General information on online casino

Hello Mr Wizard,

I really want to play in the online free roll Blackjack tournaments, but they require you to register with personal information such as credit card number and/or bank account number. I was wondering how safe their information storage system is? Thanks for your help!

I would imagine that it wouldn't be considered speaking for the Wizard or LCB to reference you to their "Wizard Approved" affiliates that are on the bottom of this very page. Those online casinos have been personally reviewed by the Wizard, and if you use their affiliate links below to sign up, then the Wizard/LCB will back you if you have any player disputes.

Welcome to the site! I encourage you to browse the Blackjack forums as there's a wealth of knowledge for a new player on it, for free =).

Thank you for the info Romes, and the warm welcome! Have you ever been to a Indian based Casino?

Actually, I have not. I've been to many many casinos, but I haven't even had the opportunity. Not to mention everything I've ever heard about Indian casinos basically tells me I don't want to play at them. They have their own security/police and the tribe reviews matters where a law could be broken. Basically, you *could* get cheated, accuse them of cheating, have your evidence, but guess what? Their own panel will determine whether or not their casino did anything wrong. Now whom do you think will win that case?

There are stories of them back rooming counters, etc, which you can't take them to court over, it's more of the same above. Many posters on this forum have/do play in Indian casinos (because they don't have any other options perhaps), but the general adage I believe is "tread carefully."

Indian casinos get way too much shit from this forum. If you play entirely by their rules, I personally trust Indian casinos to treat me fairly. I won't speak for the Wiz in this manner, but there is no way I, personally, would stick my neck out there to say that this or that casino is "ok" without knowing its name and location Indian or not. That's entirely up to you to decide. If we could get some more details, names and places, then maybe you can find someone here that knows of them. This forum reaches every end of the country/continent.

Quote: ahiromu

Indian casinos get way too much shit from this forum. If you play entirely by their rules, I personally trust Indian casinos to treat me fairly. I won't speak for the Wiz in this manner, but there is no way I, personally, would stick my neck out there to say that this or that casino is "ok" without knowing its name and location Indian or not. That's entirely up to you to decide. If we could get some more details, names and places, then maybe you can find someone here that knows of them. This forum reaches every end of the country/continent.

My concern isn't that a place is "okay" to play or not... Like anything in my life, I weigh the pros and cons before making any decision. One well known "con" of Indian Casinos is that you can have a tremendous amount of complications with them. It doesn't matter the name, place, age of employees, or whatever. What matters is the law, how they interpret it, and what they're allowed to do (or get away with). While yes, most 'should' treat you fairly, I don't like the idea that their security could just take my money, and then I'd have to take them to tribal court where their own people decide if what their own people did was okay or not. Even if you "win" a case like that, you're out tons just trying to fight it. Not that anything bad has, or for sure is, going to happen, but the potential for a disaster as such is enough of an issue for me. At that point I personally feel I have enough information that it's not worth the risk for me. Others may have different opinions, but I was just sharing mine, which apparently many others on this forum agree with... leading to the "Indian casinos get way to much shit from this forum."

I didn't say they were evil. I said the general adage I believe is "tread carefully."

I agree with Romes 100%, the only thing I participate in is Blackjack Tournament at a local Indian casino. I just have the feeling that because Indian casinos are a 'island' onto themselves, they can do little things that swing the odds in their favor, such as shuffling the deck where the dealer gets most of the 10's. I have seen this done. At first I thought that it was my eyes playing tricks on me. I got up from the table, and watched 8 rounds of a 6 deck shoe being played and the players got killed, and they were playing basic strategy for the most part. That is what I observed, and I invite my fellow forum participants to weigh in with their thoughts.

I have to throw my two cents worth in here. I haven't been to them all, but there's nothing about any casino experience that I can attribute to it being "Indian" or "non-Indian." I have had unfriendly interactions, and really nice ones, at both. Maybe out west where the "sovereign nation" concept is more strongly emphasized, but here in the east I can't see any real difference.

I've had a couple of interactions with the police at an Indian casino in CT, and they have been professional, courteous, and indistinguishable from what I have seen in a "regular" municipal police force. I've seen more arrogant, obnoxious, even antagonistic behavior from mall cops and security guards at public state-run arenas. That, in my opinion, is where you are more apt to run in to the guys who failed the psych or background-check part of the application process, that are on their own internal power-trips. Those guys scare me. But the "tribal police" I have encountered have been top flight. Not that I am prone to dealing with them that often.

As far as the attitude of anyone else, I have a much poorer opinion of the staff at casinos in Atlantic City than at Mohegan or Foxwoods. That may be because the folks in AC have to wonder more about their futures (but that's going to be a problem in the Northeast more and more as Massachusetts comes online). Atlantic City has come a long way from the beginning, when I think that part of the training was to present a gruff, stand-off demeanor to keep the clientele in line. That's gotten better, but AC in my opinion has a much less friendly approach to the public than the Indian casinos they compete with.

I have issues with staff that can't speak intelligible English and/or have a grouchy or unpleasant demeanor, but there are just as many of those kinds of folks at the QuickyMart or behind the counter at 7-11. Those places may also be run by Indians, but the other kind, right? <g>.

Quote: Funguy21

Thank you for the info Romes, and the warm welcome! Have you ever been to a Indian based Casino?

I go frequently to Seneca Niagara. I have never had a negative experience there. They comp me way more than CET for a similar level of play.

I just had a thought...maybe the players have gotten better and blackjack, so the casino found a way to make the game of Blackjack harder to beat over the years? Maybe I am just thinking about the 'good old days', but in the 90's the game in my opinion had better rules for the players, and the pit bosses were not as paranoid if you won a couple of grand here or there? Let me know if I am way off base with this!

Quote: Funguy21

I just had a thought...maybe the players have gotten better and blackjack, so the casino found a way to make the game of Blackjack harder to beat over the years? Maybe I am just thinking about the 'good old days', but in the 90's the game in my opinion had better rules for the players, and the pit bosses were not as paranoid if you won a couple of grand here or there? Let me know if I am way off base with this!

There's a bunch of things that could contribute to this, but overall yes, the games have absolutely diminished from the 'good old days' (which I never got to be a part of =/). Check out "Beat The Dealer" by Ed Thorp (the first mathematically accurate book describing counting and having an edge doing so over the casino). I love the stories he tells of his experiences. The games he played back then had a PLAYER EDGE from just playing basic strategy off the top.

Even from the 90's where dealer Stand 17 was more prominent, that's apparently a hard game to find now days... And as of the last decade they're trying to push 6-5 blackjack on people whom don't understand the difference.

The good news? They can't make the game 'unbeatable', in my opinion. The reason blackjack had such a boom it did and was the most popular game for the longest time was because people knew it was technically "beatable." 99%+ of players don't play a winning game, don't care, think it's illegal to count, etc. Even of the 1% of people whom do "count cards," I would be willing to bet that only another 10% of that group actually do it all correctly enough to actually have a winning game. Overall, it's important that the casinos have games that we can claim are "beatable." This drives the poor players to go and play them.

On the note about the pit bosses. They are so worried about the 10% of the 1% (mentioned above) they burn money to try to identify and stop counters. In my very honest opinion it's almost a complete waste of money for them. From a business stand point the level most casinos have taken it now days is just really really poor business. They spend 1 million on facial recognition software (that doesn't work all that well). Then not only that they pay crap wages to the surveillance guys working the software (driving poor performance). Then they tell their pit bosses they have to be able to "catch" counters! You have pit bosses whom don't even know how to count backing people off. I guarantee there's been non counters, or even people who "count" but don't even have a winning game (no/low spread, huge RoR, don't fully know basic, don't know indexes, etc) that have been given the boot. These are money makers for the casino, and they're not letting them give them money! From a business stand point, in dealing with "card counters," the casinos are mostly just pure idiots... in my opinion =).

Very well put! I still play from time to time, maybe twice a year at a table, the rest are blackjack tournaments. The odd thing is last year I entered 12 tournaments and placed in the top 5. 5 times. Does anyone still play basic strategy at the live tables(without counting) and have any of you had good results?

Quote: Funguy21

I just had a thought...maybe the players have gotten better and blackjack, so the casino found a way to make the game of Blackjack harder to beat over the years? Maybe I am just thinking about the 'good old days', but in the 90's the game in my opinion had better rules for the players, and the pit bosses were not as paranoid if you won a couple of grand here or there? Let me know if I am way off base with this!

You should have seen it in the 70s and 80s. You could actually make a good living. Yes, there are some sharp players today who do just that so don't anyone take offense.

Ok, can someone please tell me I am not going crazy.....Last night I was at a 6 deck shoe, and it seemed like the dealer was either getting a 20, or making 21 out of 3 or more cards! I can see a dealer making a hand ever 3-4 hands, but nearly every hand back to back, I must have won only 3 hands in the show, needless to say I got up and left. Am I just being a wet blanket, or was it a really really bad swing. I play basic strategy, as I don't have the intestinal fortitude to study card counting.

Do any of you feel that hand shuffling is still best vs when they put the whole shoe in this automatic tower, and you don't know how it is being shuffled? Also technically speaking can the shuffler shuffle the cards in such order as to give the dealer pat hands more often, while giving us less desirable cards?

While I'll share some of my 'crazy' theories with you, I'll start of by telling you that what you experienced was more than likely completely normal. The simple math of the game (from the top) is that the Dealer will win 49% of the hands, the player will win 42%, and you will tie 9% of the time. Even card counters lose more hands than they win. The difference is that they exploit situations where the player is the favorite and bet a ton more. I'll repeat that... even card counters LOSE more hands than they win!

Next comes variance (luck). You might win 1 month straight, barely losing a hand... but you might also lose a month straight, barely winning a hand. This is all entirely normal fluctuations to variance. As I've mentioned a couple times on the forums, kewlj is a professional whom had a 6 month losing streak and still turned a yearly profit. Imagine doing everything right, knowing you're the favorite, but still losing "overall" for a 6 month period. That's why to do it properly now days takes a very big bank roll, patients, and an understanding of the game to the level that you know you're playing a winning game and just getting unlucky.

Finally, you could look at standard deviations. If you go play for an evening, just basic strategy, no counting... you're expected value is 'approximately' the following:

HE*(avgBet * handsPlayed)

Say you play for 5 hours, and play about 70 hands per hour. This equates to 350 hands. If you mostly play table min ($10 let's say), but bump it up to $20, $30, or $50 every now and then, you probably have an 'average' bet of something like $20 (over the course of the night). The house edge on "most" 6 deck low limit games is somewhere between .45-.65, so let's say .5% for a good old 'standard' example. Let's plug these numbers in:

.005*(20 * 350) = $35. So what does this number mean? This means, on average, if you go play for 5 hours, with an average bet of $20, that you'll lose $35. If you did this a million times over the next decade, you would average out to losing $35 every time you play. Now, we all know this doesn't exactly happen every time. After all, some people WIN, right? Well no, not in the long run. You might win $200 tonight... or lose $200 tonight... but if you did this a million times over the next decade, the math proves that it will AVERAGE out to be a $35 loss for every 5 hours you play (thus you're losing, on average, $7/hr). This is how counters find out how much a game is worth to them (well, with a little more math and positive expectations because of their counting skills).

So you see... You can lose for a day, week, or month(s) straight, and it could still be just a regular fluctuation in variance (luck).

Side Notes: I prefer a hand shuffle over an Automatic Shuffle Machine (ASM). An ASM is when they put all the cards in the box, and it comes out shuffled, then they deal from a shoe. A Continuous Shuffle Machine (CSM) is a bit different where they're 'always' being shuffled continuously. And no, an ASM can't "pre-set" the cards because it has no idea how many players are at the table, if someone's taking 'extra' cards that aren't basic strategy, etc... It's entirely too random to "set" although until I look up the models in use and verify they are as 'random' as possible I'll always prefer a hand shuffle =).

You can find a lot of this information, and much more, in a lot more detail in my A-Z Card Counting thread. It might answer a lot of other questions you have to, so I'd suggest giving it a read =).

How does the shuffler know which cards go to the dealer?

It is possible to do this in bacarrat, since no one can make any decision affecting who is going to get each card.

Quote: Dalex64

How does the shuffler know which cards go to the dealer?

It is possible to do this in bacarrat, since no one can make any decision affecting who is going to get each card.

I'm saying that the dealer always gets to act last in the game of blackjack, so they can program the machine to shuffle the cards in a way that the dealer will get more 20's.

Again, how does the shuffler know what cards the dealer will get, when the players act first and can take as many cards as they like?

If it is giving the dealer a 20 with two cards, how does it know how many players are playing so the two tens end up together and in front of the dealer?

Thank you so much for this real life breakdown of the game! I always said that a casino will not have a game in their house, unless they have a advantage, but it is nice to see with practice and a little luck you can have the best odds of winning over the long run! I guess just like horse racing, playing blackjack correctly does require thousands of dollars so that the player can ride out the storm, and take advantage of a break in the 'weather' and go in for the kill.