Chingona is a dice game played by two or more players, using five poker dice and a cup. It is usually played to decide who is to pay for the next round of drinks, but betting can also be involved.

Link

• Rules of Chingona

Fan-Tan, or fantan (Simplified Chinese: 番摊; Traditional Chinese: 番攤; pinyin: fāntān) is a form of gambling long played in China and among Chinese immigrants to America and other countries.

History

Fan-tan is no longer as popular as it once was, having been replaced by modern casino games, and other traditional Chinese games such as Mah Jong and Pai Gow. However, it was once a favorite pastime of the Chinese in America. Jacob Riis, in his famous book about the underbelly of New York, How the Other Half Lives (1890), wrote of entering a Chinatown fan-tan parlor: “At the first foot-fall of leather soles on the steps the hum of talk ceases, and the group of celestials, crouching over their game of fan tan, stop playing and watch the comer with ugly looks. Fan tan is their ruling passion.”

San Francisco’s large Chinatown was also home to dozens of fan-tan houses in the 19th century. The city’s former police commissioner Jesse B. Cook wrote that in 1889 Chinatown had 50 fan-tan games, and that “in the 50 fan tan gambling houses the tables numbered from one to 24, according to the size of the room.”

Fan-tan is still played at Macau casinos, where play goes on day and night, every day of the week, and bets can be made from 5 cents to 500 dollars.

The game

The game is simple. A square is marked in the centre of an ordinary table, or a square piece of metal is laid on it, the sides being marked 1, 2, 3 and 4. The banker puts on the table a double handful of small buttons, beads, coins, dried beans, or similar articles, which he covers with a metal bowl, or “tan koi”.

The players then bet on the numbers, setting their stakes on the side of the square which bears the number selected. (Players can also bet on the corners, for example between No. 2 and No. 3). When all bets are placed, the bowl is removed, and the “tan kun” or croupier uses a small bamboo stick to remove the buttons from the heap, four at a time, until the final batch is reached. If it contains four buttons, the backer of No. 4 wins; if three, the backer of No. 3 wins, and so on.

A 25% commission is deducted from the stake by the banker, and the winner receives five times the amount of his stake thus reduced.

The Card Game Fantan

Fantan is also the name of a card game, played with an ordinary pack, by any number of players up to eight. The, deal decided, the cards are dealt singly, any that are left over forming a stock, and being placed face downwards on the table. Each player contributes a fixed stake or ante. The first player can enter if he has an ace; if he has not he pays an ante and takes a card from the stock; the second player is then called upon and acts similarly till an ace is played. This (and the other aces when played) is put face upwards on the table, and the piles are built up from the ace to the king. The pool goes to the player who first gets rid of all his cards. If a player fails to play, having a playable card, he is fined the amount of the ante for every card in the other players hands.

The card game Sevens is also sometimes called ‘Fan Tan’

Links

• Fan-Tan history
• Picture of a Fan-Tan set

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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

Faro is a card game, a descendant of Basset. It enjoyed great popularity during the 18th century, particularly in England and France, and in the 19th Century in the United States, particularly on the American Frontier, where it was practiced by ‘faro dealers’ such as the infamous Doc Holliday. It has since fallen completely out of fashion and is only practiced by dedicated Old West enthusiasts and Civil War re-enactors. Its name is believed to be a corruption of pharaoh, and refers to the Egyptian motif that commonly adorned French-made playing cards of the period.Faro is similar to the contemporary game of Mini-Baccarat.

Literary fiction

Faro is the game played in Aleksandr Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades. 
Faro is also played in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Movies

• Faro is played by characters in saloons on the HBO series “Deadwood”.
• Scenes involving the game of faro (with varying degrees of accuracy) appear in the Hollywood movies Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner, and Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.
• In the film The Sting, it is said that the gangster (and intended “mark”) Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) only plays faro when he goes out to casinos, and then only by himself.

References

Howard, M. The Traditional Game of faro Barbary Coast Vigilance Committee. 08 June 2004

Links

• Play faro online
• Faro Dealer
• Faro equipment

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

Video: Faro Shuffle Tutorial

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.

Cited References

1. American Scientist online: Bettor Math, article and book review by Elwyn Berlekamp

Link

• Original Kelly paper

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

Video: Understanding Kelly Criterion

A dead pool, or deathpool is a game of prediction which involves guessing when someone will die. Sometimes it is a bet where money is involved. The combination of dead or death and betting-pool, refers to such a gambling arrangement. A typical modern dead pool might have players pick out celebrities who they think will die within the year. There are several scoring variants. For example, a player might be rewarded few, if any, points for predicting the death of someone who is over 80 years old or is suffering from a terminal disease. Other pools require participants to form a list ranked on how sure they are that a person on the list will die, with points given based on how high a person on their list is ranked, and others award points based on how many other contestants selected the deceased celebrity. Another variant on the game has a single point awarded for each correct prediction, regardless of the celebrity’s age or medical condition. The advantage of this scoring method is that there is more scoring, and it rewards research (learning which celebrities are experiencing failing health) rather than luck.One example of the concept is a series of segments on the Howard Stern Radio Show, where show regulars would place bets into a celebrity death pool, each trying to predict the next celebrity to pass on. The practice has been expanded to include wagering on such abstract entities as businesses.

Definitions of celebrity vary from contest to contest. Smaller pools may rely on consensus of the players as to who is famous. Others require an obituary to appear in a recognized newswire such as the Associated Press or Reuters. The Lee Atwater Invitational employed a Fame Committee consisting of non-contestants who assess ahead of time the name-recognition of each celebrity. The Rotten.com Dead Pool, the largest in the world, uses NNDB as its source of qualified celebrities, and as arbiter of their life status.

The concept and success strategies are also detailed in an annual guide called “The Dead Pool”, written by KQRS radio personality Mike Gelfand and author Mike Wilkinson. KQRS also does an annual on air dead pool contest, similar to Stern’s, where show hosts and listners will attempt to pick which celebrity will die in that calendar year.

In most pools, killing the celebrity in question is considered cheating and results in the killer’s immediate disqualification from the pool. Such a dead pool was depicted in the aptly-titled Clint Eastwood movie, The Dead Pool.

Death List is unlike a traditional dead pool as there are no competitors involved and no points are awarded. The names on the list are chosen by a committee, members of Death List then track the well-being of the chosen celebrities over the course of the year. The Death List was first conceived in a student bar on November 29th 1986, the inspiration being the death of Cary Grant earlier the same day. The list’s aim is to predict which people in the public eye will die in the following year. Ever since 1987, a list has been drawn up, but starting in 1994 the Death List has consisted of 50 prominent people chosen annually by the committee, who might merit a prominent obituary in the UK media — ranging from politicans, religious figures and show business stars.

The Dead Pool is also an arena in the Mortal Kombat series only being featured in Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat: Deception. The stage itself is a pit surrounded with acid. On Mortal Kombat II, you had to wait for the “Finish Him/Her”" screen, then you could knock your opponent in the acid, and it would count as a Fatality. On Mortal Kombat Deception, you could just knock your opponent in the acid with a single powerful strike.

Links

• Cash4Cadavers.com Dead Pool
• Deathlist
• Rotten.com Dead Pool
• Stiffs.com Dead Pool
• The Derby Dead Pool
• The Game Gazette Dead Pool including history of dead pools since 1591
• A funny Deathpool Website
• Bolao Pe Na Cova (Cocadaboa`s Brazilian Deathpool)
• Stretch and Wilk’s official annual guide (ISBN 156980205X)

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

Video: CSI Miami – End of Death Pool

Here is a list of potential restrictions and regulations on private ownership of slot machines in the United States on a state by state basis. Note that these regulations are subject to change without notice and are not fully guaranteed to be completely accurate.

References

• Gambling Law US
• BMI Gaming Slot Machine FAQ: State Ownership Regulations

Links

• Is Owning a Slot Machine Legal?

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

Video: How to Win Playing Slot Machines

Players: 4
Age range: recommended for 12 and up
Setup time < 2 minutes
Playing time: WBF tournament games = 7.5 minutes per deal
Rules complexity; Medium
Strategy depth: High
Random chance: Low – high depending on variant played
Skills required: Memory, Tactics

Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game of skill, and partly of chance, for four players, who form two partnerships (sides). The partners sit opposite each other. The game consists of two main parts – bidding (or auction) and play, after which the hand is scored.

The bidding ends with a contract, which is a declaration by one partnership that their side shall take a stated quantity (or more) of tricks, with specified suit as trump or without trumps. The rules of play are rather simple and similar to other trick-taking games.

References

1. WBF Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge

Links

• Great Bridge Links
• Contract Bridge Rules
• American Contract Bridge League
• The English Bridge Union
• Dutch Bridge Bond
• Karen’s Bridge Library

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

Video: Introduction to Bridge Game

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

Links

• Wizard of Odds – Casino War Strategy and Odds
• Gambling il dado article

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

Video: Casino War at Betfair Casino

Button Men is a dice game for two players, invented by James Ernest of Cheapass Games and first released in 1999.Games are short, typically taking less than ten minutes to play. Each player is represented by a button of their choice. Buttons are metal or plastic discs, about 2–2.5 inches (about 5–6.5 centimeters) in diameter, with a pin on the back that can be used to fasten them to clothing. They bear the name and illustration of the combatant (the “Button Man”) whose role the player is assuming. They also indicate the number, size, and skills (if any) of polyhedral dice to be used by the player.

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.

Links

• Button Men Online (free login required)
• Cheapass Games “double-secret website”

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

Gambling advertising is the promotion of gambling by casinos, lotteries, bookmakers or other organisations that provide the opportunity to make bets. It is usually conducted through a variety of media or through sponsorship deals, particularly with sporting events or people.

Although not as highly regulated as tobacco advertising and alcohol advertising, in many countries there are strict laws about the way in which such services can be marketed.

Gaming operators often sponsor sporting events, sportspeople or television coverage. For example, Bet365 sponsor snooker players and the Channel 4 coverage of The 2005 Ashes was sponsored by Betfair, both being online betting sites.

Links

• Joint Committee on the Draft Gambling Bill First Report – 7 Advertising, Inducements and Credit at The United Kingdom Parliament
• Guidelines: Gambling Advertising at the Television Bureau of Canada

• Gambling Advertising

• US I-Gaming Policy Report – Advertising and the Law at Casino City Press

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

Video: SIMS 141 – Search Advertising: Dr. Hal Varian

The World Poker Tour Walk of Fame is designed to honor those poker players who have played the game well at the highest levels as well as those who have promoted the spread of it through film, television, and literature. It was started in 2004.In February 2004, The World Poker Tour Walk of Fame inducted its first members at the Commerce Casino in a ceremony before top pros and celebrities in town for the World Poker Tour Invitational Poker Tournament. The induction ceremony was staged on the doorstep of Commerce Casino, the Los Angeles region’s most prestigious gaming establishment and full service entertainment/hotel complex. Poker room to the stars of Hollywood, Commerce Casino has a rich history of poker in Southern California dating back to 1983.

No new players have been inducted since 2004.

The inductees, along with the year they were inducted are as follows:

• Doyle Brunson, 2004
• Gus Hansen, 2004
• James Garner, 2004

Links

• Commerce Casino Website

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

Video: Doyle Brunson vs Chip Reese

A quiz machine is a type of slot machine in which the player must answer questions in addition to, or instead of, matching symbols. See also itbox. They are common in UK pubs, where they are often based on board games or game shows. In the UK these are “technically” termed “Skill with prizes” (SWP) as opposed to normal slot machines which are termed “Amusement with prizes” (AWP).In the UK the history of the quiz machine can be divided into three phases. In the first phase (1980s to 1995) the machines were dedicated to a single game, often based on a TV show, with the maximum prize being £5 for a 50p stake.

Between 1995 and 1999 the number of formats expanded greatly and most public houses hosted a unit.

From 1999 to the present day the trend has been to develop the ‘multi-quiz machine’, a single unit in which a wide range of games is available. Many machines now offer in excess of thirty games and the earlier six-game multi-quizzes have become obsolete.

A source of great frustration for quiz machine players is the programming of anti-payout scripts within the machine code. Thus in the Cluedo game, for example, the machine will ensure that the player never throws the requisite number on the automated (fixed) die. This legally dubious practice has proliferated to counter the success of professional quiz machine players who are adept at learning the majority of questions in the bank. Nonetheless, good players can gain a slight advantage over the machine using this method until a new question module is installed.

Well received quiz games such as ‘Big Break’, ‘Guinness Book of Records’ and ‘London Underground’, have been taken out of circulation in favour of other games like ‘Matrix’, ‘Eyes Down’, ‘Goldenballs’, and ‘Total Film Quiz’.

There is currently a trend towards the hosting of non-quiz games alongside traditional quiz favourites. Such games include Word Up, Sum Up, Bookworm and Spot The Difference.

Links

• Players’ Forum 1
• Players’ Forum 2
• JPM International
• Maygay Machines

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

Video: iQ Quiz Machine: Soccer Quiz

Bunco (also Bunko and Bonko) is a parlor game played in teams with three dice. A winning throw in Bunco is to throw three of a kind of a specified number.Although most popular soon after its inception in the late 1800s, Bunco has seen a resurgence in recent years. Currently, it is played at parties and other social gatherings.

Link

World Bunco Association, Bunco is a registered trademark owned by and used in commerce by the World Bunco Association… www.worldbunco.com www.ebunco.com

Video: Ladies Night Out – Bunco!! – The Daily Buzz

Gamblers Anonymous is an international organization of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other to solve their common problem and help others to recover from a gambling problem.The only requirement for GA membership is a desire to stop gambling.

The GA group is based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model which brings together people with similar addictive behaviors and uses as its structure the practice of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions.

Successful recovery from compulsive gambling in this context seems to depend on the following variables:

1. The degree of hopelessness that the member feels when he arrives. Open-mindedness to the GA program of recovery is often proportional to the desperation being experienced by the new member. If a person has already explored other methods of controlling or stopping his gambling and has been unsuccessful, he is more apt to listen to the GA method.

2. A willingness to be honest with other members about their gambling. The compulsive gambler tends to minimize the damage that their gambling has caused. This is a strategy that all gamblers use in order to live with their problem, as often the real implications of what they are doing are too horrible to contemplate. But if a member can be honest about the pain that their gambling is actually creating, their motivation will be increased to find a solution. Such honesty is possible if the member senses that GA is really offering a way out.

3. Identification with other members. In the GA context, members tell their stories about their gambling and what they have done in order to stop gambling. After awhile, it is possible to see the similarity beneath all the stories, as far as the progressiveness of the dis-ease goes and the futility of other methods used to stop gambling. What emerges from such a reading of those stories is an awareness in the new member that what he has been suffering from is actually a definable condition with a definable solution. The new member can then draw the conclusion that if those members have overcome their gambling problem, perhaps I can too. Hope for oneself is felt and this energy can be used to pursue the solution. Conversely, those members who are still at the point where they are trying to devise personal solutions to outwit their gambling or are looking for hints as to how to gamble “normally,” will hear the stories in such a way so as to justify their own continued gambling, i.e., “At least I’m not as bad as that guy.”

4. Accepting that the solution has a spiritual componet and a willingness to explore the solution in that context. In the broadest of terms, compulsive gambling can be thought of as a “power.” The gambler often finds himself acting against his best intentions and is puzzled by his seemingly powerlessness to just not gamble. The compulsion to do so is experienced as a powerful urge and seems to have a life of its own within the gamblers mind. The gambler uses his willpower to try and control the power of his compulsive gambling but is ultimately always unsuccessful. The GA program acknowledges this power and admits that it cannot be controlled by the individual. What can be done is for the gambler to acquire a stronger, competing power in order to supercede the power of gambling. This is the ultimate goal of the Twelve Steps. GA is not offering the traditional religious solution that one might associate with such a discussion but, rather, asks that the individual formulate a personal spirituality that might or might not include traditional religious componets. With all successful GA members, on some level, they have found a source of strength beyond their own unaided wills that has enabled them to stop gambling.

5. Regular attendance at meetings.

Links

• GamblersAnonymous.org
• Gamblers Anonymous in Australia
• Gamblers Anonymous in the United Kingdom

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

Video: Compulsive Gambling, Gamblers Anonymous

One dollar chips from various Las Vegas casinos.

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

Ace Invaders is a three line video poker game produced by International Gaming Technology. The game plays like other multi line video poker games except the bottom line is a Bonus Poker game, while the top two lines are both stud poker based games. The pay schedule for the Bonus Poker game on the bottom line offers a greater than 200% payout percentage (if one plays all three lines), but this is compensated for by the lower payout percentage on the stud poker games on the top two lines.Another feature unique to the Ace Invaders game is the gameplay. The bottom line is dealt and played as a draw poker hand, just like in a standard Jacks or Better game, and the player chooses which cards to keep and discard. Then the game deals the replacement cards, but unlike other video poker games, Ace Invaders doesn’t pay immediately. First the game checks the top line for a paying combination, then pays out for that. Then, if any of the cards in the top line are aces or would help create a royal flush in the second line, they drop down and become part of the hand on the second line. This process repeats itself on the second line, paying out, then checking to see if the cards would help complete a royal flush on the first line, and then drops those cards down again before finally paying out on the first line.

Links

• Official site
• IGT article from Bob Dancer

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

A progressive jackpot is a jackpot (highest payoff) for a gaming machine (usually a slot machine or video poker machine) where the value of the jackpot increases a small amount for every game played. Normally multiple machines are “linked” together to form one large progressive jackpot that grows more quickly because multiple players are contributing to the jackpot at the same time.

The progressive jackpot meter

The amount of the jackpot is shown on a meter as a money value. Usually the jackpot can only be won by winning the combination with the highest payoff, e.g. a royal flush at a video poker game, or five of the most valuable symbols (lemons, cherries, alligators, etc) on a slot machine. Once a player wins the jackpot, the jackpot resets to a preset minimum level.

The amount on the jackpot progresses (increases) a small amount for every play on a connected machine. The amount that the jackpot advances by is set by the casino (“the house”). For example, on a machine whose house edge is 5%, a generous jackpot contribution might be 1% (one fifth of the expected profit). The house is prepared to contribute some of the profit of a jackpot linked machine because players are attracted by the:

• relative novelty of progressive jackpots (generally, only a small fraction of the house’s gaming machines will be connected to a progressive jackpot)
• constantly changing meter, often displayed on large, fancy LED displays
• large amount of the jackpot, which eventually motivates more players to play the game.

Qualifying

Usually only players who wager the maximum number of credits per play qualify to win the jackpot. All wagers, whether or not they’re max credit bets, contribute to the jackpot though. As a result, a game which requires a 10 credit wager to qualify for the progressive jackpot will tend to have the progressive jackpot rise to higher levels (relative to its break-even level) than a game that requires only a 5 credit wager to qualify.

The break-even point

In some games such as video poker, it is possible to compute an optimal playing strategy based on the frequency for each payoff versus the odds of hitting that payoff. Since the jackpot of a progressive video poker game is constantly growing, it eventually can reach a break-even point where the machine becomes a positive expectation bet for the player.

When the progressive jackpot is less than the break-even point, there is a negative expected value (house edge) for all players.

In the long run, with optimal strategy, a video poker player can make a profit, although the “long run” is generally longer than most people think. (Several tens of thousands of plays.)

It’s worthwhile to note that a break-even point cannot normally be calculated on a slot machine game, because the payback percentage for the game is unknown to the player. The break-even point in video poker can be calculated because the payback percentage for the game is a function of the paybacks and odds of the poker hands, which is based on a 52 card deck.

Advantage play

Advantage players who only play when the progressive jackpot provides them with a positive expectation situation still generate revenue for the casino. This is a unique situation where the player has an advantage over the house, yet the casino is still making a profit from the player. This situation occurs because the bulk of the progressive jackpot has been bought and paid for by the other players’ contributions to the jackpot.

Savvy gamblers sometimes organize teams of players to play machines where the progressive jackpots generate a positive expectation situation. Such teams often displace ordinary players, making the machines unavailable just when they are at their most interesting. Team members will often have cell phones and work in shifts, calling another teammate to replace them when they’re ready for a break. Some casinos have a policy of “no team play”, and will eject players suspected of playing in such teams.

Player’s clubs

Most casinos offer slot clubs, which pay back a percentage of a gambler’s wagers on their games in the form of cash rebates and other perks with a monetary value. Participating in a slot club can reduce the break-even point of a progressive jackpot game because of the value of the rebate on each wager.

Other jackpot games

Progressive jackpots are not limited to slot machines and video poker. Poker games sometimes include a progressive bad beat jackpot. Caribbean stud poker is another casino game which often has a progressive jackpot available, and some online casinos offer progressive versions of blackjack, roulette, and other casino games.

List of popular progressive games

• MegaJackpots
• Wheel of Fortune
• Megabucks
• Regis’ Cash Club

Links

• Megajackpots – ticker and records for MegaJackpots from IGT
• Slotcharts – tracks online progressive jackpots

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

Russian roulette (in Russian: (Русская) Рулетка, оr (Russkaya) Rulyetka) is the practice of placing a single round in a revolver, spinning the cylinder and closing it into the firearm without looking, aiming the revolver at one’s own head in a suicidal fashion, and pulling the trigger. The number of rounds placed in the revolver can vary, though as a rule there will always be at least one empty chamber. As a gambling game, toy guns are often used to simulate the practice. The number of deaths caused by this practice is unknown.

Links

• The Deer Hunter death roll
• Teen Wounded Playing Russian Roulette
• Man, 18, Dies in Russian Roulette
• “Russian Roulette” Olympics Death
• Kablamo, a tongue-in-cheek board game with a Russian roulette theme.
• Gimp Roulette, a Shockwave webpage game that simulates Russian Roulette.
• 2000 Darwin Award Runner-Up, Man wins Darwin Award after playing Russian Roulette with a pistol.

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

Buzzword bingo is a game sometimes played in relaxed team meetings. The rules resemble those of bingo and housie, but instead of a matrix of numbers, each player’s card is a matrix of buzzwords. When a player hears one of his buzzwords spoken in the meeting, he crosses it off his card. The winner is the player who crosses a full line first and exclaims, “Bingo!”

One documented buzzword bingo occurred when Al Gore, the then Vice President of the United States known for his liberal use of buzzwords hyping technology, spoke at MIT’s 1996 graduation. The graduation class had distributed bingo cards containing buzzwords to the audience.[1]

A similar game is bullshit bingo, which is normally played for satirical or ironic purposes.

Links

• MIT original buzzword bingo hack for Al Gore in 1996
• Bullshit Bingo!
• thalasso’s buzzword bingo
• Bullshit Bingo (German buzzword bingo)
• Wank word bingo
• Thanksgiving Dinner Buzzword Bingo
• Buzzword Bingo actually created by SGI founder Tom Davis February 1993
• George Bush Buzzword Bingo
• Superbowl Ads Buzzword Bingo
• Comsui’s Meeting Bingo

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

Compulsive gambling is an urge or addiction to gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop. A preferred term among many professionals is problem gambling, as few people described by the term experience true compulsions in the clinical sense of the word. Problem gambling often is defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others rather than by the gambler’s behavior. Severe problem gambling may be diagnosed as clinical pathological gambling if the gambler meets certain criteria.

Pathological gambling

Extreme cases of problem gambling may cross over into the realm of mental disorders. Pathological gambling was recognized as a psychiatric disorder in the DSM-III, but the criteria were significantly reworked based on large-scale studies and statistical methods for the DSM-IV. As defined by American Psychiatric Association, pathological gambling is an impulse control disorder that is a chronic and progressive mental illness.

Pathological gambling is now defined as persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior meeting at least five of the following criteria, as long as these behaviors are not better explained by a manic episode:

1. Preoccupation. The subject has frequent thoughts about gambling experiences, whether past, future, or fantasy.
2. Tolerance. As with drug tolerance, the subject requires larger or more frequent wagers to experience the same “rush.”
3. Withdrawal. Restlessness or irritability associated with attempts to cease or reduce gambling.
4. Escape. Subject gambles to improve mood or escape problems.
5. Chasing. Subject attempts to win back gambling losses with more gambling.
6. Lying. Subject attempts to hide the extent of his or her gambling by lying to family, friends, or therapists.
7. Loss of control. Subject has unsuccessfully attempted to reduce gambling.
8. Illegal acts. Subject has broken the law in order to obtain gambling money or recover gambling losses.
9. Risked significant relationship. The subject gambles despite risking or losing a relationship, job, or other significant opportunity.
10. Bailout. Subject turns to family, friends, or another third party for financial assistance as a result of gambling.

As with many disorders, the DSM-IV definition of pathological gambling is widely accepted and used as a basis for research and clinical practice internationally.

The most common instrument used to screen for “probable pathological gambling” behavior is the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) developed by Lesieur and Blume (1987) at the South Oaks Hospital in New York. This screen is undoubtedly the most cited instrument in psychological research liturature.

Incidence

According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, incidence of problem gambling is 2-3% and pathological gambling is 1% in the United States, though this may vary by country. By contrast, 86% of Americans have gambled in their lives and 60% gamble in a given year.

Available research seems to indicate that problem gambling is an internal tendency, and that problem gamblers will tend to risk money on whatever game is available—as opposed to the availability of a particular game inducing problem gambling in otherwise “normal” individuals. However research also indicates that problem gamblers tend to risk money on fast-paced games. Thus a problem gambler is much more likely to lose a lot of money on poker or slot machines, where rounds end quickly and there is a constant temptation to play again or increase bets, as opposed to a state lottery where the gambler must wait until the next drawing to see results.

Dopamine agonists, in particular pramipexole (Mirapex), have been shown to cause compulsive gambling (PMID 16009751).

Links

• Gamblers Anonymous
• Gambler’s Help Southern – Australia
• National Center for Responsible Gaming
• People Helping People to Overcome Gambling Addiction

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