Casino

So, dear readers, I’ve written about roulette, blackjack, and which games to enjoy on the go. But before you get to playing all these wonderful games, you first need to pick the perfect online casino.
Finding a good casino is hard. Not because there aren’t enough of them. Quite the contrary, there’s a jaw-dropping number of online casinos operating in the UK alone. And, as if that didn’t make things hard enough, new ones are popping up by the minute. Well, not literally, but you get my point.
So, if finding a good casino is hard, how do you go about finding the best one? First of all, I need to make something clear. I’m not going to give you the names of the top 3 casinos to play at. Because my preferences are mine, not yours, and I can’t tell you which the best online casino for you is. What I can do is make you aware of the steps you need to take in order to identify it yourself. So, here we go:

Step 1: Figure Out What’s Important to You

Do you like playing slots? Would you appreciate having a practice mode on the games? Are you going to play mostly on your mobile devices? These are all points to consider before you even start shopping for a good online casino. What good would it do to you if a slots fan told you to go to their favourite operator if you don’t plan on playing any slots? Think about it, maybe even write your top 5 interests down.

Step 2: Get as Much Info as Possible

As much as I’d like to advise you to try out a heap of casinos, I know that’s impractical. There’re just too many and the chances to come across a bad one is too big. Instead, find an informative site written and regularly updated by experts and read what they have to say. It’s their job to know which casinos deserve your time and money. I’ve found www.bestukcasino.org.uk to be particularly helpful.

Step 3: Give the Shortlisted Operators a Try

When you feel confident with the new information, pick 3 or 5 or even 10 casinos and really devote your time to them. Register, get whatever no deposit bonuses you can and play the games. Play the ones you love but also note other games that you might come to like. Are there enough variations of your favourite game?

Step 4: Pick Your Best Casinos and Stick with Them

Now that you know what you like and where to get it, stick with your favourite casinos because they are the best ones for you. These may be 3 or 5. Or, maybe, just maybe, there’s a single operator out there offering everything you want and need. It’s all individual.

Step 5: Keep an Eye on the Novelties

Once you’ve decided on the best casinos for you, do stay with them, but also keep an eye on other possibilities. Things change, casinos start offering bigger bonuses or better conditions. They add new software providers to their portfolios or make other significant changes to the games they offer. For example, I wasn’t impressed with the live casino at Betway but they switched to Evolution Gaming and it made all the difference. You never know – the next best thing might be just around the corner.

Who doesn’t love blackjack, seriously? It’s one of the most popular casino games world wide, and with very good reason! It’s fun, it’s exciting, and it’s the closest we’ve got to Wild West-style shoot-out duels that don’t involve actually going out and murdering somebody. That nerve-wracking moment when you’re waiting for the dealer to hand you your next card so you can see if you’ll be able to get home the money or if you’ll lose it all is what gambling’s all about, condensed down into a single instant, and it is fantastic! Movies have been made about blackjack, many, many books have been written, mentalists like Derren Brown have made shows about winning at blackjack… It seems like this particular game, way more than, say, slots or roulette, has overtaken the public consciousness. Most recently, blackjack has begun invading even the final frontier! No, not space, though I’m sure that cosmic casinos are only a few hundred years away now. I’m talking about the Internet!

Yes, it only takes a look at a site like http://www.realmoney-blackjack.com/ to see just how deep the online blackjack rabbit hole goes. Thousands upon thousands of people have switched from playing physical blackjack to its online counterpart, while hundreds more are laughing at their decision. But who is right, in this case? It’s actually very hard to say, considering just how different the two forms of blackjack are. For casual players, the online version is definitely superior in practically every way. First and foremost, it provides the convenience that all online… things (be they casino or otherwise) offer us – constant 24/7 availability wherever you are. You don’t need to go to a casino and plan out your night around a game of blackjack – you can open up your phone on the bus or carpool to work and play a hand with no issue! It’s the same reason why Netflix will always be better than your local cinema – everything is better in the comfort of your own home.

On the other hand, if you’re a professional card-counting player, then I’ve got some bad news for you – your tricks aren’t going to really work online. Most games where you play against an AI have certain safeguards in place to make sure you can’t count cards even if you wanted to, and while playing against a live dealer they’ll usually shuffle the deck after each hand to keep the odds of you winning low (and even if they don’t, live casino games typically go so slowly that counting cards isn’t even worth it). But wait! Believe it or not, some online casino games have better odds than physical casinos! It’s all about exploiting loopholes in the AI, some of which are deliberate and some of which are accidental (though those usually get patched out pretty quickly). Then again, you’ve got to keep in mind that even all loopholes can’t make up for a good old night out with friends playing blackjack!

At the end of the day, the decision on whether you should stay at home and play online blackjack or go out to a casino is yours, as both options have pros and cons. My advice? Do both! I mean, it’s not like there’s a law saying you only need to take one side here! There’s plenty of blackjack to go around, am I right?

The end of March is always a good moment to look back and draw some conclusions for the first quarter of the year. It has been a rough start for the bookmakers in Britain with the new taxations introduced on free bets. Those will come into play starting from the 1st August next year but have already been officially confirmed. Thankfully though, few weeks back, major players as Ladbrokes and William Hill saw their shares rising with traders explaining the peak with the British budget announced and the fact that it did not unveil any new taxes on the so called “sin-sector”. Ladbrokes’ shares rose as well with a huge 8.8% (before settling back to the still positive 4.9% higher). William Hill’s and Paddy Power/Betfair shares rose respectively 3.3% and 1.7%.

Still, maybe it is too early to celebrate – the Gross Gaming Yield (GGY) bands for gaming duty for UK casino operators are set to be increased for the accounting periods starting today or after (1st April 2016). The measure was confirmed even though it is still not clear what the increase will be precisely. At present, it is set in the Finance Act of 2015 and ranges between 15% and 50%, with 15% being paid for the first £2.3m GGY. For the next £1.6m operators owe the crown 20%, 30% for the £2.8m mark, 40% on £5.6m and 50% on the remainder.

It has not yet been revealed what the specific increases will be, but the changes will be made clear in the Finance Bill 2016 and will be in line with retail price index for accounting periods starting on or after 1 April. The bookies liable to pay that duty will have to go through the trouble of submitting not one but two returns – on for the interim period (3 months after the introduction) and another full one at the end of the 6 months accounting period. Just to clarify, all this applies to casino operators only. On the bright side, tax rates are said to not be expecting an increase in the near future, so let’s hope there will not be any nasty surprises there.

In other news, Sky Bet announced they are opening a graduate software academy. Pretty smart move if you ask me. They are investing £1.5 million in a center based in Leeds, UK, and a team of 25(ish) young and talented minds will join the academy in July this year. Andy Burton (Sky Betting & Gaming CTO) commented “By investing in graduates now we hope to play our part in ensuring there’s a pipeline of tech talent in Yorkshire. I look forward to welcoming the first grads in the summer.”

The Swedish Yggdrasil Gaming scooped “Software Supplier of the Year” for its futuristic unique games. They bagged the award on the 9th International Gaming Awards. It is their first one and they gladly accepted it. The company just rolled out officially on the UK market after being granted a license last December. They already have some major UK operators under their belt. Way to go!

Aaaand to finish on a positive, Titanbet got themselves a new brand ambassador – Liverpool legend John Barnes. He will be joining the team for the 2015-16 football season, much to the happiness of his fans. John has an official exclusive Titanbet blog where he is giving advice and commentaries on the world of online sports gambling. Pretty fun.

So, that’s it for now, you’ve been updated, feel free to come back for more soon!

If you’re here, that means you love online gambling at least as much as I do. There’s no two opinions about it within our not-too-small community – online gambling rocks! Going out to a physical casino can be very fun when you’ve got a nice company to come with you and a few hundred bucks you’d be perfectly willing and able to spend on gambling, but if those conditions aren’t met then you’ve got a bit of a problem. Going to the casino by yourself, without a good amount of cash, sucks. It feels like an incomplete experience, like you’re missing something that you were intended to have. That’s why online gambling is so great – you can have only a tenner in your credit card and, say, fifteen minutes of spare time after the kids are off to bed, and you can still have a very complete experience playing slots, bingo or placing bets on your favorite sports.

But online gambling can be a double edged sword. On one hand, there’s plenty of accounts of people who made it big by playing online casino. Just a few days ago, a woman from Scotland managed to win £2.5 million by playing an online slot. Just like the example above, the woman, who is a teacher and a single mom, was bored on Valentine’s Day and decided to play an online slot. This would’ve never happened if online gambling wasn’t a big thing. You can’t exactly just go to the nearest casino on Valentine’s day, abandoning a seven-year-old child alone so you can play slots, that kind of thing simply doesn’t happen, or if it does, the authorities should definitely be involved. And yet thanks to online casino this ordinary woman managed to become a millionaire. This isn’t even the only case, or, hell, not even the only case this year – last month, a man won the £2.2 million progressive jackpot for an online slot, breaking records and taking names.

The number of people who made it big (I’m not talking millions, just thousands) from online slots is gigantic. The online slot industry is one worth billions of dollars, so it’s really amazing to think that it’s capable of giving out so much money and still remain highly profitable. But that’s because not everybody wins. A few days ago, the news that the creator of NYPD Blue – an immensely popular police procedural which ran for 12 seasons – was facing bankruptcy after spending his fortune of 100 million dollars on gambling, including sports betting and online casino. David Milch had to sell off his mansions and estates and move in to live on a $40-per-week budget in order to curb his horrible gambling addiction. The very same institution which had changed the lives of so many people by making them millionaires brought an actual millionaire, and a very creative person, to ruin.

I suppose that the message I was trying to narrate with this article is that one shouldn’t be swayed by the messages of positivity overflowing the web. Online gambling is great as long as it’s done in moderation. Try to be more like the Scottish mom and less like David Milch. Striving for the jackpot is great, but if you feel like you’re way in over your head and may be headed towards an addiction, don’t forget to seek help while you still can.

If you search his name in Google Images you’ll see pictures of him partying with Usher, Alicia Keys, Paris Hilton and Ludacris… He’s also been associated with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Britney Spears, Robert De Niro, Jamie Foxx, Kanye and Kim, Lindsay Lohan, Chris Brown, Busta Rhymes, to mention but a few. He founded a production company which financed one of the biggest movies of the past few years – The Wolf of Wall Street. His name is Low Taek Jho and he popped out of thin air in 2009.

What made the tabloids notice Jho Low, as he’s otherwise known, was that he was dropping crazy money in New York and Las Vegas clubs, surrounding himself with celebrities and buying and renting extravagantly expensive condos. He’s also known to be the owner of one of the most expensive art collections in the world containing a Picasso that he bought for the mind-blowing $141 million. As you can imagine a big spender like this one is a perfect fit to the Las Vegas high roller and party scene. If you too consider yourself to be a big spender but Vegas is too far away from where you’re residing, then I would suggest you also visit highstakesroulette.co.uk for all your high limit casino needs.

But, as sweat as all this sounds, nowadays it’s actually not only fun and parties for Jho Low. His extravagant lifestyle and close connections to the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak led to him being entangled into the investigation of the Malaysia’s Government Investment Fund (1MDB). The fund is actually being investigated for financial fraud and money laundering simultaneously by the United States, Singapore, Hong King and Switzerland. Many of Low’s bank accounts have been frozen for the purposes of the investigation, as he’s reported to have been acting as a financial advisor to the Malaysian Prime Minister who also happens to be the head of the advisory board of the 1MDB. The investigations were actually motivated by the fact that close to $700 million dollars of the 1MDB money ended up into Razak’s private account while the organisation itself failed to pay $11 billion to its creditors.

In the midst of this scandal Jho Low claims that he has nothing to hide and that the allegations of his involvement in any type of criminal activities are false. It certainly doesn’t help, though, that the party boy businessman has started selling some of his high-valued assets fast. Among the latest sales are three precious artworks amounting to a total of $54 million – a Picasso, a Monet and a Basquiat. What will happen to the tabloid’s favourite party boy? We’ll stand by to see.

If you know anything at all about casino, you should be well aware that mathematics play a gigantic role in whether or not you’d win anything at all when playing. Whether it’s online casino or physical, winning is all about maximizing your odds and betting just the right amount in order to win the maximum amount of money every time. While there is a certain amount of luck involved, more in some games (such as slots) and less in others (blackjack says hi), generally it’s a combination of odds, skill and luck that can make every casino game your—Wait, what do you mean I can’t use naughty words in this article? Sigh… Editors, am I right? Well, let’s say it like that – if you properly understand how the odds of every casino game works, you’re going to be one step closer to deciphering it and making the best of it!

Slots

Slots are the most luck-based casino game out of all of them, so there’s really not a whole lot you can do to influence their behavior. A common strategy among slot players is to bet low, but not too low. This works especially well in jackpot slots or slots with bonus rounds (which, let’s face it, are the only ones you should be playing), as the big wins you’re going to be scoring aren’t going to be coming from when the symbols match up, but rather when you manage to activate the bonus game, which in a lot of cases nets you a whole lot of cash, maybe even a huge jackpot! So the best way to increase your odds is to bet low, but often. Another thing you should be looking out for is the so-called RTP – Return to Player percentage. Every slot has been programmed to keep some of the money invested into it and disperse the rest randomly among the players, so slots with a higher RTP are naturally going to be increasing your odds. 96% and up should be enough!

Roulette

Roulette is the easiest game to tell the odds of, since… Well, they’re right there on the board! Bet on a number and it’s a one in 37 (or, well, one in 38, depending on whether you’re playing European or American roulette) chance that you may win. Bet on a color, or whether the number will be even or odd, and you have a 50/50 chance of winning. Simple as that! While there are several complicated strategies about how you can maximize your winnings in roulette, there’s one that I always use. I pick a number (say, 26 black), then I’d bet a small amount of money on it, for example, 2-3 chips. Then I’d bet a much bigger amount (say, 5-6 chips) on the color of my lucky number, in this case, black. In that case, I have a 50/50 chance of scoring some profit while also leaving myself a smaller chance to win something much more.

Blackjack

Blackjack is extremely complicated to talk about in terms of odds… There are entire sites dedicated to calculating and determining blackjack probabilities, entire books written on the subject. In reality, it would take a mathematical genius to figure the odds out without card counting, which is illegal in many casinos and not applicable to online ones. If you count the cards, then you can relatively easily determine which cards are coming, when you should bet and when you should fold, because at the end of the day there’s only so many variations and possibilities left in the deck, but if you want to keep everything legal things start becoming much more difficult. To make a long story short, the odds are determined by the cards you have, namely – what their values are. The closer you are to 21, and the lower the values of the cards in your hand is, the higher the chance of going bust.