Counting cards in blackjack has become substantially more difficult as a result of casino countermeasures. The most common is the use of more decks, which decreases the player’s advantage, but even in the few remaining single- and double-deck games, dealers will often shuffle prematurely or unusually frequently to defeat a suspected card-counter. However, for the casinos there is a downside to frequent shuffling: It reduces the amount of time that the noncounting players are playing and consequently losing money to the house. It has become common for casinos to use automatic shuffling machines to compensate for this. Some models of shuffling machines shuffle one set of cards while another is in play. Others, known as Continuous Shuffle Machines (CSMs) allow the dealer to simply return used cards to a single shoe to allow playing with no interruption. Because CSMs essentially force minimal penetration, they remove almost all possible advantage of traditional counting techniques. As a result, some blackjack players call for a boycott of tables using CSMs. In the case of online casinos, the deck is shuffled at the start of each new round, ensuring the house always has the advantage. However, some online casinos periodically animate the dealer shuffling the cards to give the illusion that the cards are shuffled infrequently.
Unfavorable rules can cut into a player’s advantage, such as no double down after splitting, and having the dealer hit a soft 17 (ace, six which can play as 7 or 17.) Starting around 2004 a number of casinos began offering a 6:5 payoff on player blackjacks instead of the more traditional 3:2 payoff. These games are generally single-deck, inviting unwary card-counters and other players who believe they have an advantage. The inferior payoff substantially increases the house edge and makes the game unbeatable, even by a card-counter who is practicing the most sophisticated system perfectly.
A pitboss who determines that a player is a card-counter might either “back off” the player by inviting him/her to play any game other than blackjack, or will ban him/her from the casino itself. In jurisdictions where this is not legal, such as Atlantic City, a pitboss can require the player to flat-bet and disallow players from entering in the middle of a shoe. Such countermeasures effectively remove any chance of gaining an advantage from card counting in multi-deck games. The player’s name and photo (from surveillance cameras) may also be shared with other casinos and added to a database of card-counters and cheaters run for the benefit of casino operators. One such blacklist was known as the Griffin Book, and was maintained by a company called Griffin Investigations. However, the Griffin Agency was forced into bankruptcy in 2005 after losing a libel lawsuit filed by professional gamblers.
Many casual card counters make small mistakes that cost the advantage they gain by counting. Two or three mistakes per hour may give back all of the counter’s advantage. Even if one can count perfectly when practicing at home, it is much more difficult in an actual casino. The loud, distracting environments of most casinos, and even the availability of complimentary alcoholic beverages, play roles as casino counter-measures.
Casinos look out for known card counters, who may be banned from play depending on regulatory commission rules. They also look for suspicious actions such as a long series of small bets followed by large one. Monitoring player behavior to assist in this identification falls to on-floor casino personnel (“pit bosses”) and casino surveillance personnel who may use video surveillance (“the eye in the sky”) as well as computer analysis to try to spot playing behavior indicative of card counting; early counter-strategies featured the dealer learning to count the cards themselves to recognise the patterns in the players. In addition, many casinos employ the services of various agencies, such as Biometrica, who claim to have a catalog of advantage players. If a player is found to be in such a database, he will almost certainly be stopped from play and asked to leave regardless of his table play. For successful card counters, therefore, skill at “cover” behavior to hide counting and avoid “drawing heat” and possibly being barred, may be just as important as playing skill.
Casinos may alter the game’s dynamic against card counters by raising the minimum or lowering the limit on a table with a suspected counter, or by reshuffling sooner than the normal end of the shoe if they think that the player is offering a large bet on a positive count.
There have been some high-profile lawsuits involving whether the casino is allowed to bar card-counters. Essentially, card-counting, if done in your head and with no outside assistance from devices such as blackjack computers, is not illegal, as making calculations within one’s own mind is not an arrestable offence. Using an outside device or aid, however, was found illegal in a court case in Nevada involving Keith Taft, a professional gambler known for his innovations in blackjack computers and other gambling technology. In this case, two members of Keith Taft’s team were convicted of cheating for using a video device to gain knowledge of a blackjack dealer’s hole card. At the time of the Taft team trial, however, there was no anti-device law in Nevada, and the law that was written after this case is considered by many attorneys to be unconstitutionally vague. Still, the law has been adopted by most other states with casinos, and no player has yet tried the constitutionality of the law.
Casinos don’t tolerate card counters or practitioners of other legal professional gambling techniques willingly and, if permitted by their jurisdiction, may ban counters from their casinos; in Nevada, where the casinos are ruled to be private places, the only prerequisite to a ban is the full reading of the Trespass Act to ban a player for a year. Some skilled counters try to disguise their identities and playing habits; however, some casinos have claimed that facial recognition software can often match a camouflaged face with a banned one. In the experience of most professional gamblers, this is untrue, and a 2004 book by a Las Vegas casino surveillance director, The Card Counter’s Guide to Casino Surveillance, also declares this assertion to be an overstatement. Approximately 100 casinos in the United States used the Griffin Investigations consulting firm to help them track down and monitor card counters, before the firm’s bankruptcy as a result of a lawsuit for libel filed by professional gamblers.
Other modern technology that has been marketed as an aid in catching card counters includes the MindPlay system and Blackjack Survey Voice software.
The game of poker (or at least most of the variants) is considered to be computationally intractable. However, methods are being developed to at least approximate perfect strategy from the combinatorial game theory perspective in the heads-up (two player) game, and increasingly good systems are being created for the multi-player or ring game. Perfect strategy has multiple meanings in this context. From a game-theoretic optimal point of view, a perfect strategy is a minimax one that cannot expect to lose to any other player’s strategy; however, optimal strategy can vary in the presence of sub-optimal players who have weaknesses that can be exploited. In this case, a perfect strategy would be one that correctly or closely models those weaknesses and takes advantage of them to make a profit. Some of these systems are based on Bayes theorem, Nash equilibrium, Monte Carlo simulation and Neural networks. A large amount of the research is being done at the University of Alberta by the GAMES group led by Jonathan Schaeffer who developed Poki and PsOpt. The Poki engine has been licensed for the entertainment game STACKED featuring Canadian poker player Daniel Negreanu.One major aspect of poker is being a game of imperfect information. Some cards in play are concealed, so the players cannot deduce the exact state the game is in. This fundamentally differs from games like chess where all information about the game’s current state is public. A major part of the skill of live poker games, however, is guessing at the strength of a player’s hand by identifying tells made by other players, while concealing one’s own. As a computer would not make any physical tells, playing against a computer would necessitate reading tells only from the bets placed. Once the ‘mind’ of the computer is known it can exploited.
Although you cannot read a computer opponent, playing against computer opponents can still help you sharpen your skills by learning how to count outs and play the percentages. With the advancing technology of artificial intelligence, computer players can be created to incorporate bluffs and other human-like decisions.
Pokerbots are bots or computer programs that play online poker disguised as a human opponent. Online poker rooms prohibit the use of bots like WinHoldEm.
Gambling as a betting action – wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money or material goods.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
Online Slot Game Guide – Slot machines, and their electronic cousins, video poker, electronic keno, gamemaker’s, etc., are now the biggest revenue producer, by far, in the casino industry.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
It is about a legal way to win, but take care! Such practice is considered an advantage gambling and, if the casinos see that you are a skillfull or knowledgeable player that can gain an advantage at blackjack by using the card-counting or shuffle tracking, at video poker by using a strategy card devised or not by computer analysis of the game, or at progressive slot machines by taking advantage of a high jackpot, you can end by being listed on the Black Book. And, if you will be listed finally on the Griffin Book shared by the casinos, you will end you career as gambler much sooner that you intended to do, because you will be excluded from all the casinos that have access to the book.
Bonus hunting (bonus bagging, or bonus whoring) makes possible from a mathematically point of view to get a profit. Wikipedia shows as example the house edge in blackjack which 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, after subtracting the expected loss of $25, the player has an expected profit of $75.
If you play at an online casino, you will take advantage by the signup bonuses, usually one-off bonuses for signing up to the casino and opening an account. There are terms and conditions for each bonus, like restricted games or bets and wagering requirements.
Wagering requirements prevent players from withdrawing the bonus money immediately after receiving it. Before the bonus money can be withdrawn the player must wager a certain amount of money on unrestricted games. The wagering can be spread out over many bets. To meet a $2000 wagering requirement, a player could make 1000 $2 bets on blackjack, provided blackjack is not a restricted game.
Games like blackjack and video poker have a low house advantage. The house advantage for blackjack is ~0.5%. So in the example above, by playing $2000 worth of blackjack with a house advantage of 0.5%, a player is, expected to lose $10 in total. But the expected value is an average value and may be less than the actual value.
Assuming that you only lose an amount close to the expected loss, and the bonus awarded to you after meeting this wagering requirement is greater than $10 then you will have a profit. The process is mathematically calculated. Bad luck could cause a player to lose more than $10 playing blackjack in this situation.
In sports betting, by taking advantage of free bet promotions, you can back the event, and then lay the event on a betting exchange, at similar or same odds, thus ensuring that the free bet is not a bet at all, instead more like a financial trade. No matter the outcome, it is possible (by using a betting / arb calculator) to calculate both the possible outcomes before the sporting event has started. By inputting the odds, the bet calculator then tells you what amount to bet, to ensure that whether the bet wins or loses, the return is the same.
In online poker, the poker player can take advantage by the incentive bonuses offered by the site after a certain number of raked hands are played. For example, a site may offer a player who deposits $100 a bonus of $50 once he plays 500 raked hands. A poker player who can at least break even can become a long-term winner by playing with poker bonuses. This way, a winning poker player can add to their winnings with the use of bonuses.
CryptoLogic Limited, a leading software developer to the global Internet gaming market, through its wholly owned subsidiary WagerLogic, has announced a three-year licensing contract with 888 Holdings PLC, one of the world’s most popular online gaming companies. Under the agreement, 888 will select and integrate casino games from CryptoLogic that best complement 888′s broad offering.
“Today’s announcement is consistent with CryptoLogic’s strategy to partner with the world’s biggest and best gaming brands – as a way to offer the ultimate player experience,” said Brian Hadfield, CryptoLogic’s President and CEO. “888′s reputation, established player base and global marketing strength, paired with CryptoLogic’s industry-leading games – it’s a winning combination.”
“This reaffirms 888′s strategy of creating a game ecosystem, powered by an industry-leading integration infrastructure, which enables 888 to introduce a diversified offering to existing and new players, worldwide,” said Gigi Levy, CEO of 888.
“For CryptoLogic, 888 is a natural fit,” added Justin Thouin, CryptoLogic’s Vice President, Product Management and Business Development. “Together, we offer the world’s best online games through one of the world’s largest Internet casinos.”
Source: CryptoLogic Limited
About CryptoLogic:
CryptoLogic Inc. (TSX: CRY) is a Dublin, Ireland-based software application service provider (formerly Toronto, Canada), one of the four largest in the industry along with Microgaming, Playtech, and Real Time Gaming.
Cryptologic listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (CRY) in 1998 and on the NASDAQ (CRYP) in 2000. In 2003 the company began trading on the London Stock Exchange (CRP) before achieving gaming software certification in Alderney.
The Playboy brand launched casino and poker products on Playboygaming.com using Cryptologic software in early 2007.
World Poker Tour Enterprises (WPTE) also joined the CryptoLogic network in 2007, offering both casino and poker products.
About 888.com:
888 Holdings Plc incorporates Cassava Enterprises (Gibraltar) Ltd., a limited company listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: 888) which operates several high-profile gambling websites: 888.com, Casino-on-Net, Reef Club Casino, Pacific Poker.
On October 2, 2006, 888 Holdings announced that it had indefinitely suspended business from US customers in light of the passage of the Safe Port Act by the US Congress three days before. On August 14, 2007, the US Department of Justice asked to recoup all profits made by the company in America. This would amount to nearly $120m for 888.
An already tested method to defeat the online gambling companies started to act again, after Bodog.
1st Technology made a complaint against several companies including Digital Gaming Solutions SA, Costa Rica International Sports, Action Poker Gaming Enterprises and SBG Global; two Norwegian companies: Playsafe Holding AS and eCom Enterprises; and Digital Gaming Network, Ltd., which is based in Curacao, for the inftingement of a US patent. The result could be the confiscation of the domain names and default judgements.
Gambling 911 tells us that the complaint, filed in a Missouri Supreme Court, is considering the U.S. Patent No. 5,564,001, titled “Method and System for Interactively Transmitting Information Over A Network Which Requires Reduced Bandwidth”.
What is interesting is that this kind of action is taken against companies that are not under the jurisdiction of the US. But, in order to be able to fight against the online gambling, it is used an intermediate for the complaint and the fact that many international institutions that are implied in the domain name and Internet regulation are based within US, so they are considered as being under the US jurisdiction.
I do not know if this US patent it is a legal and enough argument against the online gambling companies. But why they didn’t act before the UIGEA, when US was accepting the online gambling?
And more than this, it seems to me that during the last years the US patents grown in a such manner that soon there will be very few activities on Internet that will no infringe a patent or another (in an insurance related web site, I was forced some time ago to change the metatag “farm insurance” because it is patented by an US company).
And they have even the power and the tools to impose their own rules, as long as the most important specific institutions are under the US jurisdiction.
So, it seems that the Internet is no more a “worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol”, but a patent where we are accepted temporarily, as long as we do not bother the owner.
One of the factor to measure the development of the gambling industry is the trade of the gambling software. In this context, good news from Playtech, the most known producer of gambling software. Its revenues increased with 101% to $32.7 million during the last quarter of the last year. Its casino games division rised to $22.9 million and its online poker software up to $9.4 million in revenue.
Playtech Cyprus Ltd. is a gaming software development company founded in 1999. The company provides software for online casinos, online poker rooms, online bingo games, and fixed-odds arcade games online.After UIGEAimplementation in US, the company’s stock suffered a one-day fall of over 40%. It subsequently recovered the losses to stand at near its 52-week peak in February 2007.
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Playtech Cyprus Ltd. is a gaming software development company founded in 1999. The company provides software for online casinos, online poker rooms, online bingo games, and fixed-odds arcade games online.
