play blackjack betting

2007-01-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

Blackjack History
Derived from old French card games like "Chemin de Fer" and "French Ferme," the game of blackjack made its first appearence in French casinos around 1700. In France, blackjack is called "Vingt-et-Un," which means "Twenty-and-A." The game garnered it's now-common name of "blackjack" because when a player received a Jack of Spades and an Ace of Spades as the first two cards that were dealt to them, they would win an additional amount of money. Blackjack became popular in the United States around the 1800's and continues to be the most popular casino table game to date.
Roger Baldwin
Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in 1956 titled The Optimum Strategy in Blackjack. The paper was published by the Journal of the American Statistical Association and helped changed blackjack history forever. This paper was the first of it's kind to apply mathematical theory to the game of blackjack. Baldwin used probability, statistics, and calculators to show methods of reducing the casino advantage in blackjack. The paper was approximately 10 pages long and mainly consisted of mathematics and how they applied to card games.
Professor Edward O. Thorp
In 1962, Professor Edward O. Thorp, who is often referred to as the "Einstein of Blackjack", touched up the basic strategy that Baldwin had worked on and added the first known techniques of the now infamous tactics of card counting. Professor Throp published a famous book in 1963 called Beat the Dealer. The book was a national best seller. The casinos were affected so strongly by this book that they began to modify the game rules making it more difficult for players to win. Once again, the advantage had shifted back to the casino when they began changing the rules. It was during this time that casinos began introducing automatic card shuffling machines and multiple deck blackjack.
Stanford Wong
The next author to publish a famous book on blackjack was Stanford Wong, who wrote Professional Blackjack. This title used computer simulation to teach blackjack strategy and was designed for both beginning and advanced players. This book quickly became the standard blackjack bible for anyone who wanted to learn or master the game.
Julian Brown
Another large contributor to blackjack history was Julian Braun, a former IBM employee. Braun, a computer wizard, programmed thousands of lines of code for an IBM mainframe system, to simulate basic strategy. He developed new strategies for both basic strategy and card counting, which were published in the 2nd edition of Beat the Dealer.
Ken Uston
Electronic card counting devices were introduced in 1977 when Ken Uston's blackjack team built five pocket-sized computer devices that slid into their shoes. The team won over $100,000 in a short amout of time, as they assumed would happen, but eventually one of the computers was found and turned into the FBI. This computer device simply used public blackjack information, such as basic strategy, so the FBI ruled that it was not a cheating device. 60 Minutes, a popular news television show on CBS, aired an episode featuring Uston on their show in 1981 which lead to challenging casinos in Atlantic City on not allowing card counters to play. Uston wrote a book called The Big Player which details all of his work in blackjack.
MIT Blackjack Team
In the early 1990's another famous card counting group called the MIT Blackjack Team formed, continuing in the tradition of basic strategy and counting techniques, but without any computerized assistance. This team won hundreds of thousands of dollars over a short amount of time. Eventually casinos caught the group of card counters and they were barred from casinos across the globe.

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sportsbetting

2006-09-23T16:54:00.000-07:00

sportsbetting

So you want to learn more about sports betting and sports wagering so you can start making the big bucks off of your highly polished sports knowledge? Before you dive into the adrenaline-pumping action at our sportsbooks, learn more about online sports betting and online gambling, as well as trivia questions and the history of your favorite sports at our informative directory!

You can bet on almost every aspect of a contest from who is going to win to who scores first, the overall combined score, what round a boxer will knock out his opponent, and even whether the coin toss will yield heads or tails. A very generic breakdown of online sports betting and online sports wagering: sports handicapping is a system of taking two or more competing teams/individuals and providing a "level playing field" on which gamblers can bet the outcome of the event. Sports handicapping can be expressed in the form of points or odds. Odds can be defined as the odds of a team winning a game, series, championship etc. Points are the amount of points a team is going to win the game by (not just win the game, but by how many).

A sportsbook (sometimes abbreviated as book) or a race and sports book is a place where a gambler can wager on various sports competitions, including golf, football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, horse racing and boxing. The method of betting varies with the sport and the type of game. The more prominent the event, the more wagering options that are made available.

Winning bets are paid when the event finishes, or if not finished, when played long enough to becomes official; otherwise all bets are returned. This policy can cause some confusion since there can be a difference between what the sportsbook considers official and what the sports league consider official. Customers should carefully read the sportsbook rules before placing their bets.

The betting volume at sportsbooks varies throughout the year. Bettors have more interest in certain types of sports and increase the money wagered when those sports are in season. Likewise the interest in sports varies by country since the level of interest in the various sports is not constant the world over. Some major sporting events that don't follow a specific schedule, like boxing, can create peaks of activity for the sportsbooks.

Odds

In the mid 1930s, Leo Hirschfield started a company in Minneapolis, Minnesota called Athletic Publications, Inc., that published and distributed odds to bookies across the country by telephone and telegraph. He had a team of handicappers analyzing the matchups who also studied newspapers across the country. The company was a major provider of odds and prices until it finally disbanded, under fear of prosecution from the Federal Wire Act of 1961.

Today most sportsbooks get their opening prices from other sportsbooks as well as private companies like Las Vegas Sports Consultants. They adjust prices based on the bets coming in, news, injury, and weather information, and the price movement by other sportsbooks.

Nevada sportsbooks

Today there are roughly 150 licensed sportsbooks in the United States, all located in Nevada casinos. Now that many casinos share the same parent company, they offer the exact same wagering choices and odds, which is a disadvantage to the astute gambler who in the past could do more shopping for better prices.

In the 1950s the first Nevada sportsbooks, called turf clubs, opened. They were independent from the casinos, and had an informal agreement with the hotels that they would stay out of the casino business as long as the hotels stayed out of the sportsbook business. The sportsbooks had to pay a 10% tax so they charged a high vigorish to gamblers, but they still brought in a lot of business.

In 1974 the tax was lowered to 2%, (and in 1983 lowered to 0.25%), and in 1975 Lefty Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust Casino, convinced legislators to allow them in the casinos, and soon nearly all of the casinos added them. The turf clubs were no longer able to compete and eventually all closed.

In Nevada casino sportsbooks you will find:

Betting Windows

Numerous big screen televisions

Places to sit and watch

Interactive betting stations

Odds boards, usually computerized

Internet sportsbooks

While internet sportsbooks lack face-to-face transactions, they can handle more customers than land based sportsbooks and operate more cost effectively. They pass lower costs on to customers in the form of reduced vigorish (cheaper prices) or bonus incentives. They can also offer similar products, such as casino games, bingo, and poker to their existing clients.

While Internet sportsbooks take bets online, normally they are licensed in some jurisdiction. Taxation and regulation vary greatly by country.

Internet sportsbooks range from fraudulent operations with no intention of paying their customers to multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies. Internet sportsbooks range in focus, as some primarily cater to American sports, while others focus on European soccer. Some sportsbooks handle large wagers while others have low wagering limits. Some offer many exotic proposition wagers, where others have limited choices. Payment methods are not universally accepted at all sportsbooks.

Costa Rica is home to a large number of offshore sportsbooks, as it caters to many of the needs of the industry with an open regulatory environment and a large, capable workforce. A number of sportsbooks are also located in Jamaica, Gibraltar, Antigua, Curaçao, Australia, and many other countries around the world.

The United States Justice Department claims that wagering at offshore sportsbooks is a violation of the 1961 Federal Wire Act. Jeffrey Trauman of Harwood, North Dakota, was the first player ever to be prosecuted for online sports betting in the United States. The former car salesman, who quit his job to become a professional gambler, was cited under a North Dakota state law.

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