Every single state in Australia has a casino in their
capital city.
Every single 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 of these cash cows on their own turf. It has been said that the worst gambling addicts in Australia are the federal and state governments, as none of them could balance their budgets without the revenue they cream off from 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. We don't really need to draw any distinction between whether these are played in bricks and mortar casinos, or via the internet. Nowadays, online casino games are so advanced and realistic it can be quite similar to playing in a real world casino. If you really want to play at an online casino there are plenty of guides, such as Casinoreef.com.au, which do comparisons and discuss the various casino sites.
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.
There are plenty of guides to assist you in choosing the best place to play; www.casino.com.au has a good one for Australian players. However you also need to spend some time deciding on the best game to play, and you should choose one that you have some skill at playing. Don't be one of those players who give an additional edge to the casino in a non fixed returns game, simply because you are unskilled at the game you are playing. You can compare casino games on a casino portal like www.online-casino.ca and choose the game you want to play.
Professor of Statistics, Dr Stephen Clarke, writes about this subject here.
At Smartgambler we are not fans of any casino games except the games of skill such as Blackjack and Poker, and even then only if you have good reason to believe you actually are a skilled player.
If you do want to visit a casino and are not a skilled player in any non fixed returns 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.
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