It would be a grave mistake to assume that a team with an average record is playing for nothing. Many teams play hard throughout the season, because they have a shot at the NCAA tournament even if they are low in the conference. Another fallacy that kills sports bettors is betting NCAA basketball like it’s the NBA. You have to remember that NCAA basketball is comprised of young adults, typically 18-21. Most don’t possess the ability to perform at a high level, to think under pressure and to rise to the occasion against all odds.

While colleges fill their basketball teams with the best talent they have available, that does not mean the team will have even one really good player. Some programs out there are just plain bad. Only a small sample of players at the college level will be drafted by the NBA. Most are just street balers going through their college years. College basketball players are more susceptible to emotional swings than NBA players. For this reason, you must pay attention to any recent news and events swirling around the team.

For those that don’t already know, college basketball works on the spread system. For example, let’s say you have UCLA playing at Duke and Duke is -8. You have two options. You can take Duke and lay the 8 points, which means Duke must win by more than 8 for you to win—8 is a tie and only wins on some parlay cards. Your other option is to take UCLA and the 8 points. As long as UCLA win or does not lose by more than 7, you win. If they lose by 8, you tie.

College basketball betting also features the totals line. Not every game played will have a totals line at every sports book. The totals line is the total number of points scored by both participants at an event. For example, if the totals line was 130, you could bet the over or the under. Take the over and you want both teams to combine for 130 or more points. Take the under and you want both teams to combine for 130 or fewer points. Totals lines in college basketball can be both profitable and tricky at the same time.

The pocket cards are dealt to the player and dealer, then the player makes a decision – to play or not to play, and places a bet. After that three cards of flop are dealt and again the player may place a bet; there is also a possibility to place the bet after the turn. However, there are some differences: before deal the player places the ante bet. If the player wishes to continue preflop game, he is to place the bet equal to two antes (the flop bet), otherwise he is to be dropped and to lose his ante. Nevertheless, the bets after flop or turn are equal to one ante (turn and river bets); at this stage the player may say “check” and continue the game without additional investments. When the river is dealt the combinations of dealer and player are compared according to the hold’em rules: the played away player loses all his bets; in case of draw game all bets are returned; if the player had won then he gets one-to-one payment as for the flop/turn/river bets; ante is returned in case if the combination is lower than street and it is one-to-one repaid in case of street combination. As you see, this game’s strategy is very difficult and unlike club hold’em you have to play with almost 100% hands and to drop only off-suit 23-27! During optimum game the advantage of casino makes nearly 2%. The word “bonus” in the name of game means, that there are additional bonus bets. The player can place the bet on his pocket cards. When the pocket pair or ace and jack, lady or king comes out, the player receives from three-to-one up to thirty-to-one payments. Side bet advantage of casino makes about 8%.

If you like to play blackjack and to bargain when playing club poker you need to have a look at Hold’em Blackjack (only InterPoker has it). The authors of game had swiped the rules of collection and calculation of hand points from blackjack – the player is to have the combination to the utmost close to 21 without overshoot. As the game is played not against the dealer there is no any surrenders, divisions, duplications, and even blackjack is disabled. This game is simple pontoon and has no advantages against 21 points collected from three cards. But the most senior combination becomes “Seven Charlie’s cards” – seven cards without overshoot. The rules of action are swiped from hold’em. In the first round all players receive one card each, obligatory small and big blinds are placed (in tournaments ante also can be used) and then there is an action round which is completely similar to limit hold’em in increments of big blind and three raises maximum. In the second round each of the remaining players receives the card and the second round of double bet action takes place. After the second round of action the players may continue to collect the cards (in a clockwise direction starting from the player to the left hand of dealer’s button). The player may widow the cards until he wishes to stop or until he overshoots pontoon. When the players finish to widow, the last round of action starts and the bets on this stage may vary from 2 up to 10 big blinds. When the action round is finished there is a showdown; the player with the best combination (“Seven Charlie’s Cards”, 21, 20, etc.) takes the bank and if several players have identical combinations they divide the bank. If the remaining players had overshot the player having minimum points (22, 23, etc.) wins. Casino takes the rake as it is the club poker. It is understood that there is no standard strategy against opponents, but it is possible to assume, that the player having quite good knowledge of blackjack and hold’em will have the advantage.

It should be noted, that popularity of various tournaments grows. It is more interesting for players to compete with human opponents instead of computer dealer. There are slots, blackjack, roulette, oasis-poker, and baccarat tournaments. A lot of casinos offer such tournaments and there is even a blackjack tournaments site.

And finally let’s have a look at innovations in the field of slots. As I said before, there is basically quantitative increase – new pictures and more lines (20-25 lines do not surprise anymore; there are even 30 and 40 lines). But there are also some innovations. The latest thing for the Internet which is known for a long time in offline games – slots with stoppage of lines and option “to push” the drum. Cryptologic casinos had gained the right to use so-called British fruit-machines which are classical slots of fruit themes, but as a bonus the players may have, from time to time, the option of either to fix 1-2 drums and to twist the remaining drums, or to shift any of drums on one symbol downwards.

Cryptologic also has another innovation – Cubis slot. The player sees three walls of a cube – bottom and two back. On each of the walls appear 25 multi-colored cubes. There are 15 lines which pass through two walls and if on one of lines there are four cubes of one color successively the player takes the prize depending on color and number of cubes. Then the winning sequence of cubes disappears and its place becomes occupied by other cubes and new winning sequence can be formed. In game there are also the cubes-multipliers increasing the prize up to six times as well as bonus cubes allowing to change the line or the whole plane.

Reading finished their Championship winning campaign in style, by beating Sunderland’s points record by one point. Graeme Murty’s late penalty, only his second goal for the club and first of the season, ensured the Royals beat Queens Park Rangers 2-1 and finished the season on 106 points.

Dave Kitson gave Reading the lead five minutes before the break but veteran Paul Furlong looked set to spoil the party when he equalised for the Hoops on 72. But Murty secured victory with six minutes left from the penalty spot, scoring 3/10 Reading’s 99th goal of the season.

Sheffield United beat Crystal Palace 1-0 to ensure the Eagles finished in the sixth and final play-off spot. Chris Morgan scored the only goal of the game with nine minutes remaining for the 20/21 Blades.

Watford got the point they needed to finish third in the table after a goalless draw against Hull at Vicarage Road. The 5/2 draw means Adrian Boothroyd’s men now take a five-match unbeaten run into the play-offs semi final against Crystal Palace.

Preston earned a psychological edge over play-off opponents Leeds after beating them 2-0 at Deepdale. Brian Stock scored direct from a free kick after 38 minutes for the 6/5 Lillywhites and Brett Ormerod added a second on 77.

Wolves finished the season one place off but eight points adrift of the play-off places with a 2-1 win at Norwich. Denes Rosa opened the scoring on the stroke of half-time and Mark Kennedy doubled Wolves’ advantage on 71. Robert Earnshaw hit back for the Canaries two minutes later but Glenn Hoddle’s side held firm at 14/5.

Coventry finished the season strongly at the expense of out-of-form Cardiff. Stern John broke the deadlock for the Sky Blues after eight minutes but the Bluebirds levelled through Steve Thompson on 21. Dele Adebola on 65 and Dennis Wise in stoppage time sealed a convincing Even money win at the Ricoh Arena.

Stoke boss Johan Boskamp ended his tenure in charge on a high after thumping Brighton 5-1, making a nonsense of the 8/5 odds available. Youngster Adam Rooney scored after 6 and 22 minutes before Mamady Sidibe made it three a couple of minutes before the break. Rooney completed his hat-trick on 63 and Peter Sweeny struck his first form the club on 82. Doug Loft grabbed a consolation two minutes later but the result condemned the Seagulls to bottom position in the table.

Being a young scientist, Edward O. Thorp regularly read mathematic journals.  When he was a student, he was pressed for money. The idea of outplaying the casino on the basis of calculations appealed to Thorp and he decided to check the results of the “excellent four” and see what will come out of it. The result of his activity was a phenomenal book Beat The Dealer, now its sales are approaching million of samples.

Thorp chose the other way – he did not make analytical calculations, but with powerful at that time computer IBM (they were also called mainframe) he wrote several programs on Fortran, creating quite original methods for 60s. By the way, Thorp together with his research instructor Claude Elwood Shannon, a great scientist, were also involved in solving the problem “how to outplay the roulette?”

From his calculations Thorp understood that dead cards had a considerable affect on the gambler’s chances this or that way. His main idea was about memorizing the dead cards in somewhat simplified way and when the situation is beneficial for the player, make high stakes.  By the way, this system still remains the basis of any methods and counting systems of blackjack.

The counting system introduced by Thorp, was rather complicated for usage in real casinos, required great concentration and large amount of mentally arithmetic actions. However with good training there was nothing impossible in its application.

Thorp’s book immediately became a success and bestseller. Everyone understood that with quite simple actions you can get an advantage. Every reader dreamt of enormous prizes. However, the casinos also knew the score.

Panic seized them. And in 1962 after Thorp’s book, all Las Vegas Casinos without exception changed their rules being afraid of mass influx of “system players”. The quality of the rules worsened terribly and no counting system could ever help you to win. Though the effect for casino turned out to be quite unpredictable and reverse – people stopped playing blackjack. And during several months, all the casinos had to return to the former rules for their own survival.

Another interesting effect caused by Thorp’s book- incredible popularity of blackjack outrunning the favorite American craps. A lot of people, after reading the book considered themselves potential winners and rushed to the blackjack tables. However, most of them had a bad understanding of the mathematical principles of the game did not become winners but quite vice versa. Therefore, casino got more clients and moreover losing clients. Since then their number is only increasing.

The system presented in the first edition of Thorp’s book was quite difficult even for professionals and only the few could apply it under the conditions of a real game. Something should be simplified.

The power behind the throne.  
Julian Braun is quite a unique personality.  He had hardly ever played a deal in real blackjack. But he played millions and maybe even billions of deals on the computer. Braun was a good mathematician and programmer and he got interested in Thorp’s idea and offered him cooperation in the sphere of calculations and programming.

 He was behind the development of all modern systems the authorship of which belongs to Revere, Humble, Wong and Uston. He wrote the only book How to Play Winning Blackjack, but what a book!

Braun upgraded Thorp’s system on FORTRAN and made considerable changes and the second edition of Thorp’s book also contained Hi-Lo system in its modern form. It was quite a revolution in gambling world. Braun worked in IBM corporation and had access to probably most powerful computers of that time. This fact helped to build simple and efficient tool in struggle with casino.

The casino’s electronic versions of the regular games are also quirky and fun. There are serious video poker players who stake out the high-paying machines, and gamble only on them. Those who watch a serious video poker player long enough will learn some of their strategies, like the “Jacks or better” version where players favor hands, as the name implies, with a face card in it.

Casino dice games are exciting, but sometimes complicated. Variations include “street craps,” “bank craps” and what some people call “Grand Hazard”. It’s good to know what version of game is going on at the table before you lay your money down. Is the casino paying winners who roll seven or eleven? Or are you gambling, roulette style; on the numbers that come up on the dice roll?

Roulette is said to be one of the most challenging games in the casino. The roulette wheel has up to 38 numbered positions for the little ball to land in. You can start your gambling on a single number, odds or evens and other combinations. If you are a beginner, it’s best to research this one online or at your local bookstore first, as the game can be not only mesmerizing, but also expensive for a beginner.

Casino games are fun, but sometimes it’s a good idea to research first, learn the rules, and then go to the casino armed with your understanding of the rules.