Online Casino King Blog

We get alot of people asking us for slots tips, and we get especially wound up when people tell us that they scooped a big jackpot and then spent it all on the same slot machine! Don´t! So, anyway, we have compiled a list of our favourite things to concentrate on while you are playing slots games online.

Always Read the Pay out Tables
Seems obvious, doesn´t it? But you would be surprised to know how many people don´t spend a little bit of time and effort doing their homework. This is a basic. Compare different slots games before you play. What do they pay out when you win? Don´t just play the Spiderman slot because you happen to like Spiderman The movie! Looking at the pay tables can help you guess the frequency that the slots pays out. If there are many combinations that payout on a smaller scale, then the slot will normally pay out more frequently (with smaller amounts …granted) than a slot that has fewer winning combos that pays out larger sums.

Play The Full Coin Amount in Progressive Slots.
Progressive slots offer big life changing jackpots which builds as more and more coins are pumped in across the network. You can only win the progressive jackpot if you are playing the maximum number of coins. So if you want to bet smaller amounts, pick a non-progressive machine.

Bank Your Profits
If you hit a jackpot, make sure that you bank your profit. Think of the quiz game “Fifteen to One” and bank as you go.  Take your initial pot with some profit and put it to one side. Then play with your winnings. This way you are effectively playing with free (ie the casino´s) money.  Even better: take a break after a hitting a jackpot. Go an make a cup of tea, or stop playing all together.

Keep a Track of your Profits AND Losses
Most slots players can tell you how much they have won. Few can tell you how much they have lost. It´s OK to lose, as long as you win more and keep a track of both. Write it down!

Slowly, slowly.
There´s no need to rush online. You can play at whatever speed you choose, so play slowly and methodically. This doesn´t mean you are playing at snail´s pace, but it also doesn´t mean that you should be clicking the Bet Now button like a caffeine addicted insomniac!

Use Money Management Techniques.
Only bet what you can afford for entertainment. Break your money into smaller amounts and play multiple sessions. Don´t go crazy and blow it all in one session.

Cash Out.
Don´t leave any big wins lying around in your casino´s account. it´ll just earn them interest! Withdraw it pronto, stick it in your bank account and you start earning interest on it. if you leave it in your casino account, you might be tempted to play ith it again.

Don’t Buy Betting Systems.
Betting systems for slots are a con. Period. Don´t pay for one.

Here´s an interesting connundrum for all you lottery players, and a question that keeps being thrown back at us. Is it better to play the same lottery numbers every week, or do you stand a better chance if you change them week in week out? We all know that some people have their favourite numbers based on birthdays, wedding days, etc etc. And some prople just go for the “Lucky Dip”. Does it make a difference mathmatically?

Well, in terms of winning, it doesn´t alter your probability one iota if you change your numbers. It´s a bit like a roulette wheel (which we try and explain until we are blue in the face). Just as a roulette wheel has no memory, so the lottery has no memory. If 6 numbers come up today, there is the same probability that those exact 6 numbers (as any other combination) will come up next week.

“Aha!” I hear you say. So why do you never see 2 consecutive results the same in the lottery? Well, that´s because there are so many combinations of numbers. You will eventually see this happen, (theoretically), but by then you´l be long gone (and probably the solar system would have blown up as well).

If there are less combinations (such as red/black) in roulette, you often see the same result on consecutive events.

The only thing we would say, is that whatever your method, be consistent. By that we mean, consistently change your numbers every week by playing Lucky Dip, or always keep the same numbers. Because if you switch around from one method to another, you are going to feel sick as a dog if your “numbers” come in. If you play Lucky Dip, on the other hand- you won´t have any “numbers”. And check behind the sofa for the winning ticket. Do you realise how much money is unclaimed every year in the lottery. Well, I am not even going to tell you, because it depresses me. if you buy a lottery ticket, for gawd´s sake CHECK IT!

That´s just made me think. I wonder how many people who play Lucky Dip win? I mean, what is the percentage of Lucky Dip players who win versus “favourite number” players…I think we might just ask The NAtional Lottery to clear up that one. Stay posted!

On another note, our poison is actually playing the big jackpot slots online rather than the lottery. OK the payouts are not as huge (but I´d be happy with 6 million Euros on Mega Moolah). but the odds are better. (Note I didn´t say the odds were amazing, I just said they were better!)

Well, I don´t know about you. But if I was French, Austrian, Swedish, Belgian, Irish or Swiss I would be seething. What is it about the UK and Spain and the EuroMillions lottery? Players from one country or the other seem to regularly scoop the big prizes, and this time over the weekend it was the turn of couple from the West Country who just win “Fifty-six million, eight thousand, one hundred and thirteen pounds and twenty pence.”

Thats £56,008,113.20 in numbers. They have been confirmed as Britain´s biggest ever lottery winners. And the winning tickets were shared with another lucky punter in Spain.

It is the 4th time in 3 months that a British winner has landed more than £25m in the EuroMillions draw. What is going on?

In November, Les Scadding, 53, and wife Samantha Peachey-Scadding, 38, from Caerleon, south Wales, won over £45m.

And £45m was won in the same day by a team of 7 IT workers at Hewlett Packard in Liverpool.

Back in January, 4 family members from Dorking in Surrey won £26m.

And Spain also seems to do well. The record EuroMillions win is £113m by a single Spanish ticket-holder in May last year. The other winning ticket was sold at the Administration Number 2 in Mojácar, Almería, in the P.Q. commercial centre. It’s understood the prize is shared by 3 Spaniards, each netting a cool €23 million.

Two of the 12 second category prizes were also won in Spain, in Madrid and Baracaldo, Vizcaya.

Euro Millions is played in the UK, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Irish Republic, Portugal and Switzerland. So that should give yuo a clue as to the frequency of the wins. When you think of EuroMillions, you think the whole of Europe is involved, and that is not the case. So statistically speaking, both the UK and Spain have high populations meaning that these countries stand a better chance of scopping the big one. Plus, both countries have a culture of “having a punt” (Spain is famous for its huge Christmas lottery: El Gordo) andthe Brits just seem to bet on anything - particularly the bankers in The City (!)

So How Do I Win The Next EuroMillions Lottery?

Well, our best piece of advice to to wear your lucky pants. To win the Euromillions prize jackpot you need to predict all 5 main board numbers and both lucky star numbers. The odds are slightly less than 1 in 76 million. The Euro Millions draw offers 11 more prize categories apart from the jackpot, and the odds ofwinning one of these is better. The lowest prize has odds of 1 in 38.

We are often asked the question: which casino has the lowest minimum and highest maximum bet at their roulette tables? This is also known as the roulette spread by the way.

First of all, we got to wondering why so many people were asking this question. And second of all, we got to thinking about the actual casinos themselves that offer this kind of variation in the betting limits. Many casinos offer an upper betting limit of $200 to $500 dollars, but there are casinos that offer maximum bets that head north of $2000, $5,000 or even $10,000.

Firstly, why the interest in this information? Well, we can only assume that people are wanting to play aggressive progression systems such as the Martingale System (or even the Triple Martingale). In these systems, you increase your bet after a loss to compensate yourself when your number doesn´t drop in. In the Martingale, you cover your loss and hope to make a one bet win. in supercharged versions of The Martingale, you hope to more than cover your losses.

Now there are basically 2 potential banana skins to the Martingale and its cousins. The first is the fact the roulette wheels have a zero pocket (and sometimes 2), so that if you are betting on reds and hoping for your results to switch from black to red at some point, occasionally a green will drop in. The second, is that the most casinos have table limits. So there is a finite amount of “double up” bets that you can make to cover your losses. At some point you will hit what is known as the Martingale Wall- where you are unable to cover losses. This is why people like big betting limits, as it gives them more of a run and more chances to turn around a losing streak. Let´s take the Martingale for example. You are doubling your bets, so if we start at 1 we can progress as follows:

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 156….

So, you can see we hit the Martingale Wall after 7 bets on a $200 limit table.

But if we are playing on a $5000 limit table we can progress as follows:

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 156, 312, 624, 1248, 2496, 4992. So you can cover 14 losses in a row.

But…WAIT! Think about the 2nd sequence for a second. You are going to be laying down around $5,000 (if you are unlucky enough to lose 14 times in a row) to win just $1! And an you get 14 blacks in a row? Well, it doesn´t happen often- but yes, absolutely. It´s perfectly mathematically possible.

OK- now that we have given you the theory, let´s talk about which casinos offer large betting limits for high roller or high stakes roulette players. But don´t say we didn´t warn you.

Las Vegas is probably your best option. You are unlikely to get more than a $1000 limit online. There have been roulette tables with $5 minimums and $10,000 maximums at the Paris casino in Vegas. $10 min and $5,000 max in pretty prevalent on The Strip and in Macau. If you are trying to get big limits online, your best bet is to do this through one of the VIP programs (Ladbrokes have a pretty good one). But you´ll need to have some history with them, and “work your way up” to these kinds of limits.

Would we bet $5k to make $1? Are you kidding? No!

Views on The London Casino Affiliate Conference (LAC).

Well, we just got back to the office after the London Affiliate Conference which was held at the Old Billingsgate Market in The City (London). So how was it, I hear you ask, and what is a Casino Affiliate conference might I add?

Overall, it was good, and what was it? Well, it was a big conflab involving the great and the good (and a few of the poor and bad) of the online casino industry. Players, affiliates (website owners who promote online casinos), online casino , poker and bingo companies and a whole host of service providers, dancers, hangers-on, ne´er-do-wells, city slickers, bums, chancers and snoozers.

The intinery proceeeds along these lines: all the participants jump on planes from North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the southern tip of Africa and congregate in a small hotel in London where they shuffle along a big queue to collect their coloured bracelets and barcode badges. Once these have been bagged, the parties and waffling commence, the booze flows and the networking begins.

The online casino conference kicked off proper with an Awards night which like many an awards night probably went on a little too long. And then we were into 2 days of workshops, lectures, shows, parties, nights oot and dinners. Phew…

So can we summarise the event in 8 points for all you urban stress monkeys pulling this off on your iphone RSS feed apps? I doubt it, but here goes

1. 2010 is the year the mobile Internet will take off for the casino market (so was 2009 and 2008 but 2010 really is the year).

2. The US is gearing up to legalise and regulate gambling online…….maybe. But it might not.

3. Billingsgate market is along way from the rest of London and most restaurants, shops and public conveniences do not open at the weekend.

4. They make loud loudspeakers these days.

5. A good blagger always peppers his or her converstions with at least 5 mentions of link juice/infrastructure/dynamic/power play/fishy/loose/tight/variance/super/windfall/mega/über

6. If you are not on Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/MySpace you are missing out but you´ll have a lot more time to do other stuff. Twitter in particular have pulled off an impressive coup by persuading alot of people that they should be on Twitter, nay need to be on Twitter, without really knowing why they are on Twitter. With the end result that there are alot of Twits following other Twits which is all helping to inflate the sites´s numbers. That´s got to be a good thing for when they eventually flog it to Sergie and Lazza.

7. You can´t fit that many people into a Mini, but you can fit ALOT of people in a club called Parker McMillan which isn´t that much bigger than a Mini.

8. It takes 16 and a half minutes for the bar staff at The Grange St Pauls hotel to make a Martini. I know, because I was trying to order a simple pint of beer (estimated pouring time 30 seconds) while some American chap who´d been to New York has mistakenly ordered one. 2 lessons here: (1) Train your staff. (2) When in Rome, drink the local brew.

London is fairly glamorous anyway, especially in the West End (apart from certain bits of Soho that is). But we have heard that the capital might be getting its own slice of Monte Carlo glamour right in the middle of town.

A Monte Carlo hotel group is in the running to snap up a slice of Piccadilly history.

Monte-Carlo SBM, the Monaco based hotel and casino operator, is a front runner for the purchase of 94 Piccadilly — formerly the address of the In and Out Club — which is on the market for an estimated 250 million pounds sterling.

Bernard Lambert, the CEO of the group, said that he was “very interested” in buying, or taking an stake in, the former base of the Naval & Military Club, which coined its “In and Out” name from the signs on the front door.

The Grade I listed building, once owned by Lord Palmerston who was PM in the 19th century, was a well known schmoozong and boozing destination for the well to do. It had been up for a super luxury hotel makeover by its owner, Simon Halabi, the billionaire property investor. But the £300 million refurbishment was halted in 2007 and the building has been empty since.

Mr Halabi’s propert empire subsequently unravelled, forcing him to sell the building.

Despite the ongoing crisis, the streets of London are still paved with gold for some people. The Monaco based group is looking ot diversify abroad and create a group of super luxury hotels around the world with a sprinkling of “Monte Carlo magic”. The group wants to  open 5 or 6 properties in the next couple of years in London, Paris, Milan, Rome and New York.

Mr Halabi, the current owner, has a house in Monaco. He bought the club in 2000 for £50 million (err- not a bad return then…Ed.) He was ordered a fortnight ago to pay Aukett Fitzroy Robinson, the architects, £500 grand after a 2 year High Court battle of wits over a disputed invoice.

Mr Halabi took on the architects in 2006 to design the hotel. The plans were later shelved as the economy turned.

Anyway, we are working on getting some tickets organised for our members for when the hotel eventually opens! It´s officially on the list of stuff to do…..

There has been another monster Euromillions lottery win for a UK resident.

The Euro Millions lottery numbers pulled on Friday made one British man or woman £26 million better off.  The enormous Euromillions jackpot will be shared between a lottery player in France and the UK player. It´s the 4th biggest scoop in UK lottery history.  The hot numbers were 11, 26, 29, 49, 50- the idendity of the lucky player is not yet known.

Last November saw a record win- this follows quickly on from that scoop. It is not known of the ticket holder is a syndicate or a person, or whether in fact the ticket is still lying hidden behind the sofa. But rumour has it that the winners has “come out” and is with the National Lottery secret agents as we post this.

Just like the previous big jackpot win, the numbers included “11″.

After 3 weeks without a winner there was £52.3 million in the pot during the draw. The lucky numbers in the draw were 11 – 26 – 29 – 49 – 50, lucky stars 4 and 7 and the Millionaire Raffle number was VFP866401.

Had the UK player been the only winner, the £52.3 million Euromillions Lottery jackpot would have made them the UK´s largest every lottery winner. But then £26,151,124.20 isn´t such a bad haul either.

Next Friday´s Euromillions Lottery will come in at an estimated £12 million.

Well, we just got back from a tour of Asia- principally Macau and Hong Kong. OK, the weather wasn´t as great as we expected (it´s chilly there too! - although not as cold as it is in Beijing we hear). But all in all, we had a fantastic time. And what really hit home, was how that part of the world is powering ahead while we all seem to be moaning about the crisis in this part of the world.

U.S. casino Big Boys Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts have appeared to have made a shrewd bet in Macau (or Macao). This casino town has not only overtaken Las Vegas as the world’s top casino market, but its gambling palaces are rebounding strongly as gambling in the US remains stuck in the mire.

In October, Macau gambling revenues hit record $1.59 billion and that´s not even including The Chinese New Year holiday, which lasts for about a fortnight from Valentine´s Day- traditionally one of the busiest periods of the year and as Chinese holiday makers flock to the former Portuguese enclave en masse.

The Chinese believe that on New Year’s, “If you have luck, then you’ll have luck all year.” So “Kung Hei Fat Choi!”, as the Cantonese say around these parts around New Year.

The continuing growth of Macao — which is around 50 miles to the west of Hong Kong— as a massive casino party town is just one sign of the Middle Kingdom’s economic strength these days and reflects the spending power of Chinas’s 1.3 billion citizens. With the country´s population and growth prospects, frankly if you are not here, you are starting to look like a lame duck.

One of the wierd things we noticed while playing in Macau, was all of the superstitions that people follow. You might notice people changing the colour of their clothes for example — (red is lucky here and is used at weddings, white is associated with funerals- to give you an idea). So you are unlikely to see someone wearing a white tux. And if someone is winning, don´t touch their back! Many Chinese believe that this could rub their luck off (but then maybe it´d rub off on you).

Chinese believe strongly in fate and luck, and that´s one of the reasons that they are so into gambling. Baccarat is hugely popular because it is a game of pure chance rather than skill.
Gambling in Macau is deadly serious. You are unlikely to find that many people who are here just for the shows. The average punter bets around 3 times as much as his or her equivalent in Las Vegas.

If you get the chance: go & visit- it is well worth the trip, and combined with a shopping and sightseeing trip to Hong Kong, and maybe a beach stop over in Thailand or Malaysia, this is a holiday that we reckon is hard to beat.

Online casinos are legal in the UK of course, since the government has taken the stance (enlightened in our view) that this industry is better regulated than made illegal, which only serves to push it underground.

But what about the online casino market in other countries around the world? How does the law across the planet treat this pastime?

Well, famously, the US government under Bush has tried to strangle off the industry (which hasn´t gone down to well in the Eu as a lot of the more successful companies in the US were European). They´ve done this by making it more difficult to carry out gambling transactions online. Predictably, the industry has just moved offshore and invented a new toolbox of financial instruments to enable people to continue playing poker, bingo and on the tables online. But what about other countries?

Well, the Swiss are considering allowing open competition from online casinos in the betting market. The governement there have decided that trying to ban Internet gambling is basically a lost cause- so they are following the UK down the regulation road. Individual cantons (or regions) may have the right to regulate online casinos as they see fit.

Because Switzerland is not a member of the EU, it can set its own rules- but they will be closely watched by all the EU countries to see how this strategy will work out for them.

Head north to Belgium, however, and it´s a different story. The Belgium government is setting out its stall, despite a nudge from the European Commission that many of their plans do not fit with the European Union Treaty. Belgian rules would require a physical presence in the country and for operators to be possesion of a Belgian license which are to be limited in number. EU rules specify that Belgium must recognize the licensing authority of other EU member nations as well.

The EU is meant to be a region where all members compete freely with each other in a free market, unchained by tariffs or local protectionism. But many EU countries are falling short on this.

In this sense, Belgium has followed the line of France and Germany who are both risking a legal slap down from the EC for not allowing competition in their gambling markets.

So is there anyone else in the regulation camp along with the UK? Well, Spain seems to be heading in that direction. The rest are “wait and sees”. The plot thickens, as they say.

We have featured quite a few casino scams on the blog- not because we condone them in any way, but we do find them fascinating (don´t you think?). In the past we have run through a few blackjack scams and roulette scams that we have come across, but we haven´t covered anything on baccarat…up until now that is.

Baccarat is the favourite flavour for high rollers of course, on account of its favorable odds and speed of play. So it is not suprising that it attracts fraudsters trying to get one over the casinos. There can be a lot of money sloshing around at the baccarat tables- particularly in the VIP rooms.

One such case went down at the mini baccarat tables in Atlantic City, and although the amount was not too eye watering ($100 grand….eye watering enough for the casino we suppose), it is interesting to see what their plan was and how they got caught out (and arrested).

13 people were eventually booked for taking part in a Mini-Baccarat Cheating Scam in 1999 at the Claridge Casino Hotel. The team consisted of a number of men and women, most of Vietnamese origin, including the dealer, who was eventually caught on CCTV. Inside jobs are very common in this type of scam.

Here´s basically how the team operated:
2 men worked as card counters. They began playing Mini-Baccarat, betting with low stakes and noting the cards played (this is a common enough practice in baccarat- nothing wrong in doing this as long as you can do it in your head).

When it was time to shuffle the deck, the Card Counters stopped betting and left the table. The dealer, also part of the team, set up a new shoe of cards, but shuffled in a pre ordained way, which gave other members of the team an edge against the house. Then 9 more players from the team sat down at the table. Because they knew the card order , they bet big on each hand - up to $3,000 on a hand and won more than $100,000.

However, the casino quickly clocked an unusual pattern, and a couple of hours into the scam, all 9 players were arrested at the table, and the Police took $90,000 in gaming chips and currency. The card counters and the dealer, were also arrested, as well as the King Pin who was sitting out the scam at home. The team made the elementary mistake of staying at the table too long and getting greedy. It became too obvious to the casino that there was something fish going on- the laws of probability just don´t allow you to have such a long winning streak, particularly  if your wins are not compensated by someone else´s losses at the table.

So what did they get? Well- a trip to Atlantic County jail, and bail set at $50,000. And they risked a $150k fine and up to 5 years in the slammer. Ouch.