For many at this time, life has been pretty much on hold and access to bricks and mortar casinos (or anywhere for that matter) put firmly on the ‘back burner’ in most nations. Prior to recent times, for some of us, casinos had proved to be the occasional ‘unwind’ that we wanted and also were fun times spent with friends or family. For roulette and slots fans like myself, online casinos have become a legitimate alternative – providing an at-home casino experience. Try rtp slots on Johnslots for instance, and you’ll soon release what you’ve been missing. With so many original and inventive slots to play there are no shortage of options close to hand.
RTP slots are also a responsible option when compared to many other online slots game types. RTP, meaning ‘Return To Player’ value, essentially informs you of how much of a house edge this particular slots game has over the long term. That way you’re fully informed as you play and are able to enjoy playing with all of the facts to hand, rather than using guesswork or being under the illusion that an outcome is more likely than it actually is. Some slots even have an RTP of between 98-99% which really does give the casino only a small edge and is impressive in comparison to many real world slots machines. Of course even the official stats won’t hold true for every single instance of play but that can work for you as much as against, as lady luck is often something that goes hand-in-hand with playing any casino game.
Case in point is roulette, it’s one game with a small house edge, but really does have some wild swings of fortune this way and that. Of course there are many different approaches (as in, if you stick with a single number of a prolonged period, while it may soon come up, statistically it could take a good while to!) but even with that in mind, it’s amazing to see the winning runs – or its opposite – that can occur. It’s all part of the casino experience though and when your luck is in it really can be an unrivaled experience!
With all casino games it of course pays (in more ways than one) to set your own limits, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to be playing games where there’s only a small house edge, as that isn’t true of all casino games out there. Getting more bang for your buck and giving yourself the best chance possible to come out of top (even if you don’t have an expectation as such of winning anyway) is a good strategy for anything in life really.
The earliest recorded game of Blackjack dates all the way back to the 16th century, making it one of the oldest and most popular casino games around. Since then, Blackjack has only continued to evolve, and you can now play Blackjack online or even live, somewhere like Karamba live casino, maintaining its place at the top of the casino scene.
With such a long and rich history, there are a whole host of Blackjack facts and findings that you may not have heard before. Read on if you want to be in the know – and wow your friends with the following top six Blackjack facts.
- Keeping things natural
The chance of getting a “natural” outcome of 21 is around 4.8% based on a single Blackjack deck. This will of course change depending on how many decks of cards are being used in a game – if you’re opting to play live action Blackjack then as many as eight decks can be used at one time.
- Unlucky for some
Ending up with a total of 16 is the worst hand that anyone can be dealt in a game of Blackjack. However, you’ll be interested to know, it’s actually one of the most frequent hands.
- Find your edge
Blackjack has one of the smallest house edges out of all of the top casino games. In its classic form, Blackjack has an impressively high return to player (RTP) rate, all thanks to that minimal house edge. The RTP will usually equal somewhere around 99.87% – making it well worth a game or two.
- The curse of a winning streak
When it comes to Blackjack, a streak is actually considered to be an extremely unlikely feat. Finding yourself in some kind of a streak is essentially just an old wives’ tale. When you join a game of Blackjack, you will have up to three possible outcomes – win, lose or a tie/push. On average, you will have roughly a 50% chance of losing, 42% chance of winning, and an 8% likelihood of a push. After each win, there will be less of a chance of landing another, with the likelihood of having seven wins in a row pitched at around 0.99%.
- Napoleon’s court
Back in 18th century France, Blackjack was known as “Vingt-et-un” and was often played in the royal courts. None other than Napoleon Bonaparte, the famed military leader and Emperor of France, was one of the many historical figures who found a place in their heart for the iconic game. Upon his infamous exile on Elba, Napoleon really got to perfect his Blackjack-playing skills, also forming the belief that the game was so captivating that he banned his soldiers from playing so that they wouldn’t be distracted!
- Know your goals
On the surface, you might think that the objective in Blackjack is just to reach 21. However, if you’re a true Blackjack aficionado, then you’ll know that the actual objective is to beat the dealer. This isn’t to say that reaching 21 won’t help your cause, but that shouldn’t be your main focus.
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Gambling can be addictive, please play responsibly.
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Away from the world of online slots, as far as casino gambling is concerned, Edward Thorp is best known for his academic research into the application of probability theory to blackjack strategy, which eventually led to the publication of the ground-breaking book, ‘Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One’, in 1962. Inspired by his observations while playing blackjack in Las Vegas, shortly after receiving a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles in the late Fifties, Thorp discovered that by keeping track of the cards during the game a player can determine when the odds are most favourable.
In his seminal treatise, Thorp introduced the so-called ‘Ten Count’, which was the first mathematically proven, publicly available system for card counting. The Ten Count was only really applicable to single-deck games, which were commonplace in the Sixties, but spawned numerous other card counting systems, which are equally applicable to multi-deck games and have been used successfully by generations of blackjack players. Thorp is often called the ‘father’ of card counting; he was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2003.
By no means a ‘one-trick pony’, Thorp also turned his attention to roulette and, together with Claude Shannon, a.k.a. the ‘father of information theory’, co-invented the first wearable computer. Although strictly illegal in Nevada, the analog device, about the size of a cigarette, was tested in Las Vegas in 1961 and produced predicted improvement in the odds when playing roulette, but its invention was kept secret until 1966. The computer divided the roulette wheel into eight octants and attempted to predict not the exact number, but the octant, in which the ball would land, based on the speed of wheel and ball.
The late Tommy Carmichael was a television repair man-turned-inventor, who devoted nearly twenty years of his adult life to devising innovative ways to cheat slot machines. Carmichael began his life of crime with a nuts-and-bolts device, known as a ‘top-bottom joint’, to which he was introduced in the early Eighties. A crude affair, consisting of a curved piece of metal and a guitar string, the top-bottom joint effectively short-circuited the coin hopper of older, electromechanical slot machines, causing an illicit payout. Carmichael was arrested, convicted and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for using the device in Las Vegas in 1985.
He served just two years in prison but, on his release in 1987, slot machine had become more sophisticated. In response, Carmichael acquired a state-of-the-art machine and created a novel cheating device, known as the ‘slider’, or ‘monkey paw’, which was effective against the latest technology. Again employing a guitar string, together with a piece of sprung steel, the slider could be inserted into the payout chute, tripping a microswitch and causing the illegal release of coins from the hopper. If you think it is too difficult you can try your luck playing all slots games on the 1xbet page.
By the early Nineties, slot machine technology had moved on again, rendering the slider obsolete. Nevertheless, posing as a prospective buyer, Carmichael examined the inner workings of of a cutting-edge, computerised machine and devised a fresh device, known as the ‘light wand’. As the name suggests, the light wand employed a miniature light bulb powered by a camera battery – making it nigh on undetectable – and effectively ‘blinded’ the optical payout sensor when shone into the machine.
Carmichael was subsequently arrested in 1996, 1998 and 1999, on the latter occasion pleading guilty to running an illegal gambling enterprise, for which he was sentenced to time served plus three years’ probation. He died, at the age of 68, in 2019, but for the last 16 years of his life his name appeared on the Nevada Gaming Control Board List of Excluded Persons, a.k.a. the ‘Black Book’, so he was officially banned from every casino in the state.
