Best Online Casinos for US players

Assuming you have been living in a cave, and you think gambling is a matter of pure chance, it is also safe to assume you realize that besides chance, strategy and technique, psychology also plays a large part in winning, when gambling online and offline. Ultimately it will be luck that will bring the decisive factor in winning or losing, but it is not the only factor in the game.

Where gambling is concerned, a large factor is psychology; in fact we can classify this in two categories: Applied psychology and applied sociology.

The psychological level concerned with gambling is a matter of will, the proper mind set that will allow a player to stay in control at all times. It makes the difference between healthy gambling and addictive gambling.

On a psychological level, the term gambling, either equals illegal behavior, or it is perceived as a part of human nature. However, in general gambling is perceived as something bad, as is best illustrated by the fact that gambling is called a vice, a weakness if you will.

Those that perceive gambling to be bad, immoral, or illegal, typically have black and white views on the world, and in general avoid risk whenever possible. These are the types of people that place their trust in banks rather than attempting to multiply the money on the stock market, casino, or other investment type they deem risky. These people are governed by reason rather than instinct, and those people think of gambling in the same sense as they would when talking on the subject of drugs. To them a gambler is a sick individual that needs to be treated for his illness.

On the other hand we have those that perceive gambling as a part of human nature, and see gambling as something governed by instinct. To them it definitely is not a disease that needs to be treated, and they regard gambling to be a means for relaxation, which is entertaining. To them gambling is a part of life, as natural as eating, sleeping and breathing. However, this does not mean that those people do not consider the possibility of a gambling addiction; to them it just is a natural thing that does not necessarily lead to addicted behavior.
Who is right or wrong cannot be determined, it is a matter of personal views, and should be respected in their own right.

Where gambling is concerned, a player’s emotion must be under control at all times. If a player loses control it will present a major distraction, preventing the player to maintain the right state of mind required to play the game(s) in an intelligent fashion. A professional player also knows when to play and when to quit. A successful player will never go all out and risk it all.

While gambling, not letting emotions getting the better of you can be at times hard to do, yet it is important to stay in control in order not to let emotions take control over you. When things get hard to handle, blow off some steam afterwards, but never while playing.
M.A.H.

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Say somebody suggested a wager to you where the bet would be that this person could toss a coin and have it come up with the heads side for ten times in a row, and in order to ensure fairness this person would allow you to select the coin to do it with. What chance would you give him to succeed? Many, if not all would consider the odds to be against this person and think they could safely offer odds like a thousand to one and still have a high expectancy of winning.

Let’s take the same wager only this time the person in question has already tossed the coin nine times over and heads has come on top every time. What chance would you give him? The same as before? If so you would be wrong and this error is the heart of what is known as the gambler’s misconception.

The notion that previous results can affect the outcome of an event that is random by nature is what we commonly refer to as the gambler’s misconception. In our bet, the fact that the coin already turned up heads nine times has absolutely no effect on the tenth toss which still could go either way.

Because the coin came up with heads nine times in a row already, the chances of doing it a tenth time are 50 percent just like they were when the coin was tossed for the first time. A coin does not remember previous results and there is no difference between tossing this coin or another one. In other words the probability factor does not change.

In modern day casino games the gambler’s misconception has a great impact. Players typically are looking to spot patterns in order to gain the advantage in a game. To illustrate: Gamblers playing roulette who notice several wins on black in a row are more likely to bet on red, as in their mind it is due to turn up after so many results on black. Same goes for their betting amounts. If they lose, they most likely double their wagers in the belief it improves their chances of winning.

This misconception is used as the core of the flawed Martingale system. Using this system the wagers are doubled after each loss so when the player eventually wins he will make good on all previous losses he sustained. The reality of it all is that losses can and will happen, even many times in a row, there is no pattern to detect and players who base their strategies on this system could end up in financial problems if they do not have the required financial resources to back up their bets. They may end up with financial problems they are unable to solve on their own.

It should be noted that this strategy is a misconception only under circumstances where events are renewed at each turn, because in that case the conditions for the results are identical in every instance of the game. In card games such as Blackjack for example, cards already drawn can affect the outcome as the game progresses. That essentially is the foundation for counting cards, which actually is a strategy that can work.

M.A.H.

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One of the greatest concerns of any player who plays at casinos online is security. How safe are those casino sites that you open an account with and fund that account with your money? The logical question which follows after that is without a doubt: How does one select the online casino that is the most secure? Below you will find a selection of the most used techniques to research an online casino in order to make sure the casino of choice is an established, and a secure one.

Established online casino sites take all the necessary steps in order to protect their customers. One of the key factors in determining whether or not a casino web site is secure is finding out if this site has implemented so called encryption software to shield all (personal) financial data. Never, ever, enter a credit card number without verifying that the site in question has indeed implemented such software. Besides checking the technical side of things it is also wise to research the casino site first in order to determine that it is indeed a legit online casino. Established casinos will shield all personal data and will never share this information with third parties.

Before making a choice it is wise to read up on the casino that caught your eye at the many casino review sites that exist online. However, do keep in mind, while a good review is an indication that the casino in question is legit, reviews can be faked, so also make sure the review site you selected is an established one.
As stated, the well established online casinos also make for the most secure sites. Therefore, it is a good idea to check how long the site has been in business. Most casino review sites will include this information and if not it is always possible to do a so called “whois” search at the web site of one of the many domain registrars. Though owner information could be concealed, a whois search will show you when the domain was registered and how often it has changed servers, owner, and much more.

One can also recognize established casinos simply by comparing services that are offered as established ones can offer services that less reputable casinos can’t. Look for services like real time chat support, a (Toll-free) phone number, and contact email as these usually are absent on less reputable casino sites. If you cannot find this information on the casino site of your choice, or the information listed looks strange, it is highly recommended to find another one.

The only way to gamble online safely is by using reputable, established and secure online casinos. Before joining one always read up on them, do a whois search on the domain and check the services offered for support. If any of the above looks strange do not consider joining that casino, there is no reason to take the risk as there are plenty of well established and secure online casinos around.

Enjoy playing casino games online, and stay safe!

M.A.H.

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Players usually choose a casino on the basis of reputation, payout factors and other issues which make a casino reliable. Casinos are not there to ensure that you win. It is a game with a win-lose possibility and getting ripped off at a casino is not abnormal. There are many people who complain about their losses at a casino. A reliable casino is a basic requirement for any player and going about spotting one is easy if you know how.

When you come across attractive offers that a casino is offering, try getting to know about the casino from reliable sources. One good way to start is to Google it. You are most likely to get a favorable number of search returns to inform you about the casino. If the casino has a fraudulent reputation, it might not turn up on the search page as they are usually efficiently blocked from time to time by governmental interference. Checking for reviews and comments from experienced players, or knowing someone with online gambling experience can help.

After selecting an online casino you can go to the official website and take a thorough look at the deals, offers and conditions that are there for the players. A good look at the website can save you hundreds of dollars. The casino highlights are usually displayed on their websites about the software / system provider, payout factors, bonus offers and more. The bonus offers may have important fine print information which should never be skipped. To avoid hassle, it is better that you have everything crystal clear in your head before shelling out cash.

M.A.H.

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Research over the years has shown that the average amount of money a Las Vegas visitor plans to spend in the casino is roughly $500. This is a crucial statistic. The amount of the bankroll and the player’s preferred style of action define his relationship to luck and the house edge. But what happens when the online gambling takes pace from the player’s home computer? Every online gambler has his own casino strategies and when he logs into the online casinos he has every intention of using his casino strategies to play with. The amount of money he intends spending in the online casinos is a major item in his casino strategies. In order to start online gambling, he has to transfer a deposit into his account in the online casino.

This is where his casino strategies begin. How much shall I transfer? How much will I need when I am playing in the online casino? If at this point he thinks to himself, “it really doesn’t matter how much I deposit, if I lose it all I can always transfer more,” he is lost. Perhaps the most vital of all casino strategies is that of discipline. A player must start his gambling with a fixed amount of money to play with and when that is finished he must stop him gambling activities for that session. He may gamble in the online casino again the next day with a new bankroll, but the current day’s play is over. Be strong and stick to your casino strategies!

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Over the years I have developed many different casino strategies, some based on mathematical formulae, some based on the sheer skill of playing and others based on luck. Which of these casino strategies works the best, you ask. Well, it’s a toss-up. Actually, none of them, is the honest answer. Some work well in the online casinos, and others work well in the real casinos. For example, I tried for a few years to always have my black cat on my lap when I was online gambling and that seemed to work well. But when I tried to smuggle him into a real casino, I got thrown out by a bouncer. The doubling up strategy that I used in a real casino for a while, failed to work in an online casino so I dropped it. 

These days I confine myself to online gambling and I am developing new strategies to use in the online casinos. The typical online casino has become as good, if not better than the gamblers when it comes to strategies. It’s easy to write ‘anti’ strategy into the software, I suppose, and that makes it doubly difficult for us players to develop successful online casino strategies.

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Are you new to black jack or have you been playing for ages?
No matter – it always makes good sense to take another long, hard look at the black jack charts to increase your chances of winning. These charts will advise you on the decisions you need to make for every possible hand.

Each strategy chart comprises 3 separate options: one for a Hard Total, one for a Soft Total and one for a Split.
These charts tell you exactly what to do during the game. Check the hand you are holding and find it on the charts. Of course there are many charts available but these three are the most popular.

Hard Total Chart
black jack hard chart
H=Hit, S=Stand, D=Double

Soft Hand Total
black jack soft chart
H=Hit, S=Stand, D=Double

Split Total
black jack split chart
H=Hit, S=Stand, D=Double, SP=Split

We recommend that you always use the charts, even if you are a card counting master.
Unless, of course, you have learned them and know them by heart.

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The two most popular games in America are football and poker. In a certain sense, I suppose we could say that each of them is a preparation for life and then a model of life. Football is the ultimate team effort game whose aim is to score a goal by kicking the ball through the opponent’s goalposts.

Football highlights teamwork, joint effort, role specialization and the striving to reach a common goal. It is no accident that football jargon pervades the business world vocabulary.

Poker, on the other hand, is the game in which individuals strive against each other. It emphasizes the internal dynamics of a person, the choices that make him a winner or a loser, and his understanding of his competitors. It also is no accident that poker jargon pervades the stories and legends of the conquest of new territories and the frontier and myths of groundbreaking stories.

Is there any sure fire way to get started on the right foot at winning at the poker table? Well, there are a few things that you must know and remember. Firstly, you have to understand the game sufficiently to be able to realistically evaluate the chances of the hand you are holding winning. Most players learn pretty quickly what the odds are, what constitutes a good hand, and are able to make a reasonable evaluation of what the other players are doing.

Most of the books deal a lot with these mechanics. They are all relevant but won’t give you the ‘killer’ edge. Some players meticulously keep a book on their opponents, noting each little gesture and evaluating the body language. This will give you a little edge and is a pretty useful thing to do. But it’s no big deal - you can probably rely on your instinct for what people are doing and what their intentions are. But the mechanics are not so relevant when you have already grasped them.

There are, however, two really relevant issues to understand. First of all, poker is a money game. The books tell you about card odds. They are only the first step. The important thing is pot odds, how much will it cost you to play compared to how much you stand to win. You can’t change the card odds, but the pot odds can be changed.

The deep secret of poker is to make people put as much money into the pots you win and not put very much into the pots that the others win. Some people are of the opinion that the secret of winning is to play tight, to only play the very best hands. Wrong.

When your opponents see you playing tight they don’t stay with you unless they have very good hands. So you end up winning small pots. Some players play wild in order to win, to get a lot of action going so that there are big pots. Wrong again. In that way you win more pots but you put a lot of money into other people’s pots as well. What you are trying to do is to make people put money into your pots.

You must manipulate them to get them to stay in. When you have them on the hook you push the betting aggressively. When the odds are on their side the losers call and the winners raise.
If you want to win, another important issue is to choose to be a winner rather than a loser. There are two types of losers - the passive callers and the wild men.

The passive caller stays in too long, hoping against hope, knowing that he’s bucking the odds. He doesn’t raise when he should and calls when he shouldn’t. He knows he’s playing like a loser but continues playing in the same way.

The wild man prefers action and excitement. He plays hands when he shouldn’t and raises when he shouldn’t. He seeks any excuse to stay in the action. He knows he plays too many hands and pushes them too hard but he keeps on doing it. If an individual is a loser, it’s because he has chosen to keep his losing habits and being a loser is acceptable to him.

You probably want to ask happens when the other players are better than you? The answer is simple - don’t play in games where the other players are a lot better than you are.

And in the end, that’s the winner’s answer - play in games where you can win!

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We all tend to think of ourselves as special individuals who are capable of doing and succeeding at anything. We think we can remain cool and collected in any circumstance no matter how heavy the odds are against us. This is human nature and is the very positive image we have of ourselves.

I know that that when I first started buying lottery tickets I was confident that I would win and that the money was already mine. Even today, I am surprised whenever I buy a ticket and see later that I haven’t won.

We all think we are different from all other people and that I am the one who was born with the silver spoon in his mouth. And you and I and billions of other people all think exactly the same.

If you are a gambler, confidence and optimism are necessary in your personality and in the games you play. On the other hand it is not these characteristics alone that will make you a winner. To these positive traits you have to add your own gambling systems and you have to develop your own strategies to help you along. Positive thinking is not enough at the casino.

Your first step must be to ask yourself several questions to set things straight. Why do you want to gamble? Are you in search of entertainment, or are you trying to earn fast money so you can go out on the town and splurge on a few costly items just to spoil yourself?

If you are looking for entertainment, are you are the kind of person that likes extreme entertainment or do you prefer the calmer types of relaxation? Are you willing and able to risk your hard earned money at the gambling table?

Surely you’re not going to walk into the casino with all your money – you must set a limit of money or bankroll you are able to play with. Are you disciplined enough to stick to your limits, or are you liable to lose control, and do something unpredictable in your wild chase after the unachievable?

The most important question you have to answer is - how much self-control do you have. Of course, the answer to this one may change from day to day as you change your mind on the issues of gambling. But the answers to these questions and others are critical components to developing a winning casino strategy for yourself.

So before you rush off to the casino or sit down in front of the computer to go to an online casino and start gambling, make a game plan for yourself. If you don’t have one when you start gambling you will find yourself losing pretty quickly, but a positive and disciplined plan will assist you enormously and put you on the road to buying that new car or taking that Caribbean cruise.

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The craps table is not a straightforward affair. For instance, there are 2 possible ways to approach it:

The first and easiest one is to bet with the dice, hoping they will pass, that the same numbers will keep coming up and that the come-out roll will consist of many 7’s and 11’s. A bettor who wants the dice to pass is called a right bettor. This term is not morally interpreted. It only names a player who is betting with the dice.

It doesn’t really matter whether you bet right or wrong, the odds still remain the same. Your chances of winning are equal, but keep in mind that casino craps is a negative game, hence only good luck and smart play allow you to win. If you bet senselessly, as when the house has a big edge over you, you are unlikely to walk away a winner from a casino craps table.

Right Bettors - Correct Play
A right player is a player who places bets that give the house the minimum edge. So it follows that a passline wager is the best and most conservative method of play, together with taking the maximum odds allowed on the point established. If you are uncertain about how much you can wager as an odds bet, you should ask the dealer. Now if the player wants to have a little more action, he can make a come bet or two come bets, also taking the maximum free-odds.

In this way, much money may be won. What’s more, the player is only giving the house 0.8% in a single odds game and 0.6% in a double odds game. Someone who plays like this will be called a tough player, as he makes only the best bets, and gives the house very little in the way of an edge. If Lady Luck is sitting on his shoulder as well, he can make rake in quite a lot of change with this method.

For the more aggressive bettor, after making a pass-line and 1 or 2 come bets, all with maximum free-odds, he can cover the 6 or 8 if they’re not already bet, by making place wagers on these numbers. In such a case, the player will be giving the casino an edge of 1.52 per cent. However, a good deal of money can be made by the gambler who bets in this way, if the dice pass and some long rolls develop.

Under no circumstances make any other bet, no matter how tempting the payoffs may be. The house edge is too great, and will eat away your bankroll very quickly. Craps is a fast game, in which you can make or lose money in no time at all. So be cautious and bet smartly.

Wrong Bettors-Correct Play
The wrong bettor should make ‘a don’t’ pass bet and then lay single odds against the point. Double odds will slightly decrease the house edge from 0.8% to 0.6%, but after a series of repeated points the player’s bankroll will disappear very quickly.

Then the wrong bettor should make one, or if he’s more aggressive, two ‘don’t come’ wagers, laying single odds against the come points, and stop.

These are the only bets for a wrong bettor to make.

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