casino weblog

Blogging has become a very popular way of communication within the past few years.  While it used to be something that techy geeks would do, it’s become a way of life in the meantime.  People blog for various reasons, being that they have a particular topic they would like to discuss, such as politics, sports, music, hobbies or themselves.  There seems to be a blog for just about any subject.

Even scrappers have started to blog and the number of blogging scrappers is climbing at an unbelievable rate.  Scrappers have come to realize what the benefits of blogging are and how to integrate these benefits into their scrapbooking world.

One of these benefits is having a daily “log” of their lives documented online.  They can use the information they post as a reference for future journaling on their scrapbooking pages.

Another benefit is communication with other family members or friends that live far away.  Let’s face it, this is a fast-paced world we are living in, where time is of the essence.  Instead of writing to each and every family member or several friends about what is happening in your life, you can simply suggest that they read your blog.  It saves time and they can look at it whenever they want.  There are blogs that have a password option, so not to worry.  If you would like your blog read only by certain people, that is a possibility.

Some scrappers enjoy sharing their layouts and projects with other scrappers where a blog can really come in handy.  Many blogs offer photo galleries, making it easy for scrapbloggers to get inspiration from other scrappers.  To make it look like an actual blog for scrappers, some scrappers have a nice matching theme.  Many blogs offer various themes for a variety of subjects.  For scrappers, although, the selection is very slim.  The good thing about themes is that you don’t have to be a programmer to have your blog looking fabulous!  You just select it and viola, there it is!  Why pay someone to make something that you can already get for free!?

Since there is a need for themes out there, some designers have begun to realize this and are developing cool scrapbooking themes for blogs.  Most recently a special free scrapbooking theme was created for WordPress by SimplyWP.  The theme contains scrapbooking elements in the header image and the background theme. There are also two sidebars and a second sidebar can be used to list all your friends or to add buttons or blinkies.  This theme was created in subtle, soft colors to allow your layouts to be the main attraction of your blog.

The above mentioned scrapbooking theme can be previewed at http://www.scrapblogging.net/?theme=scrapbook and downloaded at http://www.photomix.com/news/free-scrapbooking-theme-for-wordpress/ absolutely free. It’s unbelievably easy to implement, so you’ll have no fuss with it at all. You can show all of your friends what a cool scrapbooking blog you have almost instantly.

Well, you can do the other thing. At my time of life, I got no time for them as thinks they know better unless they’re buying me drinks. The young friend tells me to just let rip, so now I’m gonna give it to you straight and fast. You don’t like it. Then I make some reckons they’re buying my time - anyways, people in bars always seem more interesting when free drinks kicks in.

They’ve got no idea what they’re doing. An’ you never see this more often than in a casino watching how people play the slot machines. Need a drink first, though, to dull the pain. Now, if it’s one thing my dad taught me that’s become a kinda guiding principle, it’s that people without math live their lives in a fog.

So, here I am, playing on video poker machine. I’m feeding the machine and keeping count of the number of times I do and don’t get winning combinations in the pay table. 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. The longer I go without a winning hand, the more likely a big hand gets.

vThese folk live in a dream world. You ever watch a Poker Dealer wash and shuffle a deck of 52 cards fairly. 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.

What these dreamers in a fog never see clearly is the principle of statistical independence. This a fancy way of saying that events are unrelated - when the first occurrence has no effect on the second. When events are random. So when is a sequence of cards random? When the odds of you predicting the next card are no better than chance. It’s like tossing a coin.

So don’t you never fall into no gambler’s fallacy. There ain’t no deck of cards or dice that got a memory. They’re just the tools we use to gamble with. So long as they all got a RNG, all they’re doing is remembering the longest string of random numbers anyone’s ever bothered to collect.

To the public at large, one of the most strange things about professional blackjack strategies is hole-card play. Hole-card play is not a single strategy, but a whole range of strategies. To most professional blackjack players, this seems absolutely incredible and impossible, unless there is some sort of cheating going on. But it’s not impossible, and in fact, most hole-card strategies are perfectly legal.

The one feature that can be found in all of these strategies is that the player either knows the dealer’s hole card, or has valuable information about that hole card, whether it’s a paint or not. In introducing us to the most successive black jack player of our time, Munchkin writes, “For every one hour spent on the table playing, the hole-card player may spend ten hours scouting… Most players, even if shown a dealer who is flashing, would not be able to spot the hole card anyway. Holecarders spend hundreds of hours training their eyes to see something that flashes by in a fraction of a second, often cast in shadow.”

Hole-card players speak their own language and have their own heroes. Most consider card counting blackjack strategy too weak to be worth the trouble. Many quickly attain notoriety in the casinos and a degree of fame among other pros that appreciate the rare skills they have developed. But let’s look at some of the forerunners of today’s players, describe some of the most common hole-card strategies, and get a historical overview of this type of legal strategy.

What is warp play? In the old days, dealers used to manually peek under their tens and aces to see if they had a blackjack before satisfying the players’ hands. This constant bending up of the corners on the tens and aces tended to put a warp into these cards if the casino did not change its decks frequently. An observant player could see the arc in a dealer’s hole card created by hours of bending the corners of the tens and aces. Warp play was simply using this information to make strategy decisions.

In 1980, Stanford Wong published a book, Winning Without Counting (now out of print), with an initial price tag of $200. To pros, the book was well worth it. Wong discussed many methods of hole-card play for the first time and provided the only detailed description and analysis of “warp” play ever in print.

Then, Ken Uston’s Million Dollar Blackjack was published by SRS Publishing in 1981. Spooking is something else again. It used to be standard procedure for dealers to manually peek under any 10 or ace to see if they had a blackjack, in which case they would immediately turn up the card and collect all bets without playing the hands. In addition to everything Uston wrote about card counting and team play, Uston went into more detail about two of the hole-card techniques Wong had revealed the year before in Winning lnthout Counting: “spooking” and “front-loading.” Uston, in fact, had become quite adept as a hole-card player after his first book, The Big Player, was published in 1977.

Some dealers, in peeking, angled the card in such a way that a person standing behind them, or sitting at another table on the other side of the same pit, could glimpse the card also. The guy behind the dealer was called the spook. He would signal his buddies playing at the table with whatever information he could get on the hole card. Dealers don’t peek this way anymore, and this is one of the reasons why.

One of the major companies in the casino games industry is Bibtex. In latex.com, they have produced the first progressive network to link online, mobile and real-world jackpots. Over the last three months, this is the second payout exceeding $2m. The total amount paid out on this system since its launch now stands at more than $33m.

So, our congratulations go to Rens.S. who, on the 1st February, was just $23,750 shy of $2.5m for a single spin of the wheels. The network has just made a jackpot payout of slightly less than US$2.5m. Now, you might think this is a single system all on its own. It may be making big payouts, but not every progressive is making big payouts.

Now we must all stay calm. These players are the exception that makes the rule that everyone who plays the slots ends up a loser. Ren and Klaus have joined a fairly exclusive band of players that have “hit the big time”. For the record, Klaus was the thirteenth player to become an instant millionaire on this particular online progressive. But, by any standards, a win of more than $5m is fairly impressive. It brings the total winnings since the system came online to $27m.

Well, meet Klaus E. from Finland. That he was slightly surprised by his good fortune probably does not quite capture the moment. It is possible that he has resigned his job and is currently sitting on an island somewhere with a glass in one hand. What he has in his other hand is anyone’s guess.This April, he also became an instant millionaire. He risked an entire US$0.50 bet on the Mega-Moolah Progressive Slot Machine and managed to scoop $5.5m.

When you do start looking at the facts, the online casino games industry is maturing fast. As millions more players on cross-platforms start to play, the progressive jackpots will rise more quickly. There will be more big payouts. You see that when your luck is in, you can suddenly find yourself rich for a small stake.

That last sentence puts the win in its proper context. There were twelve previous winners of more than $1m plus the latest win. That makes $17.7 as a minimum or less than $10m paid out to all the other jackpot winners over the last few years. The win of $5.5m is one of the largest the online industry has seen. It took months for the progressive to build up to that level. It took millions of “pulls”. There were an uncountable number of players who did not win.

When I was younger, cinemas used to run movies back-to-back in a rolling program through the day. You could go in and watch the cycle through as many times as you wanted. So this is where I came in when I started writing this article. People are fascinated by the prospect that, for a small outlay, they might hit it big. The trick is to keep the odds in perspective and never spend more than you can afford chasing the dream. Subject to that, it never hurts to drop a coin or two into one of the online casino games. You never know, today might be your lucky day when fantasy does become reality and changes your life.

I’m feeling a little ornery. I want to tell you one story about casino gambling.

After the third screwdriver, my friend did get me to thinking. When I lost the third pot in a row to river cards against the odds, I confess to thinking I was caught in a skin game. Just a moment of anger. Ain’t no-one with the cojones to try anything against me for real - not with my connections. But there’s lots of folk get it into their heads that online video poker sites are cheating them. The truth ain’t designed to do that.

So, let me sit you down in front of a video poker machine playing Jacks or Better on a pay table that’s offering 9-6-250 like online at goldencasino.com. For those who’ve not boned up on the jargon, that’s a machine paying 250 per coin on a Royal Flush, 9 on a Full House and 6 on a Flush. No matter which lucky rabbit’s foot you got in your pants, the very best you can hope to do is to almost break even.

Just ’cause you come up empty on one or two sessions don’t mean nothing ‘cept your wins and losses’re averaging out over time. To make any kinda case against the casino, you’d need evidence. How you gonna that that evidence? Well, you gotta test their slot machines. Pick one of their video poker games. Say before you start how many times you’re gonna play and what you hafta see to prove the machine’s rigged. S’pose you think a video poker game don’t have all the faces in the deck - you’ve to track the frequency of the faces as they show in the count of all non-face cards.

One last thought before the thinking’s done: some of you load up your own software to run alongside video poker machines - kinda like a coach. They might not like some of the things they find - not within the spirit of the game from their point of view. Remember the old Chinese saying, “Big fish eat small fish.”

So why do some folk get so all-fired sure they’ve been cheated by slot machines? In a word: frustration. They were hot, certain their luck was in, but had a long bad session. Gambling’s got streaks of luck both ways. On one hot August night in 1913, the roulette wheel in Monte Carlo came up black a record-breaking twenty-six times in a row. The House took millions of extra profit. Half the room got to playing the Martingdale System. They were doubling their bets after every loss. But they tapped out of money before the streak ended. Was there anything wrong with the wheel? Nope! The math god smiled and it was true.

The first time I stepped into a casino, I had no clue on what to do or where to go. Everything around me was in continious motion. It wasn’t until I was attracted to the slots machines that I understood where I had to be. Slots were the games to play. So play I did. In my first few moments, I racked up bonuses like you wouldn’t believe. Soon enough, I won, yeah! When I play slots ar video poker, I see the amount of variety offered. The slots bonuses are always amazing and I feel as if right now, I am ready to begin playing slots tournaments. I can’t wait anymore! There are so many different themes available and it is always nice to watch other players win money from playing free slots. I can tell these players practice from their own online slot games. To anyone who is considering playing slots in house or slots online, I say try. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain from being an everyday person just like me who likes to play slots!

Slots is the best game to start your onlne casino experience. Find yourself playing a game that allows you to practice as often as possible without losing money. Soon, you’ll want to start winning. How could you not? Once you’ve resoluted that you’d like to collect bonuses and that you’d like to see how your lady luck is treating you, you will be able to move on and play real slots for real money. No problem! There are a great variety of slots games out there and you can be one of the many people who have fallen in love with how they choose to play slots. Don’t be fooled, though. Slots are not a game that is solely for the beginner’s to gaming casinos. Slots is the object of a great love of people from all over the world. From the professional blackjack player to the granny at home who knits, slots are your best bet to a great time. Win cash bonuses, win huge payouts, enjoy communities of players, and relax from the comfort of your home. With new technology, you can even try your hand at luck when you play slots online.

How do you know you’d make a great casino game player? Easy: you want to see your pockets lined with cash but you don’t mind it so much if you walk away with thinner pockets. You must always play for fun, this is the only guaranteed profit you can make from casino. You’ve experienced all of the sides of the casino. From the land-based gambling halls to the online high-end slots and poker tables, you know what to expect and you know the techniques needed. You know when to double-down and you know when to walk away from the table. Now, the stakes are higher because you’re done playing free slots. You want to play slots and you want to get a jackpot. But stop! You work hard every single day and have obligations. You won’t be able to get to the casino for a few months? How do you remedy this? Easy. Online casinos are real, virtual reality worlds in which you can win real cold hard cash. Start playing online slots and winning now.

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

Some novice players are afraid that if they’ll cross the threshold of 21 is worse than if they’ll stay long under it. 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.

Tip: 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.

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: Very common mistake for young players is to play like 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.

Tip: 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.

Professional Blackjack. Wong had a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, hence his pseudonym. The casinos looked for card counters by watching for their betting spreads. It had never occurred to the casinos that a counter might be watching a table from the aisles, waiting for an advantageous count before jumping in to bet.

The counting system Wong published was the Hi-Lo Count, and like Revere’s count, used the easy divide-by-remaining-deck(s) approach to running count adjustments. So, at last, some twelve years after Harvey Dubner had proposed the Hi-Lo count values, his system was available in a format both fully optimized with strategy indices, and presented with a simple methodology of play. Wong’s table-hopping approach to shoe games was in many ways similar to Al Francesco’s Big Player (BP) team approach, but allowed a solo card counter to attack shoe games invisibly, and without a team of spotters. This playing style has since become widely known as wonging.