Learn how to play blackjack and $$ START WINNING $$

What are Free Slots?

admin — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:17:58 +0000

Free slots are a simple way to enjoy playing slots without paying any money. Sometimes we all want to have fun and gamble for a little. While some go to land casinos and spend their money there, others choose playing free slots online. It is a much more comfortable way of putting your luck to the test, when you can play for as much as you like right at your home. All you need to play free slots online is a computer and Internet connection. No credit cards, or other payment methods are required.

Unless, you wish to play slots for money, of course. There are two basic ways you can play free slots online. One way is by downloading a stand-alone program from an online casino website. There are numerous online casinos that offer such free slots programs. They don’t require any payments for downloading the game. The other way is to play free slots directly on the casino website, by using Flash, Shockwave or Java plug-ins in your browser. Make sure you have one of these installed on your computer, or you can download them directly from the site - usually free slots site post links for installing these plug-ins. No matter what type of free slots you choose, you can be sure that you’ll find the right slot machine for you. Just like real slot machines, there are numerous variations and themes on which the slot games are based. You are a big fan of Star Wars? There are hundreds of free slots based on the movie.

Couple of Common Mistakes in Blackjack

admin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 05:30:15 +0000

Mistake: The most common mistake beginners make is to stand too often on their stiff hands (12,13,14,15, and 16). Players are naturally afraid to hit these hands because every one of them could bust (make a total of 22 or more) with a single hit. But when the dealer has a high card showing, your best odds of winning come from hitting and giving yourself a chance of making a better total.

Some beginners think the best way to play is to play the same way the dealer plays: Hit all sixteens and stand on all seventeens. This is not true. The object of the game is not to make a hand as close to 21 as possible, but to beat the dealer. Often the best way to do this is to stand with a low total, sometimes as low as 12.

Here’s how many players think: If I hit this 14, I risk busting my hand right here and now. But maybe the dealer has a 6 in the hole. If I don’t take a hit, my hand still has a chance. Maybe the dealer’s hand will bust.

Every player is afraid that he will be responsible for his own loss. But that 14 you are holding is already in dire jeopardy when the dealer shows a 10 up. You must fight for the hand’s survival by taking the hit, giving it a chance of becoming a stronger hand against that 10. With a 14 against a 10, you must fight to the death.

Recommendation: On the other hand, if the dealer’s upcard is 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, and you are holding a stiff hand, you should stand. Since the dealer must hit his stiff hands, and chance busting even when you are stiff, hitting your weak hands is not advantageous against these weak upcards.

Mistake: Some beginners think the best way to play is to play the same way the dealer plays: Hit all sixteens and stand on all seventeens. Generally speaking, this is not true at all. The object of the game is not to make a hand as close to 21 as possible, but to beat the dealer. Often the best way to do this is to stand with a low total, sometimes as low as 12.

Recommendation: There are exceptions to these guidelines, as the actual basic strategy decision for any given hand is determined by working out all of the mathematical probabilities. But if you just consider this logic when studying the basic strategy charts, the pattern will become clear to you and it should not be too difficult to memorize.

Early blackjack counting systems development

admin — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:00:29 +0000

In the toe of each shoe there were two “switches”, or buttons - one above each big toe and one beneath - for a total of four switches. By using a series of toe taps, kind of like Morse code, the player could relay to the computer everything it needed to know in order to make a decision in a blackjack game: which cards had already been dealt, what cards the player held, and the dealer’s upcard. This computer communicated its decisions to the player with buzzes and taps on the sole of the player’s foot. It was not easy to use one of these devices. It took weeks or even months of practice to get to the point where you could use the device at casino-dealing speed without foot cramps stopping you.

During the early 70th, Dr. Keith Taft began developing the first concealed blackjack computer, and by 1972, Keith had started using a computer in the Nevada casinos to play “perfect” blackjack. Nevada had no laws at that time prohibiting the use of devices at their tables. By the mid-’70s, Keith and his son, Marty, had met Al Francesco, and they would be putting together teams of players using computers to beat the blackjack tables.

Mistakes. I’ve made quite a few!

admin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:02:58 +0000

So, here I am, playing video poker. My video poker strategy is down pat! You see, to my way of thinking, there’s no such thing as a random sequence. The probability of any one thing happening is set by what went before. So, if I got me a winning hand, the law of averages says the odds of that happening again is poorer for the hands that come just after it. An’ that’s true for the reverse as well. The longer I go without a winning hand, the more likely a big hand gets.

These folk live in a dream world. You ever watch a Video Poker Dealer wash and shuffle a deck of 52 cards fairly. Then the Dealer deals five cards to each player from that shuffled deck. The first card dealt comes with a 1 in 52 chance, the second with a 1 in 51 chance, and so on as the cards are dealt in turn. All the countries licensing video versions of card and dice games have laws. No country wants to kill the golden goose that’s laying all them tax eggs so they all want to see fair games. Players vote with their feet if they think a game’s crooked. That’s in no-one’s interest. So all casinos gotta match the odds of a real card game with a human dealer. You might be thinking these casinos’ll still be out to cheat you in some way - after all, wouldn’t nothing be easier than to tweak the software - and those countries’re probably corrupt, take a backhander and look the other way. But there’s no need to cheat. No matter how you cut it, the games make more’n enough money when played fairly. Even when serious professionals come out to play, the House has an edge.

A slots tournament? What’s that all about?

admin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:15:32 +0000

When you walk up to a slot machine in a casino or log into an online casino and play the slots, it’s a battle between you and the machine to see who comes out the winner. Actually, even if you’re a professional, the machine will almost always come out ahead over the long term. That’s the way casinos make a profit. But for fun, you can sign up for a slots tournament where you’re playing against the other players. In the real world, one of the current tournaments is running at Cache Creek Casino in Brooks (Yolo County), for the next six weeks (it finishes at midnight on the 19th June).

Like most real-world tournaments, the casino has corralled a number of machines and members of the local slots club are rotated in every fifteen minutes to play for three minutes. The player who racks up the biggest score in those three minutes will be the winner. The total prize money fund is $200,000 with everyone in the top fifty winning at least $1,000.

Hyland’s team

admin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:43:19 +0000

A New Jersey college student named Tommy Hyland, who had just turned twentyone, started going to Atlantic City in 1978 when he heard about the favorable blackjack game at Resorts. Within a year, he had organized about twenty of his college and golfing buddies into a team of blackjack players. Hyland’s team continues to this day as one of the most successful casino gambling operations in history.

Big Boom on the Boardwalk

admin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:38:40 +0000

No one had anticipated the tidal wave of humanity which surged into Atlantic City after Resorts opened its doors in 1978. Gross profits at this one casino averaged over $600,000 per day, far higher than anyone of the larger las Vegas casinos.
e.R. Chambliss & T.e. Roginski, Playing Blackjack in Atlantic City.
The phenomenal growth in the casino industry that occurred in Nevada throughout the 1960s and ’70s as a direct result of the popularity of Ed Thorp’s Beat the Dealer, had the East Coast politicians and business leaders buzzing with plans to get casinos legalized in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere on the East Coast. So much gambling money was flying west to Vegas and Reno every day, a plan had to be hatched to keep those dollars closer to home.
In 1974, a referendum to legalize gambling in New Jersey failed, but a similar referendum that would limit the casinos to Atlantic City passed in 1976. Atlantic City had been chosen as the first East Coast gambling venue because the politicos felt, and rightly so, that the public would accept it. It was well located and had once been a popular vacation resort town, but had long since fallen on hard times. The oncefamous boardwalk was in disrepair, and the surrounding residential neighborhoods had become slums of broken-windowed tenements.
No one in the state could make an argument that casinos might destroy the neighborhood. The neighborhood was a pit of poverty and despair. Instead, the hope was that casinos might revitalize the town.

Casinos in the United States

admin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:06:00 +0000

In the United States, try Atlantic City, Northern Connecticut, Gulfport/Biloxi, Reno/Lake Tahoe, Chicagoland, Minnesota, Michigan, St. Louis, New Orleans, Niagara Falls - the list goes on and on, and includes hundreds of riverboats and Indian casinos all over the United States. By the way, unless you’re from the Upper Midwest, I’ll bet you didn’t know that the state of Minnesota alone has about nineteen operating casinos.
On the international front, casinos for blackjack
can be found in many countries all over the world. They’re just a little more low-key than those in America. Don’t expect mega-structures with 6,000-room hotels over-looking a volcano. In fact, in some European countries it’s very possible to pass a casino on the street and not even know of its existence behind the glass doors of what could easily be mistaken as a private club or office. Serious players find out where the games are and what rules apply - without the aid of blinking lights or garish advertisement. It’s a whole different kind of interface - you’ll know what I mean if you ever
can play blackjack
in other countries.
Some better-known international destinations offering casino gambling include the Caribbean, Canada, London, Amsterdam, Monte Carlo, and all over the Pacific Rim, including the major cities in Australia.

Sin City

admin — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:06:00 +0000

What city is home to more casinos per square mile than anywhere in the world, and also happens to be mecca for the modernday card counter? If your answer was "Las Vegas," you’re right. Sin City has turned up the volume yet again. And that was a good business decision, because with the popularity of casino gambling exploding across the United States, some place had to emerge as the creme de la creme of gambling towns. And that somewhere remains, indisputably, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Blackjack common rules

admin — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:06:00 +0000

Let’s touch on some common rules and the corresponding effects on player advantage to start playing blackjack. Keep in mind that a player using perfect Basic Strategy in a game with a typical set of rules plays at only a very slight disadvantage. And a proficient card counter, under those same circumstances, garners about a 1.5 percent advantage. As mentioned earlier, it’s imperative for the serious player to find a game of online blackjack
with rules that don’t negate too much edge. Otherwise, all that is really happening is the passage of time. And why go through the effort of counting, proper bet sizing, and all the other facets of professional-level play if the rules of the game reduce your advantage to a level on which playing becomes an exercise in futility? Thankfully, in more instances than not, card counting can overcome the negative effects of rules that are unfavorable to the player. But regardless, the first order of business should be an assessment of the game and what rules apply.