CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) – A plan to roll back a voter-approved ban on smoking in public places died weeks ago in the Nevada Legislature, but lobbyists for the gambling and tourism industries are using the last few days of the 2009 session to try to bring it back to life.

Fresh off a vote to increase Illinois’ income tax, senators approved a major gambling expansion to add another possible piece to the state’s budget puzzle.

A shill is an associate of a person selling goods or services who pretends no association to the seller and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The intention of the shill is, using crowd psychology, to encourage other potential customers unaware of the set-up to purchase said goods or services. Shills are often employed by confidence artists.The word “shill” is probably related to “shillaber”, a word of obscure early-20th century origin with the same meaning.

Shills are illegal in many circumstances and in many jurisdictions because of the frequently fraudulent and damaging character of their actions. However, if a shill does not place uninformed parties at a risk of loss, but merely generates “buzz,” the shill’s actions may be legal. For example, a person planted in an audience to laugh and applaud when appropriate, see “claque”, or to participate in on-stage activities as a “random member of the audience”, is a type of legal shill.

Shills in gambling

The illegal and legal gambling industries often use shills to make winning at games appear more likely than it actually is. For example, illegal three card monte peddlers are notorious employers of shills. These shills also often aid in cheating; they will disrupt the game if the mark is likely to win.

In a legal casino, however, a shill is sometimes a gambler who plays using the casino’s money in order to keep games (e.g. especially poker) going when there are not enough players. (This is different from a proposition player who is paid a salary by the casino for the same purpose, but bets with their own money.)

Links

• “Strange bedfellows: Journalists as corporate shills”
• Mainstream Media Shills For NATO
• I Quit, Confession of a Republican Shill
• Confessions of a Government Shill | By Andy Borrowitz
• Corporate Shill Enterprise: A Corporate Lobbying Front Group
• American Media: Government Shills?
• Some American journalists accused of being spokespeople for the administration
• The Hazards of Online Auctions
• Internet Shills: Old Trick, New Tech
• EBay’s policy

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Labor organizations Monday said expanding gambling in New Hampshire could bring in more cash to shore up the state budget while providing much needed jobs.

Detroit — A Sterling Heights man accused of paying bribes to influence University of Toledo football and basketball games is to have no involvement with gambling and can’t even sell lottery tickets at the store where he works, a federal judge ordered Monday.

The value of a starting hand can change dramatically after the flop. Regardless of initial strength, any hand can flop the nuts—for example, if the flop comes with three 2s, any hand holding the fourth 2 has the nuts. Conversely, the flop can undermine the perceived strength of any hand—A♣ A♥ would not be happy to see

♠ 9♠ 10♠ on the flop because of the straight and flush possibilities.

There are

(50/3) = 19,600

possible flops for any given starting hand. By the turn the total number of combinations has increased to

(50/4) = 230,300

and on the river there are

(50/5) = 2,118,760

possible boards to go with the hand.

The following are some general probabilities about what can occur on the board. These assume a “random” starting hand for the player.

Board consisting of	Making on flop		Making by turn		Making by river
	Prob.	Odds	Prob.	Odds	Prob.	Odds
Three or more of same suit	0.05177	18.3 : 1	0.13522	6.40 : 1	0.23589	3.24 : 1
Four or more of same suit			0.01056	93.7 : 1	0.03394	28.5 : 1
Rainbow flop (all different suits)	0.39765	1.51 : 1	0.10550	8.48 : 1
Three cards of consecutive rank (but not four consecutive)	0.03475	27.8 : 1	0.11820	7.46 : 1	0.25068	2.99 : 1
Four cards to a straight (but not five)			0.03877	24.8 : 1	0.18991	4.27 : 1
Three or more cards of consecutive rank and same suit	0.00217	459 : 1	0.00869	114 : 1	0.02172	45.0 : 1
Three of a kind (but not a full house or four of a kind)	0.00235	424 : 1	0.00935	106 : 1	0.02128	46 : 1
A pair (but not two pair or three or four of a kind)	0.16941	4.90 : 1	0.30417	2.29 : 1	0.42450	1.36 : 1
Two pair (but not a full house)			0.01037	95.4 : 1	0.04716	20.2 : 1

An interesting fact to note from the table above is that more than 60% of the flops will have at least two of the same suit—you’re likely to either be drawing to a flush or worried about one.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Among deal’s requirements: No more betting, and stay out of Runyon’s The accused elderly ringleader of a gambling and loan-sharking operation run out of a local steakhouse has taken a plea deal that spares him from dying in a Florida prison.

May 8 (Bloomberg) — Olympic Entertainment Group AS , the only publicly traded casino operator in eastern Europe, reported a first-quarter loss as a recession in its main markets hit gambling demand.

A pick 6 is a type of wager offered by horse racing tracks. It requires bettors to select the winners of six consecutive races. Because of the great difficulty in picking six straight winners, plus the number of betting interests involved, payoffs for successful wagers are quite high, sometimes in the millions of dollars.The pick 6 has its roots in the daily double, the first so-called “exotic” wager offred by horse tracks. To win the daily double, a bettor must pick the winner of two consecutive races, traditionally the first two and the last two races of the program. The pick 6 merely extends this principle. The wager is offered once per program, and is usually offered on six races which conclude with the featured race of the day.

The wager is conducted in parimutuel fashion, with all pick 6 bets going into a separate pool from other kinds of betting. There is one “betting interest” for each available combination, and the number of combinations is equal to the product of the number of runners in all six races. A simplified example: If there are ten horses in each of the six races, then the number of combinations is 10 × 10 × 10 × 10 × 10 × 10, or 1,000,000.

The pick 6 wager actually has two payoffs, one for bettors who pick all six winners, and a smaller payoff for those who pick five out of six. The total pick 6 betting pool is divided by precentage between the two payouts, along the lines of 75% for the six-winner pool and 25% for the five-winner pool.

Because of the sheer difficulty off successfully choosing six straight winners, plus the large number of betting interests, it is common for there to be no winning wager on all six races. When that happens, the six-winner portion of the pool carries over to the following program, and continues to carry over until it is won. This allows the “carryover pool” to grow to large sums, and tracks usually publicize the fact that their carryover pool has grown to six or seven figures. The five-winner pool is paid out each day, however; if no bettors have chosen five out of six winners, then those who have chosen four winners are paid, or even just three winners (which has happened when a series of longshots have won races). The pick 6 pool is also paid out in its entirety on the last day of a race meet; if there are no six-winner tickets, then the pool is split among five-winner tickets.

Because of the huge number of betting interests involved, bettors will often try to increase their chances of winning by selecting multiple combinations. This can be costly — a bettor who wants to cover two horses in each race muct bet on 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 combinations, or 64 combinations, times $2 for each for a total of $128. This method is called “boxing horses,” and is also used with other wagers such as a trifecta or superfecta.

Late scratches

Because all pick 6 wagers must be made before the first of the six races, there are many times when a horse is scratched from a race well after the wager is placed. How this is handled varies according to the rules of the racing jurisdiction. In most cases, the track substitutes the horse that is the post time betting favorite (in the “win” betting pools); if the bettor’s original horse is a late scratch and the post time favorite wins, then the betor is considered to have picked the winner for that race. In other cases, the track may declare combinations involving the scratched horse to have “no action,” and the wager is refunded.

Races moved from turf to dirt

At North American tracks, races which are run on a turf (grass) course must sometimes be moved to the main dirt course, usually due to heavy rain or other adverse weather conditions; sometimes this switch is made after pick 6 wagering is closed. Moving from turf to dirt greatly affects the wagering decisions of astute handicappers, as many horses perform differently according to the racing surface. For pick 6 wagering, different tracks handle this situation in different ways. In New York, a race moved from turf to dirt after pick 6 wagering closes is declared an “all win” race, where picks on any horse in that race are declared successful. If only one race is moved, bettors who successfully pick the other five race winers will win or share the ful six-winner pool, including carryovers. If two races are moved, bettors who pick the other four winners will win or share in that day’s six-winner pool, but no carryover, and the previous carryover pool only goes to the next program. (Few North American tracks schedule more than two turf races in a program.)

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank will unveil legislation on Wednesday to roll back a U.S. ban on online gambling, he said in a statement on Tuesday.

A US congressman announced plans Tuesday to introduce legislation that would allow online gambling in the United States.

Roll your own is poker jargon used for a particular ruleset in certain poker variants, particularly in stud poker.In traditional stud poker games, cards are simply dealt to each player, either face up or face down according to the rules of the game being played, followed by betting. In roll your own games this is different in one of three possible ways. These are called:

• simultaneous choose-after
• in turn choose-after
• choose-before

In simultaneous choose-after in every round where an upcard is normally dealt, each player is instead dealt a downcard. All players then look at all of their downcards and choose one to turn face up, then all players turn their chosen card at once.

In in turn choose-after the game begins the same way with each player being dealt a downcard, but then the first player to act (determined by the rules of the particular game) turns over his choice of upcard, then the next player can use that information to decide which of his cards to turn up, and then all players follow in turn.

Choose-before is always played in turn. On upcard rounds, before a card is dealt to each player, that player must choose whether he wants to receive it up or down. If he wants to receive it up, he says so. If he wants to receive it down, he must first turn one of his already-dealt downcards face up, so that all players will still have the same number of up and down cards. When using this method cards are not dealt to players starting at the dealer’s left as usual, but start with the high hand showing.

Roll your own should not be confused with rollouts, which, while similar, is fundamentally different.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

The Republican minority leader in the Minnesota Senate is predicting that gambling revenue might end up helping lawmakers erase a $4.6 billion budget deficit.

Technical details will be worked out today or Tuesday The Legislature is scheduled to resume negotiations today on a gambling deal with the Seminole Tribe.

Two-up (also known as swei or swy) is a gambling game, and one of Australia’s many contributions to the world of gambling (another being the totalisator).

Rules of the Game

The game is conducted in a flat circle of approximately 20 feet (6 metres) or larger. The only equipment required (aside from materials for tracking bets) is two coins (by tradition pre-decimal pennies), and a flat piece of wood called the “kip” approximately 8 inches in length which has holes carved in it to fit the coins neatly but loosely enough for the coins to come out when tossed.

The game is run by a “boxer”, who calls the first “spinner” (one of the players around the circle) in to toss the coins. The spinner wagers an amount of their choice on either “heads” or “tails”. Other players around the ring can then also bet on either “heads” or “tails”.

Once all bets are taken, the boxer calls “no more bets”, and the player tosses the coins in the air using the kip. To be a valid throw, they must go above the head height of the spinner, be rotating sufficiently and land entirely in the ring – if they do not the boxer calls “barred” and the throw is retaken. Ideally the call must occur before the coins settle.

If the coins land both on the same face, the round ends and non-spinning player’s bets are paid off, with people who bet on the same face as that landed winning. A new round of non-spinner bets is then taken before the spinner throws again.

If the coins come up with one tail and one head, the spinner spins again. If 5 “odds” come up, all players lose and a new spinner is selected.

If the spinner throws his nominated face three times before either 5 “odds” being thrown in a row, or a spin with both coins being the opposite face, the spinner wins and is paid at 7.5 to 1 (in most modern games).

Links

References:

• Australian gambling – Comparative history and analysis- report published by the Victorian Casino and Gaming Authority

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

TALLHASSEE (FBW) – Contending Florida House Speaker Larry Cretul will be the “final arbiter” of whether there is a major expansion of gambling in the Legislature this year, Bill Bunkley is asking Florida Baptists to contact Cretul immediately and urge him to oppose gambling expansion.

Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety last week penned a letter to 11 ISPs asking them to block access to 200 gambling Web sites and their phone numbers because they violate a 1961 law known as the Wire Act.