Casinos
Every state in Australia has a casino in their capital
city.
The state governments gradually realised the revenue
windfall that casino gambling provides via taxation
and all of them succumbed to the temptation of licensing
at least one these cash cows on their own turf. It
has been said that the greatest gambling addicts
in Australia are the federal and state governments,
as none of them could balance their books without
the revenue they cream off the casinos, lotteries
and pokies.
For the purposes of the smart gambler, casino games
can be usefully divided into two categories, those
which involve a degree of skill and those which don't.
Games which involve no skill because the payout percentage
is always the same in the long run are called 'fixed
returns' games.
If played well, the games which require a degree
of skill such as blackjack tend to offer better percentage
returns to the player than games with fixed returns
such as roulette. What happens in reality though
is that the games requiring intelligent decisions
are actually some of the biggest winners for the casinos
because the average player is so bad. As mentioned
elsewhere on this site, most casinos make approximately
2% profit on turnover from blackjack, whereas if played
intelligently blackjack should be one of the best
casino games for the player, returning only around
0.5% profit on turnover to the casino. This is a sad
state of affairs!
Being informed about the best and worst casino games
to play is going to give you a much better return
than those who are ignorant of the probabilities and
will allow you to get better value for your entertainment
dollar. Remember that this (entertainment) is what
gambling at a casino represents for anyone who has
not done the intensive training required to be a successful
professional gambler. It is entertainment for which
you, as part of the wider group of casino gamblers,
must pay. You may be lucky enough to win on a given
occasion, but overall the pool of casino gamblers
of which you are part will inevitably lose because
of the prevalence of fixed returns games.
At Smartgambler we are not fans at any casino games
except the games of skill, Blackjack and Poker, and
even then only if you have good reason to believe
you are a skilled player.
If you do want to visit a casino and are not a skilled
player in either of those games, we highly recommend
that you refer to our
table of comparitive returns so that at
least you can steer clear of the truly horrible games.
We also have an expert on probability based attacks
on casino games in Tristan
Barnett who discusses a few other possibilities.
Next...
Casino
etiquette
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