Rugby football refers to sports descended from a common form of football developed at Rugby School in England. The two major sports are rugby league and rugby union. American football and Canadian football also originated from Rugby football.
Games descended from Rugby School rules
Rugby football
Rugby League
Rugby Union
Rugby Sevens
Touch Rugby — a variant of rugby league replacing tackles with a touch. Also call Touch Football or Touch Footy.
Tag Rugby — a form of non-contact rugby league using a velcro tag to indicate a tackle.
OzTag — a form of Tag Rugby played in Australia.
Wheelchair Rugby, also Wheelchair power tag rugby and Wheelchair rugby league
American football — called “football” in the United States, and “gridiron” or “gridiron football” in Australasia.
Arena football — an indoor version of American football
Touch football — non-tackle American football.
Flag football — non-tackle American football, like touch football using a token to indicate a tackle.
Canadian football — called simply “football” in Canada.
Canadian flag football — non-tackle Canadian football.
(Australian rules football was based partly on Rugby football, and partly on several other codes of football.)
The exact origins of the game are obscure, but it seems to have evolved from “pitch and toss”, a gambling game involving tossing a single coin into the air and wagering on the result of the toss which was popular amongst poorer English and Irish citizens in the 18th century. The predilection of the convicts for this game was noted as early as 1798 by the colony’s first Judge Advocate, as well as the lack of skill and consequent losses at it.
There is evidence to suggest that pitch and toss had evolved into two-up, using two coins by the 1850′s, and the game was played on the goldfields of the eastern states, and spread across the country with subsequent goldrushes elsewhere in Australia. As time passed, increasingly elaborate illegal “two-up schools” grew around Australia, to the consternation of authorities but in fact with the assistance of corrupt police officers.
The game was played extensively by Australia’s soldiers during World War I, and games of two-up at which an even blinder official eye was cast became a regular part of ANZAC Day celebrations for the returned soldiers.
The games continued illegally for most of the 20th century throughout Australia, exclusively involving men and usually only Anglo-Australian men. Two-up was the basis of one of Australia’s first major illegal gaming operations, the legendary Thommo’s Two-up School, which operated at various locations in Sydney (sometimes even on boats and hired ferries) from the early years of the 20th century until well after World War II. Crime writer David Hickie claims that Thommo’s was turning over tens of thousands of pounds annually by the 1920s, and it is generally acknowledged that it flourished for decades thanks to endemic police and official corruption.
Legal two-up arrived in Australia with its introduction as a “table” game at the new casino in Hobart in 1973. Laws were subsequently passed legalising two-up on Anzac Day and also legalising it at several two-up schools in outback towns (mainly as a tourist attraction). Two-up is now played at many of Australia’s casinos, but from the 1960s onwards it began to drop out of the illegal gaming culture. It was at first supplanted by the card game baccarat, which enjoyed a considerable vogue in the 1960s at the numerous illegal gaming houses around Sydney, but ultimately it was overtaken by the mainstream adoption of poker machines (slot machines) in NSW clubs. It is also played at Returned Serviceman’s Leagues (RSLs) on Anzac Day.
Online scratch cards are the online version of lottery scratch cards. Online scratch cards are played by clicking on designated areas to reveal information used in determining the card’s prize value. These online companies provide various cards, and there are a few dedicated companies that provide this activity.
Some online scratch card can offer better odds than the lottery scratch cards, usually purchased at stands. The company is responsible for determining the chance of winning.
Online scratch card types
Online scratch cards can be divided into two groups: web-based scratch cards and download-based scratch cards; some companies offer both.
Web-based online scratch cards
Web based is the most common form of online scratch cards. For the web based online cards, the website users may directly play cards without loading any software to the local computer. Games are presented in the browser plugin Macromedia Flash and require browser support for this plugin.
Download based online scratch cards
On these websites, users must download certain software to play the online cards. After installing the software, it connects the online card service provider and handles contact without browser support.
Games offered
A typical selection of games on offer at an Online Scratch Card might include: Fantazy slot, Bowling, Mega Safe and Slot Super 7.
Bonuses
Many online Scratch card companies offer large bonuses. Often a “100% match up bonus”. For example, common terms and conditions for a bonus may go as follows:
100% up to $100
Must wager 20 times the bonus before withdrawing
For a specific example, this would mean that a player depositing $100 would start with $200 in his/her account. He/She must make $2000 ($100 & times; 20) in wagers before withdrawing. Any card played will count towards the wager requirement.
Player Fraud
Sometimes players are deceitful or irresponsible. In the most common cases of player fraud, the player signs up for multiple accounts on a card site using fake names to repeat the bonus more than once. Online scratch card companies do not tolerate such behavior and will usually lock the account or accounts of the player responsible, and may inform other scratch card sites or the software provider to keep the player out of other scratch card sites.
Cosmic Wimpout is a deceptively simple, user extensible game combining chance and skill. The game promotes wisdom, fun, and fellowship; and many Cosmic Wimpout afficianados believe that long term playing of the game can eventually unlock the secrets of the universe.
It is played with 5 six-sided cubes displaying assorted arcane symbols. An optional combination score board and rolling surface, in the form of a piece of cloth or felt available in various colors and designs, may also be used. Players supply their own game piece for score keeping.
The origins of the game are shrowded in the mists of time, but it continues to be manufactured and distributed by a small group of friends. Possibly based on Pig and/or Zonk, Cosmic Wimpout was introduced in the 1970s and has often been associated with the Berkeley, Grateful Dead, and other free-form subcultures.
The annual tournament currently takes place at the Green River Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
About the time of World War II, many modern poker games used community cards (also called “shared cards” or “window cards”), which are cards dealt face up to the center of the table and shared by all players. In these games, each player is dealt privately an incomplete hand (“hole cards”), which is then combined with the community cards to make a complete hand. The set of community cards is called the “board”, and may be dealt in a simple line or arranged in a special pattern. Rules of each game determine how they may be combined with each player’s private hand. The most popular community card game today is Texas hold ‘em, originating sometime in the 1920s.
In home games, it is typical to use antes, while casinos typically use only blinds for these games. Fixed limit games are most common in casinos, while spread limit games are more common in home games. No limit and pot limit games are less common. Later betting rounds often have a higher limit than earlier betting rounds. Each betting round begins with the player to the dealer’s left (when blinds are used, the first round begins with the player after the big blind), so community card games are generally positional games.
Most community card games do not play well with lowball hand values, though some do play very well at high-low split, especially with ace-to-five low values, making it possible to win both halves of a pot. When played high-low split, there is generally a minimum qualifying hand for low (often 8-high), and it is played cards speak.
Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) are computerised machines normally found in betting shops which allow players to bet on the outcome of various games and events with Fixed Odds. They were introduced to UK shops in 2002, shortly after the abolition of the Betting Tax in October 2001.The most commonly played game is Roulette. The minimum bet per spin is £1 and the maximum is £100. Chips can be as small as 20 pence. The maximum amount that can be won on any spin is £500.
Other games include Spoof, Bingo, Virtual Racing and Triple Disc.
Shops are allowed a maximum of four such terminals, although since this number also includes fruit machines, many shops have fewer than four.
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.
Faro was undoubtedly one of the most popular card games of the 18th century, especially among the lower classes. Although both faro and Basset were forbidden in France, on severe penalties, these games continued to be in great vogue in England during the 18th century; apparently because it was easy to learn, it gave the appearance of being very fair, and, lastly, it was a very quiet, quick game, and could be played discreetly. “Our life here,” writes Gilly Williams to George Selwyn in 1752, “would not displease you, for we eat and drink well, and the Earl of Coventry holds a Pharaoh-bank every night to us, which we have plundered considerably.” Charles James Fox preferred faro to any other game, as did american con man Soapy Smith. It was said that every faro table in Soapy’s Tivoli Club, in Denver, Colorado in 1889 was gaffed (made to cheat). Faro was played all over the United States, by the rich and the poor, during the 19th century.
Faro’s detractors regarded it as a dangerous scam that destroyed families and reduced men to poverty. This reputation is likely due to the use by some bankers of rigged dealing boxes that allowed the banker to manipulate the draw of the cards after observing the players’ bets.
Faro bankers were alleged to employ ‘gentlemen’ to give a very favourable report of the game to the town, so that the games would be allowed to transpire without further inquiry.
Seven Twenty-Seven is a vying game similar in some respects to poker, and often played as a “dealer’s choice” variant at home poker games. It uses the same equipment and betting system, but the value of hands does not use traditional poker hand rankings, either high or low. Rather, only the sum of the cards is used to calculate the worth of a hand. The game is somewhat of a cross between blackjack hands and poker bluffing.The game play proceeds like this:
Each player is dealt a downcard and an upcard.
A betting round begins with the player on the dealer’s left, and proceeds exactly as in poker: all players must either equal the largest bet or drop out.
After the betting, each player may draw a card, face up, in turn from the dealer’s left. If all players pass on their opportunity to draw, there is one more round of betting, followed by a poker-style showdown. Otherwise the game continues with another betting round (often beginning to the left of the player who began the previous round) and another draw, so there can be as few as two betting rounds in the game, but more often three or four.
Numbered cards are scored at face value; face cards count for one-half a point. Aces count for one and eleven, so a hand with a five and two aces scores 7 and 27 at the same time.
On showdown, the pot is split in half, with the hand(s) valued closest to 7 and the hand(s) valued closest to 27 each winning one half of the pot. If there is a tie where two players are off by the same amount, but in different directions (6 to 8), the lower hand wins. If there is an exact tie, that half-pot is split again among the tied players. Ties are common. The same player may contest for both high and low, usually because of aces. A player with a five and two aces can win the whole pot.
There are a few variations in rules that complicate things somewhat: first, the rule about ties in different directions varies; also, some players play with a declaration, while others play cards speak.
Keno, in its modern form, is like a lottery or bingo in that it is a numbers game. Unlike bingo, the keno player picks the numbers for his or her ticket(s). Keno cards have 80 numbers; the keno player can pick as many (or as few) numbers as desired. This is done by circling or otherwise marking them with a pencil. Once the player has picked his or her numbers, he must bring his or her card back to the clerk at the keno booth. The clerk will then issue a receipt after recording the player’s numbers.
After picking numbers and recording them at the keno booth, the player will then watch either a “big board” in which winning keno numbers will light up or on a video monitor showing the selected numbers. As the winning numbers light up, the player usually marks them on his or her card with a bright-colored marker. The amount of numbers the player originally picked that match winning numbers of a particular drawing will determine if any money is won and, if so, how much. The winning ticket needs to be taken to the keno booth immediately if it is an individual game ticket, as drawings usually take place every five minutes. If the player tries to redeem a winning ticket when the next drawing starts, it is void and no money is paid out.
To avoid having a void ticket, a keno player can purchase a “multi-race” ticket with the same picked numbers on anywhere from 2 to 20 tickets. When the maximum number of games (matching the number of tickets) is finished, the player can then redeem any winnings and avoid the peril of a void ticket. Another option is the “stray and play” ticket, which is usually a number of games greater than 30. Unlike standard keno tickets, the “stray and play” doesn’t have to be redeemed immediately and is often good for up to a year after purchase.
Lottery versions of Keno are now used in many National Lotteries or state licensed Lotteries around the world. The games have different formulas depending on the wanted price structure and whether the game is slow (daily or weekly), or if it is a fast game with just minutes between the draws. The drawn numbers are typically published on TV for the slow games and on monitors at the point of sale for the fast games.
Keno is a bingo-like gambling game. Its history can be traced to a Chinese game called “The Game of the White Dove (白鴿票)” invented during the Han Dynasty (187 BC). The name “keno” descends from a form of bingo or Lotto popular in the USA in the 19th century. There are many references to “Keno” played in a bingo like format in the eastern states prior to the influx of Chinese during the gold rush. The name appears to have been transferred to the similar format Chinese lottery in the late 1800s.
History
The following account of the history of the game is an excerpt from Stewart Culin’s paper published in 1891. [1]
This game is an old establishment, and was first introduced by Chéung léung of the great Han Dynasty. When the city was hard pressed, and provisions were beginning to fail, they (the besieged) were anxious to increase the contributions, and to exhort the people to subscribe more for the army, but were unable to do so. Hence they established a game of chance (to guess characters), by which they hoped to tempt the people to hazard their property. In order to fix a method of losing or gaining at hazard, they chose 120 characters for the whole game and eight characters for one subdivision. If the people lost one (whole) subdivision they lost three lí of property; if they gained one division they were rewarded with ten taels. These regulations being once established, who would not sacrifice a little in order to gain much? The two games in the morning and evening were attended by men and women who tried their luck by guessing. They had only opened the game for about ten days, when they had accumulated more than 1000 pieces of silver; and after a few more decades their wealth was boundless. The money thus gained was considered a contribution to the army for the reduction of the empire….
At present the people practice the game as a profession. They borrow the characters from the Thousand Character Classic, of which eighty are chosen and arranged after a new plan, ten characters forming one division, which the people are permitted to purchase for more or less (for whatever they please.)
Three cash gaining ten taels makes the people covet the game without loathing. When they guess five characters they gain five lí; when six characters they gain five candareens; when seven characters they gain five mace; when eight characters they gain two taels and five mace; when nine characters they gain five taels; when ten characters they gain ten taels.
When this game was first established, the houses were often at a great distance, and communication being difficult and the people anxious soon to know the result respecting their gaining or losing, they employed letter doves to carry the news to the parties, whence the present designation: ‘The Game of the White Dove.’
In poker, the nut hand, or just the nuts, is the strongest hand possible in any particular situation. The term applies mostly to community card poker games to mean the individual holding that makes the strongest hand possible with the given board of community cards. By extension, the term is used more loosely to refer to any very strong hand.For example in Texas hold ‘em, if the board is ♠ 6♠ A♣ 9♠ 5♥, a player holding
♠ 8♠ has the nuts (a -high straight flush in spades), and cannot lose. Sometimes it is useful to know that your hand is the second or third best possible. On this same board, the hand ♣ 5♦ would be the second-nut hand, four fives; and the third-nut hand would be any pair of the remaining three aces, making a full house A-A-A-5-5.
In high-low split games one often speaks of “nut low” and “nut high” hands separately. With an Omaha board identical to the one above, any hand with
-3 makes the nut low -5-3-2-A, while -4 is the second-nut low (the nut high hands remain the same).
Finally, one also hears terms such as “nut flush” or “nut full house” to mean the highest hand possible in that particular category in the circumstances, even though that may not be strictly the nut hand. For example, a pair of aces with the above board could be called the “nut full house”, even though there are two higher (but very unlikely) hands possible.
The phrase originates from the historical poker games in the colonial west of America. If one bet to the sum of everything he possessed, he would place the “nuts” of his wagon wheels on the table. Most likely, this was to ensure that, should the wagerer lose the hand, he would be unable to flee and would have to make good on the bet. Obviously, to make such a bet one would need to be sure that he has the best possible hand.
There is also a possibility of having a nut losing hand (a hand that will lose to anything). For example, this occurs when the board has four of a kind and a deuce. In this situation, if you hold pocket 2′s, there is no possibility of this hand winning a showdown with any other hand, as any opponent must have a better kicker than you.
Much complexity in bridge arises from the difficulty of successfully arriving at a good final contract in the auction. This is a fundamentally difficult problem: the two players in a partnership must try to communicate enough information about their hands to ultimately arrive at a makeable contract, but the information they can exchange is restricted in two ways:
Information may only be passed by the calls made and later by the cards played, and not by any other means.
The agreed-upon meaning of all information passed must be available to the opponents.
A bidding system is the typical solution to this problem: each player evaluates his or her own hand and makes bids to give or request information from their partner, with the goal of eventually arriving at an ideal contract. Bids, doubles, redoubles, and even passes can be either natural or conventional. A natural bid is a proposal to reach a contract in the named suit. A conventional bid is an attempt to communicate, offering and/or asking for information about the partnerships’ hands, that is not intended to be a proposal for the final contract. A wide variety of bidding systems have been developed over the course of the 20th century. However, most modern systems have well-established common ground.
First of all, a fairly universal system of high card points is used to give a basic evaluation of the strength of a hand. Aces are counted as 4 points, kings as 3, queens as 2, and jacks as 1 point; therefore, the deck contains 40 points. 26 points shared between partners is considered sufficient for a partnership to bid, and make, game in a major or in no trump. In addition, the distribution of the cards in a hand into suits may also contribute to the strength of a hand and be counted as distribution points. Because 26 points is usually considered sufficient to make game, 13 points in one hand is considered sufficient to open the bidding (that is, make the first bid in the auction), by bidding 1 of a suit.
A one no trump opening bid usually reflects a hand that has relatively balanced suits and high cards, and usually refers to a hand with 15-17 high card points. In some systems the number of points expected from a 1NT opening bid changes, but it almost always refers to a relatively narrow range of points.
Opening bids of 2 or higher are reserved for two types of bids: unusually strong bids and preemptive bids. Unusually strong bids communicate an especially high number of points; the availability of unusually strong bids allows a player with a weak hand to safely pass when their partner opens the bidding at one of a suit. Preemptive bids are often made with weak hands that especially favor a particular suit. For instance, with a hand of ♠ AK98742 ♥ 73 ♦ 42 ♣ 76, an opening bid of 3♠ is a very reasonable sacrificial bid, designed to make it difficult for the opposing team to determine a contract for themselves (which is good here, since they are likely to have the bulk of the points).
Most systems include the weak two bid convention, in which opening bids of 2♥, 2♦, or 2♠ are reserved for preemptive bids, while 2♣ is used for very strong hands. This is a first example of a conventional bid: an opening bid of 2♣ in no way suggests 2♣ as a final contract: indeed, in these systems 2♣ may be bid without any clubs.
Another common convention is the 5-card major convention, in which an opening bid of 1♥ or 1♠ promises at least 5 cards in that suit. This leads to some awkward bids, for instance, when a player has four cards in each major, and is forced to open the bidding with 1 of a 3-card minor suit.
Doubles are sometimes used in bidding conventions. A natural, or penalty double, is one used to try to gain extra points when the defenders are confident of setting (defeating) the contract. The most common example of a conventional double is the takeout double of a low-level bid, implying support for the unbid suits and asking partner to choose one of them.
There are many other conventions. Some of the most famous are Stayman, Jacoby transfers and Blackwood.
Bidding systems depart from these basic ideas in varying degrees. Standard American, for instance, is a collection of conventions designed to bolster the accuracy and power of these basic ideas, while Precision Club is a highly conventional system that uses the 1♣ opening bid for strong hands (but sets the threshold rather lower than most other systems) and requires many other changes in order to handle other situations. Many experts today use a system called 2/1 game forcing. In the UK, Acol is the standard system. There are even a variety of techniques used for hand evaluation. The most basic is the Milton Work point count, but this is sometimes augmented by other guidelines such as losing trick count, law of total tricks or Zar Points.
Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or internet casinos, are online versions of traditional (“brick and mortar”) casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet.Online casinos generally offer odds and payback percentages that are comparable to land-based casinos. Some online casinos claim higher payback percentages for slot machine games, and some publish payout percentage audits on their websites. Assuming that the online casino is using an appropriately programmed random number generator, table games like blackjack have an established house edge. The payout percentage for these games are established by the rules of the game.
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.
Trick-taking games can be traced back to the early 16th century. Whist became the dominant form, and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word bridge is the English pronunciation of “biritch”, an older name of the game of uncertain origin; the oldest known rule book, from 1886, calls it “Biritch, or Russian Whist”. This game, known today by the retronyms bridge-whist and straight bridge, became popular in the United States and the UK in the 1890s.
Biritch featured several significant developments from Whist: the trump suit was either chosen by the dealer, or he could pass the choice to his partner; there was a call of no trumps; and the dealer’s partner laid his cards on the table as dummy to be played by the dealer. It also featured other characteristics found in modern bridge: points scored above and below the line; game was 3NT, 4H and 5D (although 8 club tricks and 15 spade tricks were needed!); the score could be doubled and redoubled; there were slam bonuses.
In 1904 auction bridge arose where the players bid in a competitive auction to decide the contract and declarer. The object became to make at least as many tricks as were contracted for and penalties were introduced for failing to do so.
The modern game of contract bridge was the result of innovations to the scoring of auction bridge made by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and others. The most significant change was that only tricks contracted for were counted below the line towards game and for slam bonuses, which resulted in bidding becoming much more challenging and interesting. Also new was the concept of vulnerability to make it more expensive to sacrifice to protect the lead in a rubber, and the various scores were adjusted to produce a more balanced game. Vanderbilt set out his rules in 1925, and within a few years contract bridge had so supplanted other forms of the game that “bridge” became synonymous with “contract bridge.”
These days most bridge played is tournament bridge.
The Kelly Criterion or as it is sometimes referred to as the Kelly formula is a formula used to maximize the long-term growth rate of repeated plays of a given gamble that has positive expected value. The formula specifies the percentage of the current bankroll to be bet at each iteration of the game. In addition to maximizing the growth rate in the long run, the formula has the added benefit of having zero risk of ruin, as the formula will never allow a loss of 100% of the bankroll on any bet. An assumption of the formula is that currency and bets are infinitely divisible, though this is met for practical purposes if the bankroll is large enough.The most general statement of the Kelly criterion is that long-term growth rate is maximized by finding the fraction f* of the bankroll that maximizes the expectation of the logarithm of the results. For simple bets with two outcomes, one involving losing the entire amount bet, and the other involving winning the bet amount multiplied by the payoff odds, the following formula can be derived from the general statement:
f* = (bp - q) / b
where
f* = percentage of current bankroll to wager;
b = odds received on the wager;
p = probability of winning;
q = probability of losing = 1 - p.
As an example, if a gamble has a 40% chance of winning (p = 0.40), but the gambler receives 2:1 odds on a winning bet, the gambler should bet 10% of her bankroll at each opportunity, in order to maximize the long-run growth rate of the bankroll.
For even-money bets (i.e. when b = 1), the formula can be simplified to:
f* = 2p - 1
The Kelly Criterion was originally developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, based on the work of his colleague Claude Shannon, which applied to noise issues arising over long distance telephone lines. Kelly showed how Shannon’s information theory could be applied to the problem of a gambler who has inside information about a horse race, trying to determine the optimum bet size. The gambler’s inside information need not be perfect (noise-free) in order for him to exploit his edge. Kelly’s formula was later applied by another colleague of Shannon’s, Edward O. Thorp, both in blackjack and in the stock market.
In gambling terminology a crimp is a bend that has been intentionally made on the corner(s) of a playing card to facilitate identification.A card cheat will typically bend some of the important cards during the game. Below are just several of the most popular examples.
In poker, for instance, a cheat may crimp one of the cards to mark off the exact location where he wishes his secret conspirator to cut the deck. Similarly, if the card cheat is not working with a confederate, he may bend one or more cards to force a cut upon an unsuspecting victim. In either case the deck will most likely be cut at the exact predetermined spot in the same way an old book always tends to open at the same page.
Another poker scenario (also popular in numerous other games) is to crimp some of the high-value cards during the early rounds. On subsequent rounds the cheat will be able to identify some of those cards during the deal. This enables the cheat to employ a second deal and deal some of those cards to the desired hand, or simply to identify some of the cards held by other players. In any event, the cheat has a mathematical edge over the other players.
In casino blackjack a crossroader may crimp all the 10-value cards. this will enable the cheat to sometimes identify the dealer’s hole card (the dealer has one card face up, called the up card, and one card face down, called the hole card). In those instances the cheat(s) will know the dealer’s total and play their hand(s) accordingly.
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.
Button Men is a game designed for fan conventions and other public venues. It can be played almost anywhere on short notice (provided the dice are at hand), and games are quick to complete. Buttons are meant to be worn on clothing, bags, or other accessories, advertising that the wearer has a button to play with and is open to challenges. Buttons also frequently advertise something else, such as a company, a webcomic, or another game. The Sluggy Freelance set of buttons, for example, features characters from that comic, and the BRAWL set features characters from another Cheapass game. In 2000, Button Men Online won the Origins Awards for Best Abstract Board Game of 2000 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game 1999 .
Button Men can easily be extended simply by creating more buttons. It has continued to be so extended since its inception; as of 2004, over 200 buttons have been printed. Many are by now out of print, though many others are still available, primarily via purchase from the Cheapass Games web site. Companies other than Cheapass must pay a licensing fee to use the Button Men artwork in distributing their own buttons.
Button Men Online, a website developed by Dana Huyler and officially endorsed by Cheapass Games, allows users to play games over the internet via a web-based interface with e-mailed notifications. Button Men Online features most of the printed buttons, an additional 250+ “buttons” that exist only on the site, and a random button generator. In 2003, Button Men Online won the Origins Award for Best Play-by-mail game of 2002.
Casino war is a casino card game based on the children’s game of War. The game is arguably one of the most easily understood casino card games, but it also has a relatively large house edge compared to other games.The game is normally played with six standard 52 card decks. The cards are ranked in the same way that cards in poker games are ranked, except that aces are always high.
The deal
After the player has placed a bet, the dealer and the player are each dealt one card.
If the player’s card is ranked higher than the dealer’s, the player wins even money.
If the dealer’s card is ranked higher than the player’s, the player loses the bet to the house.
Ties
A tie occurs when the dealer and the player each have cards of the same rank. In a tie situation, the player has two options:
The player can surrender, in which case the player loses half the bet.
The player can go to war, in which case the player must place an additional wager the same size as the first wager.
Going to war
If the player goes to war, the dealer burns three cards before dealing each of them an additional card. If the player’s card is ranked higher than or the same as the dealer’s, then the player wins an amount equal to the size of the original bet only. If the dealer’s card is ranked higher than the player’s, the player loses both the original bet and the “going to war” bet.
House advantage
The dealer and the player each have a 50% chance of winning, so this seems like an even money game. The house advantage, however, comes from what happens in the case of a tie.
Some casinos offer a bonus payout in the event of a tie after going to war.
The house advantage increases with the number of decks in play and decreases in casinos who offer a bonus payout. The house advantage for this game is over 2%.
Strategy
Surrendering has a slightly higher advantage for the house, so a player should never surrender.
References
Brisman, Andrew. American Mensa Guide to Casino Gambling: Winning Ways (Stirling, 1999) ISBN 080694837X
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