Casino Folk Pages

If your favorite online casino is not displaying any verification forms you may want to contact them and find out why. This is an important part in recognizing the legitimacy and fair gaming policy of the online casinos.

(From How Important is the Online Casino Payout Rate? )

In my opinion, the author gives too much significance to the so called “casino payout rate”. Payout rates that you see on Home pages of numerous casinos are almost impossible to verify. Undoubtedly, online casinos have tools to gather such data, but none can tell what exactly are the numbers printed on the first page of online casino, whether it’s an average payout deduced by using the above mentioned tools, or it’s a number that suggested to be put by the online casinos marketing department based on the marketing analysis.

The other thing to check for at the online casinos is that the payout rates are actually verified by a 3rd party auditing house like OPA or eCOGRA.

OK. Let’s ignore the fact that the so called “3rd party” such as OPA (Online Player Association) happen to be affiliates of the casinos that they audit and get commissions from the money wagered and lost by the players.

If someone can prove me otherwise, I will apologize to those “3rd party”, but so far, any programmer who takes a glimpse at the source code of OPA web pages will prove me right.

So, let’s talk about the quality and technical aspects of payout calculations.

How can a 3rd party verify this? First of all, one can analyze thoroughly the internal web pages (internal stats) of an online casino, including financial pages, also one can use specialized software supplied by online casino software provider.

I have significant doubts that any online casino would allow this. This leaves us with a direct method of verification -playing in the casino that is being audited for real. (I must emphasize that a tester must wager real money, as I once wrote in one of my articles, free and real games can drastically differ)

Today, an average online casino offers a variety of 60 and more casino games, each game having different payout rate. In order to obtain a more or less valid result, a tester must play a dozen of games andwager thousands of dollars for each games. Does a “3rd party” company uses such approach? I don’t know.

Not so long ago, I’ve stumbled upon an article about testing on one of the online casinos. Here’s a quote:

The owner of the casino contacted the Online Players Association in May 2002 claiming that their games
are fair. He invited the OPA to test the games. The tester deposited $50 and played Jacks or Better video poker at $1.25 per hand….

So, as you can see, the tester used only $50 dollars to test the games, a statistically insignificant amount in my opinion.

To conclude, I would like to offer a simple advise on how to pick an online casino; Play only in online casinos that use a known and reliable gambling software. You can read in [coming], on how to recognize such online casinos.

Most of us, we go to play in casinos for fun to mingle around with the crowd and we know that the money we wager is paid to the casinos for the fun we have. Some however, believe that casinos can provide them with decent living, because they believe that they can win money in casinos permanently.

Myself, I never tried to become a professional gambler and make my living by spinning reels and counting cards at Blackjack. But, there is a fundamental thing that a gambler should know.

There are two types of games: Games of Chance and Games of Skill.

Game of chance is a game in which there is no chance to constantly win money, as the probability is always determined in favor of the casino. The classic example is a game of Roulette. You can try to bet a thousand times on red for instance, and you may think that you are guaranteed to win at least 500 times and it’s a 50/50 chance. However, Roulette also contains a “0” which decreases the chance of winning and it’s not 50/50 anymore.

In this type of games, the outcome of each event is independent. Roulette, craps, slots are all games of chance. The key factor here is that each time you spin the reel or toss the dice, it is not affected by anything that happened before and it does not have any effect on what will happen in the future.

What does this mean? Well, it means that as a player, there is not much you can do to improve the odds in your favor. The only thing you could do is make bets based on the probability of a given outcome. For example, if you play craps, you should know that probability of the player to toss a 2, 3 or 12 is almost 12%, but the probability of tossing a 7 is 17%.

The outcome in games of chance is random, and there is no pattern that predetermines anything. It’s like flipping a coin. You can flip it five times and get heads all five times, but the probability still remains 50/50. You may notice similar patterns in any other game of chance such as slots and craps, where the same numbers will come up often, but don’t be fooled. These numbers are just as random as the outcomes themselves.

The games of chances include: Roulette, Craps, Slots, Baccarat, Sec Bo, Keno, 3-card poker.

Games of skill on the other hand is where player’s knowledge and competency can influence the odds in their favor. Poker and Blackjack are the two classics that represent the games of skill. As a skillful Poker player, you know better which hand to play and which to throw away.

The games of skill include: Most of varieties of Poker, Blackjack, Sports Betting.

Usually, the more time you play and the more skill you gain, the more your win rate improves. In the next articles, I will tell more in detail on how players improve their winning rates based on several basic techniques.

At most casinos, as long as you keep feeding machines with coins or playing at casino tables, you get alcohol drinks on the house. It’s a good idea to tip the beverage server a buck or two every time you get a drink. Actually, the first time you should give about five bucks to show that you are not a stingy person despite the fact that you are playing 25-cent slots.

Now, when I say “at most casinos”, I mean American casinos. For instance, in the casino of Montreal, one of the biggest Canadian casinos, you will be served non-alcoholic beverages mostly tea and coffee. It’s also illegal to roam around the casino with a drink in your hands. A vigilant security guard will surely send you back to the bar. But, to think of it in a more positive way, there is an advantage as you are reducing the risk of getting wasted and gambling all the money away.