Gambling Guide and Directory

Somebody should tell Senator Jon Kyl (Arizona Repuplican) who along with a few friends pushed the Unlawful Internet Gaming and Enforcement Act through congress to law riding on a bill about homeland security (which after 911 almost any of these are sure to pass) on the last day of the session when most of the potential voters had already gone home, that if he truly was worried about the reason he used for pushing this law through: to prevent children from stealing their parent’s credit cards for the purpose of funding online gambling endeavors (unless they wanted to bet on the horses or the lotteries, they are still okay … no small coincidence they are both gambling entities located in the states and very visible in DC), that he needn’t have bothered to take away yet another freedom of the American people. That simply isn’t the way kids think when it comes to stealing a credit card. They have other things in mind and young Ralph Hardy of Newark Texas is living proof of such matters.

It seems young Ralph liberated his father’s credit card but gambling with it never entered his mind. He had other ideas that according to Money.co.uk, included buying an all night visit from two local call girls who along with the cost of an amazing amount of Dr Pepper, Fritos and Oreos … plus several electronic gadgets, an Xbox video console with a heap of games (the hookers were paid to play video games with the boys) and $3000 cash, came to a total on Dad’s card of over $30,000. In hindsight the kids getting ahold of a card and going online gambling may not be the worst thing that could happen.

If it can be said there is a comical side to this situation (aside from the whole incident which I’m certain the parents of the boys involved do not think is funny) it would be the way the boys convinced the hookers to stay. They were going to leave because the boy’s age was so obvious but the boys countered with the story that they were people of stunted development who were traveling with a circus. They pointed out that state law prevents disabled workers to be discriminated against, therefore the hookers could not refuse their services.

No charges were filed against the “ladies” since all they did was to play video games with the boys. Watch out Senator Kyl, you may be able to sell an unenforcable law to a bunch of absent politicians about the dangers of online gambling while leaving out the gambling entities of which are known to be very powerful in the campaign contribution department in Washington, namely the horse racing industry,… but if young Ralph’s current ability to put a twist on things to turn them to his advantage, is any indication of what is to come when he matures … he may just have the makings of what it would take to fill your shoes, sir.

A player who had over thirty thousand dollars in an online sport book (BetCris) was horrified to discover after logging into his account some two month’s later, that someone had taken about twenty thousand out of the account. Since this person is also a gambling guide of sorts (he’s a poker guide), he knew to contact support immediately and change the password to the account. He was then asked to send proof of identity documents to their customer service manager. The player-victim was told the account was now locked and that no further changes would be possible until the matter was resolved. He was told to contact BetCris the following day to address the issue in its entirety.

The player-victim was shocked to see the next day when he logged back into the account that once again someone had been placing bets using the account. He immediately contacted the support manager who was handling his case and asked how this could be possible when he was told the account was locked and no further bets would be allowed until the matter was resolved. The reply was as shocking to this writer as I’m certain was the shock of seeing the account had once again been compromised. He was told by the support manager that he had no idea how this was possible because he had made multiple notes on the account to not allow any further action. The support manager went on to say that he had tracked down the culprit along with the IP address and phone number etc.

When asked to supply a timeline of the incident the player-victim supplied this list. The ID sent to BetCris was issued on the eleventh of May, just a day before the matter occured, and was valid only until the fifteenth of May. There is no way anyone else could have had that valid ID, so how could BetCris make the claim they had two people sending valid ID for the same account? He was told his account was locked until the matter had been resolved yet the thief was able to call in and have the account unlocked using no more information than was used to originally gain access. Not only that but the support team gave out the new password to the thief or he’d never have been able to access the account even if he had been able to get the account unlocked (which he was successful). The thief was given this information while the support manager was on the other phone with the player-victim no less! On top of all that the money in the account was suppose to be tied up into a bonus scheme that required there be a play-through of over $200,000 which he was aware and had no complaints about it. In fact this as it turns out is a big red flag about the whole mess. What sport book allows you to transfer money out of their establishment before you’ve met the bonus terms? Answer to that is none that I am aware, at least not until now. Frankly I doubt you or I could get away with that kind of behavior so it really makes one wonder about how this money was allowed to be released? The money went to another sportbook called Rio sportbook. The player-victim had never heard of this place before now and therefore certainly did not transfer money to it.

At the time of this writing BetCris has seemingly washed their hands of the matter despite continued pressure from this writer and several other gambling guides who along with my self warned BetCris to step up and do the right thing or we’d be writing about the matter but to no avail. What this writer has taken away from this whole fiasco is to be sure to find out from any sport book or casino if they allow money transfers to other casinos or sport books? That seemingly is the only way I can see a thief having the opportunity to get their hands on your money is by transfering the money to another establishment where the thief had created an account using the victim’s name and their method of withdrawal. So for instance the thief would add his/her NETeller account as a deposit/withdrawal method and then they could after transferring the money be able to get it into someplace where they can actually get their hands on it.

If a poker player chooses to play in a tournament at a live poker room, or even online the player must realize that everyone playing in this tournament will have some strategies and some skills that can be very close to the professional level. No one who plays poker plans on losing.

By developing a good poker strategy and skill set good poker players are able to gain some advantages over the other people sitting at the tournament table. By developing a good skill set and a good set of strategies a losing poker player will be able to turn his game into a profitable game.

While poker playing has hundreds if not thousands of play styles there really are only two main styles of play. These would be aggressive and conservative. When first seated at a poker tournament you will notice that most players tend to be on the aggressive side. If this is indeed the case it might be better to sit back and let the other players go at it for awhile.

The reason that a lot of poker players take an aggressive stance to begin with is that they believe that they will be able to garner a good amount of chips right away from the start of the tournament and then they can switch gears and become conservative and ride out their stack until they are able to get to the money. While this may seem like a good strategy to try to employ it is very flawed in that when everyone at the table is aggressive there is no one to push around at all.

Another strategy some players like to use is to always bet on the flop. This gives the bettor control of the hand and the other players at the table must try to figure out what cards the bettor has and what his next move will be. If the bet is high enough this type of player may be able to take down quite a few pots when holding nothing in his hand.

Another way to play poker tournaments is to be a passive player. The passive player will sit back and let the other players duke it out with each other and carefully choose the times when to get involved and make moves. Using this style will let this type of player study and learn from his opponents at the table.

Regardless of what base style you choose to play when playing in a poker tournament it is very important to be able to change up your strategy and adapt to the strategies and skills employed by the other players at the table. Most of all work out a poker strategy that suits your strongest poker skill set and stick with it.

The advantage of playing blackjack on line starts with the speed of the game. Even using speed shufflers there is no way traditional blackjack tables can offer the speed of the games played on line. It takes time to go around and gather in cards, pay the winners and take from the losers. The average blackjack table in Vegas has at least three players sitting and needing the attention of the dealer so you can multiply that down time by three or more. Online casino games have no time spent on other people unless you’ve chosen to play at a multi-player table in which case there is a slight down time allowed per player to make their wagering decision but it is in no way as slow as playing at a game in Vegas.

You always get a fair-odds hand when playing on line because the shoe is shuffled after every hand meaning you’ll never sit down in the middle of a shoe which is heavy with cards that are not benefical to the player. For each deck in a virtual shoe there will be four aces, four kings and so on for every hand played.

While on the subject of fair-odds and shuffling the shoe it should be noted for card counters that they are the only ones which do not stand to benefit from playing blackjack on line other than for sharpening their skills for the next trip to the riverboat or Vegas. The reason that playing on line is not going to work for card counters is because it is impossible to get an edge if the shoe is shuffled after every hand. They cannot get deep enough into the shoe to get an idea whether the game is heavy with cards that are going to hurt the player or cards that help greatly, those being any card worth ten. The rest of the world actually gets the advantage of always starting with a fair-odds shoe and ending it the same way. While it is true that the shoe will never be heavy with beneficial cards it will never be the opposite either and if you are not counting cards then by playing on line you are assuring yourself the first hand is as fair as if you’d just sat down at a table in Vegas with a fresh shoe coming out, and you are assured your last hand will be the same, and not that you might have left a game in mid-shoe that had already endured most of the bad cards and was now rich with good cards … only you’d already left before the good part happened.

The variety of games compared to Vegas or Atlantic City isn’t really a comparison. That’s saying quite a bit considering that those two cities blow away most any place when it comes to gambling. However it is true. Some online casinos powered by Microgaming software offer as many as fifty versions of blackjack including the game called “faces up” where you are shown both dealer’s cards but of course you give up a little to get a little and part of this deal is you don’t get paid time and a half for a blackjack. Most Vegas casinos don’t even have fifty tables open at one time, let alone fifty different versions all with no waiting to get a seat.

One last advantage to playing blackjack on line is the online casinos allow you to play for free which means even those who don’t trust playing on line can still use it as an excellent tool to sharpen their game and not have all that down time of a real table. You might be surprised to find you’ve crossed a line where the thought of driving to the local casino and having to search for a table with your stakes and an open chair … is too much trouble for someone who can sit down at their PC and be playing in seconds. Where you can if having a bad day simply shut down the casino and do something else … which means you also have the option to go back and play when you feel your luck is better … and not have to waste all that time driving and finding a table and waiting for everybody else to change their cash to chips etc, in order to find out if your luck is good or bad.

Its true! Progressive slot games do at times have a positive expectation value on what you are gambling to win them. Many people are unaware of this fact but not everybody. There are actually professional slot machine game players which form into teams and they watch the progressive games for them to reach a level of payout where it becomes a business of spending low to sell high, so to speak. These teams work as packs and they prey on the positive expectation value of a progressive slot game which has few enough individual machines involved in the progressive scheme that they can as a pack attack it from all angles meaning they try to monopolize the games by placing a team member in each seat of every machine involved in the payout.

Progressive games at online casinos have brought the idea of this popular type of games of chance into new levels of payouts. Slot machine games that tie in so many different machines from so many different casinos that these games are actually paying out millions of dollars on a daily or near-daily basis. Many progressive games here at the local riverboats where I am located seem to hover around the five figures neighborhood at best but they admittedly do have many fewer machines contributing than could ever compete with the kind of numbers found at online casinos.

Which means to you as a player that unless you are a member of a professional slot machine team then you have the good news of not only being able to get to a machine to play when there is a positive expectation value (when they reach that level) but also that when you win its going to be for a lot more money … and of course the jackpots pay out a lot more often than do those at land casinos (for the most part, there may be some that do not).

Players of online casino progressive slot games will never be able to monopolize their games the way the professional teams do in Las Vegas or Atlantic City but on the other hand for the majority of us … we are not professional slot teams so that effects us zero percent but now we’re now not going to be pushed out of the opportunity to hit one of these jackpots which is going to be a nice change of pace. Those that play the online progressive slot games with a positive expectation value will just have to hope they get lucky like everyone else because there is no way they are going to monopolize the games. Which by the way the most recent really big win on a progressive online game was on the slot machine called “Mega-Moolah” powered by Microgaming software, the leader in the online gambling industry. This progressive slot game paid a man in Finland an outstanding five and a half million dollars. This is just one of several online progressive slot games to have paid out over one million dollars.

Reps. Rothman [NJ-9] and Cohen [TN-9] have signed on to halt prohibition of online “unlawful Internet gambling” - a term no one in government can define. If you care, write to Congress today. If you don’t care about poker rights, …

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Online Gambling Database Graphic Remember from online billiards buddies from the United States and the United Kingdom ? Guess what, they sent another email requesting me help them out check out Online Gambling Database, an online…

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With Internet gambling predicted to surpass $20 billion in 2008, and with illegal wagering accounting for $150 billion in the United States, by some estimates, the temptation for those seeking to influence the outcome of games has never …

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The argument in favor of a state-run online gambling monopoly is usually based on a problem of the players’ safety. This argument has been repeatedly defeated taking into consideration the more and more stringent regulations and …

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… congressional representatives continue to endorse HR 5767, a bill that orders the Federal Reserve and the Dept. of the Treasury to cease trying to implement any rules that would govern the online gambling ban law. Reps. Steven R. [. …

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