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According to Richard Epstein’s Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic, Academic Press, 1977, blackjack became popular during World War I, and was called “black-jack” from the practice of paying a bonus to a player who held an ace of spades with a jack of spades or clubs. John Scarne, puts the year when this curious rule first appeared at 1912, when twenty-one tables appeared in horse-betting parlors in Evanston, Illinois. I believe Epstein’s information is taken from Scarne, and Scarne states that he discovered the origins of blackjack in America as a result of his private discussions with old-time gamblers, not from any published texts that can be looked up today.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Resorts International opened in Atlantic City, the first legal East Coast casino in the twentieth century. Their four- and six-deck blackjack games offered a new form of surrender. This rule gave basic strategy players a small edge over the house right off the top, without any card counting whatsoever! And the advantage to card counters was even greater. From opening day, card counters had a field day at Resorts’ tables. And, ironically, Resorts International was soon the most profitable casino in history, winning an average of $650,000 per day.

A team of professional blackjack players whose founders were from Czechoslovakia that had been playing in Las Vegas flew all of their members to Atlantic City to take advantage of this new surrender rule. This team, which later became known in the casino industry as simply the Czech Team, found the Resorts’ game to their liking and stayed for months.

Indeed, it was a combination of that easy-to-beat early surrender game and Ken Uston’s The Big Player that had just been published in 1977 that worked together to create an environment where new teams of smart young kids could make millions playing blackjack.
It was also in 1978 that the first MIT blackjack team was started. This team actually consisted of students from MIT, Harvard, and other East Coast colleges. Johnny C.j now a legendary player who joined the team in 1981, plays high-stakes blackjack to this day and continues organizing teams of professional players. The Czechs, the Hyland teams, and the MIT teams would be the scourge of the casino industry for decades to come. Many believe these teams owe their existence to the Resorts’ game with its early surrender rule that made the game so easy to beat. College kids found that they could pool their money, play blackjack with a modicum of intelligence, and get rich quick.

People often get seduced by the idea of something for almost nothing. That is why they often drop a coin or two into a slot machine as they walk into a real land-based casino. The myths are “out there”. Lightning can always strike you. There are real stories to back up the myths so, perhaps, it is always worth dropping a coin or two just on the off-chance…

Now we must all stay calm. These players are the exception that makes the rule that everyone who plays the slots ends up a loser. Ren and Klaus have joined a fairly exclusive band of players that have “hit the big time”. For the record, Klaus was the thirteenth player to become an instant millionaire on this particular online progressive (let no-one say that thirteen is always an unlucky number). But, by any standards, a win of more than $5m is fairly impressive. It brings the total winnings since the system came online to $27m.

One of the major companies in the casino games industry is Playtech. In WinAJackpot.com, they have produced the first progressive network to link online, mobile and real-world jackpots. The network has just made a jackpot payout of slightly less than US$2.5m.

When you do start looking at the facts, the online casino games industry is maturing fast. As millions more players on cross-platforms start to play, the progressive jackpots will rise more quickly. There will be more big payouts. You see that when your luck is in, you can suddenly find yourself rich for a small stake. When I was younger, cinemas used to run movies back-to-back in a rolling program through the day. You could go in and watch the cycle through as many times as you wanted. So this is where I came in when I started writing this article. People are fascinated by the prospect that, for a small outlay, they might hit it big. Subject to that, it never hurts to drop a coin or two into one of the online casino games. You never know, today might be your lucky day when fantasy does become reality and changes your life.

That last sentence puts the win in its proper context. There were twelve previous winners of more than $1m plus the latest win. That makes $17.7 as a minimum or less than $10m paid out to all the other jackpot winners over the last few years. The win of $5.5m is one of the largest the online industry has seen. It took months for the progressive to build up to that level. It took millions of “pulls”. There were an uncountable number of players who did not win.

Indian casinos are becoming more and more wide-spread so it’s worth a word about their poker machines. In the Indian Gaming Act of 1988, the Federal Government classified three types of game:
- social gambling that’s not for profit;
- games that don’t rely on a House bank such as bingo and lotto;
- the traditional casino style of gambling games including slots and video poker machines.

The headlines say that these machines don’t have a fixed hold percentage. All the machines are linked to a central piece of software that plays bingo games among all you players. Whether you win or lose is decided by the virtual ball the software “picks”. Each game ends when a “winning” pattern in the game is achieved. It’s all very ingenious and, using this technology, the manufacturers of the games claim that the payouts are identical to the third class of game. Just one ending thought: if the class two and three games are identical in the way they play, how come this is not illegal?

To run the third class, the tribe has to negotiate a compact with the local State Government and, to be fair, many have done this. But some decided that regulation was not for them. To get around the legislation, they devised electronic bingo games that look and feel like slots and video poker machines. If nobody told you, you wouldn’t know you were not playing a Vegas style of machine. Except that, once you lift the lid, the insides are very different.

Some people think that slots are a game that you need control over; a game that only allows the best players to win. Those people, though, would be wrong. Slots are a game that offers the ultimate in the “trying your luck” experience. You could literally be anyone, walking around, with nothing to do. You could also have nothing in your pocket but some spare change. Chances are you could find yourself spending that change in a slot machine, trying your luck. If your slots machine is made with a horseshoe on its side, you’ll be able to make a great profit this day. When you play slots, you are giving away total control to the fates. And if you are lucky, you can have a life-changing experience. The same simply cannot be said about other casino games. You should have a sense of the game and some skill about the ways the games are played. The options for slots have grown and are now endless. You can play slots online and try your hand at luck from the comfort of your own home. Don’t mistake luck for dumb-luck, though. Now you are ready to play your best at slots slots around at the right places. Slots online is one of the places where you can find the games best suited for your skill level and your lucky day!

You can easily know that you’ve made a great casino player: you want to see your pockets lined with cash but you don’t mind it so much if you walk away with thinner pockets. It’s all about fun, but you definitely have paid your dues and practiced enough to know how the online casino games are played. You’ve experienced all of the sides of the casino. You know when to double-down and you know when to walk away from the table. Now, the stakes are higher because you’re done playing free slots. You want the progressive slots and you want to win the big jackpot. When you’re done with that you are ready to move onto the “bog boy” table, playing for real money and playing for keeps at online blackjack and online poker. But wait! Don’t you work hard every day to get your money? You simply can’t allow yourself to stay in casino longer than it is possible. How do you remedy this? Easy. Online casinos are real, virtual reality worlds in which you can win real cold hard cash. Start playing online slots and winning now.