A Riverboat casino is a type of casino unique to several areas of the United States. Several states authorized this type of casino to limit the areas where casinos could be constructed.The economic impacts of, first, limited sailing time and, later, from being closed as a result of storm damage, have restricted interest in this type of casino.

History

When first approved, these casinos were required to actually be located on ships that could sail away from the dock. In some areas, gambling was only allowed when the ship was sailing. Over time, these regulations allowed gambling when the ship was docked.

Further changes allowed these casinos to be located in a moat or an area with water adjacent to a navigable waterway. Over time, these casinos were allowed to be built on stilts but still had to be over water.

Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 several states are now allowing these casinos to be built on land within certain limits from a navigable waterway.

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

Video: The History of Casino Boats in the U.S.A.

Horse racing and dog racing have been in a slow decline for almost 20 years now….the only tracks that have really thrived are the ones that have slot machines. In many cases their live handle (the daily amount bet at the track by live customers) has continued to decline, but their revenues have shot up so fast that they’re able to offer the biggest purses and thereby attract the best horses. Tracks like Delaware Park and West Virginia’s Mountaineer Park, once considered places where local degenerates bet on broken-down nags in claiming races, are now among the wealthiest tracks around, with the best races. Fabled tracks like Churchill Downs and Pimlico, on the other hand, sometimes have trouble making ends meet.

USA Today noted in a June 2003 article that receipts from slot machines are divided about evenly in four ways:

• Payment of the operating costs and payouts to lucky gamblers,
• State taxes,
• Prize money (the purse) offered to jockeys and horse owners, and
• Profit for the racino operator.

According to Focus on the Family, as of 2003 racinos are legal in at least eight states: Delaware (since 1995), Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island (since 1992), and West Virginia (since 1990). West Virginia pioneered the concept when MTR Gaming Group was allowed to introduce video lottery terminals (VLTs) to Mountaineer Race Track & Gaming Resort in Chester.

While VLTs were somewhat successful, a November 2003 article from the Global Gaming Insider noted the real financial success story was the introduction of reel spinning slot machines in Iowa:

In 1994, Iowa voters authorized reel spinning slot machines at Iowa racetracks (including Greyhound tracks). Polk County, the owner of a brand new, bankrupt horse track, Prairie Meadows, spent $26 million to convert the clubhouse into a casino and install 1,100 slot machines. The racino opened for business on April 1, 1995. Reel-spinning slots proved to be much more popular than video poker. In the twelve months ended March 31, 1996 machine revenues totaled $119.3 million, enabling Polk County to pay off the $27 million bond issue that paid for the clubhouse casino conversion and retire the track’s initial $38.8 million bond issue 17 years early.

With Prairie Meadows the racino came of age. The rapid transformation of a failed Iowa horse track into a highly profitable horse racing/slot gaming business was the defining moment in the marriage of pari-mutuel betting and machine gaming. For racing returned to Prairie Meadows in reinvigorated form. Purses, subsidized by revenues from slot machines, increased by a factor of six, from about $20,000 per day prior to slots to a planned $126,000 per day over the 1997 racing season. Higher purses attracted higher quality horses. This higher-quality racing was in turn exported by Prairie Meadows to other racetracks and simulcast facilities throughout North America, a high margin, profitable business. Less visibly, slot machines had a positive impact on Iowa horse breeding, a development with long-term consequences for the evolution of Iowa gambling law.

The Global Gaming Insider article also noted that the creation of the racino has lead to onsolidation in the ownership of racetracks, with Magna Entertainment Corporation and Churchill Downs Incorporated the largest.

In November 2004, Florida voters amended their state constitution to allow slot machies at parimutuel facilities.

Links and references

• What Is A Racino?, a January 2003 column by Joe Bob Briggs
• Gambling drives passion for ponies, A June 2003 article from USA Today
• Purses and the Politics of Legalization, a November 2003 article from the Global Gaming Insider
• Argument Over VLTs at Tracks Heats Up, a December 2003 article from the Detroit News
• The Impact of “Racinos”, from a Focus on the Family website
• Magna Entertainment Corporation
• Churchill Downs Incorporated

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

Video: Racino Part 1

One commonly reported behavior related to refusal to pay withdrawals is the refusal to pay withdrawals promptly, in hopes that the player will continue gambling with the money in the account and lose it all back.

Cheating software appears to be less common than payout problems.

Some casino software has been mathematically proven to cheat, such as Casino Bar (evidence by Michael Shackleford and others). Elka System/Oyster Gaming software is known to cheat, also confirmed by Michael Shackleford. Statistically non-random video poker has been reported at Playtech, see article “OCA STATS”. Screen shots from the back office of an older brand of software indicated the odds could be adjusted by the operator.

Much of the speculation about casino software cheating is usually the result of a player finding a pattern in a statistically small set of results. Most people in the online casino industry believe that most of the major casino software brands offer odds and paybacks that are the same as their land-based casino counterparts.

Many casino gambling portals and player forums maintain blacklists of rogue casinos. These can easily found in any major search engine, but most of them constitute indvidual webmaster and player opinions rather than anything official from any type of regulating body.

Fraudulent player behavior

Common fraudulent behavior from online casinos players includes the signing up for multiple casino accounts using different identities in order to claim a bonus offer multiple times. Another form of fraudulent behavior might be the use of a graphics editing software like Adobe Photoshop to create a false winning slot machine game screenshot in an attempt to tell the casino they hit a jackpot and didn’t get paid for it.

Online casinos usually lock the player accounts for these people, and it’s widely believed that online casinos share fraudulent player blacklists.

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

Games offered

A typical selection of games offered at an online casino might include:

• Baccarat
• Blackjack
• Craps
• Roulette
• Slot Machines
• Video Poker

Signup bonuses

Many online casinos offer signup bonuses to new players making their first deposit. These bonuses normally match a percentage of the player’s deposit with a dollar maximum, and almost all online casino signup bonuses require a minimum amount of wagering before allowing a cash out. Gameplay at specific casino games might be excluded from the wagering requirement calculation.

A fictional signup bonus offer follows as an example:

• The online casino offers new players a deposit matching bonus of 100%, up to $100
• The player must wager 25 times the total amount of the deposit plus the bonus before withdrawing
• Wagers on baccarat, craps, roulette, and sic bo do not count towards meeting wagering requirements

For this particular example, this would mean that a player depositing $100 would start with $200 in his account. The player must make $5000 ($200 × 25) in wagers before being allowed to make a withdrawal.

Advantage play in casino signup bonus situations is mathematically possible. For example, the house edge in blackjack is roughly 0.5%. In the example above, $5000 in wagering with a house edge of 0.5% will result in an expected loss of $25. Since the player received a $100 signup bonus, the player has an expected profit of $75.

Advantage players who use bonus offers for an expected profit are often called “bonus hunters”, “bonus abusers”, “bonus baggers”, “bonus whores” and “casino scalpers”. Some online casinos have restrictions regarding “the spirit of the bonus offer” which they sometimes use as a deterrent to what they consider “bonus abuse”.

A player who wishes to do this at a large number of online casinos must be careful. Some casinos are rogues (see below) and do not pay. Others have terms and conditions that are not favorable to the player, such as most bonuses that are restricted to slots.

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

Video: Online Gambling – 2008 Year in Review

Online casinos can be divided into three groups based on their interface: web-based casinos, download-based casinos, and more recently live casinos. Some casinos offer multiple interfaces.

Web-based online casinos

Web-based online casinos are websites where users may play casino games without downloading software to the local computer. Games are mainly represented in the browser plugins Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Shockwave, or Java and require browser support for these plugins. Also, bandwidth is needed since all graphics, sounds and animations are loaded through the web via the plugin. Some online casinos also allow gameplay through a plain HTML interface.

Download-based online casinos

Download-based online casinos require the download of the software client in order to play and wager on the casino games offered. The online casino software connects to the casino service provider and handles contact without browser support. Download-based online casinos generally run faster than web-based online casinos since the graphics and sound programs are located within the software client, rather than having to be loaded from the Internet. On the other hand, the initial download and installation of a download-based online casino client does take time. As with any download from the Internet, the risk of the program containing malware does exist.

Live-based casinos

Live-based casino gaming is a way to interface with a real world casino while playing online. Recent advancments in communication technology now allow land-based casinos to open a real-time window via the web for players to game tables in an interactive, live environment. With live gaming players can see, hear, and interact with live dealers at tables in brick and mortar casinos worldwide.

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

Reliability and trust issues are commonplace and often questioned. Many online casinos lease or purchase their software from well-known companies like Wager Works, Microgaming, Realtime Gaming, Playtech and Cryptologic in an attempt to “piggyback” their reputation on the software manufacturer’s credibility. These software companies either use or claim to use random number generators to ensure that the numbers, cards or dice appear randomly.

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

Video: Poker Room Review and Online Casinos to Avoid

A locals casino is a casino designed to attract residents of the area in which it was built rather than tourists or vacationers. The term is most commonly associated with Las Vegas.Locals casinos usually have a different mix of games than other casinos in the area. They usually offer higher payouts, with some video poker machines offering payouts of greater than 100 percent to attract those who live in the area. Local casinos can range from locations with fewer than 15 machines such as a bar with no lodging to resorts that have hundreds of machines and hotels with hundreds of rooms.

In order to attract locals, these casinos offer services like payroll check cashing, frequently with some type of free play bonus, to get patrons into the casino. This is usually expanded with special promotions to cash Internal Revenue Service tax refund checks in Nevada.

Locals casinos in Vegas will offer games not available in Strip casinos like bingo. They frequently include bowling, movie theaters and occasionally day care.

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

Video: THE RAMPART CASINO IN LAS VEGAS

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

Cheating in casinos refers to actions which are prohibited by a casino’s rules. Cheating is usually illegal but the exact sanctions will depend on the jurisdiction in which the casino operates. In Nevada, cheating in a casino is a felony under Nevada law. In most other jurisdictions, specific statutes do not exist but cheating in a casino would likely be considered fraud and dealt with as such by the authorities.

Methods of cheating

The methods for cheating in a casino are often specific to individual games and include:

Pastposting

After a bet is won, one replaces smaller denomination chips with chips of large denomination.

Hand Mucking

Palming desirable cards then switching them for less desirable cards that the gambler holds.

Marking Cards During Play

Various methods.

Introducing Previously Marked Decks Into Play

Usually involves “inside” help, i.e., the collusion of casino employees. There are many different way to mark decks of cards, some of them very difficult to detect.

False Deals

Ability to deal the second card from the top (used in conjunction with marked cards), or the ability to deal the bottom card of the deck (used in conjunction with placing desirable cards at the bottom of the deck.)

False Shuffles and Cuts

Ability to seemingly mix and cut the cards while retaining certain cards or the whole deck in a desired order.

Slot Machines

Methods exist for altering the outcome of slot machine games.

Collusion

In poker games, the practice of two partners signalling to each other the values of their cards; this can be very difficult to detect.

How casinos combat cheating

Proper Procedure

This means certain standardized ways of shuffling cards, dealing cards, storing, retrieving and opening new decks of cards.

Eyes in the Sky

Most casinos have an extensive array of cameras and recorders which monitor and record all the action in a casino. Some casinos use facial recognition software to detect known cheats or card counters/advantage players as they enter the casino.

Software

Casinos use software to analyze game play to uncover any unusual betting patterns or winning patterns and thus discern cheaters (as well as non-cheating card counters and “advantage players”).

References

• Casino Game Protection

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

Video: Casino cheat Richard Marcus (World’s biggest casino baccarat scam demonstrated on national TV by the world’s most famous casino cheater, Richard Marcus.)

Casino tokens are small colored metal or plastic discs used in gambling establishments.

There are two main types of tokens used in casinos: multicolor tokens of various denominations called chips, used primarily in table games; and metal token coins, used primarily in slot machines. Some casinos also use gaming plaques for high stakes table games ($25,000 and above). Plaques differ from chips in that they are larger, usually rectangular in shape and contain serial numbers.

Money is exchanged for the token coins or chips in a casino at a cashier station (the cage), at the gaming tables, or at a slot machine. The tokens are interchangeable with money at the casino, but have no value outside of the establishment.

These tokens are employed for several reasons. They are more convenient to use than currency, and also make theft and counterfeiting more difficult. Because of the uniform size and regularity of stacks of chips, they are easier to count compared to paper currency when used on a table. This attribute also enables the pit boss or security to quickly verify the amount being paid, reducing the chance that a dealer might be overpaying a customer.

Furthermore, it is observed that consumers gamble more freely with replacement currencies than with cash.

Finally, the chips are considered to be an integral part of the casino environment, and replacing them with some alternate currency would be unpopular. However, many casinos are moving to paper receipts.

Casino tokens are collected as a part of numismatics, more specifically as specialized exonumia collecting.

A set of injection molded ABS poker chips “hot-stamped” with denominations 100, 50, 25 & 10

Chip Denominations

Chips of the same denomination from different casinos tend to have similar colors. This increases familiarity with denominations.

The most common color scheme used in US casinos:

• $1.00: White (uncommon: blue, grey)
• $2.50: Pink
• $5.00: Red
• $25.00: Green
• $100.00: Black
• $500.00: Purple
• $1000.00: Orange (often oversized)

A standard 300 piece set of ABS plastic chips

History

After the increase in the value of silver stopped the circulation of silver dollar coins around 1964, casinos rushed to find a substitute, as most slot machines at that time used that particular coin. The Nevada Gaming Control Board consulted with the US Treasury, and casinos were soon allowed to start using their own tokens to operate their slot machines. The Franklin Mint was the main minter of tokens at that time.

In many jurisdictions, casinos are not permitted to use currency in slot machines, necessitating tokens for smaller denominations.

Tokens are being phased out of many casinos in favor of coinless machines which accept banknotes and print receipts for payout. (These receipts can also be inserted into the machines.)

Future

In certain casinos, such as the new Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, chips are embedded with RFID tags to help casinos keep better track of them, determine gamblers’ average bet sizes, and to make them harder for counterfeiters to reproduce. However, this technique is costly and considered by many to be unnecessary. Also, this technology provides minimal benefits in games with layouts that do not provide gamblers with their own designated betting areas, such as craps.

Links

• Casino Chip and Gaming Tokens Collectors Club
• ChipGuide

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

Video: RFID in Casinos, Abbiati