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The world never stands still too long. If it does, this may mean it’s dying and has nowhere else to go. The eternal question for every business lucky enough to hit a winning formula is whether to change it and, if so, by how much and how quickly. In one shape or form, casinos have been around for centuries. They were gambling in Ancient China and Rome long before anyone thought of building in the Nevada desert. Yet, the basic idea has remained the same. If your luck is in, a small bet will win you a fortune. It’s a remarkably seductive temptation. Just think. All you need is for the dice to fall just so, or the next card to be the 8. The games may change their appearance, but the principle of betting on the outcome of random events remains the same. To that extent, gambling never changes and probably never will change significantly. If there is change, it’s superficial. Say, from the one-armed bandit invented by Charles Fey to the video slots version you start by the press of a button. This makes the arrival of online casinos the first real revolution for at least a century. People have always gathered together to gamble. It could be in a friend’s home, a private club or a place with public access. The internet does away with the requirement for a “place”. Now people can stay home and still enjoy the pure experience of gambling. It avoids the inconvenience and expense of travel, buying food and drinks in more impressive surroundings and, in many cases, finding somewhere to stay overnight. All you have to tolerate is the quality of the animation and the annoying soundtrack of “live” players and the games. Over the last decade, real world casinos have come under real competitive pressure. They are not doing too well. But, before you all celebrate, this means the states take less in revenue and, as their deficits rise, tax hikes may have to fill in the gap.

This article brings two “back-to-basics” gambits by the competing forms. Let’s start in Atlantic City. There has been a significant drop in the number of players in all venues and for all games. The recession is biting hard. So, albeit only on a trial basis, the management has gone back to the $2 game at two blackjack tables. The thinking is easy to explain. High table minimums frighten away the learners and the more conservative gamblers. People want the maximum gambling experience for the least possible outlay. The casino assures us that, if the trial is a success, more tables will go back to the $2 minimum. Except there’s a twist. If you only bet in the range $2 to $5, you pay a fee of 25 cents per hand as a “contribution toward the operating costs”. It seems casino managements cannot resist biting gamblers in the ass.

Going to online blackjack, Microgaming is introducing a live dealer version. You will be able to interact with the no doubt sexy dealer through the wonder of streamed video. Better still, it makes the online experience more obviously “fair”. Although we have all come to trust the RNG, it’s always more reassuring to see someone deal real cards. Others can also Bet Behind on the seated players and you can book a seat with your favorite dealer. It will be interesting to see whether live dealers represent a new nail in the real world casinos’ coffin.

Well, the inevitable has begun to happen. When the recession first hit and credit dried up, everyone predicted the casinos would lose out. If the banks squeeze credit, people cannot maintain their levels of discretionary spending and, sadly, gambling is always going to be one of the choices made less often. The prediction then ran on: if fewer people go into casinos and those that do go spend less, the casinos will find their profits under pressure. At this point, the forecasters would take a deep breath. This will not be a problem so long as the casinos hold their nerve. The economy will slowly pick up. Confidence will return as consumers save less and spend more. In three to five years time, casino revenues will be back to their normal levels. But, and this is where the forecasters would look grim, if the casinos try to suck extra dollars of profit out of fewer players, they risk killing the golden goose. So which way have casinos played their hands?

In most states, blackjack has always been the biggest table game. But in 2009, casinos across the US lost an average 20% of their annual revenue from the tables. When you lose such a big slice of your revenue from just one game, this puts pressure on the casino operators. Unfortunately, they have tended to move in the wrong direction. Most states regulate on the basis of a 3:2 payout on blackjack (i.e. if you bet $10 and win, the casino pays $15). In Colorado, operators have applied for an increase in table odds to 6:5 (i.e. a winning $10 bet pays out only $12). For those of you who like the math, this lifts the house edge from 1.5% to 2.9%. In Nevada, the table odds moved to 6:5 months ago, closely followed by a general raise in the table minimums. This drove away the casual players and, not surprisingly, the high rollers followed. The casinos shot themselves in the foot by both tightening the rules and reducing the payouts.

Where has the business gone? Well, the hard core gamblers have decided they don’t like the deck being so obviously stacked against them. There’s no reason why should they tolerate low payouts when online casinos have kept their table odds at a fair level and not changed their table minimums. Online, you can still play at $1 or $5 tables if that’s all you want to risk. The higher table minimums are there if you want them but there’s no pressure. In the real world, slightly stressed staff are trying to encourage you to spend more. Sitting in the peace of your own home, you can pull a beer out of the fridge and take life easy. There are so many good online casinos where you can play blackjack with many different styles of online blackjack to choose from. If the mood takes you, there are tournaments to play. If the money runs out, you can always play for free. This is one time when the greed of the real world operators has worked against them. In the good old days before the internet, it was a real world casino or nothing. Now that the internet has come of age and the quality of the casino software has improved, the real world casinos have a real fight on their hands if they want to remain relevant.

There’s one game that will forever be associated with casinos – it’s not called the “king of casino games” for nothing. The reason? Perhaps it’s the simplicity. Someone spins the wheel, releases the ball, “Where will it fall? No-one knows!” There’s the noise as the ball is thrown against the direction of spin. It rolls around the wood framing the the wheel, slowly losing momentum, edging down toward the whirling blades of the slots. Then, with a clatter, the ball is caught by the wheel. It bounces, suddenly caught up and thrown in the opposite direction. There’s a hypnotic quality about how the ball moves. Everyone watching feels they can reach out with their minds and will it to land in their numbered slot.

As the wheel slows, the ball bounces up and down a few times, then finally gives in to a combination of friction and gravity, and is caught in one of the slots. It is a wonderful moment of theater, followed by the “instant” gratification of the win for those with the luck. For some, this is the perfect game of chance to play. In the real world atmosphere of a casino, the crowd always gathers round the wheels first among all the games. It has a compelling fascination. Strip away the real world and play online, the experience on your computer can never really be the same. There are good graphics and the sound effects are reasonable. All you are left with is the game itself.

Is it strong enough on its own? Almost certainly. Little changes about the game. The rules are the same, the odds and betting are identical. So should you play it? Well, so long as you know the rules and the odds, it remains a good game. The only difference is the loss of atmosphere when you play online. So you are sacrificing all the travel, inconvenience and expense by staying home and switching on your PC. You can play when you want, for as long as you want from the comfort of your own home. Think how much you might spend on a real world trip in gas, drinks at bar prices (assuming no comps), and so on. That’s why you stay home. You will find bonuses and spot prizes to replace the comps. You have more money to play through as a result.

One gentle reminder – there’s a myth to dispel. Many try to sell the idea of a strategy to win. In reality, the house has an edge no matter how you play roulette. Never be deceived if you have a hot streak. You might get ahead in the short term but the house will always win in the end. There are no professional players who make a living out of playing this game. You can do many things to keep your losses small, but roulette should really be for fun and excitement. If your luck is in, you can have the satisfaction of beating the house. But always be disciplined. If you have a good win, quit while you are ahead. Make your fun go a long way by coming back another time.

Tommy started playing blackjack professionally in 1978 while still in college. That was also the year he started his first informal “team.” He’s never looked back. For more than twenty-five years, he has been running the longest-lasting and most successful blackjack team in the history of the game. He and his teammates have played in casinos all over the U.S., Canada, and the world. He has used big player techniques, concealed computers (when they were legal), and had one of the most successful “ace location” teams ever. He has personally been barred, back-roomed, hand-cuffed, arrested, and even threatened with murder at gun-point by a casino owner he had beaten at the tables. Every year, the Hyland team players take millions of dollars out of the casinos. And even though Tommy has had his name and photo published in the notorious Griffin books more times than any other player in history, he continues to play and beat the games wherever legal blackjack games are offered. He has also fought for players’ rights by battling the casinos in the courts.

Despite his fearsome reputation, Tommy is polite, soft-spoken, and always a gentleman. He is as loved by players as he is feared by the casinos. In an interview conducted by Richard Munchkin in 2001, Tommy said, “If someone told me I could make $10 million a year working for a casino, I wouldn’t even consider it. It wouldn’t take me five minutes to turn it down … I don’t like casinos. I don’t like how they ruin people’s lives. I don’t think the employment they provide is a worthwhile thing for those people. They’re taking people that could be contributing to society and making them do a job that has no redeeming social value.”

Travel back in time a few decades and you will find the source of many modern myths. The most interesting swirl around the group of professional gamblers who devised the so-called basic strategy and those people, blessed with a good memory, that can beat the House by counting cards. Today’s wisdom says that putting the two together gives you the best chance of beating the house edge. There is some truth to this for those of you who go to real-world casinos. Indeed, many casinos actually sell small cards with the basic strategy printed in neat tables and charts. The original math wonks who crunched the numbers used to guard their knowledge and sell it only at high price. Today, the casinos effectively give it away. Why are the casinos so confident you will not break the bank?

For those of you who are serious about learning the game, sitting in front of a live dealer with the strategy cards as your reference point is a daunting prospect. You are surrounded by one-hundred-and-one distractions. You have an audience who immediately see you as a newbie and will enjoy watching you make the wrong decisions. Worse, you will play with the speed of a constipated snail. On tables with several players, there is an expected rhythm to the play. No-one wants to sit idly around while you run your finger up and down the rows and columns to decide which strategy to play given the combination of cards on display. The only place where you can “safely” learn the basic strategy is online. The animated dealer will sit patiently for minutes while you think.

Thanks to the success of the movie “21″, the exploits of the MIT team are well-known. They won millions during the 1990’s by counting the cards. Before you all rush off and start training your own team, you have to recognize the difficulty of the task. Every person has to be able to count and keep it up for hours at a time. You have to develop a system of signalling to other members of the team without the security staff noticing. Although card counting is not illegal, casinos ask counters to leave and blacklist them by sending photographs to all the other casinos. Being barred from one casino is being barred from all major casinos. This is not something you can put together in a few days. It will require months of training and planning. Even then, you are only shading the odds in your favor. You will need a bankroll. Unfortunately, this is one time the online casinos will not help you. The online backjack program uses a random number generator to determine the next card. Unlike the real-world stack of six decks where the order of the cards is fixed until the stack is emptied or changed, you cannot use counting to predict the probability of high/low cards when you play blackjack online. So all your practice will have to be in real time. Do you have that much dedication? Most do not and the majority of card counters play blackjack on their own. More importantly, they keep a very low profile to avoid detection by casino staff. That way, they can maintain a gentle accumulation of profit on their bankroll. It can be done. It just takes time, patience and skill.

Blackjack being the most widely played table game in casinos all over the world has the lowest house edge that can be taken down even lower if employing card counting techniques. But if blackjack was a new game trying to make it to the casino tables in our days it would be very unlikely to get there. Blackjack players that use the basic strategy usually reduce the house advantage to 1,5%, which is two times less that is usually accepted in the casinos these days.

Back in 1963 Edward O Thorp, the author of Beat The Dealer, highlighted the fact that blackjack in essence could be easily beaten when using card counting and made even if the player used the basic strategy. Such revelations made a stir in the gambling world as many players jumped behind the tables with the hope to beat the game. The response of casino officials was very simple – they added more decks to the game, making car counting harder to use and apply. However, the basic strategy still gives the player a house edge of less than 1% even with more decks in the game.

But the reality is far less optimistic than most players think, as a little number of those who play blackjack devote much time to learning card counting to the extent that would allow them using the technique in a real life setting. And the number of those who actually manage to master the basic technique is even smaller. Of course, the calculated house advantage can be less than 1% but the vast majority of those who play blackjack have to deal with 2%.

Seeing how much people choose blackjack to play at both brick-and-mortar and online casinos, you may believe that the casino owners are happy with their incomes. However, the owners themselves have a different opinion. The last couple of years seem some changes introduced with the scope of maximizing the profits casinos gain from blackjack players. Some houses installed automatic shuffling machines for making the game even faster paced. Others changed the rules, increasing the house edge in general. However, some casinos on the Las Vegas Strip have introduced a change to the rules that delivered a very strong impact on the game in general.

Now, instead of 3 to 2 paid for natural blackjacks these houses require 6 to 5. This means that if with previous rules you would get $15 dollars when betting $10 a hand, now you will only get $12 for a natural blackjack. And this leads to the house edge raised by 1.4%, leaving the player who’s using the basic strategy with a 2% disadvantage.

To make things even worse, these casinos are advertising these new rules as an advantage to the player. And inexperienced players fall for such ads, not realizing that they get ripped off in comparison with typical blackjack. The best way to win at such games is to avoid them at all, as it’s not the blackjack most people can win these days. Find a casino with a 3 to 3 blackjack payout and feel the difference.

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Are we seeing common sense emanating from the Danish Government.

Denmark is getting ready to follow suit in the legalisation of online gambling. Indeed, they are to propose a law to the European commission to legalise online gambling before actually applying it. A move that could see the light as soon as in 2011. After Italy France, and lately, Estonia, Denmark has decided that the time had come to make the activity legal, and therefore generate taxes that would go towards gamblers protection and profit charitable organisations. It would also be a way to fight against fraud, money laundering and organised cyber crimes. Practices that are, sadly, rife in the online gambling industry. And Denmark is hoping that implementing such laws would be a first step towards eradicating this plague.

We can only welcome this move from the Danish Government, a signal that more and more countries seem to have realised that the real way forward is not banning, but regulating. We’ve seen, time and again, that simply banning without any proper regulatory measures does not stop crime. On the contrary, it seems to work in favour of the latter. It is an encouraging piece of news for the industry. Hopefully, more will take this step forward. The more it will be realised that if we really want to fight crime, protect gamblers and minors, generate extra income in taxes that, in turn, will benefit the country, regulating online gambling is the way, the way towards a safer, more secure and more honest gambling industry, that is in serious need of regaining the trust of many.

Read more about it on Gambling Insider.

Online casinos have come a long ways since the kick off of online gambling. The advancement of online casinos has been outstanding and players feel extensively pleased by betting.

Playing with a boundless and top-notch casino games all comes to one plain and simple inkling: either you win or you lose.

Online casinos offers amusement and excitement at any time of the day. The fastest growing industries, online gambling sites are simply a computer generated replica of a traditional casino likewise with the games and rules giving the player the choice of an excellent casino game varieties.

THE BASICS

Once you singled out where you want to play, click the “download” button to download the software. When the download starts, choose “open” and then follow the installation instructions.

Once you’ve downloaded the software, click the casino icon to start the casino, verify your install, and ask you whether you want to play for real or fun.

You will need to register your details before you can start playing for real money. Then simply click the “cashier” or “banking” button in the software to make a deposit. And away you go !

Remember, when you start seeking casino games, many of these need to be downloaded first. This only happens the first time you pick a game. It is done to ensure that your initial software download is as fast as possible.

ONLINE GAMBLING PRECAUTIONS

There are certain precautions that should be taken when playing at an online casino:

If you ever get an e-mail or a phone call from someone claiming to be associated with an online casino, payment processor or credit card company, do not present any personal information.

Another precaution you should take beforehand would be to set a budget and stick to it, using a credit card would be a much safer and smarter choice. You don’t have to send your bank details to each online casinos that you play at. The fewer people that handle your banking info, the safer you are.

You can create your passwords from scratch or use password generation tools such as RoboForm to create passwords for you. You can even write your passwords down and then keep it in a secure place.

Always keep an eye on your gambling habits. If you ever spend money that was set aside for a different purpose, you may have a gambling problem. Take a step back and evaluate your gambling habits every once in a while and look for negative inclinations of time and money you spend gambling.

Online gambling is simply an development of casino into the modern age. You should know that the higher the odds are, the better the casino. Online casinos give out regular reports of the payouts for their games and which can show exactly what each game paid out. Nowadays anyone with internet connection can log on to an online gambling site, wager real money and win real money just like in a traditional casino. Happy gambling!

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