bwin – the world's biggest online gaming platform

Back when I worked in gaming, one of the weakest spots or the most vulnerable when it came to cheating was Casino Stud Poker or to call it by its other name…..Caribbean Stud Poker.

In this game the players are dealt five cards and so is the dealer. You have already placed what is called an “ante”. If you have placed say $5 on the ante box and you look at your hand, you then have to decide if you want to play the hand or not.

If you do then you must place double the ante on the “bet” box behind it and so you would have to place $10 in this example. If you don’t want to play the hand then you must concede the $5 ante and lose it.

The kicker behind this is in the odds that you get paid for the hands that you make. But in a real live casino setting, there are several players sitting within a very close proximity to each other.

This presents the casino with several security issues and the main one is in not letting players have the opportunity to take cards out of play. This is easily checked simply by the dealer checking the number of cards that are remaining.

But there are far weightier problems as well and I have seen players actually place stronger hands on the boxes of players to their left or right who had bet more money. This can be difficult to spot when done quickly and using mis-direction.

Also card marking has been a problem as well in recent years although casinos tend to try to combat this problem by checking the cards every hour. This though presents the problem of them having to wait a full hour before the pit boss or manager can inspect the cards.

In my opinion though, many of the card marking techniques that are in operation today would get by an average pit boss and I will be looking at some of these in further posts.

See you soon

Carl

I must confess that before I started working with bwin, I was unaware as to how big and just how varied their markets really were. Coming to the site is worth it just for the extensive football betting and bwin live betting and streaming service by itself. If all that doesn’t grab your attention then you can get yourself across to their poker room which is one of the best on the net and with some great bonuses to boot.

You can also get access to some great poker material as well on the poker blog section with some great features and news. I think for me personally one of the outstanding features that any gambling site can have is variety and daily content. But there are millions of people who are turning to the online casino experience these days.

In fact I was only having this exact same conversation with a professional colleague of mine the other day. We discussed how land based casinos were starting to veer down the electronic gaming avenue. This is certainly the case in the UK. We have electronic blackjack, electronic roulette and all the rest of the electronic games that are sprouting up like mushrooms.

They are entering dangerous ground in my opinion because what they are starting to offer in a gaming sense is starting to merge with what online casinos offer. So in future, where will the incentive be for punters to leave their own home to gamble on blackjack or roulette etc when everything can all be got from their very own computer? There are always those who fear cyber crime of course by these days sites like bwin employ some of the best experts in the world to thwart these people.

In my mind the threat is no more real than getting mugged outside a casino (which almost happened to me once). I can also say that numerous people have had their cars broken in to whilst being inside a land based casino and I have even heard of big winners being followed home and then robbed at home. Land based casinos are also a haven for thieves and pick pockets so if you think by avoiding online casinos that you are safer then you had better think again.

I really do think that you are safer both physically and financially playing online casino gambling and this is from someone who has done both on numerous occasions.

see you soon

Carl

It has taken a while but I have finally watched the mover “21” with Kevin Spacey. I think as with all movies that surround technical fields like sports and games, there are going to be numerous things that are not accurate. Today’s video shows the preview for the movie and has been selected by me because it sort of fits in with what I have been saying about blackjack.

At the end of the day, anything that has been written, spoken or filmed about the game of blackjack rightfully takes its place in the blackjack world whether people agree with it or not. It is inevitable that Hollywood will do their stuff and change what the MIT team did just for dramatic effect.

So we have a situation where reality and fantasy merge. Even when I wrote my book “Princes of Darkness: The World of High-stakes blackjack”, it was difficult to get across the reality of it and I was the one who was writing the book. In fact I have to confess that I slightly inflated and dressed up certain things in a minor way and I think that is kind of inevitable during the process.

I remember a few years ago watching Rounders with Matt Damon and even though that is probably the best film on poker ever made due to its accuracy, I found it very clichéd and done in a way that still didn’t depict true reality. Watching the movie “21” will not reveal how to run a successful blackjack team although it will reveal useful tips if you zoom in on them.

But things like using two big players on the same table isn’t needed for instance as this just brings too much heat down and tipping is not something that a professional blackjack player does on any great scale simply because the edge is so small. By all means watch the movie if you have never watched it before but do remember that you are watching Hollywood at work here.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Play blackjack online

Do you recall me saying to you a while ago about the Derren Brown casino roulette trick, well I have attached the video here so that you can see for yourselves what I was talking about. The high profile roulette wheel that was in operation inside this casino are very rarely used. They are perfect for visual prediction simply because the ball once it falls
simply stays where it is a large percentage of the time, take a look.

There are several key dynamics with regards to being able to do this. Your first objective is to ascertain the speed of the wheel. If the dealer is keeping the speed constant all the time then this is a big assist. You can use the green zero number as a point of reference to ascertain how many revolutions the wheel is going.

Then you need to ascertain the ball speed, this isn’t as difficult as it sounds and many dealers will be constant in their delivery of the spin on a regular basis. This was possibly a reason why Derren Brown kept this a secret as to when he would do the coup. Going into mainland Europe could simply have been a play to escape detection as he would be far less known in other countries.

We used to practice this as dealers and anyone who has read my book Killer Roulette will be aware of how many dealers find it possible to actually do this. The modern low profile wheels make it harder but a skilled dealer or punter can affect the house percentage by a considerable margin. Obviously this is not something that the gaming industry would wish to be made public but these are facts.

While this may have been a show and a very well put together show at that, the mechanics behind what Derren Brown did are all too real and rightfully take their place as highly effective methods of casino gambling.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson