The Online Casino and Beating The House Edge

For hundreds of years the casino was an exclusive place, accessible only to the wealthy few. The explosion in the number of online casino operators such as Sky Vegas casino, which has occurred over the last decade or so, has changed all this. The online casino has brought previously elite gambling games to the masses, as well as providing online versions of more down to earth gambling devices like slot or fruit machines. The huge variety of games now available at the average online casino is often exciting to the newcomer, if a little bewildering. Here we look at the key features of the two main types of popular online casino games: slot machines and card games. As will soon become apparent, the chance of winning these different games varies wildly.

Slot machines have been a very popular choice for conversion to online casino games, and an important reason for this trend has to be the guaranteed house edge which is inbuilt into these programmes. This contrasts with some card games, in which the ‘luck of the draw’ can sometimes work in favour of the player, instead of the house. Additionally, in some card games, with the prime example being Blackjack, gaming skill and the employment of mathematically based playing tactics can significantly reduce the house edge.

Slot machines, on the other hand, generally require no skill to play. Indeed it was for this reason that the devices first gained popularity in Las Vegas casinos, as a means of enticing people with no knowledge or skill of casino games to gamble. Slot machines now produce the largest slice of profits for many casinos, something that it is perhaps important to be aware of as a new player.

Perhaps now would be a good time to provide a clear definition of ‘house edge’, which is simply the fact that the mathematical chances of winning a casino game are always, somewhat unsurprisingly, skewed in favour of the house. Indeed, without this bias the average casino could be out of business pretty quickly! It is safe to say that the modern casino as we know it, particularly the massive incarnations of the phenomenon seen in places like Las Vegas, would simply not exist if there was no house edge.

However, the point with slot machines is that that there is simply no reliable way to decrease the house edge, which is imbedded in the design of the game. This is not to say that no one ever wins money playing slot machines, as of course no one would ever play if this was the case. The simple fact is that over time, with repeated play, the strong statistical likelihood is that you will lose money playing slot machines, and so they should only ever be played as a bit of fun, with small stakes, once in a while.

If you want to get into gambling more seriously, you need to focus in those games where skill and knowledge of probability can help you proactively reduce the house edge, making it more likely that you can win more money than you lose over a series of games. In a nutshell, this means card games like Texas Hold ‘Em, and in particular, Blackjack. While games like Roulette may seem classier, and therefore to stand apart from the more humble slot, there are very few legal ways to reduce the house edge in roulette. In fact, if you have the science and maths background to be able to devise a way of computing roulette table bias, you should almost certainly be putting your mental powers to a more useful pursuit!