand against his first hand, second against his second, third against his third. The player can lose all three bets ($15 loss), win all three ($15 win), win two and lose one ($5 win), win one and lose two ($5 loss). The house edge comes on ties, which are called "copies," not pushes, because a tie loses.

After playing quite a few hands of the game, I can tell you a couple of secrets to getting an advantage over the dealer:

1) If you have a pair of queens or higher, almost always split the pair to create two strong high-card hands. (The player is allowed to split pairs. The dealer can't.)

2) If you have two pair, use the lower of the two pair as your first hand, and then split the high pair for hands two and three.

3) The key to winning is that lonely third hand, the one- card hand. You want to make that card as high as possible.

4) When you have two kickers, put the HIGHER kicker in the second hand, not the first. Usually the kicker is not going to make a great deal of difference on the first hand, but in the second hand it can turn a loss into a win.

The game has the look of a winner, because it appears complicated at first, but can be learned in about 20 minutes and rewards skillful play. It's rare to lose all three hands, so your money doesn't disappear quickly. And it has the potential to be a highly social game, since the players are allowed to show one another their cards and discuss how to play them. (The dealer, on the other hand, can only play his hand "the house way," which is dictated by the rules.)

Two Two One will be debuting in both northern and southern Mississippi casinos this month, but if you stop by to check it out and you really do like it, then do all of us table-games lovers a favor: