Blackjack Switch is a popular variation of the classic Vegas Style Blackjack game. In this version of the game, the player plays with two hands and has the option of making a switch. This game is slow…

Rules

• All rules are based on conventional blackjack unless otherwise noted.
• Six or eight decks are used.
• Dealer usually hits a soft 17. I hear in Ontario, Canada, the dealer stands on soft 17.
• The player must make two bets of equal size.
• Cards will be dealt face up.
• Dealer will peek for blackjack with an ace or ten up. If the dealer has a blackjack all player hands will immediately lose, except a player blackjack will push.
• The player may switch the second card dealt to each hand. For example, if one hand has 5,10 and the other has 10,6, the player may switch the 10 and 6 to have two hands of 11 and 20. The player may also switch cards to form a blackjack.
• If the player switches to a blackjack, it counts as 21 points.
• Player may double on any 2 cards.
• Player may double after a split.
• Player may resplit up to four hands.
• Winning player blackjacks pay even money.
• A dealer total of 22 will push against any player total of 21 or less. A player blackjack will still beat a dealer 22.

The rules compensate for this advantage by paying player blackjacks only even money. In addition, a dealer total of 22 is an automatic push in Blackjack Switch on any hand other than a player blackjack. In other words, if you double down on that 11 and catch a ten for a total of 21, and the dealer proceeds to hit his hand to 22, your 21 hand just pushes. If you are holding a blackjack against the dealer’s 22, your blackjack wins—but only even money.

This version of the classic game of 21 has a twist that will give you a winning edge! You will surely love this game, especially if you’re already a blackjack fan. All you need to do is hit 21 or end up with a hand higher than the dealer’s hand with any one of five different hands.

To start the game you will first need to place your bet. In this game you can bet with either $1.00, $2.00, $5.00, or $10.00. Click on each of the hands in order to play them and you can also click on “Scratch All” to have the computer scratch all the cards off automatically.

5 Diamond Blackjack gives you five chances to win money and free cards up to a ‘stunning’ 4,000 times your bet. Beat the dealer hand and instantly win the prize. Uncover a Blackjack hand and win double the prize. Reveal a diamond and lose that Poker Face – you instantly win all 5 prizes on the card. And watch the Jackpot meter. It can be awarded at anytime.

One of the most common and popular of casino games is the slot machines. It is one of the casino games available that any casino visitor can play without requiring any prior gambling knowledge. Unlike card games, one does not have to be an expert at the slots. Anyone can easily engage in the game and even win at it. The slots also do require only small bets that any casino visitor can easily afford.
Blackjack is only considered as a game of chance if it is played using one deck. Most blackjack rules for one deck state that all cards dealt to players should be faced down at which this becomes difficult for players to predict the cards that have been dealt on the table. The game becomes a mathematical game when blackjack is played with the use of two decks or more. Most blackjack rules for two decks or more would state that cards are dealt face up to all players this in turn will reveal the cards that have been dealt on the table. All players will be able to see the cards that have been played and hence various winning strategies will be used by each and every individual player.

Online casinos are not only free fun sites you visit to just play games; they are also moneymaking website. Most online casino sites are websites you signup to play free games, win credits and cash on lottery games or any game at all. Some sites even give you money on referrals, signups and games won. You can practically make a lot of money playing games online depending on the websites. For some casino sites; the more you visit the more play credits you earn and the more winnings and money you can cash out.

I recommend NOT jumping right into action upon your arrival.   Relax with a nap, a meal, check in with your host, set up dinner reservations, etc.   Consider a workout in the fitness room before your first gambling session.

Blackjack is the world’s by far most popular casino card game and we are proud to be the leading free online Blackjack guide since 1998, teaching you everything from rules to basic strategy and card counting.

We also feature daily updated news from around the Blackjack world as well as profiles of the famous players and teams who helped to make blackjack as big as it is today both on the internet and in the major gambling destinations such as Las Vegas.

In addition to this we also recommend the best Blackjack software available, to play either for free or with money.

Blackjack is a popular card game played in casinos all over the world. It is also known as twenty-one. The objective of the game is to defeat the casino. An ace and any of the three face cards that are valued at ten is labeled blackjack.

The person has to form twenty-one with the distributed cards. If he achieves this, he is the winner. If the dealer achieves this, the person loses and if both have the same sum then there is a tie. This is termed a push.

In blackjack, there is no relevance of suits. Every card is designated a value according to its number. The picture cards have a value of ten. The ace can take a value of one or eleven. An ace with a value of eleven is called soft whereas an ace with a value of one is called hard. If the sum of cards in hand is between seventeen and twenty-one the Ace is taken as eleven, else it is taken as one. Some online casinos specify that the dealer must have a soft seventeen. If he does not achieve this then he has to take new cards until the sum reaches a hard seventeen.

Many years ago, we started to see the use of ShuffleMaster automatic shuffling machines appear, mostly in multi-deck games. Some casinos find these machines to have attractive features. The manufacturer boasts a forty percent increase in hands played per unit of time. Some casinos have jumped on them with visions of corresponding forty percent revenue increases. Automatic shuffling machines do thwart shuffle-tracking techniques. A few years ago, Tommy Hyland took a small shuffle tracking team into the Windsor Casino (Canada) and reportedly won well over $100,000 in a single weekend betting over $2,000 each hand in favorable rounds. Windsor officials countered by first having the team members arrested, then immediately installed ShuffleMaster machines at all their blackjack tables. After significant legal hassle, Hyland’s team was found innocent of any wrongdoing and the case was dismissed.

There are those players, however, who like the chance to receive larger payouts, and do not enjoy playing slots. High rollers can expect large payouts when they win, but high rollers also have to make large investments in order to receive those bigger payouts. For this reason, many players will go as far as placing an extra bet on online blackjack in order to play the progressive blackjack jackpot.

Progressive slots games offer the highest jackpots of any slots games, this is because a progressive jackpot is linked, so every player playing that given game is pumping up the jackpot which means the jackpots can get very big very quickly. Some of these progressive jackpot slots games are available at more than 1 casino so obviously that means many more people will be playing the same game, hence bigger and faster growing jackpots to be won. Sometimes many different slot games all contribute and qualify for the same progressive jackpot.

Usually, gaming machines have their jackpot listed as a monetary value and this can only be won by achieving the combination with the highest payoff; whether that’s 4 cherries in a row or a ‘Royal Flush’ at a Video Poker machine.

Once the jackpot has been won, the machine resets itself to its preset and designated minimum.

The difference with progressive jackpots is that each time a game is played on a connected machine, the jackpot increases by a small amount. So, instead of individuals all playing to win a $5,000 or $10,000 dollar jackpot a

Video slot games form the largest category of online casino games. The number of paylines ranges from 5 to 1024. What impact does this vast range of paylines have on the outcome of video slot games? One thing is evident. The greater the number of paylines, the more frequently will win combinations appear. The more important question is whether this would necessarily translate into greater average returns to the player.

In order to understand the situation we take a simple example of a video slot game with 15 paylines. Now, without changing any of the rules or the payout table if the number of paylines is increased to 25 then the average return to the player will increase considerably. In fact the return could go well beyond 100% and clean out the online casino. However this does not imply that every video slot game with 25 paylines will have a greater average return to player than a video slot game with 15 paylines.

The number of paylines is only one of the factors that contribute to the average return to the player. There are other factors like the payouts in the payout table, the propensity of the bonus games to offer payouts and even the relative frequency of different symbols on different reels. If a video slot game has a very large number of paylines then the other factors are suitably adjusted so that the average return to the player remains in a narrow range around 95%.Therefore opting to play on a video slot game with greater number of paylines in the hope of winning more is an incorrect strategy. If this is so then what purpose is served by this wide range of paylines? The simple answer to this question is that online gaming software developers have kept on increasing the number of paylines in order to differentiate their games from others and offer some innovative attraction to the players.

Most video slot games have paylines between 9 and 50. Microgaming has consistently taken the lead in offering video slot games with larger number of paylines. In 2008 it released Cashapillar, the first video slot game with 100 paylines. Then in 2009 it released a slot game called Burning Desire which had 243 paylines. In fact in this slot game the concept of paylines became immaterial because every possible alignment is covered in 243 paylines. Recently Cryptologic released a video slot game called Striker Fortune that has 99 paylines. What is unusual about this is that the paylines are formed by symbols in adjacent reels that are on the same horizontal level or one diagonal space away. If the entire payline is occupied by players from the same team it results in an animation of passing the football from player to player and scoring a goal.

Wager Works offers two sets of video poker games with different themes. The first set is Lucky Draw video poker games. As its name suggests the Lucky Draw games have a western theme. The games are described as “born of the wild west when guns were fast, and the stakes were high”. Each video poker game in the set bears a logo of a Sheriff’s star badge with the words Lucky Draw inscribed in it. The background to the cards is the wooden planking of the wall in the Sheriff’s office in any western town. The pay table is depicted as a Wanted poster pinned to this wall. The video poker variants in this set are Bonus Poker, Joker Poker and Jacks or Better. Players can wager on up to four hands at a time and up to five coins per hand. The pay table automatically adjusts to display the payouts for the number of coins wagered. The game is played in the usual manner. Lucky Draw has a turbo feature in which the card dealing animations are dispensed with and that dealt cards instantly appear on the screen.

The second set of video poker games at WagerWorks online casinos is called Phantom Belle. This develops thematic content in greater detail. The setting is a dimly lit haunted casino with the player seated at the table. The cards are not presented in a flat horizontal line but are dealt across the table in a 3-D view as in casino poker based table games. The cards are dealt from a pack by an invisible phantom dealer whose gloved hands are the only thing that can be seen. Unfortunately the same three video poker variants are offered in the Phantom Belle set and the opportunity to introduce variety is thereby lost. The Phantom Belle set offers single hand video poker games. The turbo feature is available.

WagerWorks also offers the same three video poker variants in the ten hand format known as Ten Play. These are not presented in a thematic format but follow the standard display of the other software providers. One of the major disadvantages of WagerWorks video poker games is that the Auto Hold feature has not been incorporated. This feature, which is present in video poker games of leading software developers, automatically marks as “Held” the cards in the dealt hand that result in a payout. Hence new players do not discard those cards by mistake. This prevents them from needlessly forsaking payouts. As a result new players will not prefer WagerWorks video poker games. However, expert players find it more challenging to play without the Auto Hold feature and turn it off any way. They would not find WagerWorks video poker games disadvantageous.

WagerWorks video poker games can be played at Virgin Casino, which has been licensed from the gambling jurisdiction of Alderney.

One of the techniques employed by the software developers is to include two different bonus games in the online slot. Each bonus game is triggered by different combinations of symbols and is also different in nature. An example of this can be seen in the recently released slot game Magic Multiplier. The Curtain Feature is triggered when the Curtain symbol appears in reels 2, 3 and 4 at the same time. In this bonus game the player chooses one of the Curtain symbols which opens to reveal bonus credits. The second bonus game is called Cups Feature. This is triggered when the Cup symbol appears in reels 3, 4 and 5 at the same time. In this bonus game a ball is hidden beneath one of the cups and if the player guesses correctly then he wins bonus points.

A more common technique is to allow players to choose from a number of bonus games once the triggering mechanism takes place. The bonus games are so balanced that none offer an advantage over others, but their different natures make the game play more interesting. Another Microgaming slot Queen of the Jungle incorporates this concept. When the bonus game is triggered players can choose from Monkey Gift, Monkey Chop and Monkey Fetch. In Monkey Gift the player has to choose from nine gifts, in Monkey Chop the player keeps breaking coconuts and winning rewards and in Monkey Fetch three fruits are fetched to make a cocktail that offers rewards.

Though both the techniques described above alleviate the boredom of playing the same bonus game to some extent, they do not do so completely. This can be done only if the player plays a different bonus game each time. This concept was introduced in i-slots by Rival Gaming. The different bonus games form a series of the same story or process. The software remembers the bonus game last played and automatically takes players to the subsequent one next time. The simplest i-slot is Hole in Won, which is based on golf. In the bonus games the player is taken in turn to nine different holes of a mini golf course. Each hole is structured differently and requires different techniques to get the ball in the hole. Players are awarded credits based in part on the number of strokes taken. After player completes the entire nine-hole golf course he starts with the first hole again. Bank Heist is an i-slot that is more complex in structure. It is set in the context of a bank robbery. Each bonus game represents an event in the robbery and the outcome of the bonus game decides whether the robbers get caught or move on to the next stage.

Online casino players can use their land line home phone to deposit funds at online casinos using 900Pay. The amount deposited is added to the player’s phone bill. Therefore no credit card or bank account information is given to third party processors and this takes cares of concerns like privacy loss and identity theft. Also the transaction does not pass through banking institutions and therefore there is no fear of rejection. The player does not have to step outside his home in order to make the payment. 900Pay does not lead to any hidden charge in the player’s phone bill. The online casino may be licensed anywhere, there are no long distance fees. Only the amount deposited is charged. The security issues are also taken care of and this payment is as safe as any other.

Since 900Pay is a phone based service, online casino players should ascertain that there is no phone line block for this service. Should there be such a block, the players should contact the telephone company to ask for it to be removed. There are certain limits presently imposed for using 900Pay that may be a problem for high rollers. A maximum of $50 can be deposited at an online casino account in a single transaction. This cannot be circumvented by making repeated deposits because there is an overriding limit of $5,000 per month. Another disadvantage of 900Pay is that withdrawals cannot be credited to the telephone bills. Players will get their withdrawals by way of a check or bank draft. This takes time because of the times involved in the posting and check clearing process.

The 900Pay system, owned by Navaho Networks, was specially designed to help American online players and is only available to Canadian and American residents who have a US dollar bank account in the United States. The company was founded in 1999 as SNG.com. In 2000 the name was changed to Navaho Networks. The headquarters are in Toronto, Canada. Navaho Networks also offers the popular electronic wallet eWalletXpress.

One of the first online casinos to accept payments using 900Pay was the Kahnawake licensed Bodog Casino. As the problems in the United States are increasing with more and more payments processors coming under the Department of Justice scanner, the demand for 900Pay is increasing exponentially. Some of the online casinos currently accepting this system are Sloto’ Cash Casino and Vegas Casino Online.