Online Gambling

Three Card Poker (also called Tri-Card Poker) is a popular table game at many casinos. Most casinos, both online casinos and land-based casinos, have reasonable pay tables for winning hands. However, as with most casino games, it pays to shop around for the absolute best returns that you can find.

I’ve analyzed the Three Card Poker pay tables from over a dozen online casino software vendors. Eight of them offer the best pay tables — meaning the lowest house edge, and the best returns for the player. The Three Card Poker from these eight online casino software vendors has a 5.32% house edge, assuming that you play with Q6x or better, and fold otherwise. Here is the pay table to look for:

The eight online casino vendors with this Three Card Poker pay table are as follows:

• BoDog Casino also has a sports book and poker room
• BetOnSoft: Treasure Mile is a favorite of mine
• Players Edge: Tropical Cash Casino is where I play
• Proprietary #2: Only at Win4Real
• Microgaming online casinos: Loved these casinos, but they closed to US players
• BetSoft online casinos
• PlayTech online casinos
• Proprietary #1 online casinos

Good luck at the tables!

As I recently blogged, NuWorks is a new online casino software vendor. It is being used by only a few sites, one of which is US-friendly BuzzLuck Online Casino.

BuzzLuck offers 1, 3, 10, 52, and 100 hand versions of Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, and Joker Poker video poker. Looking at their paytables for single-hand quarter video poker, and assuming optimal play and max coins in:

• Their Jacks or Better video poker is the best. They have a full-pay paytable with a return of 99.54%. You won’t find a better Jacks or Better video poker paytable anywhere, either online or in land-based casinos.
• The Deuces Wild returns 98.91%. This is decent, and matches the best return that you can find at any online casino that accepts US players.
• You can skip their Joker Poker video poker with its 98.40% return. BoDog rocks Joker Poker with its incredible 99.97% payback.

To attract the real video poker player, NuWorks/BuzzLuck are going to have to:

• Add more video poker varieties. Double Double Bonus comes to mind.
• Support keyboard shortcuts for card selection a dealing.
• Provide a way to turn off the double-or-nothing screen that annoyingly appears after each win.

In Two Ways Royal online video poker, a 2-through-6 straight flush is called a Low Royal Flush and it pays the same as a Royal Flush. With the proper paytable, max coins played, and optimal play, Two Ways Royal online video poker returns an exceptional 99.79% — that’s only a 0.21% house edge!

The good news is that there are several US-friendly Gaming Right Media (GRM) online casinos that deal Two Ways Royal online video poker with this player-friendly return table.

Playtech online casinos also deal Two Ways Royal online video poker with this same generous return table, but are not open to US players.

Don’t you just love video poker? I do! Video poker has some of the best returns in the casino — if you play it correctly, of course.

(While some claim that a Low Royal Flush is an Ace-through-5 straight flush, this is not correct. It is, in fact a 2-through-6 straight flush.)

Since I last updated my online keno article, there are a few new places to play online keno. And some places where online keno could be played have left the market. You’ll want to read the complete article for all the details about my analysis of online keno, but here are the highlights.

Summary:

• The keno games from Parlay, Top Game, Microgaming (MGS), Rival, BetOnSoft (BOS), and VueTec are all better than average; each has an overall payout equal to or greater than about what you will find at a video keno machine in a land-based casino. (Click the previous links to view all online sites that run that software.)
• The keno games from Party Gaming, 888, CGTV, and B3W are acceptable in terms of their payout percentage, but just barely.
• Keno should not be played at online sites that run software from RTG, Grand Virtual, Bingo Entertainment Network, Wagerlogic, or Boss.

Recommended Sites:

• Parlay bingo halls accept players from all states in the United States — For US players, Classic Keno is the best choice for 2- to 9-spot (excluding 8-spot) and Kenoland is the best choice for 11- to 15-spot players
  • Free Bee Bingo: Get $50 FREE + a 200% bonus
  • Bingo Tide: Get $5 FREE + a 200% bonus
  • Bingo Millionaire: Get $5 FREE + a 200% bonus
• Rival Gaming casinos accept players from most states in the United States — For US players, Vegas Jackpot Keno is the best choice for 8-spot players
  • Davinci’s Gold: Get $25 FREE + a 900% bonus
  • Ruby Royal Casino: Get $888 FREE to win as much as you can in 30 minutes + a 888% bonus
  • Cocoa Casino: Get $15 FREE + a 100% bonus
• VueTec casinos do not accept players from the United States — Best choice for 2- to 10-spot non-US players
  • DublinBet.com: Get a 100% bonus

Good luck and have fun playing online keno!

For you video poker enthusiasts, I’ve increased the number of video poker varieties that are analyzed on my video poker page from 15 to 18. The recently-added varieties of online video poker are:

• Loose Deuces: There are three online casino software vendors that offer this video poker; the paytables are the same at all of them; the house edge is 0.93%. You can play it at Bodog, Real Time Gaming online casinos like Intertops RED, and Grand Virtual online casinos.
• Triple Bonus: Not recommended. The house edge is a whopping 9.98%!
• Triple Double Bonus: Double Double Bonus video poker on steriods. There are two online casino software vendors that offer this video poker; the house edge ranges from 0.43% to 1.85%. Unfortunately, Grand Virtual online casinos — where the better paytable is offered — are not available to US residents. You can find the less desirable paytable at BetOnSoft online casinos like Treasure Mile.
• Super Double Bonus: Dealt at Grand Virtual online casinos, the house edge is 1.32%.

Offer valid in USD as well as EUR.

As I mentioned in a previous post, BetOnSoft online casinos are a new online casino software provider in the US market. The BetOnSoft online casinos (listed below) offer seven popular varieties of video poker including Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, Bonus Deuces Wild, Bonus Poker Deluxe, Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, Triple Double Bonus, and Joker Poker. Futhermore, each of these video pokers is offered as single-handed, ten-handed, and fifty-handed varieties.

I’ve updated the video poker pages for Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, Bonus Deuces Wild, Bonus Poker Deluxe, Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Joker Poker to include the return tables for the BetOnSoft online casinos. As it turns out, their return tables are simply outstanding. As two examples, the return on their Bonus Poker is 99.50% and their return on their Bonus Poker Deluxe is 99.45% — both of these return percentages are highest among all online casinos for those video poker games.

Any of these video poker games can be played for as little as a penny per credit, all the way up to $5 per credit in single-handed mode, $2 per credit in ten-handed mode, and $1 per credit in fifty-handed mode.

If video poker is your game, you’ll want to take a hard look at one or more of the BetOnSoft online casinos. Start with Treasure Mile; here is a list of other BetOnSoft online casinos. Be aware that if you take advantage of the Treasure Mile 100% initial deposit bonus (use bonus code TM1000), video poker counts as only 10% toward meeting the 20 x (deposit + bonus) playthrough requirement associated with the bonus. So, if you only played video poker with your initial deposit and bonus, you essentially have to meet a 400 x deposit playthrough before you can make a withdrawal.

Offer valid in USD as well as EUR.

Kentucky (opened +7, currently +5) looks to be the spot play here against South Carolina, after the Gamecock’s biggest win in school history last week over then-top-ranked Alabama. While Spurrier has never lost to Kentucky, you have to think that his squad may be looking past their next opponents. Add South Carolina stinks on the road.

Another way to play this game would be to tease Kentucky with another home dog, perhaps Hawaii (opened +9.5, currently +6.5).

Get the latest NCAAF odds at US-player-friendly Intertops, BetUS, and OddsMaker.

Intertops has a prop bet on the value of the tenths digit of the Dow Jones Industrial Average at market close. It’s certainly not a very attractive prop bet, with each selection 0 through 9 returning only 8-1. But it got me wondering — do the values 0 through 9 appear approximately equally often as the tenths digit of the Dow close?

As you may or may not know, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a weighted average of 30 stocks. The 30 stocks that comprise the Dow are changed every once in a while, but have not changed since June 8, 2009. Looking at the daily close of the Dow beginning with that date (you can use Yahoo! Finance if you are interested in these data), we have the following:

One would expect that each digit should have appeared approximately 29 times over the course of the 290 closes starting June 8, 2009. But the 9 has appeared 41 times! Now, I have no idea what factors may influence the value of the tenths digit, I am simply interested if the data suggest that some values appear more often than others. To do this, a Chi-Square statistical test can be run on the data; OpenOffice.org Calc and other spreadsheets can do this for you.

The resulting chi-square statistic has a probability of 0.09, meaning that if you randomly picked values from 0 through 9 290 times, the probability that you would get a distribution similar to the one shown in the table above is only 9%. That’s fairly rare, but not overly so.

But, if you were going to make this prop bet, pick the 9.

As reported in yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal, the House Financial Services Committee voted 41-22 to approve legislation that would regulate many forms of online gambling, including poker and bingo, while specifically banning betting on major US sports leagues like the MLB, NFL, NBA, and others.

Other news articles point out that the legislation also would deny licenses to any online site that has allowed, or currently does allow, US players to gamble online. Looking ahead, this would appear to effect PokerStars, FullTilt, and other online poker rooms that have continued to serve US players despite the UIGEA of 2006.

Other key elements of the legislation include player loss limits, rigorous age verification systems and frequent testing thereof, and allowing states to opt out of this legislation and ban its citizens from online gambling.

And the legislation that was passed does not cover how the industry is to be taxed — that’s covered in a separate bill that hasn’t made it out of the House Ways and Means Committee.

It is unlikely that this legislation will be voted on before the current Congressional Session expires in September. The scheduling is simply too tight. If it is not voted on, the process will need to start again next session. Perhaps it will be attached to some other legislation, as was the UIGEA of 2006. Even so, if the legislation is approved, it still would need to be signed by Obama.

We are still years away from any comprehensive online gambling policy in the United States. Need proof? The UIGEA of 2006 took nearly 4 years before it actually went into effect this past June 1 — and there are still plenty of loopholes in that legislation that allow US players to fund and withdraw money from their online gambling accounts… or so I’ve heard.

Ten of the sixteen most popular online gambling software vendors deal Tens or Better Online Video Poker. The house percentage on these games ranges from a worse of 3.74% at Parlay Entertainment sites to a best of 0.87% at Microgaming, Rival, Vegas Tech, Grand Virtual, Boss, and Playsafe sites. (I prefer Rival online casinos over the others, because it also offers the best odds on other varieties of video poker.)

Play Tens or Better at these top-rated Rival gaming sites.