Talking about gambling in an online casino

In 1985 the Indians in Michigan decided to expand their bingo operations into full-scale casino gambling. The Chippewas began adding blackjack tables on their reservations, and state and federal authorities immediately stepped in to close them down. But to the astonishment of the government authorities, the Indians kept reopening the games. It had been quite a number of years since the feds had been fighting with Indians anywhere, and this was a development that had the authorities in a quagmire.
The Indians were claiming a legal right as sovereign nations, according to various treaties with the U.S. government, to operate casinos on their reservations. What’s more, the citizens of Michigan were supporting the Indians. They wanted to play blackjack. The state and federal cops realized they couldn’t arrest the players for gambling, since they didn’t have this kind of jurisdiction on Indian reservation lands, but they could not believe that the Indians had the right to just start opening casinos out in the Michigan woods! It was preposterous.

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All the talk of legalizing gambling elsewhere, in fact, had died with the dream in Atlantic City. Businessmen and politicians had no leg to stand on in any argument that casinos would be a good thing for their communities. Everyone pointed to the shameful fiasco of Atlantic City and said, “Not here.”
The gambling “boom” might have died right then and there, not so much a boom as a little pop and fizzle. But something occurred that took everyone by surprise. The businessmen, the lawyers, and the politicians all knew that they could never again get the public support they would need to expand gambling operations anywhere else in the country. But there was a small group of people who were living in poverty, who had no lawyers, no politicians, and no bankers, who saw Atlantic City in a way that no one else did. With no public referendums, or marketing campaigns with media blitzes, or any concern whatsoever for what the local authorities might think of their legal right to have a casino, they pooled their modest resources and said, “Screw you, Donald Trump. We’ll be your competition.”

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Another cocktail waitress passes, offering up coffee, tea, and soda. As your camouflage efforts increase, your orders for the cocktail waitress may change from coffee and bottled water to gin and tonic or vodka and Seven. By the way, you don’t actually drink the stiff ones - you’re just ordering them for the subtle image it plants, perhaps at an opportune moment like when a suspicious pit boss is observing your game of online blackjack . You can dump the contents of the glass a little later on, when outside or in the casino restroom, and refill it with water.
"You’ve actually done that?"
"Many times," I say. "My drink of choice is a gin and tonic, something that simulates water." Just then the pit boss who had given me heat in the past looks

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Someone at the table leaves, and almost immediately a middle-aged man sits down and start playing blackjack. The floorperson comes over as the dealer fans $500 in $100 bills across the table. The man gives the floorperson a little plastic card. This card is called a "comp card," or player-rating card, and is issued to any customer who desires to earn comp points based on the amount of "action" he or she gives the casino. The casino uses it to track the average bet made by the player along with, as accurately as possible, the total amount won or lost. Casinos where you can play blackjack then reward their valued customers by issuing complimentary meals, show tickets, rooms, etc. For the duration of their stay, "high rollers" typically expect "RFB" - meaning complimentary room, food, and beverage. A "whale," or the highest of high rollers, will often get the top-level suite the hotel has to offer, free of charge for however long he wants it - including all transportation expenses incurred in getting him to that casino, whether those expenses involved plane tickets, limousines, or even helicopters.
Although it is completely up to the individual to accept or decline a player rating, or use of a player’s card, the modern-day card counter is almost forced to get one and get rated for play just because of how popular getting rated is. In fact, it’s so uncharacteristic to deny a rating that nowadays doing so often attracts more attention from the pit than being rated like a normal player. For that reason, the counter should get a player’s card (under an alias) in any casino that he or she plans to play in with regularity.

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If you are playing a $1 reel slot machine that takes 2 coins as maximum, with a session bankroll of $100, and whose top jackpot is $2,500, with a secondary jackpot of $800, your win goal should be the top jackpot and/or the secondary jackpot. Otherwise, why play it? However, based on the event occurrence of that specific Slots tournaments very short-term slice of your exposure to this machine and game, your win expectation should be 20 coins. In this case, this comes to $20. This is a 20 percent improvement over and above your starting session stake. Where else can you get such a big return on your investment that quickly? And what if you don’t hit the jackpots, and only make a $5 profit, falling far short of the win expectation as well as the win goal? Have you lost anything? You still made money. And that’s the most important part of both your win goals and your win expectations. Be glad you got what you got. Remember, you are playing a slot machine, which means you are playing a game with a built-in house edge, and therefore a game with a negative expectation. This means the slots games will always make money for the casino in the end. If you hit it for any kind of a win, then you have caught the game at the right time and made money in spite of the fact that it’s a negative-expectation game. If your stock rose by $5 per share, you’d be ecstatic, right? Well, why complain if your session at this slot machine only resulted in a $5 win? Any win means you have beaten the game. Be glad you did. Put it away, and set yourself up for the next session.

What if you lost, instead of winning? What if this machine was just a real dog, and no matter how well you selected it and played it, you just picked a bad one at a bad time? It will happen. In fact, overall, you will pick a winning machine, or have a winning session, only about 40 percent of the time. However, if you do it dealt a blackjack correctly, your overall wins will more than compensate for your losing sessions, and you will still wind up a winner. So this machine was a bad one, and your end-of-session result was a loss of $75. More than two-thirds of your session stake. This is about as bad as it can get. You suffered a 75 percent loss of your session bankroll—but the point is, you still have $25, or 25 percent, of your session stake left. It all adds up. Put it away, mark it as your session result, and move on to the next session. In the next session, you may have a $75 win. So with the sessions combined, you are even, and have accumulated slot club points and comps besides. What about the next session? There you may make $5. So now you are ahead by 5 percent, along with the accumulation of all your slot club points, comps, and freebies, and have done so in spite of the fact that your first session was such a devastating loss.

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If you come across an unusual rule that seems too good to be true in a casino that’s been around for a while, then it’s probably just that—too good to be true. Often, new games or rule changes to existing games aren’t as advantageous as they first appear to be. In fact, many harbor a mathematical disadvantage. Casinos in general rarely come along and make it easier for the player to win. If you encounter a new rule in any casino, there’s really nothing you can do but abstain from play or rely on your own best judgment as to whether the rule is perhaps advantageous or not. Then, later, a visit to one of the reputable blackjack websites that list new rules and their corresponding advantage/disadvantage might prove helpful in determining whether or not to take advantage of it. After reading this text, odds are you’ll be more than knowledgeable enough to draw a reasonable conclusion, at least for the time being.

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Double Exposure and Other Forms of “Exotic” Blackjack No chapter on blackjack basics would be complete without a brief mention of Double Exposure and other, newer forms of “exotic” blackjack that involve various side bets and special bonuses. Double Exposure has been around for years and is a form of the game in which both dealer cards are exposed. However, in double exposure the house wins ties. Although it may seem highly advantageous to know the value of both dealer cards at the beginning of every hand, do understand that losing ties is extremely unfavorable. In other forms of exotic blackjack, what may seem like a very attractive bet at first glance is often, in reality, mathematically unfavorable to the player. The advice here is to exercise extreme caution. In fact, any and all forms of “untraditional” blackjack should be avoided unless some special facet of a particular game with a particular set of rules can be exploited, and reliable computer simulations along with a predetermined change in playing strategy has proven it.

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