What are the differences between live casinos and online casinos in 2020?

Most people know the difference between land-based and online casinos as they have become so popular nowadays. However, what many people do not know is the difference between live casinos and online casinos in 2020. This stems from that a live casino is a new form of entertainment in the iGaming industry. Now it is time to learn similarities and differences between these online casino gaming types.

Online Casino Games

When we think about online casino games, all of them involve players playing themselves. Although online slots look magnificent with solid stats, lack of interaction sometimes can make players bored. This is also the same for blackjack when the dealer is a computer code generating random cards. This type of games does not require a consistent Internet connection and easy to access. However, as we mentioned above, they lack the thrilling atmosphere of land-based casinos.

Rise of Live Casinos

The prominent companies in the iGaming sector considered this drawback and come up with a brilliant idea. This lead to the born of the live casinos. In live casinos, a real human dealer delivers the cards, and people gamble through their computer by joining this live stream together. You can think of the live casinos as virtual versions of the actual casinos, in which you can play online blackjack. Therefore, the rise of live casinos still continues rapidly.

Live casinos require a stable and better Internet connection as it hosts many players and a quality live stream. However, leaving this drawback aside, they look flawless and offer the thrilling atmosphere of the casinos very well. If you have a consistent Internet connection and do not have time or money to visit a land-based casino, you can consider playing at live casinos. Nowadays, most people prefer this type of entertainment at their home with increasing social distancing practices.

Live Dealer

The real-life casino dealer is the main attraction of live casinos. You can interact with this virtual dealer, and she can communicate with you too. With advanced live streaming and technological capabilities, you will feel like you are in a Vegas casino. You can see live dealer in many online casino games including blackjack, poker and more. You can even smell the cards while croupier delivers them.

Authentic versus Electronic

Along with playing with a live dealer, with live casinos, you will have the chance to play with millions of people all around the world. Furthermore, you can even interact with the people sitting beside you at the table. For real players, this is a golden opportunity to feel the authentic environment of the actual casino.

On the other hand, online casinos offer an electronic way to generate numbers. However, this is also a highly preferred one because of its reliable and rewarding gaming experience. Furthermore, online casinos offer many bonuses and promotions along with free spins that you can use in particular titles.

On the whole, both online casino and live casino have their advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, they have different audiences based on the players’ preferences. Do not forget that live casino and online casino are different sides of the same coin.

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A Review Of The Best Role Playing Gambling Games of 2014

Casinos may be big business, but it’s often pretty hard to differentiate your suite of games from the competition. After all, it’s not easy to create brilliant new variations on the basic rules that end up being more than mere gimmicks. Much easier, then, simply to combine cardplay with a completely different genre of game. That’s the smart thinking behind the new wave of titles that weave aspects of RPGs with strands of casino games.

Suits and Swords

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/suits-and-swords/id725701018?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sonypicturestelevision.blackjacktheknight

suits and swords game logo

Perhaps the easiest introduction to this fascinating genre is Sony Pictures Television’s ‘Suits and Swords’ game. Available to play both as an Apple iOS or Android app, Suits and Swords sets you loose in a medieval world divided into different lands – Heart Union, Club Kingdom, Diamond Empire, and Spade Nation. You must aim to free each land from domination by the evil Joker. As you move through the landscape, you face combat against a raft of different foe. This is where the ‘gambling aspect’ comes in. Rather than merely hitting a button to stab or slash your opponent, you fight by playing hands of cards. The rules roughly mirror those of blackjack, so the closest each player gets to a blackjack, and the better their hand is compared to their opponent’s, the more damage they’ll inflict. Score a low hand or go bust, and you may be left relying on the healing wand of a fairy.

In the wrong hands, a game such as Suits and Swords could end up feeling rather contrived. Where Sony Pictures (or rather, the developers n-Space) have got it right, though, is in the superb integration of card themes within the period setting. The land names are all related to suits, and the monsters are themselves visually styled around their respective card suit. In the tradition of all fine RPGs, you can obtain better armour and weapons, and, of course, no swords and sorcery game would be complete without the promise of magic.

Gaining extra spells means you can summon up helpers, or increase the severity of your attacks. The latter often amounts to being able to make the score of a hand go up or down. This isn’t the obvious winning move you might think, though, since you must employ magic cards against the enemy even though you have only seen your opponent’s first card. So while you can certainly calculate your increased chances of winning, it’s very much in the lap of the gods whether the magic will make any difference or not. But then, such is the randomness of blackjack. What isn’t quite so random is the superiority of the opponents’ hands. Most of the time you have to score at least 20 on a hand in order to have any chance of victory, which seems rather ridiculous for blackjack, and does spoil gameplay somewhat.

Perhaps where the game really falls down, though, is in its lack of variety. An awful lot of Suits and Swords amounts to little more than playing an unrealistic version of blackjack against a series of seemingly similar (in feel if not in looks or name) creatures. Many of the best RPGs have a cleverly-written plot that pulls you into the game and that allows the atmosphere to change and grow as you get further. With Suits and Swords, though, the plot is fairly basic and unrewarding. You do have a continuing opponent in the ‘Joker’ character, who presides over proceedings, but the main narrative lacks depth.

suits and swords game screenshot

The game also misses a trick in terms of its quests. Giving the player complex and differing sets of objectives to complete would give you more to play for. There isn’t enough variety to the fights themselves. Go to any good online casino, and you’ll see a vast array of blackjack variations. Suits and Swords, though, makes little use of these ideas. Where are the equivalents of Double Attack or Perfect Blackjack, for instance. Where are the progressive bonuses that build as you take on more and more foes? And why is it so hard to beat many of the opponents? Suits and Swords needed to have far more angles to it, as well as superior plotting. We would also have liked multi-user play.

The final problem with Suits and Swords is that the graphics are, ironically, a little ancient. Today’s app games are frequently slick and fluid, but Suits and Swords’ visuals are a little static and primitive. Had this game come out a few years ago, we might have applauded it, but app game players are a demanding bunch nowadays. Compared to the fireworks of typical slots, for instance, this game looks very dull in comparison.

Suits and Swords is a nice concept, and parts have been done very well indeed. However, more varied blackjack play, more realistic deals to the opponent, and better plotting and visuals will all be needed to make this more than an occasional-play.

Sword & Poker 2

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/sword-poker-2-ww/id369834297?mt=8swords and poker logo

Very much a forerunner of Suits and Swords is this relative oldie, Sword & Poker 2. Released back in 2010 as a sequel to the even older Sword & Poker, this game combines an RPG background with elements of poker.

The action takes place over a series of dungeons, and you move through fighting monsters. Battles consist of the participants trying to make poker hands on a grid. You place pairs of cards in turn, trying to find the best lines. The better the hands you play, the more damage you inflict. Both the player and the monster has a set amount of coins allocated, and the fights rage on until one of the participants has lost everything.

swords and poker 2As is probably obvious, you’re not playing poker in its purest sense. Instead, it brings in an element of strategy, forcing you to think very carefully about which squares to fill up. At least part of the skill is in preventing the opponent from playing their best hands.

In the traditions of the best RPGs, the further you get, the better the items you’ll be able to buy. However, it’s not as simple as saying the best weapons will dish out greater amounts of damage. Some will wreak havoc upon top hands, such as straights and flushes. Others are better suited to damaging lesser hands, such as pairs. Weapons may have special skills. Some, for instance, allow the player to secure the last two hands of the round.

All of these elements force you to think, plan ahead, and use the various items and plays very carefully. It requires a great deal more thought than the relatively simple gameplay of Suits and Swords, for instance.

Considering the age of the game, the graphics aren’t too bad. The monsters tend to be quite humorous, and the interface is bold and colourful. The animations can drag, though, while the music gets repetitive very quickly. Overall, though, Sword & Poker 2 is an excellent little game. Liking poker isn’t really a prerequisite, although the enjoyment of strategy almost certainly is.

MMOs

http://www.dragons.tl/
http://casinorpg.com/

What both of the above titles really lack is multi-user play. Sword & Poker is more enclosed, but Suits and Swords would have had far more edge had you been able to interact with other players. Doubly so if players could attach themselves to different factions, World of Warcraft-style. To be honest, we couldn’t find any good MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games that use gambling in place of fight systems. There are a number of experimental MMOs that are partly based around gambling. Dragon’s Tale, for example, lets you walk around a vast world, chancing your arm on almost everything, from the growth of seeds, to kicking benches, and guessing which jackpot square a freed monkey will run to. CasinoRPG is very much in its early stages (it’s still in the Beta stage), but lets you build up a casino empire. You can even play in-game versions of the various casino titles.

dragons tale

These games aren’t visual extravaganzas like WoW – they run in the browser, for a start, so compatibility is high, but graphics capabilities are relatively modest. More like intriguing experiments than full games in their own right, Dragon’s Tale and CasinoRPG still have something to offer the patient user. CasinoRPG, in particular, is very much in its infancy, and is likely to grow and improve as it gets older.

What’s Next?

The sheer number of Kickstarter projects based around the concept of RPG/gambling suggests we should have some interesting titles to play before long. In the meantime, you can while away a happy afternoon with Sword & Poker, or Suits and Swords. Nobody’s yet hit on exactly the right combination of RPG plot, absorbing card-game combat, and multi-user competition. This genre, though, is one to watch in the near future.

The History of Blackjack

The exact forerunner of blackjack remains unclear to this day. In the 16th and 17th centuries, several games seem to have emerged where the objective is to accumulate a certain ‘score’ without going over. Undoubtedly, it’s from one (or more) of these that modern-day blackjack developed. Picking out the exact source, though, is rather like identifying the ‘missing link’ that connects us to other animals. The French game of ‘Vingt-et-Un’ is commonly quoted as the game’s main source, and there are undoubtedly similarities. As in blackjack, two cards are dealt, and each one is assigned a value, the aim being to notch up a score as close as possible to 21. The ace can be worth either 1 or 11, depending on the wishes of the player. After that, though, the game veers rather wildly away.

blackjackjgirlsVingt-et-Un is actually a rather more complex game than blackjack, consisting of a series of different deals – all of which have their own name. Imaginary Tens, for example, assigns all players a score of 10 plus the value of their second card. Other evocatively-titled phases (Sympathy and Antipathy, Rouge et Noir, Self and Company etc.) have the player guessing whether their cards are of a particular colour or value. The role of ‘dealer’ isn’t fixed, but switches around from player to player – the dealer is compensated through being awarded special plays (such as the ability to double their bet if they’re liking their hand) that aren’t open to the other players. Vingt-et-Un, then, has many elements in common with blackjack, but also has distinct shades of both poker and roulette. Clearly, it’s unlikely to be the direct source of blackjack.

An alternative candidate is perhaps the game of Trente-Un or Trentuno (Thirty One), where the arbitrary figure of 31 is set as the ‘ideal’ which players are supposed to get close to. Three cards are dealt, and the ace is counted simply as an 11-pointer – no choice of value is permitted. The game is extremely old, and its origins are rather murky. Indeed, there’s even much dispute over which country ’31’ originated in. Italy is frequently cited, but that could be down to its earliest recorded mention (in the 1440s) coming from an Italian monk. It could just as easily be Spanish, though, and it has even made an appearance in French literature.

Whatever its provenance, Trente-Un is still played today. Strangely, though, the modern Trente-Un has developed a very different set of rules from its predecessor, and bears little comparison to blackjack. The original rules and spirit were preserved in a 16th century English variation, called Bone Ace. This kept the dealing of three cards and the maximum of 31, but introduced card values identical to those of blackjack, and, as in Vingt-et-Un, assigned the ace a double value of 1 or 11. The ‘Bone Ace’ of the title referred to the ace of diamonds, which would secure victory for its holder in the event of a tie. This game seems a strange conglomeration of Vingt-et-Un and Trente-Un. However, it’s remarkably similar to modern blackjack. Cut the number of cards dealt to two, and reduce the target score from 31 to 21, and you essentially have blackjack.  Another Italian game, Sette e Mezzo (Seven and a Half), may have contributed the idea of automatically ‘going bust’ when the maximum score is exceeded. Mix all of these elements together, and you essentially have the modern game that we adore.

American Beginnings
blackjackcardsWherever it was exactly that these juices seemed to mingle, it was likely to be somewhere in the United States in the early 19th century. Whether the game rules were carried by refugees rushing from the terror of the French Revolution, or were brought over by the American settlers themselves (perhaps under the influence of Bone Ace), they seem to have come together in the card games played in the USA in the early part of the 19th century. Gambling was illegal in many parts of the US, but that didn’t stop the rise of games. Riverboats, frequented by the well-to-do, were regular haunts for card sharps looking to make a quick buck from gullible customers. Mining towns like California, Nevada and Arizona were also strong gaming spots, as restless workers seeked a fun but unsophisticated way of unwinding after a day’s toil. For a few years, the epicentre of cards was the ‘Vingt-et-Un’ in Nevada. Taking its name from the French title of the forerunner of blackjack, this establishment was run by a woman, Eleanor Dumont, known as Madame Moustache. The promise of ‘honesty’ seems to have been the biggest draw, although this doesn’t seem to have precluded a rather large house edge. Ultimately, Eleanor Dumont lost everything after being swindled by her new husband, and supposedly spent her last few days stumbling along the dusty roads vowing to find the man who had stripped her of all that she owned – she never found him and, like many a Vegas hero, eventually took her own life.

The game of Vingt-et-Un (or 21) makes occasional appearances in early American literature. It doesn’t really seem to blossom until the 20th century, though, at which point it springs, fully-formed, into life in Indiana. That’s where the first ‘bank’ game seems to have taken place, and also where the rewards for drawing a natural 21 (an ace plus a card with a value of ten) were changed to 3 to 2. It wasn’t until gambling became legal in the 1930s that the game really took off, though. That was largely down to Nevada casinos trying to promote it with a new bonus – if your hand included the Ace of Spades, plus either the Jack of Spades or the Jack of Clubs, your hand was called a ‘blackjack’, and a special payout of 10 to 1 was dispensed. This change was short-lived, and casinos quickly went back to the old 3 to 2 rules. Nonetheless, a new ‘American’ phrase had been coined, and ‘blackjack’ finally replaced the old French name.

Blackjack and the Card Counting Revolution
By the 1960s, blackjack was big business in casinos up and down the land. Now with its rules firmly established, there didn’t seeem to be far for it go. Blackjack, however, was about to take a new and totally unexpected turn. Most establishments operating blackjack games had changed the rules to ensure that they had some sort of edge over the players.  The dealer has an automatic advantage in being able to ‘play’ last of all – the player, in contrast, has to aim for a winning hand without knowing exactly what it is that they’re going to have to beat. This advantage, though, is essentially negated by giving the player an increased 3 to 2 payout when they draw a blackjack. Once you take into account this payout, plus the small effect of features like doubling down and splitting, the house edge is very close to zero when the game is played with a single deck. In order to restore an edge, casinos play with more than one deck. Each new deck slightly decreases the chance that the player can draw a blackjack – meaning that they’re getting the compensatory 3 to 2 payout less often. The difference is very small, but playing with eight decks (rather than just the one) adds around 0.48% to the house edge – if blackjack was played using standard rules and a single deck, there would be next to no house edge.

Image Source: Wikipedia

So what can players do about this edge? Well, most early practitioners assumed the only solution was to be dishonest, and use trick devices and sleight of hand to con the dealer and other players. In 1962, though, Edward O Thorp published his bestseller, Beat the Dealer, and showed that there was another way. This involved ‘counting cards’, assigning values to each card and then keeping a running total of the ‘worth’ of the remaining cards in the pack. If a large number of low-value cards had been drawn, this made it more likely that the majority of those cards remaining would be high-value. If you knew lots of high-value cards were likely to turn up, you could increase your bet size, knowing that you were far more likely to draw blackjacks, and so gain a large share of the lucrative 3 to 2 payouts. For the most part, the cards coming up were little more than random. Occasionally, though, there were clear trends that very patient players could follow for a profit and a small edge of their own.
Edward O Thorp’s book featured some of the ‘simpler’ methods of counting cards. Even these methods, though, were quite tricky to execute properly. What the book did, though, was to supply the game with a mathematical foundation, and to show that it could be beaten legally. Huge numbers of card players flocked to the blackjack tables in its wake, looking to take down the casinos. Most of these people failed miserably, but amongst the few success stories was maths genius Lawrence Revere. Building on Thorp’s work, Revere produced his own version, introducing a slew of new counting methods – including the Revere Five Count and Ten Count, and the Revere Plus-Minus systems. Thorp was so impressed that, when a new edition of his book was brought out a few years later, he insisted on adding new material that explained the Revere systems in detail.

Card Counting Teams
Casinos were quick to take note of card counting. The practice wasn’t illegal, but casinos have the right to ban players from their establishments, and they insisted on exercising this right whenever they identified somebody who was counting cards. The telltale signs were fairly easy to spot, as players would suddenly raise their stakes significantly, and for no apparent reason, and would then have a period of success before dropping their stakes again. Clearly, a more subtle approach needed to be taken.

blackjack-ken-ustonIt was Ken Uston who came up with the idea of ‘teamwork’. Counters would work in groups. Most of the group members would act as the ‘spotters’, with just one of the members designated the ‘big player’. The ‘spotters’ would play games for small stakes while simultaneously counting cards. If they were playing at a table that was likely to see a rush of high cards, they would send a subtle signal to the ‘big player’, who would then come and join the table. Since the ‘big player’ appeared to be using the same large stakes at every table, and since the ‘spotters’ carried on staking at the same amounts, there were no telltale signs for the casino to pick up on.

This concept of teamwork was quick to take off, and bands of card counters started working casinos up and down the country. The most successful of these was the M.I.T. Team. Led by Bill Kaplan, this group consisted of gamblers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and supposedly amassed millions over the course of the 1980s. Eventually though, the casinos became adept at identifying M.I.T. members and banning them. The constant grind of card counting (along with the training and drilling needed to keep counting techniques sharp) took its toll on the players as well, and the long hours spent spinning out a relatively small edge made it tedious work. By the end of the 80s, the team decided to disband. Many of the members would go on to further success, though – Kaplan himself established his own $1 million fund, for instance.

The Future
The days of card counting seem now to be numbered, with many casinos bringing in regular deck refreshes and shuffles, so that counting is rendered essentially worthless. The rise of online blackjack is another nail in its coffin, as these simulations make it easy to maintain a full eight decks at all times. Whether the rise of online ‘live dealer’ blackjack can bring back card counting in some form or other remains to be seen. There will be opportunities for using technology to work out what may happen, although these aids are more likely to be of use in roulette, where the physics of the wheel can, to some extent, be mapped, and the likely outcome predicted.

Digital casinos, though, are finding additional ways to inject excitement, bringing out new flavours that feature extra variations, or that increase tension with ever-building progressive bonuses. The emergence of tournament play should also get blackjack players flocking back to tables. What is sure is that, after those days of uncertain origins, blackjack is now very much a glittering star in the casino firmament. As such, it’s likely to be with us in strength for a long time to come.

Superstition and Lucky Charms in Gambling

All gamblers know a few fellow players who use superstitions or rituals to bring them greater fortune. Whether that’s blowing on the dice for luck, wearing the same sock every time they go to the casino, or carrying around some kind of ‘lucky mascot’, these players often insist that they wouldn’t be having the great run they’re on unless they were sticking to the same routine again and again. Indeed, even quite sensible people believe that a pair of ones (Snake Eyes) represents the devil and, therefore, will bring bad luck – the use of the number two is also the reason why many Americans believe two dollar bills to be unlucky. It may well be that you believe in some sort of ‘luck’ yourself, to a greater or lesser degree. Deep down, you know a two-tailed lizard in your pocket can’t possibly change the spin of the dice, but there’s part of you that can’t resist the idea that, just maybe, you’re turning chance in your favour.

Source: luckymojobag.com
Source: luckymojobag.com

The idea of superstition, of course, comes from the earliest days of civilisation, when humans would try and invoke supernatural powers to help them succeed in something that they didn’t really understand. Weather and agriculture, for instance, were largely a mystery for thousands of years. Science and experimentation has gradually enlightened us, to the point where we know that ‘the gods’ have little, if anything, to do with these things. We now have sufficient knowledge of farming that very little is left to chance – scientists can even genetically modify crops so that they are more resistant to disease, can produce higher yields etc. Essentially, humans have found out how to control farming. Weather poses more uncertainties, but we do have a fairly strong understanding of what causes the elements to act as they do, and certain weather events can be predicted with greater success than before. We can’t control weather, but we can bring some sense of order to it.

Gambling, on the other hand, remains unfathomable to the majority of us. It’s a dark power that we can’t really explain, and one that we certainly can’t control. The dice and cards are totally random, and any attempt to make order of the chaos is doomed to failure. Mathematically, of course, we can calculate the probabilities of a certain throw or deal going our way. In reality, though, few gamblers ever bother to look at such figures. Instead, the game remains one large wheel of fortune, and the players hurl the dice and hope that the mystical force that governs chance will stop the wheel at the right place, just as long as each player goes through his or her ritual – their offering to the gods. All superstitions, rituals and lucky mascots are really just a way of inviting these unknowable forces to work in our favour.

Source: luckshop.com
Source: luckshop.com

The impulses to appeal to some mightier power seem to exist deep within us. In the late 1940s, the famous psychologist, B F Skinner, showed that this was the case even in other animals. His experiment saw a pigeon fed food at random intervals. If the bird was performing a certain action (turning its head from side to side, for instance) as the food appeared, the pigeon would often attribute the arrival of the food to the performing of this particular action. Performing the action would then become a mysterious ritual which the bird thought it could use to make food appear – even though, the majority of the time, it was having no immediate effect. Humans are clearly more sophisticated than pigeons, but the same impulse seems to exist even in us – certain ‘rituals’ that appear to produce winning results (generally by happening to coincide with a lucky run) are performed again and again. At some point, a bad run tends to go against us and we’ll drop the ritual, only to pick up a new ‘better’ one shortly after.

In truth, many of us know that these superstitions can’t really work, and yet we often resort to them for at least part of the time. (I confess that I refuse to bet on any horse that bears my own name, for instance, or that of my dog!) But as long as we know, deep down, that nothing can come of them in the long-term, where is the problem? If you’re using superstition as an easy replacement for doing research and getting to ‘know the figures’, then that’s clearly a bad thing. But a little extra superstition on top of a solid betting strategy can actually be a benefit. Winning gamblers always want to have some logic to their plays, but self-doubt (brought on by tension) can cause them to second-guess themselves. Anything that can counteract those negative impulses, therefore, and make the gambler more confident in following their carefully honed instincts, is likely to be a bonus. It’ll be the odds that decide whether we win or lose over the long term. But in the meantime, what’s wrong with trying to will a little randomness to work for rather than against us.