How to Play Craps – A Psychological Viewpoint

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Whether you know how to play craps or don’t know how to play craps, the same emotions are going to envelop you when you do play or learn to play. When you watch all the players around the craps table, and they are screaming and yelling, you probably want to be part of it. Why? Are they having fun and you are not? Are you missing all the potential money you could be winning by not being there? The craps table is like an evil cash magnet drawing you toward it and beckoning you to come join the happy crowd and win money. If you are new to the game or don’t understand what is going on, then the closer you get the more emotions come to the surface. How to play craps – you want to know but are too scared to try.

Really, do you need the knowledge to play? First of all if you approach the table with your money and no knowledge of the game, you might as well send the money to me instead of blindly giving it to the casino. With no knowledge on how to play craps, you are going to be taken away by the excitement, the quick pace, the distractions and the chips you had in front of you are now gone. The two main emotions will set in, fear and greed. It will make you do irrational things that you will regret later when you walk away from the table asking yourself – what just happened to me? I know what happened to you, but you don’t. That is why you need to get all the knowledge you can about the game, the table layout, the different bets and the payoff you get from them. “How to play craps” becomes a very important phrase.

How do emotions play a role? Ok, you might know something about the game and have some sort of strategy or method of how to play craps. Does that make it any easier? No, it doesn’t. The emotions now are going to get even stronger. There is fear of losing too much and greed not letting you stop when you need to. These emotions will play with you and will destroy your concentration and then all your method of play goes out the window, and the casino has the last laugh. Another emotion sets in – anger. Who are you angry at all of a sudden? Yourself for not concentrating while you are playing, the casino for taking your money, yourself again for drinking alcohol while playing which is a number one “do not ever do” rule. Since craps is a fast paced game, all of this happened in just a few minutes. How to play craps and win doesn’t look as easy as you may think. Not only are you fighting the odds of the casino, but most of all you are fighting your emotional self.

Overcome the casinos!! How do you overcome all these obstacles? In order to get the emotional part under control, you need to learn the game and get a handle of how you are going to play and know it inside and out. You need to have confidence in your play and not lose your concentration while at the table. I have been playing for over 30 years, and it is still rough sometimes to get all this together. The casino will always try to distract you and make it difficult to employ your method of play. A good system on how to play craps and lots of practice helps. As with anything, hard work pays off.

Playing for Hot and Cold Numbers in Roulette

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A “hot number” is supposed to appear more often with each spin whereas a “cold number” appears least often. As the wheel spins one way and the ball the other, is there a chance the ball will land on your hot number? Statistically speaking, there is a one in 37 chance of this happening.

So is it instinct, luck or even logic that will fill your pocket with chips and cold hard cash? First of all, don’t rely entirely on luck. That’s like giving into the house before you even sit down at the table. According to some theories, there are numbers that hit more frequently. These hot numbers can be found by looking at a post of the last numbers to hit. If a number comes up three or more times, it’s a hot number. This could be a winning streak you want to join in on, although some would argue that your odds stay the same no matter what numbers you choose, hot or cold.

But hot and cold trends do exist and many roulette players swear by them. These small windows of opportunity offer the player a chance to win by closely following trends that encourage picking out hot and cold numbers. For example, when a number that has not come up for a while finally appears, it’s still considered a cold number. Watch this number to see if it comes up again and if it does, a trend could be forming. Whether you’re playing in a Vegas casino or online, roulette is a popular choice for players because of the relative ease with which the game is played. But it’s not really fun if you keep losing. Although there is no guarantee you will ever win a spin of roulette, there may still be some truth to picking hot and cold roulette numbers. It just takes discipline and self-control and lots of observation. Deciding how to bet will determine your outcome, whether you win or lose – so bet smart.

If a hot number comes up 5 or 6 times, the probability of it coming up again and again diminishes. And if a cold number suddenly starts coming up, there may be a probability it will come up 2 or 3 more times. But, the same can probably be said of your birthday or anniversary or the lucky numbers you always play at kino. This is where your smarts come in, this is where you decide between going forward and standing still, this is where you practice self-control and self-discipline. Ultimately, the best way to play roulette is to have fun with it while observing techniques, trends and luck.

About Casino Gambling – Poker, Blackjack, Roulette, Slots & Craps

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Casinos… Think of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo, bright lights, ritz, glamour, people winning money, but mostly people losing money! You may be intrigued by the idea of going to a casino but don’t really know too much about them – please read on to learn more about the fun of a night out to a casino…

According to Princeton University’s ‘Wordnet’, a casino is ‘a public building for gambling and entertainment’. Don’t be overawed if you do go, relax and enjoy. You will most likely have the chance to play slot machines or one-armed bandits as they are commonly known and perhaps other games of chance and some skill. One major thing that you do need to be aware of, is the way that a casino will look to tilt the odds in its favour, which is more commonly known as the casino’s “edge”. However, some games such as poker are played with players versus players and in this case, the casino cannot get an advantage as it is not effectively playing. In these circumstances, the casino will take a “rake” on the bets that players make against each other.

If you have ever been to Las Vegas and gone to one of the casinos there, the first thing that you will notice is the fact that they more often or not have the slot machines (otherwise known as ‘one-armed-bandits’ or ‘fruit machines’) right as you go in. This is because they really don’t require too much understanding to play and it’s not uncommon to see people playing these machines for hours on end. The slot machine will typically involve a lever on the side (the one arm!) and three reels with patterns of symbols on, located in the centre of the machine. The reels revolve as you pull the lever and the idea is to generate rows of matching symbols to win, having paid your required stake via the slot usually on the front of the machine.

There may be times when you will play on a machine which will have extra options available for you to use, often giving the illusion that you will have more control over the reels and a better chance of winning. This may be the case over the short-term, but always remember that playing in casinos is fun, but the house always has the long-term advantage. To give you a quick example…if you were to play a game where you had to bet on what number would lie face up after the roll of a die, then you would expect to see the casino pay six times the amount bet for a win, but in fact the casino would pay five times to maintain its advantage.

This system is often found in famous casino gambling games like Poker, Craps, Roulette or Blackjack.

Blackjack has always been played in casinos because players will play their chips against the House dealer with the successful gambler being paid against pre-determined odds (ie by getting a true ‘Blackjack’ which in other words is a two card combination adding up to 21, the House will pay you 3:2, or 1-1/2 times your initial wager). If you play fair, the chances are that you may end up with a profit, but more often than not, the casino will win, unless you count the cards. Card counting is a black art as far as casinos are concerned and if you are caught, you will be blacklisted worldwide! Effectively, because the playing cards are only used once and then discarded, anyone with a good memory and a highly analytical mind can determine their own odds that a certain card will or will not appear again, tilting the odds in his favour.

Poker is one of the most played games in the world. Its popularity has grown massively over the past couple of years and many casinos would not offer a poker game due to the fact that they were limited to taking a rake (as discussed previously). You may be aware that poker is essentially a playing card game were players are dealt poker cards face down, and then take it in turns to place bets (represented by poker chips with a specific value) based on the strength of the cards that they hold, combined with other community cards placed face up in the middle of the poker table. The player with the strongest combination should win what’s known as the pot (the combined bets of all the players for that hand), however one of the reasons that poker is so popular is the element of ‘bluffing’ where a player may actually have a poor hand, but believes that he can make his opponents believe that he has the strongest combination by means of subtle psychology! This can be as subtle as staring one’s opponent into ‘folding’ his cards, or by moving his entire stack of poker chips into the middle of the table – what’s known as ‘going all in’.

Roulette is a classic casino game, whereby a croupier gently spins a perfectly balanced, wooden roulette wheel with either 37 or 38 recessed ‘pockets’ along the bottom edge of the roulette wheel. As the wheel begins to spin, the croupier will roll a small white ball the opposite way with the intention being for the ball to bounce of raised points on the wall and to finally come to rest in one of the numbered pockets. In European casinos, the wheel’s layout features pockets numbered 1 – 36 and alternate between red and black with the number one, coloured red and zero being coloured green. However in American casinos, you are more likely to see a second double-zero 00 pocket also coloured green.

Again the House pays out against set odds displayed on the cloth covering the roulette table. Typically this will offer 35:1 for single number bets where you bet on one number to win, 2:1 for any column of numbers, and evens for any red, any black, odds or evens.

Craps can be the most fun to play and certainly watch. It’s also the fastest game in the casino with often more than 60 bets per hour. Players will wager bets against the casino on the result of a roll of a die, or the series of rolls of two dice. The great thing about craps is that you don’t have to be rolling the dice to bet, you can bet on how lucky you (hope) the guy rolling is going to be, which is why it can be so entertaining. Essentially, the guy with the dice is called the ‘shooter’ and the basic bet in craps is called the ‘Pass Line’ bet, and by rolling a 7 or 11, the shooter will roll a pass line winner, and can play again. If he rolls 2, 3 or 12, these are known as craps and this is a pass line loss. Any other number becomes the shooter’s point and he continues. It really is a fascinating game with many more rules and options.

At the end of the day, a night out to a casino can be wonderfully entertaining, but casinos have learnt over hundreds of years how to make their games very, very addictive. They are quite happy to let you win a little here and there, but they know that in the long run, it’s you that’s going to be making them happy – do take care!

Avoiding Doing Activities that are Considered Taboos During a Poker Game

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Like any table game in a casino, poker demands etiquette from the players so that the game itself will be successful in providing both challenges and fun. This means that the poker players have to avoid doing certain things that will make poker a less enjoyable game. Here are some of the taboos that a casino player should never commit when playing poker.

· Cheating – A cheater is never welcome in any casino game, or in any serious game of poker. Cheating takes away the challenge of beating the game. And if a poker player has resolved to cheating, he will never reached that level of mastery of skills that would have propel him to win in tournaments, such as the World Series of Poker.

· Using the mobile phones – Communication technology has reached the point in which long distances no longer matter as much as they did about half a century ago. One major reason is the invention of the mobile phones. But such impressive gadgets become distractions to a poker game. This is why using the mobile phones has been considered a poker taboo.

· Placing food and drinks on the poker table – In online games, it wouldn’t matter if the casino player is filling his mouth while moving his mouse. But in land-based casinos, such a practice is frowned upon. The poker table is intended only for the cards and the chips. The food and drinks, although most are free and provided by the casino as comps, should not be placed on the poker table.

· Damaging the cards – Aside from the fact that the cards are not the personal property of one player, damaging the cards is tantamount to cheating. This is because one of the cheating techniques of some poker players is to place scratches or marks on the edges of the cards. When a poker is found to damage the cards, the dealer may ban him from joining the poker table.

· Discussing one’s hand during the game – Talking about one’s hand while the game is not yet over is simply a sign of arrogance. Some poker player may find it a strategy to mislead his opponents but such is not an acceptable strategy. Poker is far more sophisticated than childish games.

· Splashing the chips into the pot – The action of carelessly splashing and spilling one’s chips into the pot is a sign of bad manners. A person who does this act is not deserving to be called a poker player at all.

· Giving negative opinions or comments against one’s opponents – Criticizing one’s opponents is not a great way to distract them, especially if they are strangers. Often, in a casino table, one will never know the background and motivations of one’s opponents. This is why no player has the right to give negative opinions against any of the other poker players.

A good poker player should not just master skills and strategies but also good etiquette.

The Best Free Poker Tips To Win Online

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 Mastering the game of poker is best accomplished by first acquiring the knowledge of the best players. One could spend a lot of wasted time and money trying out different styles and methods to the game or take a more intelligent approach by studying some of the best free poker tips to win online.

The most basic POKER rules can be condensed into 5 easy to remember poker tips. To become more successful and win poker online, follow these five easy rules.

Play responsibly

Be cautious in your play to not overplay your hands or your limits. If your bankroll is limited, play within that limit and do not try to gamble it away. Be responsible in your poker play and stay focused on your goals of winning.

Obey the Mathematics

Math is an integral part of the game of poker, therefore, you should obey the mathematics of the game and avoid situations that do not make mathematical sense. In other words, if your odds of winning a poker hand are far less than the amount of poker chips you can win, you may want to consider looking for a better spot. Use the math in the game by becoming proficient at the calculations of your outs, your odds and pot size in relation to your investment.

Keep a level head

Inevitably there will be times where you will lose a poker hand to a draw or a bad beat, sometimes perpetrated by a bad player. At those times, you must keep a level head and avoid tilt. Poker tilt is one of the worst situations, as it often ends up costing many good players an opportunity to win. Regardless of the circumstance surrounding you losing a big poker hand, keep a level head and move on to the next hand to rebuild the poker chips you lost.

Endeavor to improve

Always look for opportunities to better yourself in the poker game. Oftentimes, players will become complacent and stick to basic strategy that has gotten them through some tough tournaments or cash games. It is your job to expand your poker resume and repertoire. Keep learning, discover new ways to play and always look for opportunities to be a better poker player.

Remember to use your instincts

The most important aspect of becoming a professional poker player is using and building your poker instincts. If you have a feeling that something is not right in a poker hand, it is possible that your instinct is correct. Always focus on your instincts and NOT your emotions. Is your opponent making the correct play if he is representing a certain hand? If your instinct tells you no, then you should follow up and see how focused your instincts are.

All of these free poker tips will help improve your Texas holdem game. To be a great poker player you must have a feel for the game. The poker hand you are dealt is not nearly as important if you do not use your knowledge of the game combined with responsible play, the math, avoiding tilt, a desire to improve and poker instinct to win.