Online Sports Betting

Sports betting is the general activity of predicting sports results by making a wager on the outcome of a sporting event. Perhaps more so than other forms of gambling, the legality and general acceptance of sports betting varies from nation to nation. In North America, for example, sports gambling is generally forbidden except when associated with horse racing (though a few legal sports books exist in Nevada), while in many European nations, bookmaking (the profession of accepting sports wagers) is highly regulated, but not criminalized. Proponents of legalized sports betting generally regard it as a hobby for sports fans that increases their interest in particular sporting events, thus benefiting the leagues, teams and players they bet on through higher attendances and television audiences. Opponents fear that, over and above the general ramifications of gambling, it threatens the integrity of amateur and professional sport, the history of which includes numerous attempts by sports gamblers to fix matches, although proponents counter that legitimate bookmakers will invariably fight corruption just as fiercely as governing bodies and law enforcement do.

Types of bets

Aside from simple wagers--betting a friend that one's favorite baseball team will win its division, for instance, or buying a football "square" for the Super Bowl--sports betting is commonly done through a bookmaker. Legal sports bookmakers exist throughout the world (perhaps most notably in Las Vegas). In areas where sports betting is illegal, bettors usually make their sports wagers with illicit bookmakers (known colloquially as "bookies") and on the Internet, where thousands of online bookmakers accept wagers on sporting events around the world. (In the United States, the legality of Internet wagering is ambiguous, due to the fact that online bookmakers generally operate outside of the U.S. Many online bookmakers do not accept wagers from the U.S. due to these unresolved legal questions.) The bookmaker earns a commission or "vigorish" by regarding the money at risk as less than the size of the bet placed. A common line is a $110 bet on a fair coin which pays $210 to win and $0 to lose. On this line, it costs $220 to bet both sides of the same coin simultaneously, but the combined bet always pays $210. The $10 loss constitutes the vig. There are opposing positions on whether the winner or loser can be construed as paying the vig, but this debate is not especially meaningful. If you view $110 to win $210 on a fair coin as $100 at risk, then it will appear as if the loser pays the vig; if you view the same line as $110 at risk, then it will appear as if the winner pays the vig. It happens that standard practice among bookies is to adjust odds so the amount at risk remains constant from the winning side of the proposition, hence the common perception that the loser pays the vig. Vigs expressed as percentages suffer from the same perceptual bias. On the line as given in this example, for a fair coin, the bookie has an expectation of making $5 for each $110 bet placed, which is often divided out and expressed as 4.5% Odds on teams or opponents are quoted in terms of the favorite (the team that is expected to win, thus requiring a riskier wager) and the underdog.

Bookmakers generally offer two types of wagers on the winner of a sporting event: a straight-up or money line bet, or a point spread wager. Moneylines and straight-up prices are used to set odds on sports such as soccer, baseball and hockey (the scoring nature of which renders point spreads impractical) as well as individual vs. individual matches, like boxing. For these sports, bookmakers in Europe and Asia generally use straight-up odds, which are quoted based on a payout for a single bet unit; for example, a 2-1 favorite would be listed at a price of 1.50, whereas an underdog returning twice the amount wagered would be listed at a price of 3.00.

American bookmakers generally use moneylines, which are quoted in terms of the amount required to win $100 on a favorite, or the amount paid for a $100 bet on an underdog. The amount "won" in a bet is the net amount over and above the initial bet. If a person wins $200 on a bet of $100, the bookmaker actually pays the winner $300 (i.e. $200 plus the initial bet of $100).

For example, a baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs might have a moneyline on St. Louis (the favorite) at -200 and Chicago (the underdog) at +180. A bettor looking to take St. Louis must risk $200 for every $100 he wishes to win over and above the initial $200 bet. A person wagering on Chicago will win $180 for every $100 he bets.

The +180 moneyline on Chicago includes a 20 cent "dime line". Bookmakers generally use a "dime line" with moneylines to calculate the vigorish they receive on losing wagers. Without the 20 cent dimeline in the example above, the Chicago moneyline would be +200.

For favorites of -120 to -150, the difference between the favorite and underdog is 10 cents; i.e., the underdog to a -120 favorite is priced at +110. The discrepancy between prices rises for favorites of -160 or higher.

Unlike point spread bets, a moneyline wager requires only that the team wagered upon win the match. In sports such as baseball, where certain teams can be heavy favorites against weaker opponents (sometimes as much as -350 or higher), the moneyline system requires that a hefty sum be risked on the favorite, while enticing underdog players with a higher payout.

In sports such as basketball and American football, rather than varying the money odds (which can be substantial in lopsided matches), the point spread is used. A point spread wager typically requires a bettor to risk $110 to win $100, the extra $10 being the bookmaker's vigorish if the wager loses. However, bettors backing the favorite collect only if their team wins by more than a specific victory margin, which is set at the time of the wager. This is called "covering the spread". Similarly, underdog bettors can collect even when their team loses, as long as they win against the point spread by losing by fewer points than were quoted by the bookmaker. For example, suppose that a college football game between Oklahoma and Kansas had Oklahoma as a 27 point favorite (quoted as Oklahoma -27, or Kansas +27):

If Oklahoma defeats Kansas by more than 27 points, they have covered the spread and bettors on Oklahoma would receive $100 on a $110 bet. Kansas bettors lose the $110 they wagered.
If Kansas defeats Oklahoma, bettors on Kansas would receive $100 on a $110 bet. Oklahoma bettors lose the $110 they wagered.
If Kansas loses by less than 27 points, they have won against the spread. Bettors on both sides are then treated exactly as if Kansas had won the game.
If Oklahoma wins by exactly 27 points, the wager is called a "push", and neither side wins. Standard practice by U.S. bookmakers is to return the stakes of all bettors on the game in full. To prevent pushes and ensure that they receive their commission on losing wagers, bookmakers often set point spreads that include a half-point.
Another common wager available for sporting events involves predicting the combined total score between the competing teams in a game. Such wagers are known as "totals" or "over/unders." For example, the Oklahoma/Kansas football game described above might have a total of 55 points. A bettor could wager that both teams will combine for over 55 points, and play the "over." Or, she could predict that the score will fall under this amount, and play the "under." As with point spreads, bookmakers frequently set the totals at a number involving a half-point (i.e., 55.5), to reduce the occurrence of pushes.

In the United Kingdom, each-way golf betting is serviced by twenty or more bookmakers, some of which, including the larger UK and Irish bookmakers, bet in running. Before the tournament starts, bookies pay out on a quarter for the first five places, but the each way terms lesson throughout each and every five day tournament, with win-only markets usually available during the final round. Dead heats pay out a proportion of the win or each-way return.

Many bookmakers offer several alternative bets, including the following:

Proposition bets. These are wagers made on a very specific outcome of a match. Examples include guessing the number of goals each team scores in a soccer match, betting whether a wide receiver in a football game will net more or less than a set amount of total yardage, or wagering that a baseball player on one team will accumulate more hits than another player on the opposing team.
Parlays. A parlay involves multiple bets (usually up to 12) and rewards successful bettors with a large payout. For example, a bettor could include four different wagers in a four-team parlay, whereby he is wagering that all four bets will win. If any of the four bets fails to cover, the bettor loses the parlay, but if all four bets win, the bettor receives a substantially higher payout (usually 10-1 in the case of a four-teamer) than if he made the four wagers separately.
Run line, puck line or goal line bets. These are wagers offered as alternatives to straight-up/moneyline prices in baseball, hockey or soccer, respectively. These bets feature a fixed point spread that offers a higher payout for the favorite and a lower one for the underdog. For example, the above-described Cardinals/Cubs baseball game might offer a run line of St. Louis -1.5 (+100) and Chicago +1.5 (-120). A bettor taking St. Louis on the run line can avoid risking $200 to win $100 on the moneyline, but will collect only if the Cardinals win by 2 runs or more. Similarly, a run line wager on the Cubs will pay if Chicago loses by no more than a run, but it requires the bettor to risk $120 to win $100.
Future wagers. This bet predicts a future accomplishment by a team or player. One example is a bet that a certain NFL team will win the Super Bowl for the upcoming season. Odds for such a bet generally are expressed in a ratio of units paid to unit wagered. The team wagered upon might be 50-1 to win the Super Bowl, which means that the bet will pay 50 times the amount wagered if the team does so.

Bookmaking

Most people believe that bookmakers attempt to "balance" their action, by adjusting their prices so that they get the same amount of money on both sides of a game. Theoretically, the bookmaker's only financial interest in the bets it accepts is the vigorish it takes from losing wagers, and it simply wants to ensure that the amount of wagers on each side is equal. In reality, however, bookmakers attempt to maximize their bottom line. While having an exactly equal amount of money wagered on each contestant would guarantee themselves a profit and eliminate their risk, that won't necessarily maximize their bottom line. They can make more money when they accept bets at odds which are "inflated" from those which are likely to occur. So for example, if the majority of their customers are going to bet on a team regardless of the price, they will set the price as high as possible. This is called "shading" the line. Generally, the public prefers to back the favorite, and unsophisticated bettors often show up during large events such as the Final Four and the Super Bowl. Some bookmakers actually offer different prices to different customers, using past bets as an indicator of who the customer will bet on as a way of additionally increasing their potential profit.

With a match offering a point spread, however, bookmakers must be careful of moving the line too much. Assume, for example, that a large number of Oklahoma betters caused the line to be moved from 27 points all the way to 29 points. If Oklahoma won the game by 28 points, the bookmaker would have to pay both those who wagered that Oklahoma would win by 27 and those who took Kansas on the 29 point spread. Bookmakers refer to such an event as "being middled." This famously occurred in the 1979 Super Bowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys, which American bookmakers still remember as Black Sunday. For that game, bookmakers opened Pittsburgh as a 3.5 point favorite, and the line closed just before kickoff at Pittsburgh -4.5. Pittsburgh won the game 35-31, enabling both those who took the Steelers -3.5 and those who wagered on the Cowboys +4.5 to collect.

Sometimes, a point spread is set at an amount that equals a common margin of victory for a particular sporting event. For instance, American football games are often decided by 3 points (the amount awarded for a field goal) or 7 points (the amount awarded for a touchdown with a successful extra-point attempt). In the case of a football game where the favorite is -7, moving the line up or down would likely result in a middle if the favorite wins by exactly 7 points. In this situation, the bookmaker may choose to adjust the vigorish in response to unbalanced action, rather than move the point spread. If the 7 point favorite is getting the most wagers, a bookmaker may change the vigorish on that team from -7 (-110) to -7 (-120), and move the underdog to +7 (+100). Once this occurs, bettors looking to wager on the favorite must risk $120 for every $100 they wish to win, while underdog players will get even money for every dollar they wager.

A bookmaker's line can be influenced by one or several large wagers made on a match. Bookmakers pay particular attention to the bets of a professional sports gambler, commonly known within the industry as a "sharp" or "wiseguy." Some bookmakers will not accept bets from bettors they believe fit in this category. Professionals evade such efforts by hiring agents known as "beards" to place bets on their behalf. Groups of professionals who work together are known as a "syndicate." These syndicates will often place large wagers with several books simultaneously, causing the prices to move quickly. Observers refer to these fast line movements as "steam."

Conversely, bettors who are primarily recreational are referred to as "squares". Online, there are certain betting shops that cater more towards sharps and those toward squares. Shops that cater towards professionals generally have higher (or no) upper betting limits and offer lower vigorish, while making some of the money back on fees for withdrawals or minimum bets. Meanwhile, "square" shops generally have lower betting limits and offer more signup bonuses. In return, they charge the standard 11-to-10 vigorish, and offer worse moneylines than the "sharp" shops. In many of the minor sports, sharps make up the majority of bettors, while for large public sporting events such as the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship and the Super Bowl, recreational bettors make up almost 90% of the betting action at sportsbooks, and are the top betting events both in Nevada and online.

Because of how lines move quickly during sporting events, arbitrage betting is possible. Theoretically, this will guarantee a small profit of 3-6% when a person bets on one line at one shop and on the opposite line at another shop. However, a large sum of capital is required for the amount of reward, and great care must be exercised to avoid accidentally betting on the same side at both shops.

Arbitrage situations are commonly found during halftime and intermission periods, where there is a limited amount of time for each bookmaker to determine the line and accept bets. Arbitrage betting is also possible in the weeks and days prior to sporting events as betting lines, especially for American football, are generally set early in a given time period and then adjusted in reaction to betting patterns and other relevant information as the time of the game approaches. Savvy gamblers will sometimes be able to place an early bet using the initial line and a late bet using the later line and then hope that the actual result of the contest falls somewhere between the two bets, thus ensuring either a large win or zero losses.

With the advent of online gambling came odds comparison sites that highlighted arbitrage opportunities by displaying the realtime prices of a number of bookmakers alongside each other. These sites continue to provide the most crucial information to professionals and casual gamblers alike who are looking to bet at the best odds.

In general, all forms of arbitrage betting is commonly known as "middling" or "finding the middle" of a particular contest and were fairly common in the early days of organized sports gambling. However, the relatively recent advent of both better communications between the individual sports books, the internet, and more sophisticated linesmaking techniques, has led to fewer opportunities for gamblers to make these types of bets.

The Federal Wire Act of 1961 was an attempt by the US government to prevent illegal bookmaking.

Betting scandals

Historically, sports betting has been associated with a number of unsavory characters, which has a lot to do with its desultory legal treatment throughout the world. Organized crime notoriously has relied upon sports betting for money laundering or funding purposes. The corruption or threat of a boxer to take a dive at the x round is a frequent theme in mafia-related movies. All of the American professional sports leagues, as well as the National College Athletic Association (NCAA), take stringent measures to disassociate themselves from sports gambling. All of these leagues, especially the NFL, make a great amount of effort to be as transparent as possible with the public, particularly with regards to injuries of players, so as to prevent any opportunity or incentive for the appearance of impropriety or collusion with the sports gambling industry.

Nevertheless, sports history is riddled with several incidents of athletes conspiring with gamblers to fix the outcomes of sporting events, or criminals acting against athletes whose on-field performance affected their wagers.

In 1919, gamblers bribed several members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the World Series. This became known as the Black Sox Scandal and was recounted in book and movie form as "Eight Men Out".
In 1978, mobsters connected with the New York Lucchese crime family, among them Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke, organized a point shaving scheme with key members of the Boston College basketball team.
On August 24, 1989, former baseball player Pete Rose voluntarily accepted a permanent ban from Major League Baseball for allegedly betting on Reds games while managing the team. However, the bets he made were only for his team to win.
Andrés Escobar, a Colombian defender, was murdered shortly after his return from the 1994 FIFA World Cup, where he scored an own-goal, the first of a 2-1 defeat to the USA that knocked out the Colombians at the first phase. In the most believed explanation, the Medellín drug cartel bet large sums of money that Colombia would advance, and blamed the Medellín-born Escobar for the loss.
In 1994, a comprehensive point shaving scheme organized by campus bookmaker Benny Silman and involving players from the Arizona State University men's basketball team was uncovered with the assistance of Las Vegas bookmakers, who grew suspicious over repeated large wagers being made against Arizona State.
On 10 February 1999, a plot to disable the floodlights of The Valley during a Charlton-Liverpool match was discovered. Three individuals were arrested, and the scam tracked to Malaysia, where the Premiership is very popular, and bets frequent
In early 2000, Hansie Cronje, then highly-regarded captain of the South African cricket team, rocked the cricketing world with frank admissions of match-fixing. Hansie admitted to receiving more than $140,000 USD from London-based bookies to influence aspects of his team's performance. For example, he convinced Herschelle Gibbs to score less than 20 runs in a One Day International for a $15,000 USD reward. Hansie received a lifetime ban from any involvement in professional cricket but he maintained throughout his numerous trials that he never consipired to fix overall match results. He died tragically in a plane crash in 2002, leaving behind many unanswered questions and a tainted legacy.
The Italian Football Federation said in October 2000 it had found eight players guilty of match-fixing. Three were from Serie A side Atalanta and the other five played for Serie B side Pistoiese. The players were Giacomo Banchelli, Cristiano Doni and Sebastiano Siviglia (all Atalanta) and Alfredo Aglietti, Massimiliano Allegri, Daniele Amerini, Gianluca Lillo and Girolamo Bizzarri (all Pistoiese). The charges related to an Italian Cup first round tie between the two sides in Bergamo on August 20, 2000 which ended 1-1. Atalanta scored at the end of the first half and Pistoiese equalised three minutes from full time. Atalanta qualified for the second round. Snai, which organises betting on Italian football, said later it had registered suspiciously heavy betting on the result and many of the bets were for a 1-0 halftime score and a fulltime score of 1-1.
In late 2004, the game between Panionios and Dinamo Tbilisi in the 2004-05 UEFA Cup was suspected of being fixed after British bookmakers detected an unusually high number of half-time bets for a 5-2 win for the Greek side, which was trailing 0-1. As the final result ended up being 5-2, suspicions of fixing quickly emerged, but were quickly denied by both clubs, although UEFA started an investigation.
In early 2005, the German Football Association (DFB) revealed that referee Robert Hoyzer was under investigation for suspected betting on a first-round German Cup tie between regional league side Paderborn and First Bundesliga club Hamburger SV in August 2004, and possibly fixing the match. In the match, HSV took a 2-0 lead, but Hoyzer sent off HSV striker Emile Mpenza in the first half for alleged dissent (a sending-off that many observers considered unwarranted), and later awarded Paderborn two dubious penalties. Paderborn went on to win 4-2. Several days later, Hoyzer admitted to having fixed that match, as well as several others he worked. He went on to implicate other referees and several players in the scandal. Hoyzer himself was arrested on February 12 after evidence emerged that he may have fixed more matches than he had admitted to fixing. On February 16, UEFA announced that it would send an investigator to Athens to investigate possible links between this scandal and the aforementioned Panionios-Dinamo UEFA Cup tie. Eventually, Hoyzer was sentenced to 2 years and 5 months in prison. The Croatian betting syndicate which had paid Hoyzer to fix matches was also found to be linked to the Panionios-Dinamo match.
In late September 2005, two referees (Edilson Pereira de Carvalho and Paulo Jose Danelon) were accused of fixing several matches in the São Paulo championship for an internet betting ring that moved over USD100,000 on each match day, receiving around USD 4,400 for each match.[6] In the following days, Armando Marques, president of the national commission of referees resigned and Nagib Fayad and Vanderlei Pololi, two businessmen, were arrested as suspects of working as middlemen between the referees and the corruption ring. In early October, a court ordered that the matches where Carvalho was the referee would have to be replayed and free to the public. No decision was made about Danelon's matches.
In 2006, Italy would be rocked by an even bigger betting scandal which saw four of the top teams in Serie A convicted of match-fixing charges. Juventus, which had won the league title in 2006, was stripped of its title and forcibly relegated to Serie B. Fiorentina and Lazio were initially relegated, but were restored to Serie A on appeal. AC Milan were not relegated. All four clubs were given substantial points penalties in the 2006-07 season. In a later investigation, a fifth Serie A club, Reggina, was also found guilty of match-fixing charges and was fined and given a substantial points penalty. Nearly twenty individuals were also personally punished, generally with fines and suspensions.

Sports betting forums

The Internet not only revolutionized the ability to bet online, but also the ability to communicate with like-minded bettors. Sports betting forums offer lively give and take where bettors discuss their predictions about games and help one another decide on profitable bets. Additionally a cottage industry of tipster sites has sprung up where inexperienced bettors can, for free or a fee, receive previews and tips for upcoming events. Free sites are generally affiliated with online bookmakers and finance their service by introducing new customers to their preferred online bookmakers.

Many popular sports betting forums exist, but the quality of the forums greatly depend on the members.

Casino

Interested in online Gambling.

Visit the Maharajah Club Gaming
site

A casino is a facility that accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are often placed near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships and other vacation attractions. Some casinos are known for hosting live entertainment events, such as concerts and sporting events.

History and non-gambling casinos

The term originally meant a small villa, summerhouse or pavilion built for pleasure, usually on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo. There are examples of such casinos at Villa Giulia and Villa Farnese. During the 19th century, the term casino came to include other more public buildings where pleasurable activities, including gambling and sports, took place.

An example of this type of building is the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island, built in the 19th Century and designated a National Historic Landmark on February 27, 1987.

The Copenhagen Casino was not a gambling establishment but a theatre, known for the use made of its hall for mass public meetings during the 1848 Revolution which made Denmark a constitutional monarchy. Until 1937 it was a well-known Danish theatre.

The Hanko Casino at Hanko, Finland - one of that town's most conspicuous landmarks - was also never used for gambling. Rather, it was originally a banquet hall for the Russian nobility which frequented this spa resort in the late 1800s, and is nowadays a restaurant.

In modern Italian, this term designates a bordello (also called "casa chiusa", literally "closed house"), while the gambling house is spelled casinò with an accent.

Gambling in casinos

In most jurisdictions, gambling is limited to persons over the age of majority (21 years of age in most of the United States[citation needed] and 18 to 21 in most other countries where casinos are permitted)[citation needed].

Customers gamble by playing slot machines or other games of chance (e.g., craps, roulette, baccarat) and some skill (e.g., blackjack, poker) (for more see casino games). Games usually have mathematically-determined odds that ensure the house retains a long term advantage over the players. This advantage is called the house edge. In games such as poker where players play against each other, the house takes a commission called the rake.

Payout is the percentage won by players.

Playing with house money refers to the situation where a winning player is placing bets with money that has been won from the casino.

Negative Effects

Professor Earl Grinols of Baylor University suggests that casinos increase the number of pathological gamblers in a community. Through cost/benefit analysis, Grinols concludes that in order to have positive net economic effect, casinos would need to employ roughly 13% of a community of 100,000 people.[1]

Security

Casinos focus greatly on security. Large amounts of currency move through a casino, tempting people to cheat the system. Security today consists of cameras located throughout the property operated by highly trained individuals who attempt to locate cheating and stealing by both players and employees.

Modern casino security is usually divided between a physical security force, which patrols the casino floor and responds to calls for assistance and reports of criminal and/or suspicious activities, and a specialized surveillance department, that operates the casino's closed circuit television (CCTV) system in an effort to detect any misconduct by both guests and employees alike. Both of these specialized casino security departments work very closely with each other to ensure the safety of both guests and the casino's assets.

When it opened in 1989, The Mirage was the first casino to use security cameras full time on all table games.

Problem Gambling

Interested in online Gambling.

Visit the Maharajah Club Gaming
site

Problem gambling is an urge or addiction to gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop. The term is preferred to Compulsive Gambling among many professionals, as few people described by the term experience true compulsions in the clinical sense of the word. Problem gambling often is defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others, rather than by the gambler's behavior. Severe problem gambling may be diagnosed as clinical pathological gambling if the gambler meets certain criteria.

Pathological gambling

Extreme cases of problem gambling may cross over into the realm of mental disorders. Pathological gambling was recognized as a psychiatric disorder in the DSM-III, but the criteria were significantly reworked based on large-scale studies and statistical methods for the DSM-IV. As defined by American Psychiatric Association, pathological gambling is an impulse control disorder that is a chronic and progressive mental illness.

Pathological gambling is now defined as persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior meeting at least five of the following criteria, as long as these behaviors are not better explained by a manic episode:

Preoccupation. The subject has frequent thoughts about gambling experiences, whether past, future, or fantasy.
Tolerance. As with drug tolerance, the subject requires larger or more frequent wagers to experience the same "rush".
Withdrawal. Restlessness or irritability associated with attempts to cease or reduce gambling.
Escape. The subject gambles to improve mood or escape problems.
Chasing. The subject tries to win back gambling losses with more gambling.
Lying. The subject tries to hide the extent of his or her gambling by lying to family, friends, or therapists.
Loss of control. The subject has unsuccessfully attempted to reduce gambling.
Illegal acts. The subject has broken the law in order to obtain gambling money or recover gambling losses.
Risked significant relationship. The subject gambles despite risking or losing a relationship, job, or other significant opportunity.
Bailout. The subject turns to family, friends, or another third party for financial assistance as a result of gambling.
Biological Bases. The subject has a lack of norepinephrine.
As with many disorders, the DSM-IV definition of pathological gambling is widely accepted and used as a basis for research and clinical practice internationally.

The most common instrument used to screen for "probable pathological gambling" behavior is the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) developed by Lesieur and Blume (1987) at the South Oaks Hospital in New York. This screen is undoubtedly the most cited instrument in psychological research literature.

Effects of Different Types of Gambling

Some forms of gambling are allegedly less harmful. According to William R. Eadington, University of Nevada, in an article entitled "What happens to the best laid plans: global lessons on legalization and liberation of gaming laws", ranked from least dangerous to most dangerous are:-
Lotteries (traditional), bingo - soft gambling
Destination resort casinos
Urban or suburban casinos
Convenient Gambling: gaming devices in bars, slot machines
Ultra-Convenient Gambling: interactive television, mobile phone or internet gambling

Biological Bases

According to the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery Recent evidence indicates that pathological gambling is an addiction similar to chemical addiction. It has been seen that some pathological gamblers have lower levels of norepinephrine than normal gamblers.

According to a study conducted by Alec Roy, M.D. formerly at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, norepinephrine is secreted under stress, arousal, or thrill, so pathological gamblers gamble to make up for their underdosage.

Further to this, according to a report from the Harvard Medical School Division on Addictions there was an experiment constructed where test subjects were presented with siuations where they could win, lose or break even in a casino-like environment. Subjects' reactions were measured using a fMRI, a neuro-imaging device very similar to a MRI. And according to Hand Breiter, MD, co-director of the motivation and Emotion Neuroscience Centre at the Massachusetts General Hospital, "Monetary reward in a gambling-like experiment produces brain activation very similar to that observed in a cocaine addict receiving an infusion of cocaine."

Relation to other Problems

As debts build up people turn to other sources of money such as theft, or the sale of drugs. A lot of this pressure comes from bookies or loan sharks that people rely on for capital to gamble with. Also, a teenager that does not receive treatment for pathological gambling when in their desperation phase is likely to contemplate suicide. 20% of teenagers that are pathological gamblers do consider suicide. This according to the article High Stakes: Teens Gambling With Their Futures by Laura Paul.

Abuse is also common in homes where pathological gambling is present. Growing up in such a situation leads to improper emotional development and increased risk of falling prey to problem gambling behavior.

Pathological gambling is similar to many other impulse control disorders such as kleptomania, pyromania, Trichotillomania. Other mental disease that also exhibit impulse control disorder include such mental disorders as antisocial personality disorder, or schizophrenia.

Incidence

According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, incidence of problem gambling is 2-3% and pathological gambling is 1% in the United States, though this may vary by country. By contrast, 86% of Americans have gambled in their lives and 60% gamble in a given year.

Available research seems to indicate that problem gambling is an internal tendency, and that problem gamblers will tend to risk money on whatever game is available, rather than a particular game being available inducing problem gambling in otherwise "normal" individuals. However, research also indicates that problem gamblers tend to risk money on fast-paced games. Thus a problem gambler is much more likely to lose a lot of money on poker or slot machines, where rounds end quickly and there is a constant temptation to play again or increase bets, as opposed to a state lottery where the gambler must wait until the next drawing to see results.

Dopamine agonists, in particular pramipexole (Mirapex), have been shown to cause compulsive gambling

Treatment

There is evidence that the SSRI paroxetine is efficient in the treatment of pathological gambling. Additionally, for patients suffering from both pathological gambling and a comorbid bipolar spectrum condition, sustained release lithium has shown efficacy in a preliminary trial.

Online Betting Exchange

Interested in online Gambling.

Visit the Maharajah Club Gaming
site

A betting exchange is a p2p gambling website acting as a broker between parties for the placement of bets. The concept is similar to that of a stock exchange or a futures exchange, where in this case the commodity being traded is a bet, rather than a stock or futures contract. Most betting on a betting exchange is a form of fixed odds gambling.

History

The concept was first brought to the public by the UK website Flutter.com in May 2000 in person-to-person betting form, followed closely by UK-based Betfair in June 2000. Betfair embraced a pure exchange model - one Flutter later adopted and even improved upon in places - but first-mover advantage proved decisive for Betfair. Though Flutter managed to climb to a reported 30% market share, Flutter's backers were content to broker a merger which left Betfair the dominant partner by a reported ratio of 84:16. Post merger, Flutter's customers were transferred to Betfair's system, which was later upgraded to embrace some of Flutter's functionality. Betfair went from strength to strength and controls a reported 90% of global exchange activity today. In late 2004, Betfair announced a rescue package which resulted in it absorbing the customers of Sporting Options, which had gone into administration with debts in excess of £5 million.

As with other types of exchanges, betting exchanges thrive on liquidity and customers tend to focus on the exchange where they are confident their bet can be paired up with a matching counterbet. Breaking with British tradition, Betfair uses decimal odds instead of fractional (traditional) odds because they are more popular globally. Some of its competitors allow customers to use fractional odds if they prefer.

Exchanges make their money by charging a commission which is calculated as a percentage of net winnings for each customer on each event, or market. Gamblers whose betting activities have traditionally been restricted by bookmakers (normally for winning too much money) have found these sites a boon since they are now able to place bets of a size unrestricted by the exchange - the only restriction is that one or more opposing customers need to be willing match their bets. Moreover, the odds available on a betting exchange are usually better than those offered by bookmakers in spite of the commission charged.

Exchanges have their limitations. Exchanges are not suited to unrestricted multiple parlay betting. Betfair does offer accumulators of their own content management construction, but these are limited in number. Users cannot determine the outcomes contained in accumulators themselves. Exchanges also tend to restrict the odds that can be offered to between 1.01 (1/100) and 1000 (999/1).

Unsurprisingly, Betfair's success has attracted a number of rivals.

"Laying" an outcome

Exchanges also offer the opportunity to lay outcomes, which is to bet that a particular participant in an event will lose. This is the position bookmakers take when offering a bet for somebody to back that the participant will win.

For example, if someone thinks Team A will win a competition, he may wish to back that selection. A bookmaker offering the punter that bet would be laying that selection. The two parties will agree the backer's stake and the odds. If the team loses, the layer/bookmaker keeps the backer's stake. If the team wins, the layer will pay the backer winnings based on the odds agreed.

As every bet transacted requires a backer and a layer, and the betting exchange is not a party to the bets transacted on it, any betting exchange requires both backers and layers. Of course, the distinction is moot: A layer is always simply backing the opposite outcome. Laying the home team is the same as backing the visiting team to win or draw. Laying one horse in a race is just the same as backing all of the other horses to win.

Controversy

The fact gamblers can now lay outcomes on the exchanges has resulted in criticism from traditional bookmakers including the UK's "Big Three" - Gala Coral Group, Ladbrokes and William Hill. These firms argue that granting "anonymous" punters the ability to bet that an outcome will not happen is causing corruption in sports such as horse racing since it is much easier to ensure a horse will lose a race.

Exchanges counter that, while corruption is possible on any gambling platform, the bookies' arguments are motivated not by concern for the integrity of sport but by commercial interests. Exchanges also assert they are well aware of who their customers are and some have signed agreements with governing bodies of sport including the Jockey Club, with whom they insist they will co-operate with fully if the latter suspects corruption to have taken place. In the summer of 2004, Betfair provided data to investigators, including the City of London Police which on September 1 lead to 16 arrests on charges related to race fixing. Among those arrested was champion jockey Kieren Fallon, whose case remains before the courts.

Online Casino's

Interested in online Gambling.

Visit the Maharajah Club Gaming site.

Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or internet casinos, are online versions of traditional casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet.

Online casinos generally offer odds and payback percentages that are comparable to land-based casinos. Some online casinos claim higher payback percentages for slot machine games, and some publish payout percentage audits on their websites. Assuming that the online casino is using an appropriately programmed random number generator, table games like blackjack have an established house edge. The payout percentage for these games are established by the rules of the game.

Reliability and trust issues are commonplace and often questioned. Many online casinos lease or purchase their software from well-known companies like Wager Works, Microgaming, Realtime Gaming, Playtech and Cryptologic in an attempt to "piggyback" their reputation on the software manufacturer's credibility. These software companies either use or claim to use random number generators to ensure that the numbers, cards or dice appear randomly.

Online casino types

Online casinos can be divided into three groups based on their interface: web-based casinos, download-based casinos, and more recently live casinos. Some casinos offer multiple interfaces.

Web-based online casinos

Web-based online casinos are websites where users may play casino games without downloading software to the local computer. Games are mainly represented in the browser plugins Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Shockwave, or Java and require browser support for these plugins. Also, bandwidth is needed since all graphics, sounds and animations are loaded through the web via the plugin. Some online casinos also allow gameplay through a plain HTML interface.

Download-based online casinos

Download-based online casinos require the download of the software client in order to play and wager on the casino games offered. The online casino software connects to the casino service provider and handles contact without browser support. Download-based online casinos generally run faster than web-based online casinos since the graphics and sound programs are located within the software client, rather than having to be loaded from the Internet. On the other hand, the initial download and installation of a download-based online casino client does take time. As with any download from the Internet, the risk of the program containing malware does exist.

Live-based casinos

Live-based casino gaming is a way to interface with a real world casino while playing online. Recent advancments in communication technology now allow land-based casinos to open a real-time window via the web for players to game tables in an interactive, live environment. With live gaming players can see, hear, and interact with live dealers at tables in brick and mortar casinos worldwide.

Games offered

A typical selection of games offered at an online casino might include: Baccarat, Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Slot Machines, Video Poker, and other games

Signup bonuses

Many online casinos offer signup bonuses to new players making their first deposit. These bonuses normally match a percentage of the player's deposit with a dollar maximum, and almost all online casino signup bonuses require a minimum amount of wagering before allowing a cash out. Gameplay at specific casino games might be excluded from the wagering requirement calculation.

A fictional signup bonus offer follows as an example: The online casino offers new players a deposit matching bonus of 100%, up to $100 The player must wager 25 times the total amount of the deposit plus the bonus before withdrawing Wagers on baccarat, craps, roulette, and sic bo do not count towards meeting wagering requirements For this particular example, this would mean that a player depositing $100 would start with $200 in his account. The player must make $5000 ($200 × 25) in wagers before being allowed to make a withdrawal.

Advantage play in casino signup bonus situations is mathematically possible. For example, the house edge in blackjack is oughly 0.5%. In the example above, $5000 in wagering with a house edge of 0.5% will result in an expected loss of $25. Since the player received a $100 signup bonus, the player has an expected profit of $75.

Advantage players who use bonus offers for an expected profit are often called "bonus hunters", "bonus abusers", "bonus baggers", "bonus whores" and "casino scalpers". Some online casinos have restrictions regarding "the spirit of the bonus offer" which they sometimes use as a deterrent to what they consider "bonus abuse".

A player who wishes to do this at a large number of online casinos must be careful. Some casinos are rogues (see below) and do not pay. Others have terms and conditions that are not favorable to the player, such as most bonuses that are restricted to slots.

Fraudulent online casino behavior

Fraudulent behavior on the part of online casinos has been documented. The most commonly reported behaviors are refusal to pay withdrawals or cheating software. An online casino with multiple confirmed cases of fraudulent behavior is often called a rogue casino by the online casino player community.

One commonly reported behavior related to refusal to pay withdrawals is the refusal to pay withdrawals promptly. A rogue casino may intentionally delay a withdrawal in hopes that the player will continue gambling with the money in the account and lose it all back.

Cheating software appears to be less common than payout problems.

Some casino software has been mathematically proven to cheat, such as Casino Bar (evidence by Michael Shackleford and others). Elka System/Oyster Gaming software is known to cheat, also confirmed by Michael Shackleford. Statistically non-random video poker has been reported at Playtech, see article "OCA STATS". Screen shots from the back office of an older brand of software indicated the odds could be adjusted by the operator.

Much of the speculation about casino software cheating is usually the result of a player finding a pattern in a statistically small set of results. Most people in the online casino industry believe that most of the major casino software brands offer odds and paybacks that are the same as their land-based casino counterparts.

Many casino gambling portals and player forums maintain blacklists of rogue casinos. These can easily found in any major search engine, but most of them constitute individual webmaster and player opinions rather than anything official from any type of regulating body.

Fraudulent player behavior

Common fraudulent behavior from online casinos players includes the signing up for multiple casino accounts using different identities in order to claim a bonus offer multiple times. Another form of fraudulent behavior might be the use of a graphics editing software like Adobe Photoshop to create a false winning slot machine game screenshot in an attempt to tell the casino they hit a jackpot and didn't get paid for it.

Online casinos usually lock the player accounts for these people, and it's widely believed that online casinos share fraudulent player blacklists.

Online Poker

Interested in online Gambling.

Visit the Maharajah Club Gaming site.

Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide. For the year of 2005, revenues from online poker were estimated at US$200 million per month.

Traditional (or "brick and mortar", B&M) venues for playing poker, such as casinos and poker rooms, may be intimidating for novice players and are located in geographically disparate locations. Brick and mortar casinos are also reluctant to promote poker because it is difficult for them to profit from it. Though the rake, or time charge, of traditional casinos is often high, the opportunity costs of running a poker room are even higher. Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines.

Online venues, by contrast, are dramatically cheaper because they have much smaller overhead costs. For example, adding another table does not take up valuable space like it would for a brick and mortar casino. Online poker rooms tend to be viewed as more player-friendly. For example, the software may prompt the player when it is his or her turn to act. Online poker rooms also allow the players to play for low stakes (as low as 1¢) and often offer poker freerolls (where there is no entry fee), attracting beginners.

Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud, especially collusion between players. However, they also have collusion detection abilities that do not exist in brick and mortar casinos. For example, online poker room security employees can look at the "hand history" of the cards previously played by any player on the site, making patterns of behavior easier to detect than in a casino where colluding players can simply fold their hands without anyone ever knowing the strength of their holding. Online poker rooms also check player's IP addresses in order to prevent players at the same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables.

The major online poker sites offer varying features to entice new players. One common feature is to offer tournaments called satellites by which the winners gain entry to real-life poker tournaments. It was through one such tournament on PokerStars that Chris Moneymaker won his entry to the 2003 World Series of Poker. He went on to win the main event causing shock in the poker world. The 2004 World Series featured triple the number of players over the 2003 turnout. At least four players in the WSOP final table won their entry through an online cardroom. Like Moneymaker, 2004 winner Greg "Fossilman" Raymer also won his entry at the PokerStars online cardroom.

In October 2004, Sportingbet Plc, at the time the world's largest publicly traded online gaming company (SBT.L), announced the acquisition of ParadisePoker.com, one of the online poker industry's first and largest cardrooms. The $340 million dollar acquisition marked the first time an online cardroom was owned by a public company. Since then, several other cardroom parent companies have gone public.

In June 2005, PartyGaming, the parent company of the largest online cardroom, PartyPoker, went public on the London Stock Exchange, achieving an initial public offering market value in excess of $8 billion dollars. At the time of the IPO, ninety-two percent of Party Gaming's income came from poker operations.

In early 2006, PartyGaming moved to acquire EmpirePoker.com from Empire Online. UltimateBet's parent company also listed on the London Stock Exchange and other poker rooms such as PokerStars & Poker.com are rumored to be exploring initial public offerings.

Legality

From a legal perspective, online poker may differ in some ways from online casino gambling, but many of the same issues do apply.

Online poker is legal and regulated in many countries including several nations in and around the Caribbean Sea, and most notably the United Kingdom.

In the United States, the North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill in February 2005 to legalize and regulate online poker and online poker cardroom operators in the state. The legislation required that online poker operations would have to physically locate their entire operations in the state. Testifying before the state Senate Judiciary committee, Nigel Payne, CEO of Sportingbet, the owner of Paradise Poker, pledged to relocate to the state if the bill became law.

The measure, however, was defeated by the State Senate in March 2005 after the U. S. Department of Justice sent a letter to North Dakota attorney general Wayne Stenehjem stating that online gaming "may" be illegal, and that the pending legislation "might" violate the federal Wire Act. However, many legal experts dispute the DOJ's claim.

North Dakota Rep. Jim Kasper (R-Fargo), the author of the legalization bill, has vowed to continue his efforts, stating that he is "not putting away the idea of getting into Internet gaming licenses in North Dakota" and that the "revenue we missed is too great to pass up." Kasper has also stated that he will introduce the legislation in the 2007 session of the North Dakota legislature.

In response to this and other claims by the DOJ regarding the legality of online poker, many of the major online poker sites stopped advertising their "dot-com" sites in American media. Instead, they created "dot-net" sites that are virtually identical but offer no real money wagering. The sites advertise as poker schools or ways to learn the game for free, and feature words to the effect of "this is not a gambling website." Televised ads still feature the dot-net conceit but print ads have been trending back toward advertising the dot-coms directly.

Because of the legal grayness around online poker, many banks and credit card companies will not allow direct money transfers to online poker sites. This has caused new online electronic money transfer businesses to spring up. These companies provide online “e-wallets” that players can load from a bank account, then transfer the funds directly to the poker site. The advantage of these services is that it makes it easy for people to transfer money between different poker sites without the money going back to a person’s bank account.

In July 2006, United States federal agents, citing the Wire Act, arrested BetOnSports CEO David Carruthers in Dallas, Texas while he was changing planes. He was traveling between Costa Rica and the United Kingdom; in both jurisdictions online gaming, including online poker, is legal and regulated.

How online poker rooms profit

Typically, online poker rooms make the bulk of their revenue via three methods. First is the rake. Rake is collected from most real money ring game pots. The rake is capped at some maximum fee, usually $3, beyond which the pot can continue to grow without being subject to additional rake being taken.

Second, pre-scheduled multi-table and impromptu sit-and-go tournaments are not raked; rather, but rather an entry fee, often around ten percent, is taken by the house.

Third, some online poker sites also offer games like black jack where the player plays against "the house" for real money. The odds are in the house's favor in these games, thus producing a profit for the house.

These are also the three primary methods brick and mortar casinos derive profits from operating poker tables.

Integrity and fairness

As with other forms of online gambling, many critics question whether the operators of such games - especially those located in jurisdictions separate from most of their players - might be engaging in fraud themselves.

Internet discussion forums are rife with unproven allegations of non-random card dealing, possibly to favour house-employed players or "bots" (poker playing software disguised as a human opponent), or to give multiple players good hands thus increasing the bets and the rake, or simply to prevent new players from losing so quickly that they become discouraged. However, there is little more than anecdotal evidence to support such claims, and others argue that the rake is sufficiently large that such abuses would be unnecessary and foolish. Many claim to see lots of "bad beats" with large hands pitted against others all too often at a rate that seems to be a lot more common than in live games. This might actually be caused by the fact that online cardrooms deal more hands per hour: online players get to see more hands, so their likelihood of seeing more improbable bad beats or randomly large pots is also increased.

However, to date there has been at least one site, ProPoker.com, that has been found to use serverside bots that play with the knowledge of players' cards and the cards yet to be dealt. It has since been shut down, with many players losing the funds they had on the site.

Many online poker sites are certified by bodies such as the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, and major auditing firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers review the fairness of the random number generator[6], shuffle[7], and payouts for some sites.

In general, it should be noted that with the rakes and tournament fees that are nearly universal in the online poker universe, there is plenty of profit available in operating completely fair games. One assumes that the most reputable and largest online poker rooms have much more to gain by offering the fairest game possible than through any sort of deception.

Differences with conventional poker

There are substantial differences between online poker gaming and conventional, in-person gaming.

One obvious difference is that players do not sit right across from each other, removing any ability to observe others' reactions and body language. Instead, online poker players learn to focus more keenly on betting patterns, reaction time and other behavior tells that are not physical in nature. Since poker is a game that requires adaptability, successful online players learn to master the new frontiers of their surroundings.

Another less obvious difference is the rate of play. In brick and mortar casinos the dealer has to collect the cards, then shuffle and deal them after every hand. Due to this and other delays common in offline casinos, the average rate of play is around thirty hands per hour. Online casinos, however, do not have these delays; the dealing and shuffling are instant, there are no delays relating to counting chips (for a split pot), and on average the play is faster due to "auto-action" buttons (where the player selects his action before his turn). It is not uncommon for an online poker table to average sixty to eighty hands per hour.

This large difference in rate of play has created another effect among online poker players. In the brick and mortar casino, the only real way to increase your earnings is to increase your limit. In the online world players have another option, play more tables. Unlike a physical casino where it would be nearly impossible to play multiple tables at once, most online poker rooms allow this. Depending on the site, a player might play from 4 to 10 tables at the same time, viewing them each in a separate window on the computer display. For example, a player may make around $10 per 100 hands at a lower limit game. In a casino, this would earn them under $4 an hour, which minus dealer tips would probably barely break even. In an online poker room, the same player with the same win rate could play four tables at once, which at 60 hands per hour each would result in an earning of $24/hour, which is a modest salary for somebody playing online poker. Some online players even play eight or more tables at once, in an effort to increase their winnings.

Another important change results from the fact that online poker rooms, in some cases, offer online poker schools that teach the basics and significantly speed up the learning curve for novices. Many online poker rooms also provide free money play so that players may practice these skills in various poker games and limits without the risk of losing real money. People who previously had no way to learn and improve because they had no one to play with now have the ability to learn the game much more quickly and gain invaluable experience from free money play.

Tracking play

Tracking poker play in a brick and mortar casino is almost impossible. You can easily monitor your winnings, but tracking any detailed statistics about your game requires a player to take notes after each hand, which is cumbersome and distracting.

Conversely, tracking poker play online is easy. Most online poker rooms support "Hand Histories" text files which track every action both you and your opponents made during each hand. The ability to specifically track every single played hand has many advantages. Many third-party software applications process hand history files and return detailed summaries of poker play. These not only include exact tallies of rake and winnings, which are useful for tax purposes, but also offer detailed statistics about the person's poker play. Serious players use these statistics to check for weaknesses or "leaks" (mistakes that leak money from their winnings) in their game. Such detailed analysis of poker play was never available in the past, but with the growth of online poker play, it is now commonplace among nearly all serious and professional online poker players.

Bonuses

While the practice of comping players with free meals, hotel rooms, and merchandise is quite common in B&M casinos, online poker rooms have needed to develop new ways to reward faithful customers. The most common way of doing this is through deposit bonuses, where the player is given a bonus code to enter when placing money into an account. The bonus code adds either a percentage, or a set amount of chips to the value of the deposit. One should be aware that these are not up front payments, rather the bonus is released in a piecemeal manner in accordance with the number of raked hands played. Besides this, several online cardrooms employ VIP Managers to develop VIP programs to reward regular players and additional bonuses exist for players who wish to top up their accounts. These are known as reload bonuses.

Compatibility

Most online poker rooms offer downloadable Microsoft Windows programs that require an emulator program to run on Apple Macintosh or Linux computers. However, several rooms do have clients that run natively on Mac or Linux.

Some mobile content providers have started offering poker on portable devices (mobile phones, PDAs). The functionality of mobile online poker software is much the same as computer-based clients, albeit adapted to the interface of mobile devices. The player must be able to receive a cell phone signal in order to play.

Online poker portal

An online poker portal is a website offering poker-related content. Examples of such content could be news, tournament results, strategy articles or reviews of online poker cardrooms.

Some portals have a considerable amount of content, while others attempt to act as mere conduits to other sites, normally where actual gambling games are offered.

Video Poker

Interested in online Gambling.

Visit the Maharajah Club Gaming site.

Video poker is a casino game based on five-card draw poker. It is played on a computerized console which is a similar size to a slot machine.

History

Video poker first became commercially viable when it became economical to combine a television-like monitor with a solid state central processing unit. The earliest models appeared at the same time as the first personal computers were produced, in the mid-1970s, although they were rather primitive by today's standards.

Video poker became more firmly established when SIRCOMA, which stood for Si Redd's Coin Machines, and which evolved over time to become International Game Technology introduced Draw Poker in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, video poker became increasingly popular in casinos, as people found the devices less intimidating than playing table games. Today, video poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming floors of many casinos. The game is especially popular with Las Vegas locals, who tend to patronize locals casinos off the Las Vegas Strip. These local casinos often offer lower denomination machines or better odds.

The Game

Game play begins by placing a bet of one or more credits, by inserting money (or in newer machines, a barcoded paper ticket with credit) into the machine, and then pressing a "Deal" button to draw cards. The player is then given an opportunity to keep or discard one or more of the cards in exchange for a new card drawn from the same virtual deck, after which the machine evaluates the hand and offers a payout if the hand matches one of the winning hands in the posted pay schedule.

On a typical video poker machine, payouts start with a minimum hand of a pair of jacks. Pay schedules allocate the payout for hands based partially upon how rare they are, and also based upon the total theoretical return the game operator chooses to offer.

Some machines offer progressive jackpots for the royal flush, (and sometimes for other rare hands as well), thereby spurring players to both play more coins and to play more frequently.

Regulation

Video poker machines operated in state-regulated jurisdictions are programmed to deal random card sequences. A series of cards is generated for each play; five dealt straight to the hand, the other five dealt in order if requested by player. This is based upon a Nevada regulation, adopted by most other states with a gaming authority, which requires dice and cards used in an electronic game to be as random as the real thing, within computational limits set by the gaming authority. Video poker machines are tested to ensure compliance with this requirement before they may be offered to the public. Video poker games in Nevada are required to simulate a 52 card deck (or a 53 card deck if using a joker).

It is unclear whether all video poker machines at Indian gaming establishments are subject to the same Nevada-style regulations, as Indian casinos are located on reservations that are sovereign to the tribe which holds the gaming license.

Newer versions of the software no longer deal out all 10 cards at once. They now deal out the first five cards, and then when the draw button is pressed, they generate a second set of cards based on the remaining 47 cards in the deck. This was done after players found a way to reverse engineer a random number generator's cycle from sample hands and were able to predict the hidden cards in advance.

Kinds of video poker

Newer video poker machines may employ variants of the basic five-card draw. Typical variations include: Deuces Wild, where a two can serve as a wild card and a jackpot is paid for four deuces or a natural royal; pay schedule modification, where four aces with a five or smaller kicker pays an enhanced amount (these games usually have some adjective in the title such as "bonus", "double", or "triple"); and multi-play poker, where the player starts with a base hand of five cards, and each additional played hand draws from a different set of cards with the base hand removed. (Multi-play games are offered in "Triple Play", "Five Play", "Ten Play", "Fifty Play" and even "One Hundred Play" versions.)

In the non-wild games (games which do not have a wild card) a player who plays five or six hundred hands per hour, on average, may receive the rare four-of-a-kind approximately once per hour, while a player may play for many days or weeks before receiving an extremely rare royal flush.

Full pay games

Full pay video poker machines are games which offer the typical maximum payback percentage for that game type. The payback percentage on a full pay game is typically close to and sometimes over 100% when played with perfect strategy. Full pay Jacks or Better, for example, offers a payback percentage of approximately 99.5% when played with perfect strategy.

Casinos often place full pay machines alongside other machines with pay schedules that offer less attractive payback percentages, leaving it up to the player to identify which video poker machines offer full pay schedules.

Most full pay machines are configured with a pay schedule that is only full pay when the maximum amount of credits is bet. (See the pay schedule tables later in this article for details.)

Jacks or Better

"Jacks or Better" is the most common variation of video poker available. Payoffs begin at a pair of jacks or better. Full pay Jacks or Better is also known as 9/6 Jacks or Better; the 9 refers to the payoff for a full house and the 6 refers to the payoff for a flush. Full pay Jacks or Better has a theoretical return of 99.54% when played with perfect strategy.

Deuces Wild

"Deuces Wild" is a variation of video poker in which all twos are wild. (Wild cards substitute for any other card in the deck in order to make a better poker hand. In Deuces Wild, the payout for a four of a kind makes up approximately 1/3 of the payback percentage of the game, and a four of a kind occurs on average once every 15 hands or so. Deuces Wild can be found with pay schedules that offer a theoretical return as high as 100.762%, when played with perfect strategy.

Double Bonus

"Double Bonus" video poker is a variation of Jacks or Better with a bonus payout for four aces. This variation offers up to a theoretical return of 100.1725%, when played with perfect strategy.

Double Double Bonus

"Double Double Bonus" video poker is a variation of Jacks or Better which offers bonus payoffs for different four of a kinds, as seen in the payout table below. Full pay Double Double Bonus can be found with pay schedules that offer up to a theoretical return of 100.067%, when played with perfect strategy.

Other positive expectation games

Other kinds of video poker only have positive theoretical returns when the progressive jackpot is high enough. Many establishments advertise with a billboard when the progressive jackpot is high enough.

Locating positive expectation games

Although positive expectation and full pay video poker machines are found in many "locals" casinos (located off the Strip) in the Las Vegas market (and in a few Reno casinos), most Strip casinos and casinos in other markets offer less attractive video poker pay schedules.

Players' clubs

Many casinos offer free memberships in "player's clubs" or "slot clubs", which return a small percentage of the amount of money that is bet in the form of "comps" (complementary food, drinks, hotel rooms, or merchandise), or sometimes as cash back (sometimes with a restriction that the cash be redeemed at a later date). These clubs require that players use a card that is inserted into the video poker machine to allow the casino to track the player's "action" (how much the player bets and for how long), which is often used to establish a level of play that may make a player eligible for additional comps.

Comps or cash back from these clubs can make a significant difference in the theoretical return when playing video poker over a long period of time. In some cases, usage of a club card can even add enough value to the pay schedule of a video poker game with a negative theoretical return to make that same game have a positive theoretical return.