Playing Blackjack At Online Casinos (Strategy Guide Pt.3)
Posted by: alugoool : Category: Strategies for Blackjack“When a gambler picks up a pack of cards or a pair of dice, he feels as though he has reduced an unmanageable world to a finite, visible and comprehensive size.”
Source: Annabel Davis-Goff, The Literary Companion to Gambling
The actual experience of playing online casinos is quite different from that of playing at their land based equivalents. The first, and most notable difference is that the Internet playing environment does not have the hectic and vibrant atmosphere of the offline casinos (though the software does try to recreate this to a degree with added music and audience applause). This difference can be an asset, or liability, depending upon your own playing preferences for whilst you are less likely to be disturbed by other players, free alcoholic drinks or any other of the usual casino perks to be had the general excitement and playing adrenaline is not to be enjoyed.
However as a serious gambling investor you may well prefer the lack of distractions as a chance to concentrate more fully upon your game. I certainly do. To start with you will need an un-pressurized environment to get to learn the system and to make un-rushed playing decisions.
Where to Play?
When you first take a look at the hugely diverse range of casinos available on the Internet today it is apparent that the first major obstacle is in deciding which is the right one to play. There are so many to choose from – not all of which are quite as kosher as the next!
A good way to find out what is available is to check out a casino directory site. There are many of them on the Internet and a quick submission to any popular search engine should reveal a whole list to get started with. You could begin at http://www.playhard.co.uk, which not only lists popular casino sites but also includes those with the best bonuses and payouts. In nearly every case these directories will have already evaluated a number of casinos. They will also have a great deal of feedback from their subscribers regarding their selections and so be uniquely placed to recommend those that they judge to be the best and most reliable.
By all means take a good look around at what casinos are on offer, however as I want you to get your playing career off to a good start I would initially recommend that you stick to the casinos that I personally recommend to you to begin with. These can be found in chapter 9 and have been found to be the best to use with the Goldhill Playing System. (I will also email you at regular intervals with other casinos that I feel to offer good playing opportunities).
Lets now take a deeper look at the online casinos and what they are about.
Tip: For more casino directory links visit Chapter 10 of this manual
More About Online Casinos
There are two main types of Blackjack games. The first is the Flash-based, on-site version which requires no downloads or installation to play. Quite frankly this type of game is not much thought of by serious Blackjack players.
The second type probably accounts for 98% of all Blackjack played and runs partly on your machine and partly on the casino’s server. In this manual I shall concentrate entirely upon this type of game, which are run by what are called `Software Engines’. Don’t worry too much about the term – it just means that behind the scenes there is some software that does all the calculating and number crunching work.
Software Engines
There are a half dozen or so popular software engines used at Internet casinos. At the moment Micro-
Gaming provides the most popular type of software but other major software development companies
include Real-Time Gaming, Boss Media and Cryptologic.
Whilst they all generate completely fair games they all generate their own particular style of casino
experience. It is very worthwhile to get to know them all and their little idiosyncrasies, playing operations and desktop layout.
Software Honesty
The first concern that most people have about playing any sort of software-based gambling game is the fairness of the software. After all it would be very easy for a clever computer programmer to create a program that could win consistently and you might never suspect it was a crooked game. On the question of honesty I have only ever been suspicious of a casinos’ software once and that was whilst trying out one of the lesser-known sites that was using it’s own software and of a type not referred to in this manual.
Other than that I have always been happy with the fairness of every casino’s software.
For a casino to use `bent’ software would be pointless – after all millions of people are queuing up to throw their hard-earned cash at them as it is – why jeopardize that by running the risk of getting a bad name for running a biased game. Further more any game with built-in bias would have a system and as the history of Blackjack shows somebody, somewhere always bends a system to their own ends. Once news of this got out onto the Internet the casino would end up bankrupt.
Fact: The software that drives online casinos are based upon a number crunching mechanism known as a `Random Number Generator’ – which really does all that it’s name describes. This is based upon a `root’ or `seed’ value that is changed according to purely spurious criteria.
In case you feel at all uneasy (and you have to accept that there will be times when the computer just seems to pre-empt your every move) most of the casino engines have been audited by independent assessors who monitor the results of millions of hands for any sort of bias or response patterns. As far as I know no software has yet to be revealed as crooked and so I believe that you can play any of the big casinos with complete confidence. Most operators including Microgaming and Boss have their random-number generator verified annually by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which gives you a high degree of surety and fairness.
That being said the actual implementation of that software is a different matter though. I often come across casinos that have tweaked or adjusted the software to such a point that from a professional gambler’s point of view they are simply just not worth playing. Typically this includes rules as limited options on doubling down, splitting of aces and the revealing of dealer’s Blackjacks.
Casino Payment Systems
The actual depositing and withdrawal of money from online casinos is a mystical science unto itself. I’ll try and clarify it as best I can here.
Basically a casino needs to get hold of a money deposit from you before you can start playing for real at their games. To fund your playing pot you could send them cash, a personal check, arrange a bank transfer but all these methods have their drawbacks. As an alternative all casinos prefer fast electronic payments and the now firmly established MasterCard/Visa credit-card system is perfect for this. All you have to do is sign up with a casino, get a credit card registered with them, arrange for a transfer of funds and await the money to be credited to your account so that you can play. This is usually done immediately or within a couple of hours of registering.
This approach sounds OK is theory but there can be problems associated with it. Firstly your credit card provider may block payments to an online casino, you may have to wait a while before you can play your game or you may have problems withdrawing by this method unless you can provide documentary evidence that you are the cardholder – and so it goes on. So much for instant cash transfers!
Fortunately there is a much more satisfactory process of initially funding your casino account and that is by using a third party payment processor. Here is a list of the most common ones that are endorsed by the majority of online casinos. I have included their URLs at the end of this manual.
ACH
Neteller
PaySpark
Citadel
Western Union
Each of these third-party processors work in different ways and the funding options that they offer varies according to your country of origin. As you get to know how all of these systems work you will soon work out the best way to get money into, and out of, your accounts
Tip: I recommend that you sign up with Neteller at https://www.neteller.com/ to begin with. This is the most universally accepted method of payments at casinos whilst offering the best range of funding and currency options. It also has it’s own ATM Debit card. This is invaluable for it means that you can get your winnings out of any one of many thousands of cash machines found anywhere in the world.
A Summary
And that is basically a run down of what you can expect to experience with online casinos. Space limits me from going to deeply into some of the technical aspects to them but so long as you stick to the `famous names’ casinos you can be assured a safe and painless game.
As well as email support most casinos offer good telephone 24/7 support so if you have any problems at all just contact the help line. The friendliness or helpfulness of the call center reveals a great deal about the nature of the casino itself and how keen it is on paying out!
Now let us move on to the free money that all online casinos offer as an inducement to join them.
