Las Vegas Strip

Las Vegas is the most populated city in the state of Nevada, billing itself as the Entertainment Captial of the World. The Las Vegas Strip, a 4.2 mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard South in Clark County, Nevada is where all the action is and the home to some of the biggest and best casinos on the planet. In fact of the 25 biggest hotels in the world, Las Vegas is home to no fewer than 19 of them!

The first casino built in the vicinity of The Strip was the Pair-o-Dice Club, which opened its doors back in 1931 but eh first casino to trade on what is currently The Strip was the El Rancho Vegas, which opened on April 3, 1941 with just 63 rooms in its hotel. It stood proud for almost 20 years before it was destroyed in a fire in 1960. The success of the El Rancho Vegas spawned a second casino in 1942 called the Hotel Last Fronteir and over the enxt few years some of the more famous casinos followed suit such as the Flamingo in 1946 and the Desert Inn in 1950.

In 1968 Kirk Kerkorian bought the Flamingo and used it as a base to train his staff whilst the International HotelLas Vegas Hilton was being built. A year later it was open for business and boasted a staggering 1,512 room and kick started the era of mega-resorts. This particular casino still stands today, though its name has changed to the . Kerkorian then opened the MGM Grand Hotel in 1973 but it suffered a huge fire on November 21, 1980, killing 87 people, making it Vegas’ worst accident. Amazingly, the hotel was completely rebuilt less than a year later and still exists to this day.

When The Mirage was opened in 1989 it set the tone for mega-resorts as it had everything on a scale never seen before. It offered luxury, entertainment, dining, lodgings and gambling on a massive scale. It offered 3,044 rooms and over 100,000 square feet of gaming floor, something unheard of up to that point. As others tried to follow in its footsteps it spelt the beginning of the end for some of the lesser casinos on The Strip. The Dunes was demolished and The Bellagio built in its place, followed by the demolition of The Sands where The Venetian now stands.

Today’s casino and hotels are even bigger than before, with some costing billions of dollars to build. They are no similar to miniature cities in their own right, with apartment blocks, shopping malls and golf courses being the norm in each resort. Although of late the revenues in Las Vegas have been on a two year slump, mainly due to the global economic downturn, it still remains the most popular destination for gamblers, a real gambling Mecca.

Baccarat tips

Punto Banco Baccarat is an extremely popular game both in online casino and bricks and mortar establishments due to its basic rules and low house edge. A quick search of the internet for baccarat tips, with one of the leading search engines yields hundreds, if not thousands, of results but almost all of them are simply looking to take your money for some promised betting system. The tips shown in this article come from years of gambling and playing baccarat and do not promise you untold riches, in fact quite the opposite.

The first tip, and this applies to all gambling, is to only use money that you can afford to lose. Casinos are not in business to make you money they are there to take your money and take it they will! Playing with money you cannot afford to lose may seem exciting when you win but it can be disastrous when you lose and it can have dire consequences for you and those around you.

The next thing to realise is that no betting system works for baccarat, not one. This is because there are no player interventions so you are simply at the mercy of Lady Luck. Winning or losing has nothing to do with skill so you cannot form a betting system to beat this. If you do feel like following a system then the one you will be told about most often is “Avant Dernier” which means “before last.” In simple terms, if the last sequence of wins were for the player, banker and then the player again, then the next hand you should bet on banker.

Many gamblers like to use the Martingale betting system for baccarat but I urge you not to as you will go broke eventually. Read this article for reasons on why the Martingale system is extremely flawed. Another popular system is called progressive betting and sees the player increase their stake by 50% each time the win but revert back to their initial stake when they lose. So a player starting with a $10 bet wins so their next bet would be $15. They win again so the next bet is $22.50 but they lose this one so start betting $10 again.

The most attractive betting option is to bet on the player, which has a house edge of 1.24% when playing from eight decks of cards. The banker option has a house edge of just over 1% but it also carries a 5% charge on winnings. Betting on a tie, which offers nine-to-one odds, should rarely be done as the house has a huge advantage over you compared to the other two options.

Video Poker

Video Poker is one of the most popular games played in both live and online casinos around the world. Offering a low house advantage, and in some cases handing the player the advantage, along with allowing players to avoid the often intimidating table games, it is easy to see why it has such a loyal fan base.

The company SIRCOMA, which stood for Si Redd’s Coin Machines, later becoming International Game Technology, introduced a machine called Draw Poker back in the 1970s and after a few changes to the rules and payouts a number of other machines started to appear offering what is now known as video poker.

The game is based on Five-Card Draw and as such plays extremely similar to it, though with a few differences to help the house have an advantage. The player starts the game by entering between one and five credits, with the payouts being better for playing with more credits, and they are dealt five cards. They can then discard between one and five of them in an attempt to make a poker hand. Usually the player requires at least a pair of jacks to qualify with better hands being two pair, three of a kind, a straight, a flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush and the very best hand, a Royal Flush, that is a straight ten to ace all of the same suit.

Jacks or better is the most common machine and as the name suggests the player needs to have a pair of jacks or better for his or her hand to qualify. These machines are often known as a 9/6 Jacks, as they pay out nine times the credits for hitting a full house and six for a flush. The maximum possible payout on these video poker machines, if the player plays perfect strategy ranges from 98.4% for inserting one credit all the way to 99.5% for playing with the maximum stake. The difference is because of the better payouts on the more rare holdings such as the Royal Flush, which will only be hit on average after several thousand plays.

Another popular version of video poker, one that is common online, is Deuces Wild and allows the player to count a two as any card they wish. With this system a player should expect to get four of a kind every 500 or so plays and the theoretical return with perfect play ranges from 99.7% up to 100.8% if playing for the maximum stake!

Scoring in Pai Gow

Pai Gow is Chinese gambling game played with Chinese dominoes, with a scoring system similar to that of baccarat. Though not as popular as blackjack or roulette, the game is extremely popular in casinos that have a large Chinese player base or those that are based online.

The game starts when the dealer shuffles the 32 dominoes and puts them into eight piles of four, which is known as “the woodpile.” After some more shuffling, the dealer gives each of the players, usually seven of them, four dominoes that they have to use to make two hands of two dominoes. If both of the player’s hands score higher than the dealer’s then they win, if one wins and the other loses the match-up is a tie and all other scenarios mean the dealer wins.

The name Pai Gow loosely translates to “make nine” and as the name suggests the best score a player can make is nine, though there are a couple of exceptions to this as you will find out later in the article. Working out your score is very simple and only requires minimal maths skills. All a player needs to do is add up the pips on the dominoes and then take away the place of ten from the score.

For example, a domino or tile as they are often called, described as a 1-3 would have four spots in total. If the player paired this domino with another say a 2-3, five spots, the total score for this hand would be nine. On the other hand, a player pairing a 2-3 with a 4-5 would only score four points and not 14 as you have to remove ten from any score over ten. This would mean a player pairing up a 5-5 and a 4-6 would score zero points.

As mentioned there are a couple of circumstances where the player, or dealer, can score more than nine points. Dominoes displaying double-one or a double-six are known as Day and Teen respectively. Combining a Day or Teen with an eight allows the player to score 10 instead of zero and is called a Gong, whilst combining them with a nine means the player scores 11, known as a Wong.

Tiles showing 1-2 and 2-4 are also known as Gee Joon tiles and can be used as wildcards and score either three or six, making them powerful tiles to have. A 1-2 with a 5-6 would score seven and not four. Pairs are also very sought after tiles, though not all pairs are equal. Identical pairs, such as 4-4 are worth more and always beat the tiles that have the same score but look different, such as 5-3 or 6-2.

Pai Gow

One of the oldest and most widely played casino games in the world is Pai Gow, a Chinese gambling game that is played with Chinese dominoes and dates back to the Song Dynasty, meaning it was played as far back as 960AD! The game is steeped in tradition and is the basis of games such as baccarat as its name loosely translates to “make nine.”

To start a new game the dominoes, or tiles as they are often referred to, are spread on the table and randomised and shuffled. They are then placed into eight stacks of four tiles, known as the “woodpile.” The dealer then performs a number of ritualistic shuffles of the woodpile so that new wood piles are created, before bets are placed.

The game is usually played with seven players and the dealer, with each of them given four tiles with which they have to make two hands, each containing two tiles. The hand they make that has the lower value is known as the front hand, whilst the higher valued one is called the rear hand. If the player’s front hand beats the dealer’s front hand and the player’s rear hand is better than the dealer’s then the player wins. However, if only one of the hands is better than the dealer’s then it is a tie. All other variations mean the player loses.

Scoring is very similar to games like baccarat in that both the dealer and the player have to drop the tens place from their score. For example, if they make a hand with a tile that has a total of four pips on it and one that has a total of five pips on it then the player would score nine points. But, if they had a tile with five pips and another that had 11, then the player would only score six points and not 16 as the ten place has to be removed. Likewise, making a hand from two tiles that both have a total of ten points each would return a score of zero.

Whilst the game is massively popular in China, it is not as widely spread in Western countries although it can often be found in areas where the casino is in close proximity to Chinese settlements or so called Chinatown’s.

Betting on roulette

Roulette is one of the most exciting and enjoyable casino games around, loved by complete amateurs and seasoned gamblers alike for its very basic rules and potentially huge payouts. Whilst you can literally bet on whatever you feel like when playing roulette, by reading the following few paragraphs you will know the slang and the most popular bets to make when you play online roulette.

There are two basic type of roulette bets called inside and outside bets, their names given due to the position on the table where the player places their bets. They are exactly how they sound, inside bets are made on the inside of the table, whilst outside bets are placed on the outer edge of the table.

The most popular inside bets include betting on a single number, which pays out at a massive 35/1 and the split bet, also kown as a Double or a Two Number Bet. This particular bet sees the player bet on two adjoining numbers by placing a chip on the dividing line and they will collect 17/1 on their stake if their number comes in.

Keeping with inside bets, many players opt to make a Street Bet, also known as Three on a row or a Three Number Bet. Again, this type of bet is exactly how it sounds and sees the player bet on an entire “street” of numbers, for example seven, eight and nine. A winning spin here is worth 11/1 on the player’s stake. A Square Bet is when a player places a chip in the middle of four number, such as 10, 11, 13 and 14 in a cross shape, which nets the player 8/1 odds on their bet.

Players wishing to take a less risky option in their betting are advised to make outside bets. These bets payout lower odds but are almost always for larger sums. For example, it is not uncommon to find a roulette table with inside bets set to a minimum of £0.50 but the outside bets set to £5. Outside bets consists of the Dozen Bet, which sees the player betting on the ball landing on 1-12, 13-24 or 25-36, the Column Bet and the Martingale system’s dream bet, the so-called Even Money Bet where the player bets on red and black or odd and even numbers. The Dozen Bet and Column Bet pay out at 2/1 whilst the Even Money Bet pays evens, as the name implies.

Betting systems

The internet is quite literally crammed full of unscrupulous people attempting to sell you inside secrets on how to beat the casino out of hundreds of thousands of pounds through the use of their secret systems. Here is a free word of advice, do not even consider buying them, they do not work!

Think about this logically for a moment, if you had discovered a system that would allow you to use your favourite casino game as a cash register, would you keep it to yourself and a few select friends or sell it on the internet for £20 at a time and risk the casinos being able to close any loophole?

The main reason every single betting system fails eventually is that the house has a mathematical advantage over the player. Regardless of how small the edge is, it just being there means that in the long run it is impossible for the player to beat the casino, though in the short term luck is a major factor and one of the reasons gambling at the casino is so popular.

A common betting system people employ is the Martingale system, which originated in France in the 18th Century. The system was designed to try and beat a simple game that involved tossing a coin and if it landed on heads the player won his stake but if it landed on tails he lost. By doubling their stake each time they lost, the player was guaranteed to wipe out all of their losses, and even win the stake amount, when the coin finally landed on heads. It is quite easy to see why the system gained in popularity extremely quickly, but even in this 50/50 scenario the system is flawed as it assumes the player has infinite wealth and that there are no limits on the betting amounts, which of course there always will be.

Martingale betting is popular when playing roulette, especially when the players are betting on red or black, the closest to 50/50 they can get to, though it is actually 52.6316% in favour of the house! Betting at £5 per spin and doubling the bet each time you lost would mean you could potentially lose £320 if you lost six spins in a row, which would be very close to the table limits if not actually exceeding them. But I hear you saying that losing six spins in a row is highly unlikely and whilst you are correct to some degree, losing six consecutive spins is actually quite common if you play enough.

The chance of losing a single spin is the 52.6316% already mentioned so losing six consecutive spins is 2.1256%. Spin the roulette wheel 73 times and you will have a 50.3% chance of losing six consecutive spins, a massive difference. Increase the number of spins to 150 and your chances increase to 77.2% whilst a session of 250 spins will see you have six consecutive losing spins a staggering 91.1% of the time!

Betting systems simply do not work, all they do is create an illusion that they do but in fact most of them actually increase your exposure to variance. Do not get all wrapped up in trying to beat the casino, enjoy your gambling and if you win great, if not you can always try again tomorrow, as long as you have not gone broke from following some weird and wonderful betting system!

Playtech profits booming

Whilst most gambling operators around the world are struggling to come to terms with the lack of money being spent by punters both in real life venues and online casinos, one is currently enjoying a boom period and has announced further rises in profits for the last quarter of trading.

Playtech, the industry leader when it comes to providing software for online casinos, online poker clients and bingo sites amongst others, has reported a 25% increase in revenue in October compared to the previous year and a rise of 7% in daily activity during the third quarter of 2010. This has lead to total revenues of €32.5m, up 17% year-on-year.

The company was founded in 1999 by Teddy Sagi and he still controls a majority 41% of the company from his investment vehicle. When the company floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2006 it raised £550m, pricing its shares at 257p but they lost 40% in a single day when the US Government announced the passage of the Safe Ports Act, also known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a law that essentially made it illegal for American financial institutions to process payments to and from online gambling sites. However, Playtech’s share price has recovered since that day on 30 September, 2006 and currently stands around 420p.

The company’s CEO, Mor Weizer said during a telephone interview that the majority of this success has stemmed from the regulation currently taking place throughout Europe, “I believe that regulation will change the industry and is already changing the industry and therefore we would like to establish ourselves as the largest and most influential leading software provider in regulated markets” This is in regards to various European countries ring-fencing their players, including France and the lucrative Italian markets, the latter having seen an eight-fold increase in activity since 2008.

“Bad luck” costs casino $9m!

American land based casinos have been suffering more than most in the current global economic climate, none more so than the establishments in Atlantic City, New Jersey. One casino in particular, the luxurious Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, has had a torrid time of late and according to their CEO a run of good fortune for its punters, and bad luck for the casino, resulted in the Borgata taking a $9m hit to revenue.

Paul Chakmak, CEO of the Borgata’s parent company, Boyd Gaming, explained, “The most significant factor impacting Borgata’s results was lower table games revenue, which was largely a function of unusually lucky play by our customers. Had we experienced historical table games hold, we estimate revenue would have been $9 million higher during the quarter”

The $9m hit to revenue in the most recent third quarter ensured the casino saw a 7% decline in net revenue to $207.7m, which in turn impacted on the gross operating profits, themselves falling a massive 19.7% to $54.3m. The revenue of the Atlantic City casinos has continually dropped over the past 25 months and the $54.3m profits reported by the Borgata are down 16.1% from the previous year.

The $1.1bn resort was opened in July 2003 in a joint venture between Boyd Gaming and MGM Resorts International. With over 2,000 rooms and 161,000 square feet of gaming space, the Borgata is the largest resort in Atlantic City and also the venue with the highest revenues. However, in recent times MGM Resorts International have not made secret the fact they are wanting to sell their share in the Borgata and pull out of Atlantic City completely. Indeed, just yesterday they sold 11.3 acres of land around the Borgata to two real estate companies, Vornado Reality and Geyser Holdings for a total of $73m.

The Borgata has been no stranger to negative press as in 2005 it announced it would fire any cocktail waitress who gained more than 7% body weight and did not lose it within 90 days before being caught up in an illegal sports-betting ring in the casino’s poker room in 2007. Twenty-three people were arrested, six of those were Borgata employees whilst four were known mob associates!

Tim Holland – Backgammon legend

Tim Holland was a true legend in backgammon circles, holding the record for the most major backgammon tournaments won, publishing the first ever set of official rules, creating the first backgammon tournament structure and writing three top-selling gambling book.

He was born on March 3, 1931 as Simeon Harold Holland, only son to Simeon and Inez in Rockville Centre, New York. From an early age he showed his love and talent for both card games and golf, learning how to play bridge and becoming quite proficient at golf. In fact, by the age of seven he had already won his first father-and-son and mother-and-son golf tournaments!

Golf so nearly became Holland’s career after he spent the vast majority of his time on winning wagers on the golf course whilst studying for a degree, which he graduated with, in business administration at the University of Miami. The main reason for not playing golf professionally was the fact the prizes on offer were quite small, often under $5,000, and he could win more than that betting on his own game. However, the golf association frowned upon gambling, putting further distance between Holland and a career in the game.

Gambling on golf did however expose Holland to backgammon as he often played at the La Gorge Country Club in Miami Beach, a golf community with over 100 millionaire members. Holland referred to this club as the “gambling capital of golf.” One day, in 1958, he saw two members playing backgammon, asked if he could play and was quickly hooked. It may have taken him several years, and reported losses of $30,000, to master the game but when he did he was a dominant force.

In the 1960s backgammon was becoming extremely popular, and the six foot three inches tall, impeccably dressed Holland became the co-founder of the International Backgammon Association and also created the World Backgammon Club of Manhatten which was the home of many World Championship backgammon tournaments.

Holland became the first-ever World Champion back in 1967 and he repeated the feat in 1968 and 1971. These wins sparked huge interest in him to become a coach and he responded by releasing three books, Beginning Backgammon in 1973 followed by Better Backgammon a year later and finally, Backgammon for People who Hate to Lose in 1977.

As the popularity of backgammon waned in the late twentieth century, with people becoming more interested in card games such as the various forms of poker, Holland went back to his roots and played Bridge professionally and was playing right up to his death on March 10, 2010.