I am skeptical of much of what Scarne has written about blackjack, so I’ll quote from Mickey MacDougall’s MacDougall on Dice and Cards (Coward-McCann, 1944, NY), which was published prior to any of Scarne’s books: “Many professionals dress up the game by giving prizes for certain hands. A favorite stunt is to offer ten times the size of the wager to anyone holding a natural twenty-one with a black jack. This adds interest to the game, but it also tempts a player to increase his stakes.”

In an honestly dealt single-deck game, this gimmick bonus would give the player a substantial edge over the house, assuming the player knew basic strategy (an unlikely assumption). I would also assume that a gambling house that offered this bonus would be using any number of illegitimate methods to assure the house a healthy edge.

That curious bonus payout that gave blackjack its name, however, has long since disappeared. There may be some casino somewhere that pays a small bonus if a player is dealt a natural 21 which includes a jack of spades or clubs, but that is no longer a normal rule of the game. Today, a blackjack is simply any initial two cards that consist of an ace and any ten-valued card.

That’s when Ed Thorp dropped another bombshell. Under the auspices of their Vintage Paperback division, Random House published a revised and expanded edition of Beat the Dealer. And the most important addition was Harvey Dubner’s Hi-Lo counting system, which Thorp called the Complete Point Count, with a computer-optimized strategy devised by Julian Braun. To the casinos’ frustration, this was a system that could more easily be applied to multiple-deck games.

Thorp was keeping the casinos on the run.

Still, the casino’s fears were mostly unfounded. The Complete Point Count was easier to use than the ten-count, but it was not a lot easier. It required players to keep two separate counts. In addition to the running count of the cards’ point total, the player had to keep a count of the exact number of cards remaining to be played. And in order to play his hand, he had to memorize a chart of 158 different strategy changes to be made according to the count.

Thorp also included a Simple Point Count in this new edition of his book, but at the time that strategy seemed way too simple to most players to gain much of an edge, or to be taken seriously by players who wanted to beat the game. Later, the power of Thorp’s simpler method of adjusting the running count, without keeping a separate count of the exact number of cards played, would be shown.

But, after the third screwdriver, he did get me to thinking. When I lost the third pot in a row to river cards against the odds, I confess to thinking I was caught in a skin game. Just a moment of anger. Ain’t no-one with the cojones to try anything against me for real - not with my connections. But there’s lots of folk get it into their heads that online video poker sites are cheating them. So I s’pose I’d better say a few words of reassurance - not that it’ll actually boost your confidence. The truth ain’t designed to do that.

So, let me sit you down in front of a video poker machine playing Jacks or Better on a pay table that’s offering 9-6-250 like online at goldencasino.com. For those who’ve not boned up on the jargon, that’s a machine paying 250 per coin on a Royal Flush, 9 on a Full House and 6 on a Flush. That machine’s set up to pay back only a fraction over 98% of what it takes. Even if you play a perfect strategy on this machine, the theoretical return never gets above 100%. It bears saying again. No matter which lucky rabbit’s foot you got in your pants, the very best you can hope to do is to almost break even.

‘Cause most folk can’t play the perfect strategy, the House edge on every video poker machine keeps the funds rolling in. That’s why you gotta pass the carousels of slot machines before you get to the tables. They’re the bread-an-butter earners for every casino.

If I stopped there, there’s no sense in any casino cheating on the slot machines. But there’s no denying you’re right ’bout one thing. Greed’s the worm in the gambling apple. Don’t matter which side of the fence you’re on, there’s always some as thinks they’re gonna hit it big. So I’ve seen pit bosses and managers decide the Vig’s not enough and rig the games. I’ve seen a few do it to put the money in their own pockets - most of them got decent burials, too. Yeh, there’s some cheating going on, but most of it’s on your side and it’s not very subtle.

So why do some folk get so all-fired sure they’ve been cheated by slot machines? In a word: frustration. They were hot, certain their luck was in, but had a long bad session. That always makes the loss harder to bear - when your emotion gets in the way of your judgement. Gambling’s got streaks of luck both ways. On one hot August night in 1913, the roulette wheel in Monte Carlo came up black a record-breaking twenty-six times in a row. The House took millions of extra profit. Half the room got to playing the Martingdale System. They were doubling their bets after every loss. But they tapped out of money before the streak ended. Was there anything wrong with the wheel? Nope! The math god smiled and it was true.

Just ’cause you come up empty on one or two sessions don’t mean nothing ‘cept your wins and losses’re averaging out over time. To make any kinda case against the casino, you’d need evidence. How you gonna that that evidence? Well, you gotta test their slot machines. Pick one of their video poker games. Say before you start how many times you’re gonna play and what you hafta see to prove the machine’s rigged. S’pose you think a video poker game don’t have all the faces in the deck - you’ve to track the frequency of the faces as they show in the count of all non-face cards. Tracking how many hands you played and how many you won or lost ain’t no proof at all. You need a test that’s statistically significant to prove cheating. So how many thousand hands of data you gonna pay to collect to test your hypothesis? It’s put up or shut up. No-one likes a sore loser unless they got the evidence to prove otherwise.

One last thought before the thinking’s done: some of you load up your own software to run alongside video poker machines - kinda like a coach. Me, I don’t have no problem with that, but some online casinos’re uploading Dynamic Link Library subroutines to identify the applications you’re running at the same time as the casino package. They might not like some of the things they find - not within the spirit of the game from their point of view. Remember the old Chinese saying, “Big fish eat small fish.”

Catch ya ’round.

Now, if it’s one thing my father taught me that’s become a kinda guiding principle, it’s that people without math live their lives in a fog. They’ve got no idea what they’re doing. An’ you never see this more often than in a casino watching how people play the slot machines. So, just for a moment, I’m going to slip into their mindset - give you a quick tour of how a gambler can fall into a trap. Need a drink first, though, to dull the pain.

So, here I am, playing video poker. I’m feeding the machine and keeping count of the number of times I do and don’t get winning combinations in the pay table. Got me some serious scientific study going on here! My video poker strategy is down pat! You see, to my way of thinking, there’s no such thing as a random sequence. The probability of any one thing happening is set by what went before. So, if I got me a winning hand, the law of averages says the odds of that happening again is poorer for the hands that come just after it. An’ that’s true for the reverse as well. The longer I go without a winning hand, the more likely a big hand gets.

vThese folk live in a dream world. You ever watch a Poker Dealer wash and shuffle a deck of 52 cards fairly. Then the Dealer deals five cards to each player from that shuffled deck. The first card dealt comes with a 1 in 52 chance, the second with a 1 in 51 chance, and so on as the cards are dealt in turn. All the countries licensing video versions of card and dice games have laws. No country wants to kill the golden goose that’s laying all them tax eggs so they all want to see fair games. Players vote with their feet if they think a game’s crooked. That’s in no-one’s interest. So all casinos gotta match the odds of a real card game with a human dealer. You might be thinking these casinos’ll still be out to cheat you in some way - after all, wouldn’t nothing be easier than to tweak the software - and those countries’re probably corrupt, take a backhander and look the other way. But there’s no need to cheat. No matter how you cut it, the games make more’n enough money when played fairly. Even when serious professionals come out to play, the House has an edge.

So, on a video poker machine, the Random Number Generator (RNG for short) shuffles that virtual deck of 52 cards and pulls out your first five. Now sometimes, the slot machines sit with that randomized deck and deal the next cards off the top when you press draw. In others, that ol’ RNG don’t know when to quit. It keeps on notionally shuffling the deck while you’re busy trying to decide what to do with your hand. The longer you take, the more times the RNG has cycled. Finally, you decide what you’re holding and hit the draw button. You get whatever’s on top of the deck at that precise moment. Wait a fraction of a second longer, and you get different cards. It don’t matter which wy the machines’re set up. The deck has a random distribution of cards.

What these dreamers in a fog never see clearly is the principle of statistical independence. This a fancy way of saying that events are unrelated - when the first occurrence has no effect on the second. When events are random. So when is a sequence of cards random? When the odds of you predicting the next card are no better than chance. It’s like tossing a coin. Every time you toss a coin, the chances of getting one of two sides is always 1 in 2. It never changes from one toss to the next.

So don’t you never fall into no gambler’s fallacy. There ain’t no deck of cards or dice that got a memory. They’re just the tools we use to gamble with. Sure these new video poker machines can have big memories but there ain’t no point to that. So long as they all got a RNG, all they’re doing is remembering the longest string of random numbers anyone’s ever bothered to collect.

So I’ll be getting back to the free online video poker - I’m looking over a new game. Ain’t no reason to pay to play. Just browsing for now.

Here’s an example: You wager $5 on red. If red comes up immediately, you win $5, getting back $10 total. If black comes up, you lose, but if green (0) comes up, you wouldn’t necessarily lose. You have a chance to get your original bet back. If red appears on the next spin, then you would receive your $5 back, with no winnings. If black is the result, you lose. You would remain in prison if green appears again. This effectively cuts the house edge in half, from 2.7 percent down to 1.35 percent for all even-money wagers.

Surrender also cuts the house edge in half for even-money wagers, but it works a little differently. If you had put that same $5 bet on red in Atlantic City, and a zero or double zero (green) appeared, then the dealer would immediately give you half your wager back ($2.50). The Atlantic City casinos don’t wait for the next spin to decide if you get $0 or $5 back. They split the difference and settle right away. Thus the casino’s edge is cut from 5.26 percent down to 2.63 percent for even-money bets.

We recommend you the most reliable online casinos where you can enjoy safe gambling.

Then add to that the en prison rule for even-money wagers and you’ll find the edge cut down to a less formidable 1.35 percent - which makes these bets better than the pass and come bets at craps, Let It Ride, Three Card Poker, Caribbean Stud, Pai Gow Poker and a host of other games and wagers!

If you think you might visit any of the European casinos, plan ahead. Find out if they have a dress code. The more elegant casinos will require formal dress. Also, the casinos may actually be private clubs, open only to club members and their guests.

This is especially true in the United Kingdom. After you apply for membership, you will have to wait at least 24 hours before playing. Be wary and learn the proper manners, for example in many European casinos tipping the dealer may not be allowed. Before visiting these establishments for the first time, remember to do your homework.

The casinos in the United States and Canada have a much different atmosphere. North American games run two to three times faster. You’ll probably find a more casual dress code and a laid-back attitude. On one recent visit to Las Vegas, I watched as two young couples, sprinkling the layout and swigging’ beer, were having an amusing and uninhibited time at one of the roulette tables at the California Club.

Whenever one of them would hit a straight-up winner, all four would jump to their feet, banging backsides and singing “Roller coaster … of love.” I have to admit, everyone was enjoying themselves, including the dealer and the supervisor. But what a contrast to the more reserved and slower paced games found on the continent. You won’t find many people slapping their backsides but you will still find that roulette is a roller coaster! You can also play roulette online at the top casino sites, which offer various versions of this game.

Of course, the standards are different in America and Canada as well. For example, in American casinos tipping the dealer is not only permitted, it is encouraged, and dealers rely on tips to make a living. Unfortunately, on average, the North American roulette game is not as good as its European cousin. It is possible to find single-zero wheels in Las Vegas and you can find the surrender rule (similar to the en prison rule) in Atlantic City, but I have not seen both available at the same casino, or even in the same city.