The Casino And Poker Site

By A.Awwad

One of the first famous gamblers in the world was John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich. He led a scandalous private life and was addicted to gambling. In 1762, he sat for over 24 hours at a gaming table in his home, refusing to attend meals. In desperation, a servant offered the Earl a piece of salted beef as food; the Earl suggested that the beef be encased between two slices of bread so that he could eat it in his hand at the table. This is where the sandwich got its name.

One of the West’s most famous gamblers was “Doc” Holliday, who maintained a fierce reputation as a hard drinker, tough fighter and ruthless killer. He is chiefly remembered for fighting alongside Wyatt Earp at the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

“Wild Bill” Hickok was another American legend, renowned throughout the world for the tall tales surrounding his violent life. He’s chiefly remembered for taming two of the most lawless towns in Kansas. Unfortunately, Hickok made many enemies and his day of judgment came at a poker table. He was shot in the back of the head by an assassin and died clutching a pair of aces and a pair of eights; ever since, this particular hand has been known as the ‘Dead Man’s’ hand for obvious reasons!

Benny Binion was born in 1904 and lived his life as a bootlegger and conman. At the age of 43, he gave up his life of crime and moved to Las Vegas, where he later opened his own casino. Binion was the gambler’s gambler, and in the 1970s he bought and marketed the World Series of Poker tournament, which has grown over time to be the biggest in the world.

Magazine owner Kerry Packer made his name through his family’s media empire, which owns 60% of all magazines in Australia. Packer became known as a high-stakes gambler when he won $26 million playing blackjack at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. However, Packer has not always been successful; he lost $16.5 million at the Crockfords casino in London, although this barely dented his $8 billion fortune.

The World Series of Poker tournament has created many famous gamblers of today. One such example is Johnny Chan, nicknamed “The Great Wall of China” after his amazing success winning the World Championships in 1987 and 1988 consecutively. He’s played in all the major games of the last two decades and is also known as a genuinely nice guy.

By A. Awwad

Drinking and gambling is a subject that has many opinions depending on how a player handles their booze. Most expert gamblers separate the two actions from each other on purpose. A single glass of wine or a beer is not going to interfere with most people’s play, but a steady stream of highballs could have a drastic effect coupled with a loosing streak. The problem is the liquor helps to remove fear and makes some people feel invincible. This could work to the player’s advantage if the dice table is hot or the cards are running over the player. This feeling of power which drinks give some people is dangerous when the play is not running hot. Mistakes in the amount bet or running parlays to the max can play havoc with a player’s gambling stake. A clear and sober mind is an asset for most gamblers trying to read the nuances of the trend. A person who is drinking to excess can see a trend where none exist.

There are all kinds of stories about how a gambler won a great deal of money while drunker than a sailor on liberty. They may be true, but think about what happens in any major casino. The house gives away drinks to patrons who are gambling. Why do you think they are being so kind to the players? Casinos know that drinking takes away inhibitions and the lack of control may make some players bet more than they would if not drinking. This free drink policy can backfire if the player gets hot, but over time the free drinks work in favor of the house.

The decision that a player needs to make is an individual one and should be based on the player’s own experience. Some poker players can drink like fish and their cards never get drunk. Others have a few drinks and their hands are bet like they are all winners when obviously that is not the case. Drinking players have a tendency to try to bluff more often than they should. Drinking players also are willing to call bets when the only way they can win is to make a miracle draw.

Watch the play in poker of any player who is putting them down at a steady pace.

If their play gets wilder as they drink, they are either going to kill the table of players or have a very bad night from their own drink influenced play.

To drink and play or to not to, that is the question.

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By A. Awwad

The casino in the United States has a long and often illustrious history. Gambling plays a part in American history from the beginning of the colonies, in the lore of the Wild West, in the history of the underground bars during prohibition, and more. Laws concerning gambling have changed over time, with growing prohibitions against gambling followed by a relaxing of laws.

Attitudes toward gambling varied in the early American colonies. Puritan-founded colonies, not surprisingly, disapproved most strongly of all forms of dice, cards and gaming. Colonies founded by the English were quite tolerant of gambling, and it was treated as an innocent pastime. By the early 1800’s, gambling, and even gaming houses, or casinos, had evolved in the newly founded United States. New Orleans, in particular, was a center for gambling, and casinos and saloons in New Orleans evolved games we still link with the old west, including poker and blackjack.

During the California gold rush, gambling was both legal and widespread, as government offices regulated and licensed the saloon and the casino. Faro, bluff, and dice games were popular. While New Orleans had been the gambling capital of America forty years earlier, San Francisco replaced it as the main site for gambling and casinos due to the free flowing gold of the California gold rush.

During the period between the late 1850’s and early 1900’s, California progressively criminalized gambling. It remained legal in Nevada until 1910; however, the casino never reached the glory in Nevada that it had in San Francisco. Gambling was also criminalized elsewhere in the country during this period. Needless to say, gambling did continue, but it was a phenomenon kept behind closed doors. During the era when gambling was widely illegal, casinos remained in operation in speakeasies, private clubs, and more.

Gambling once again began to be legalized in 1931, starting with Nevada. During the 1930’s, some 21 states legalized racetrack gambling. Gambling continued in Nevada, and with low stakes bingo elsewhere. Casinos began to spring up in Atlantic City, NJ in the late 70’s. In 1987, the Supreme Court made a fundamental decision allowing gambling on Native American reservations, and in the years since, casino gambling has spread throughout the country with modern and thriving casinos in many states. Riverboat casinos began to spring up on major rivers in many states during the same period, bringing gambling full circle to its early roots with riverboat gamblers on the mighty Mississippi in the early 1800’s.

By A. Awwad

Casino gambling isn’t just a few poker games with a roulette wheel thrown in for good measure; your casino offers many different games with a variety of stakes. For the frugal among us, the nickel slot machines are a very good bet. You can spend an entire evening gambling with as little as five dollars and still enjoy the thrills of hitting a jackpot. The quarter slots are more popular, but if you have more to spend, this kind of gambling may be right up your alley. Some people do nothing in their favorite casino except play the slots.

For the card player, casino gambling offers blackjack and poker as main attractions. Casinos vary these games depending on the house rules. Some tables have lower stakes but use more decks to keep the game interesting, other gambling houses feature higher stakes games with one or only a couple of card decks in play. Make sure you know the house rules on subjects like table etiquette and gambling limits before you play. Some houses are very particular about when it’s ok to touch cards, and what’s considered a forfeit. For example, many casinos won’t recognize a hand if any card touches the discard pile. Knowing these details will come in handy when you’re ready to gamble.

The roulette wheel is another kind of gambling altogether. This classic game, along with the dice tables, can be confusing for a newcomer. The best thing to do if you are unfamiliar with any game is to watch and ask questions before putting gambling any money. The casino staff is trained to help you and nobody will think you’re foolish for learning the rules before you put down any cash.

Casino gambling may also include video poker, games of skill and electronic dice games. Once you’ve learned the ins and outs of these games, you may find them as exhilarating as the old-fashioned versions of blackjack, craps and poker. As always, know your limits, go to have fun and enjoy your casino experience!

By A. Awwad

When it comes to calculating poker odds, math is your best friend. For those of you who aren’t handy with algebra, you do have the option of simply memorizing the odds for different hands. If you want to be a great poker player, however, and are able to handle anything that comes at you without a moment’s hesitation, then learning a little bit of the algebra behind calculating poker odds is the best thing you can do.

Hand Odds

The chance of you making a particular hand in poker. Example: If you have two spades in your hand and there are two spades on the flop, then your hand odds for getting that flush are 2:1. For every 3 times that this hand comes up for you, you will get your flush once. If the odds are 3:1 then you would get your hand once every four times it came around.

To calculate hand odds, use the following formula:

X to 1 odds = you get your hand once every (X + 1) times

OR

X to 1 odds = 1/ (X + 1) = % chance of getting your hand

This translates to, for example:

3 to 1 odds = 1/ 4 = 25% chance of getting your hand

Here are your odds of hitting an out by the river:

Outs Flop% Turn% Flop Odds Turn Odds Draw Type
2 8% 4% 12 22 Pocket Pair – Set
3 13% 7% 7 14 Single Overcard Draw
4 17% 9% 5 10 Gut Shot, Two Pair – Full House
5 20% 11% 4 8 One Pair – Two Pair or Set
6 24% 13% 3.2 6.7 No Pair – Pair, Two Overcard

Draw
7 28% 15% 2.6 5.6 Set – Full House
8 32% 17% 2.2 4.7 Open Straight Draw
9 35% 19% 1.9 4.1 Flush Draw, Open+Backdoor

Draw
10 38% 22% 1.6 3.6
11 42% 24% 1.4 3.2
12 45% 26% 1.2 2.8 Flush+Gut Draw
13 48% 28% 1.1 2.5
14 51% 30% 0.95 2.3
15 54% 33% 0.85 2.1 Flush+Open Draw
16 57% 34% 0.75 1.9 Flush+Open+One Overcard
17 60% 37% 0.66 1.7

How many outs does your hand have? This is your first consideration. Outs are the cards in the deck that help you create a hand. There are thirteen cards in each suit. If you hold two of them and two more are on the flop, then you have nine outs to get your flush.

These are just the beginning considerations for hand odds in poker. Your adventure in calculating poker odds has only just begun!

By A. Awwad

Baccarat is played in two places in a casino. It is played on the floor of the casino and it is played in an ornate room with formally dressed dealers. The difference in the game is who deals the shoe. On the floor, the dealer handles the shoe at all times including the dealing of the cards. In the room game the shoe is passed from player to player. The shoe stays with the player as long as the bank wins the hand. When the player wins the hand the shoe passes to the next player for them to deal the cards. My friend told me this angle for playing in the room. Watch the shoe to see if any player seems to hold on to it longer than the others. Watch for the player who deals tie hands when they are running the shoe.

He told me this tale of how he scored a large tie bet when he noticed that this one lady always seems to deal a tie while she had the shoe. He decided as the shoe passed to her to bet the tie progressively when she dealt. He started with one $100 chip and lost the bet. He then put $300 on the tie and lost. His third bet was the table max on the tie of $500. Before the hand was dealt the pit boss was asked by my friend how much he could bet on the tie. He was told $500 dollars. He made the bet and the whole table was intent on the hand being dealt.

At the game played in the room the player with largest bet on player handles the players cards and always turns their cards over first. On this hand the lady player running the shoe turned over her hand in her excitement to see how the hand was going to come out. The croupier stopped her and made her set the cards under the corner of the shoe. The table groaned, as the cards were a natural nine. The player sat stony until the croupier asked for the player’s hand. The player’s hand was also a natural nine. The table erupted and the let out a cheer said my friend. He added he would have never made the play if he had not noticed that this lady dealt a lot of ties. Up until this play, the most he had bet on a tie hand was $40.

A word to the wise, watch the shoe and see who is lucky with it. Play off of their luck.

By A. Awwad

Counting cards at Black Jack is a learned skill and frowned upon by casinos. In fact if they think you are doing this and winning they may bar you from playing Black Jack in their facility. What is card counting and why are the casinos leery of players who can count cards? There is no way this could be considered cheating, but a player who is good at this method is treated like a cheater.

The reason the player is feared who can do this with skill and discipline is simple. It puts the odds in the player’s favor. The house edge in the game is destroyed when the deck is rich in face cards. The odds for the rest of the shoe will remain with the player to win more bets than the dealer due to the fact that he can wave off hitting a card on a break hand. The dealer must hit any hand lower than soft 17(ace and a six). A rich shoe in face cards means the dealer has a higher chance of busting their hand.

There are several good books on this method of play, which are easily found on the Internet or in any bookstore for gamblers. The idea is to count the shoe down by keeping track of the cards as the dealer shows them. You know how many face cards are in a six-deck shoe and how many cards are under six not counting the aces. When the low cards are at minimum and the high cards have a numerical advantage the shoe favors the player. How out of line the shoe is in high versus low cards will determine how much the shoe favors the player. When this situation is present, the player raises the size of the bets. One of the ways the card counters have defeated detection is to have another player on their team actually make weird bets, but always increasing them when the shoe is favorable. One team even used a team member with the alias of the mad bomber to show up at an advantaged table, make a few bets and leave. This team used this ploy for a long time before they got caught.

Card counting was terrific, when the casinos dealt a lot of single deck games. The shoe dealing has made card counting much harder to do effectively. If you are willing to take the time to learn this method of play, be advised that if you are good at it you will be caught eventually, but up until that time it is possible to win consistently.

By A. Awwad

Las Vegas and its casinos have always been an inspiration for filmmakers looking to inject excitement and intrigue into their movies. One of the most famous movies with a Las Vegas backdrop is 1960’s ‘Ocean’s Eleven’, which sees the members of the original ‘Rat Pack’ – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis – planning to rob five of the top casinos in Vegas in just one night. Things go according to plan – at least until after the heists…

‘Ocean’s Eleven’ was remade successfully in 2001 by Steven Soderburgh, who cast George Clooney in the leading role of Danny Ocean and Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Elliott Gould as gang members, amongst others. The 2001 version updated the storyline while still putting across the same glamorous image of Vegas as in the first movie.

Nicolas Cage visited Las Vegas in 1992 for his film ‘Honeymoon in Vegas’. This comedy tells the story of Jack Singer (played by Cage) who decides to wed his long-time partner Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker) in Vegas. However, when they arrive, Betsy is spotted by a high-stakes gambler who decides he wants to spend a weekend with her. He engages Singer in poker games in an attempt to wrestle her from him. With Cage acting his best as the love-struck bridegroom, James Caan as the sinister gambler, and a number of parachuting Elvis impersonators, ‘Honeymoon in Vegas’ offers plenty of laughs.

Matt Damon is Mike McDermott, one of the world’s best poker players in the 1998 film ‘Rounders’, who has given up the game in order to concentrate on finishing law school. When his old friend Worm (Edward Norton) is released from prison, he persuades McDermott to return to the game in order to pay off some bad debts he’s accrued. McDermott consequently finds himself playing in a series of poker games where the stakes are forever increasing and the tension is forever building.

Finally, a list of casino movies is incomplete without a mention of the 1995 Martin Scorcese movie ‘Casino’, which is considered by many to be the definitive casino film. This tells the true story of Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein, a mobster who moves to Las Vegas and becomes the operator of the Tangiers casino. Robert De Niro makes the lead role his own, as Rothstein copes with marriage to a drug addict (played by Sharon Stone) and friendship with Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), a fellow mobster slowly spiralling into a world of violence.

By A. Awwad

The French claim to have invented Baccarat as it is similar to Chemin de fer, which was imported from France to England. The Italians also claim the game as it was invented by an Italian by the name of Felix Falguierein in the middle ages and played with a deck of Tarot Cards.

A famous Vegas gambler, Tony Renzoni, brought the game to the Dunes in late 1950s and the American version was born by combining the European version with Chemin de fer. He had imported it from Cuba before the island was taken over by Castro. As with other venues where the game is played, the original baccarat was played only by gamblers with large bankrolls. This was further accented in the States with the movies of James Bond as Chemin de fer was played in the movie to suggest a game for high rollers. The basic change in the American version is the casino acts as the bank.

In the Baccarat rooms in most fancy land casinos, the game is roped off and the minimum bet can be quite high. The croupiers are elegantly dressed and the stakes are very often in the thousand of dollars per hand. Casinos have also found that the general public likes the game too, so they deal it as a table game in the main casinos. The limits are much lower, but the game is played the same except the dealer does all of the dealing. In the room, the shoe passes to each player after the current player-dealer loses the shoe because the bank lost.

The game is a simple game of two or three cards to the player hand and the dealer hand. The cards are dealt and if either hand is a natural nine or eight, the hand is over. If the hands tie, there is no losing hand by either the bank or the player. Each player at the table can bet one of three bets. The can bet the tie, the player hand or the bank hand. The tie bet pays eight to one and the other two possible bets pay even money with the winning bank hand charged a commission of five percent. The secret to winning Baccarat play is to catch a run on either side of the shoe. For this reason, most players keep track of the winning hands on a scorecard provided by the house. A run of four or five wins on one side or the other is not uncommon. Runs of over ten or twenty hands are also seen every now and again and are a shoe following betters dream come true. A better who follows the shoe is one that bets the side that last won the hand. Players who try to buck a trending shoe can lose a great deal of money very quickly by always being on the losing side of the hand. A player could also play a run of flip flopping bets if the shoe is going back and forth between the player and the bank. These are ample reasons to make a player keep accurate track of how the shoe is playing.

Tie Hands

Tie hands can present a different type of problem for the player. A shoe could have very few ties and another shoe could be exploding with tie hands. One rule to follow is to not bet a tie hand until the first tie is dealt. One scheme that has worked in the past is to count the hands from the tie and if they are multiples of three a tie bet may be warranted. A small increase in the bet can be used in this scenario. If a player captures a few tie hands during the play of the shoe, the profit from this shoe should be more than the losses. In the Baccarat room, keep note of players who seem to deal a tie when they get the shoe, it may not happen on the first deal, but if they have shown this tendency, it could well be worth a small increasing bet. This author did that one night and was rewarded consistently by one player-dealer.

Do not be afraid to play in the room if the stakes are within your betting budget. Baccarat players are well taken care of when playing in the room. The play is more fun and you can play off other players luck when they deal from the shoe.

Some players are good for several bank wins in a row while others cannot seem to get past the first or second hand. Watch how the cards are working when each player is given their turn at dealing the shoe. Gambling is nothing but a series of trends that ebb and flow. Like life, some times things go well and some times they do not. Baccarat is a very trending game and a player can take advantage of the shoe tendencies.

Conclusion

Baccarat has a very low house edge and is very easy to play as the only thought process is to decide where to place your bet. By being aware of the flow of the shoe, small betting trends can be played and little parlays can be won. Tie hands can be captured after the first one shows. Do not fight a trending shoe, as it will cost a great deal of money before you are right. This is one game that the house is truly a little frightened by as they cannot change a losing shoe and start over until the shoe is completed. Some of the biggest losses casinos have are at this game. A fearless better can take a small amount of money and grow it to a sizable amount in just a few shoes. Tie hands can be devastating to the house since the tie pays eight to one. Find a tie play plan that works for you and stick with it for the playing session.