Bingo

Casino Tipping Etiquette

2009-05-08T10:08:00.001-07:00

Heading down to your favorite casino to play a game? Before you go, arm yourself with these poker tipping etiquette rules so you know just how much to tip…and how much you can keep in your pocket.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that casino workers are just like waiters or shoe-shiners. They’re in the service industry and most of them make 66% of their income not from wages, but from tips! Without tips, well, they’re barely making enough for their studio apartment.

Here are the etiquette rules for tipping. Keep in mind, because these are focused around games, they usually apply only when you’re winning. If you’re losing, even casino workers have mercy on you. :)

Blackjack
Tip at least one $5 chip/session. (A session is how long a dealer stays before she is replaced with another dealer.) Some players like to place a side bet for the dealer, up to 10%.

Craps
Tip at least one $5 chip/session. Some players like to place a side bet for the dealer, up to 10%.

Keno
Tip both the writers and the runners. Tip at least $1 for the first ticket. You can also tip 5% if you win.

Poker
Tip at least one $5 chip/session. You can also tip 10% of your winnings, but it shouldn’t exceed $25.

Roulette
Tip at least one $5 chip/session.

Slot Machines
Tip the changers if there are any there. Most casino’s use machines now, but if not, tip at least $1 per change made. You can also tip 5% if you jackpot, but it shouldn’t exceed $25. If an attendant is called to repair your machine, it’s common courtesy to tip them at least $1.

Waiter/Waitress
Tip at least one $1 chip/free drink.

Those are the basic tip etiquette rules for casinos. Of course, remember you may have to adjust these based on the stakes of the game you’re playing. For instance, it’s silly to tip a $5 chip to a dealer when you’re playing a dollar poker game. Likewise, it’s equally silly to tip a $5 chip to a dealer in a high stakes no-limit poker game. Use your best judgment, and ask yourself what you would hope for if you were in their shoes, reasonably speaking. Then have fun! And do your best to win more than you tip!

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7 Card Stud for Bonus Clearing

2009-05-08T10:07:00.001-07:00

pokersource.com offers great bonuses and gifts for completing certain requirements at their affiliate poker sites. While the vast majority of players out there use Texas Hold'em as their main game to complete these requirements, many should consider 7 Card Stud as an effective way to not only complete bonuses, but also to build their arsenal of poker games.

Chances are that if you’re an online poker player then Hold Em is your game. It’s the "Cadillac of Poker". It’s the game the professionals play on TV. And, let’s face it, it’s a great deal of fun.

Bonuses are great because they enhance the gaming experience in a variety of ways. A cash bonus can either pad your winnings or prop up your bankroll if you’ve found a dry spell of cards. An affiliate bonus like PSO’s point system is further icing on the cake -- your play can earn you free stuff on top of whatever money (including a poker room cash bonus) you take off the table.

Using your Hold Em game to clear a bonus is sometimes a laborious activity, however, especially at lower limits. A bonus may be released only after you play a certain amount of “raked hands”. For some poker rooms, the house must not only rake the hand you play but you must have contributed to the pot. If you’re a skilled Hold Em player you may only choose to get involved in a pot with quality hands or when you have a positional advantage. Therefore, bonus clearing via Hold Em can seem like a grind, where hours and hours at the table while slowly counting qualify hands through selective play.

Those players should consider 7 Card Stud as an alternative way of completing those bonuses, for at least some of the hands.

Play at 7 Card Stud can offer you a number of advantages:

# Poker experts agree that it is important to your growth as a poker player to diversify your game repertoire. The more variety you have in your poker experience the better your understanding will be of poker theory in general.
# 7 Card stud is an ante game: you will contribute to each and every pot via ante. Therefore, if your bonus requirement stipulates that you must contribute, you’ve already done so via your ante.
# There’s an extra round of betting in a 7 Card Stud game vs. a Hold Em game. Thus, there’s a greater chance that the pot will be raked even at lower limits.
# 7 Card Stud is not as popular as Hold Em. People chase cards, and often the play is poor. Aggressive but smart play on your part can be rewarded.

The order of play at 7 Card Stud is straightforward, with only a few differences for someone familiar with only Hold Em:

* A full ring usually seats 7 or 8 people. Bonus question: What happens in an 8-handed 7 Card Stud game if all 8 people decide to stay in until the river (8 people x 7 cards = 56 cards)? Answer at the end of this article.
* Everyone is forced to make a mandatory ante, usually $.10 or $.20 at tables with a $.50/$1.00 limit or lower.
* Players are dealt 3 cards; two face down and one face up (the “up” card). Notice that there is no flop. 7 Card Stud is not a flop game. This will feel strange to you if you’re making a transition to 7 Card Stud from exclusively play at Hold Em.
* The player with the lowest ranking “up” card opens the betting with a forced bet known as the “bring in” bet. This bet may be half or the entire minimum bet ($.25 or $.50 in a $.50/$1.00 game for example).
* Each player may call, raise, or fold after the bring in bet. Betting goes in a clockwise order.
* After this initial round of betting, each player receives a fourth card. Betting starts with the player showing the highest ranking up cards. On fourth street, betting is at the minimum ($.50 in a $.50/$1.00 game).
* On both Fifth and Sixth Streets, betting progresses to the maximum ($1.00 in a $.50/$1.00 game). As with each round of betting, players have the option to check, call, raise, or fold. A round of betting always starts with the player showing the highest ranking up cards.
* Seventh Street is dealt face down. One final round of betting occurs, after which all cards are exposed and the best poker hand is awarded the pot.

It truly is an easy game to understand. It won’t take long for those of you coming from a Hold Em background to understand a 7 Card Stud game. Both games involve seven cards, and a good hand in one game is a good hand in the other. Here are a few tips to get you started:

* Examining the board in 7 Card Stud doesn’t involve analyzing the Flop but instead analyzing your opponent’s up cards. What are they showing? What are they representing with their betting pattern? What might they be drawing to? How many of the cards you’re drawing to, cards you need to complete a flush or a straight, are already dead?
* Open with good quality starting hands, only: a pocket pair or a set, or a flush or straight draw to a high card. Notice your opponents up cards before opening. If you hold two tens but two of your opponents each show a ten, then tens are “dead”. Your pair of tens won’t itself improve to three of a kind, for example.

Good pairs and high-card starters won’t take as many pots at lower-limit Seven Card Stud as they might at comparable limit Hold Em. A pair of kings in your starting hand may not win as often as you’d like unless it improves. You have 4 cards to come, but so do your opponents. Much can happen in those last 4 cards.

* That said, open with a raise! You’re only playing with quality hands, so make others pay for chasing their long shot draws. Weed out opponents who aren’t willing to take a gamble and chase. Raise-up your starting pair of kings and see what kind of action you get back.

Quite often, you’ll find that people will call in the early rounds of betting to chase cards. Make them pay for it and keep the pressure on. Pay close attention to their up cards, however. If they are betting back at you aggressively with what may be a made draw by Fifth or Sixth Street, then consider folding.

* If you are still on a draw by Fifth or Sixth Street and you can’t beat what your opponents are showing through their up cards, then re-evaluate the strength of your draw and consider folding.
* Fold your starting hand if you’ve got an Ace showing and bricks in the hole. Your quality opponents will respect your raises with other hands if they see you occasionally fold an Ace up.
* Mix up your game. Get caught bluffing once in a while and sometimes limp in with a powerhouse. Like Hold Em, you want to keep yourself and your play hard to read.

When you hit the tables for the first time, start out smart, tight, and aggressive. Make them chase, and make them pay for chasing. Poker is poker, after all. You’ll find 7 Card Stud to be quite enjoyable and you’ll become a more well-rounded poker player via your experience at the 7 Card Stud tables, and that your bonus completing will go much faster in the process.

Bonus Answer: What happens at an 8 seat 7 Card Stud table if everyone stays in until Seventh Street? Officially in this case Seventh Street is dealt as a community card. The ultimate irony for the Hold Em player, a flop at last!

The Reasons for Playing Poker

2009-05-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

Aside from just enjoying the game, why should anyone play poker for money? The answer is a blank for most people, and in a nutshell that is the reason some other people should play the game. Poker is a game where study, deliberately trying to improve and hard work pay off. There is no poker equivalent of taking golf lessons that make some aspect of your game better but that screw up those few things you currently do well. The only close parallel in the cumulative learning process involved in poker is something like once you learn how to successfully bluff you have to still maintain patience and not try to bluff every single hand.

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But beyond the most basic levels, improving as a poker player is usually quite difficult. Evidence of this can be found by observing the mass of players. It is really easy to say "going on tilt is bad, so don't do it." But not one player in ten manages to keep tilt to a trivial level. Somehow in the rest of their lives people are able to handle equally obvious concepts: don't lick frozen lampposts; don't put your hand on a stove burner; don't wear your clothes inside-out. But when it comes to poker, they simply can't prevent their anger, machismo and stubbornness from governing their play.

But more to the point, most players simply refuse to accept that poker is a difficult, complex game that requires much from them.

Believing in ghosts and fairies is easier than doing the hard work needed to win. Saying "change the deck" is easier than studying opponent's tendencies and adapting your play to their strengths and weaknesses. Crying, whining, blaming dealers, flinging cards or saying the game is rigged, these exist in the poker world because they are easier to do than studying and having patience.

Even among somewhat more thoughtful players, the lust for shortcuts overwhelms them. They crave easy answers to complex problems. They want to be told an answer rather than learn it -- despite the fact that phantom knowledge does not bring success.

Play Poker for MoneyOne common question shortcut players ask about Texas Holdem or Omaha is: "what percentage of hands should I play before the flop?" This is akin to asking: "what should I wear?" Well, for what? Are you going to a wedding or a digging a ditch? Are you in the Amazon or the Antarctic? The question alone isn't just pointless, it's ridiculous.

Some games are loose and aggressive; others are tight and passive. Some games feature seven solid opponents and one looney-tune donator. Then you get to more specific circumstances. The percentage of hands you play third under the gun with a super-tight rock in the big blind will be different that the percentage of hands you play when an outstanding loose-aggressive player is in the big blind.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not talking about "it depends." I'm talking about the process of poker. Each circumstance and judgment you face in a poker game is an opportunity to exercise thoughtful decision-making and data processing.

And so, you should play poker for money if you like to do that!

Players who want to follow the rules or thought-processes set out by others, even outstanding players, are not playing poker so much as pretending to play poker. Poker is a battle of wits, intellects, of nerve. In short, winning poker is a challenge. Play poker to win if you like a challenge (and not coincidentally, money).

Players who seek to avoid challenge do not succeed. Sir Edmund Hillary did not take a helicopter to the top of Mount Everest. Great explorers explore, and so do great poker players.

The History of Bingo

2009-02-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

In the U.S., bingo was originally called "beano". It was a country fair game where a dealer would select numbered discs from a cigar box and players would mark their cards with beans. They yelled "beano" if they won.

The game's history can be traced back to 1530, to an Italian lottery called "Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia," which is still played every Saturday in Italy. From Italy the game was introduced to France in the late 1770s, where it was called "Le Lotto", a game played among wealthy Frenchmen. The Germans also played a version of the game in the 1800s, but they used it as a child's game to help students learn math, spelling and history.

When the game reached North America in 1929, it became known as "beano". It was first played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe renamed it "bingo" after he overheard someone accidentally yell "bingo" instead of "beano". He hired a Columbia University math professor, Carl Leffler, to help him increase the number of combinations in bingo cards. By 1930, Leffler had invented 6,000 different bingo cards. [It is said that Leffler then went insane.]

A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approached Lowe about using bingo as a means of raising church funds. When bingo started being played in churches it became increasingly popular. By 1934, an estimated 10,000 bingo games were played weekly, and today more than $90 million dollars are spent on bingo each week in North America alone.

Online Bingo Games

2009-02-26T10:03:00.000-08:00

Guide to Winning at Online Casino & Poker - Best places to play, best strategies to win. Player ratings & reviews of top online casinos & pokers with highest payouts & biggest bonuses.

The online bingo game has changed so much since it first made its way onto the internet way back in 1996, as there are now so many more online bingo sites for you to choose from and many more different variations of the UK online bingo game. When online bingo first hit the web your choice of bingo game play was very limited to just traditional 90 ball bingo, since then we have seen the introduction of 75 pattern ball bingo, then 80 ball bingo or shutter board / Scandinavian bingo as it is more commonly called, 30 ball speed bingo and just lately party cash line bingo and joker jackpot bingo have also launched at online bingo sites.

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