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Online Slots Terminology

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Are you a new slots games player? Not sure you are getting the right grip of the game? It is a well known fact that casino games tend to have their own slang and terminology, it is always important to get familiar with them in order to play the game wisely. Slots have their very own terms as well, and as a player it is imperative that you know it by heart. We have created a small list of the most common online slots terminology to help you understand the game a little better.

The terminology we are including on this article could come in handy for every type of player: beginners and veteran players might encounter a couple of things that they were probably not so familiar with and improve their game a little. Let’s take a look at our online slots terminology “dictionary:

Coin size: This does not refer to the size of the coin as well; you don’t really use coins to play online slots. This is referring to the amount you want to bet per line on your game.

Credit meter: This is a little screen that tells you how much credit you have to play with. It is more often seen on land based slot machines; however it is also used on the online slot versions in some cases.

First deposit bonus: If you are playing at an online casino for the first time, they will provide you with a sign up bonus which increases the amount of money you will be playing with.

Max Bet: The maximum bet you are allowed to play on each spin.

Onesies: Players that who bet only one coin per spin.

Pay-line: These are the directions or ways in which the symbols can be lined up in order to get a winning combination. These can be tricky on online slot machines that have many paylines; it is recommended that you check how are the pay lines on each game you play for the first time before hand.

Payout: When you are playing at any slot machine, winnings pay out in relation to the amount of money that is put in, stated as a percentage (payout percentage).

Progressive Jackpot: The top jackpot that grows progressively as more players bet on the game. This is something very interesting: Slot machines are often linked together among several online casinos which mean more players put in more money in and create all together a much larger combined jackpot.

Static Jackpot: A jackpot that is pre-determined and doesn’t change.

Scatter Symbol: These are symbols specifically related to a game. How they work I when two or more of them appear anywhere on your reels, which means a bonus game is activated or features free spins.

Wild Symbol: This is a term was stolen from Poker: as you probably know, in Poker certain cards in the deck can substitute any other card make a winning combination, it works the same in online slots. The Wild Symbol can substitute for any other symbol (except for Scatter symbols) and help you win.

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Pay outs at Online Casino: how do they work?

Monday, March 26th, 2012

Have you ever tried to play at an online casino? If not, you probably have lots of questions before actually trying it out. Perhaps you would like to try online casino poker tournaments but are not really sure on how they work, how do you join, but most importantly: how do you cash out if you win?

Of course it is important to know that when you go ahead and do an online casino deposit, you are basically doing the exact same thing you would at a land based casino: using some of your cash to play a game. Of course, at a land based casino you will probably get your winnings paid off to you right away, while casinos online work a little different. Here is a quick online casino guide to help you understand how pay outs work on these websites, how long will you have to wait to get your winnings into your hands and some of the reasons why this process is a little bit longer than one would enjoy:

It is very important to keep in mind that each casino will probably have their own rules and terms when it comes to casino withdrawals and that you need to make sure you fully understand those at the time you want to request a payout.  At The Virtual Casino, we have our own way to handle everything: from your online casino deposit to your cash out goes through a very secure process. This is how it works:

To be able to withdraw money, the first step is to log into your casino account and clicking on the cashier button, this will take you into your main screen, look for the WITHDRAW MONEY button and click on it.

There are several withdrawal methods that will immediately display, in our case we offer: Click2pay, MG Cash, Neteller, Overnight Express (Check), UsemyWallet, Wire Transfer or WU Cash. It is important to keep in mind that most cash out methods will charge you a fee for their service. If you are not familiar with these fees, you can contact the Customer Service Department at The Virtual Casino and they will give you all the pertinent information.

After you have requested your pay out and have chosen a payment method, the request is submitted to the Withdrawals Department where your personal information will be checked out to make sure no one is trying to use your account in a fraudulent way, also, there are different rules regarding withdrawals: if for example you used a bonus, a free chip or a coupon code, they all have different cash out rules, which will be verified by the Withdrawals agents. If the withdrawal request does not meet the requirements, it will be denied within 72 hours after the request has been made.

In the case that the withdrawal does meet all cash out requirements, the approval takes within 10-15 business days of the date the withdrawal was requested. The reason why this takes so long is mostly because all the personal information needs to be verified in detail. After you request is approved, you will receive notification within 48 hours of the approval. At this moment you are required to verify all personal information one last time and will be given the choices of current payout options.

For each type of withdrawal request, there is certain documentation involved and the player need to comply with all of it in order for the withdrawal will be processed.

Another important thing to remember is that there are weekly cash out limits, in the case of The Virtual Casino, we have a max cash-out of $2,000.00 per week, however depending on your player status these can be higher, for example if you are a VIP player.

When will I finally get my money?

In most cases, payments are made within 7 –10 business days of approval; yet this is not an exact estimate as you can see and there is the possibility of a slight delay every once in a while, these mostly because of the banking issues currently undergoing gambling activities. Depending on the payment method you chose, the payment dates may also vary.

So now that you have a clearer idea on how do casino pay outs work, and have a better sense of the security methods used to make sure you receive your money, you might feel a bit less hesitant about doing a deposit to play, don’t you?

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Blackjack Winning Strategies

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

MC Frontalot Dealing BlackjackPerhaps you had not heard that there is such a thing as professional Blackjack teams. Well, let me tell you there are and they are groups of professional blackjack players that operate altogether employing advanced gaming techniques to create a positive expectation.

Blackjack teams expect that for every $100 wagered, they will get a return that is greater than $100. Some of the techniques they use are card counting, shuffling tracking and hole carding. They may only bet on low stakes blackjack tables or they may pick the riskier bets.

One of the biggest Blackjack teams out there is the MIT Blackjack Team. They were not the first to operate as a team but they are famous because they have been operating together for over 12 years. The group was formed after the university held a mini-course called “How to Gamble if You Must” and JP Massar was absolutely fascinated by it and decided to start the team.

At first, he was not very successful as a gambler but in 1980 he met Bill Kaplan, who had been running a successful Blackjack team for three years in Las Vegas. Kaplan became MIT’s team advisor and fixed some fundamental mistakes they were making, which was mainly using wrong card counting techniques.

The conditions to form the MIT Blackjack Team were that the team would have formal management procedures, a dedicated card counting and betting system, strict training, player approval processes and meticulous tracking of all casino play.

The team was formally established on August 1st, 1980 and they invested $89,000 and gathered 10 players. The members managed to earn about $80 per hour and they got an annualized return of 250% of their investment.

By 1989 the team had 70 active members but it was then when everyone began to lose interest. As years went by it became more difficult to manage the team and to get new members, original founders Massar and Kaplan tried to restructure the team renaming it Strategic Investments. However, casinos around the US started banning players in the team after figuring out their techniques and the team was dismantled on Dcember 31st, 1993.

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Calculating the House Edge in Craps

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Calculating House Edge on CrapsToday, I will continue with my past article which was about how to calculate the house edge when playing Craps. As I said, the same method that we used for the rest of the games cannot be applied with Craps because most of the commonly based bets in Craps are not decided in a single roll, unlike Roulette in which all bets are decided in one single spin.

In theory, when it comes to Craps a player can keep on rolling for a whole hour without the Pass Bet being settled if neither the point nor 7 is rolled again any time. In this case, the Pass Bet is known and the player is able to estimate that they can make 60 rolls per hour but they cannot estimate the expected loss per hour. On the other hand, if the player is given the value of the house edge per roll for the Pass Bet they will be able to compute the expected hourly loss as in the same way as I explained in my last article.

Luckily for Craps players, the house edge per roll can be computed using advanced statistics to determine the average number of rolls required to complete each bet in Craps. Universally, the house edge for the Pass Bet is 3.38. You must notice that what this means is that if a player places the Pass Bet 1,00 times and each time the number of rolls it took to complete the bet is recorded, they will find that the average is very close 3.38. After this, to determine the house edge per roll, we will divide the house edge by the average number of rolls required to complete the bet.

For example the Pass Bet in Craps has a house edge of 1.41% so the house edge per roll is 1.41%/3.38 which means that if a player wagers $100 every time on a fresh Pass Bet they can expect to lose about $0.42 on each roll and on 60 rolls (hypothetically done in one hour) he can expect to lose $25.50.

This is a list of the house edges per roll for some of the other bets in Craps:*

Don’t Pass: 0.40%
Place 6, 8: 0.46%
Place 5, 9: 1.11%
Place 4, 10: 1.67%
Big 6, 8: 2.78%
Hard 4, 8: 2.78%

*Taken from CasinoAdvisor.com

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Estimating the House Edge for Casino Games

Monday, June 7th, 2010

When a player wants to estimate the expected loss per hour in any game, they must be able to estimate how many events take place in an hour. In this way the player will be able to determine what is called the “house edge” which is the proportion of each bet that the house expects to take in the long run. It is important to know this because it will give you a better idea of how to manage your bankroll and estimate your losses and possible winnings.

To make this clearer let me give you an example, the Pass Bet in Craps has a house edge of 1.41% which means that if a player wagers on this bet continuously, for every $100 wagered the house expects to get $1.41 and the players can expect to get $98.59 back.

In order to estimate how much you would lose in a game during one hour you can easily compute this from the house edge per bet. To be able to do this the player needs to estimate how many events take place in an hour. In roulette the player needs to know how many spins he can get in an hour and to do that you can easily play online casino games for ten minutes and log the number of spins you get and extrapolate from there.

Once you have done that you can know that the house edge in European Roulette at any casino is always 2.70%, so say there are 60 spins in an hour (hypothetically) and a player wagers $100 in every bet, he can expect to lose $2.70 per bet and with 60 bets in an hour he will expect to lose $162 to the house in one hour.*

This method works for almost every online casino game, the only exception is when you play Craps but we will look at hot to calculate the house edge for this game and other important notes.

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When will I Hit the Jackpot? – How to Wager on Progressive Jackpots

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Players who wish to make some money playing progressive jackpots should pay close attention to some basic strategic points that will enable them to achieve their goal. When you play progressive jackpots your strategic approach needs to be very detailed and there are some key points that you should always take into account.

A very important thing is that when you invest in progressive jackpots the funds should be invested in different places to guarantee small steady returns that will add up with time. Some other funds can be put at high risk because you must ve aware that a progressive jackpot does not guarantee returns, however, if you balance the way in which you wager the money you will have positive results.

The reason why you should spread the money in various jackpots is because if you wager only on highly volatile large payout jackpots that are hit once a year you may be stuck wagering all of your life without ever hitting any. However, if you limit yourself to wagering only on the frequent but small payout progressive jackpots you could be missing out on the opportunity of a life changing hit. Currently, online casinos like The Virtual Casino recognize that players have a need to balance their wagering and provide both kinds of progressive slots.

At this point, you may be wondering how much money should you put into both types of progressive jackpots. Well, there is no simple answer for that but I will try to give my best recommendation. As a player you must be able to assess your own risk taking propensity. This is by no means simple but something you can consider is that if you are wagering mainly for fun and small amounts of money you should go anead and enjoy the slot machines that hit more frequently and your bankroll will grow. On the other hand, if you just made a big win or have a large bankroll then you can wager larger amount on the high payout jackpots, however I strongly advice that you do not depend on assuming that you will hit it and your life will change.

Finally, my advice is that you make responsible decisions like a responsible gambler.

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Checks as a Withdrawal Method

Sunday, May 16th, 2010


A withdrawal option that is getting less and less popular everyday are checks. Even at brick and mortar casinos this option is becoming obsolete. However, it is an available option and some people may experience difficulties with other methods and might have to use this to receive payments.

Checks are not a common deposit option at casinos and they have to be accounted for manually and have to be phisically deposited at banks. They also take a while to clear and with the cost of labor and the time they consume this option is uneconomical. When online casinos accept payments by checks they charge a very high percentage and it can take up to 10 days for the money to reach the casino.

The issue is that often to make withdrawals you have to use checks because they cannot use their credit cards to do so. Also when players use vouchers or prepaid cards they cannot do withdrawals through those methods.

Online casinos rarely process the check payments in house, this function is often outsourced to a fully owned subsidiary or an independent processor. The online casino transfers the total amount to be remitted to the account of the payment processor and provides the details of what amounts are to be paid to whom. The checks are then issued by the payments processor.

This system is completely functional in countries where online gambling is legal because everyone, even the banks, know that they are receiving the money from online casinos.However, in countries in which online gambling is illegal because the banks are not allowed to process payments from online gambling processors.

The processor cannot declare where the funds come from and they have to give a wrong declaration like they are processing payroll payments and this has a high risk. In the last one year several processors have been caught by the federal law enforcement agencies. Personally, I think that checks are not an attractive option, especially in countries where online gambling is illegal. Hopefully, the US will not be in that list soon.

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Can I Really Profit From Online Gambling?

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

We have been talking about the reasons as to why online gambling is enjoyable. One of them that I am sure stood up to you was the fact that you can profit from this entertaining activity. Currently, online casinos have become extremely popular, even more popular than brick and mortar casinos. A reason as to why this has happened is because online gambling is a more convenient way to profit from the comfort of your own home.

What can be better than making money from your house? Everybody dreams of a home-based ob, but online gambling is not a job, it is a fun activity that can give you money. However, sometimes players are not so sure of why online gambling is a good way to profit and most players wonder at some point what their real chances of winning money are.

To be honest, it is not that simple to make a lot of money in casinos. It can be difficult and it might take you some time to learn how to be successful and be one of those in the list of winners at your favorite casino. From my experience in playing at online casinos I would say that the biggest secret to profiting from online gambling is knowing the odds. Online gambling is a game based on chance so luck will play a big part in it, however if you know the odds of the game well and apply them properly on a regular basis you will notice that you will accumulate profits in the long run.

An online gambler who knows what they are doing can keep they calm even when witnessing huge losses because they know they have been controlling the odds and that it is only a matter of time for them to fall in their place. We also recommend that you are cautious, if you log into The Virtual Casino and realize you are losing too much money you are probably not keeping your serenity nor thinking about the game seriously, so back off and sometimes it is also good to log off.

A seasoned and experienced online gambler knows when to back off and they also know how to be real winners by controlling their odds. In the future, I will try to post on strategy and game odds to make this information available to our readers.

Then again if you find a day where everything is going wrong from the early morning, be cautious it is not a good day for you to weigh up any kind of gambling, especially online. It may lead to catastrophes only.

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The history of the Card Deck

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

People began playing cards many centuries ago. All the rules and strategies for the game have been developing since early times and most people do not realize that there is something called the history of card games. There have been defining moments in the history of cards that have caused the games to evolve. I read about this topic at the Casino Advisor and I thought it was interesting to learn it which is why I will share some of the history of playing card games with you today.

Historians have stated that the origin of card games is China. The Chinese royalty has records of playing card games from as early as the ninth century. Back then they played with four suits and the numbers 2 to 9 in each one of them. The merchants then brought card games from China to India, the Middle East and Egypt.

The card games we know today became developing in Egypt around the 12th century. The Egyptians started playing around the time of the Mamluk Sultans and the 52 cards deck came to be known as the Mameluke deck. The suits were polo sticks, coins, swords and cups and each one had ten number cards, they also had three court cards named King, Viceroy and Under Deputy and they had abstract designs and not people on them.

The earliest authentic reference to playing cards in the West is in Europe from Spain in 1371. After that date there have been a lot of references found in Europe. The first playing cards were hand made from woodcuts and later from engravings. Cards began being mass printed later and the cards all across Europe were different with different designs, symbols and names. The suits as we know them today, spades, diamonds, clubs and hearts come from France in the 15th century. Ultimately the rest of Europe accepted the standardizes design anf the court cards were named King, Knight and Knave, later the Queen replaced the Knight.

In the 17th century the introduction of the indices at the corner came and it was important because cards could be recognized without spreading them wide and could be held with one hand. This was when the Knave was replaced by the Jack, because following the indices lead to confussion between the King (K) and the Knive (Kn).

In the 18th century came the design of reversible count cards. All the way until then the court cards were designed as full length figures. Some players would turn the court cards to make them upright and this often revealed the nature of the card. With the reversible court cards this problem was solved. Card games were also being played in America at the time and the Joker was invented here around 1870.

Find more about Card Games here

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Live Dealer Feature Gains Popularity in the Industry

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

eCOGRA recently announced that they have started accrediting companies which provide live dealer services. eCOGRA has a very rigorous live dealer specific inspection and the first company to fulfill all requirements was Evolution Gaming and they received the Certified Live Dealer Seal.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the live dealer I will give a brief explanation about it. Live dealer is a new feature that some online casinos are starting to provide to their players. Players are able to watch a real, live dealer through a webcam function who will be dealing the cards in their game. This is an attempt to make the online casino gaming experience more realistic and instead of having a machine generate the numbers, a human being does it and you can watch them do it from your computer at home.

The eGAP requirements for live dealer format cover both hardware and software. They include tests for problem gambling and dispute facilities, anti-money laundering systems, staff training, operator probity, player information security, staff access to sensitive areas, the retention of video recordings of all sessions, collusion controls and overall game statistical performance on the roulette, baccarat and blackjack games offered. Another one of the main issues with the live dealer feature is that it does not allow as much rapidness as an RNG would. However, it is faster than a brick and mortar casino but still has limitations when it comes to speed.

So far, players have responded positively to live dealers but it is not considered a must in online casinos because it still presents a lot of problems, like the ones mentioned above. We encourage you to check it out and decide if it is the right thing for you, I personally did not enjoy it and I prefer the classic format of online casino gaming.

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