Latest GamblingPlanet.org Editorials

A Historical Look at Gambling in South Africa

editor — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:30:37 -0400

Today, Gambling in South Africa is big business. Glittering casino complexes have been established in all nine of South Africa’s provinces following the recent legalization of gambling and a further five licenses are expected to be granted to each province in a national rat race among the provinces to attract tourists and create employment in one of the most promising economy’s in Africa. The South African gambling industry is certainly one of the fastest growing sectors in the economy; new casinos started shooting up all over the place.

History

However, this was not always the case. The South African gaming industry was always considered an anomaly, and was a product of the nature of the South African pre-rainbow nation apartheid political system. Gambling was officially illegal in South Africa for many years; the reasoning came from a somewhat ambiguous belief in protecting the welfare and integrity of the South African society. Yet its practical implementation was as contradictory as it was perverse. All over South Africa “proper” gambling was illegal; however, huge Casino complexes were developed in the former homelands. In order to understand this, one needs to understand the political character of these Homelands.

European Debate on Gambling

editor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:25:00 -0400

Countries such as Germany, Sweden, Greece, Netherlands and Hungary, to name just a few, are currently being put under increasing pressure as their national laws continue to confine the gaming industry in a state monopoly. The European Commission has issued infringement proceedings against these States to force them to open up their markets.

In Greece for example the Commission is concerned by the fact that providers lawfully licensed in another Member State are not allowed to provide sports betting services and other games of chance. Restrictions also extend to the promotion or advertising of the services and to whether Greek nationals can participate in the games. The Infringement proceeding is based on article 226 of the EC Treaty and is a legal mechanism or option given to the Commission to ensure that Community law is correctly applied.

Concepts: Mobile/Cell phone Poker

editor — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:06:28 -0400

It’s a pretty obvious idea: People like poker, and people like cell phones. All anybody would really need to pull off a slamming cell-phone poker company, then, is the starting capital and a couple of programming nerds.

No doubt, this was the logic behind Pokerroom.com’s 2005 launch of the world’s first cell-phone poker room. And, as the number of cell-phone poker providers grows, it still seems to be a notion many companies are willing to bet on.

Betting on the Olympics

editor — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:38:17 -0400

Even before they officially began, the 2008 Beijing Olympics have already been kind to sports bettors and bookmakers. The political issues surrounding the Olympic Games sparked a series of protests around the torch relay, and some nation leaders began openly reconsidering their Olympic policies. This led bookmakers to offer unique betting lines such as “who will be the first country to boycott the opening ceremony”. Punters wagering on Germany took home a nice payout of 10:1 after German chancellor Angela Merkel was first to announce she will not attend the ceremony.

Gambling on TV (with a Little Help From the Internet)

editor — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:56:05 -0400

Television and gambling have shared a long history, and now the two are making history together. Since the late 1930s, when television sets first became commercially available, and up until the 1950s, TV shows were basically modified versions of popular radio shows. During that period, the cooperation between TV and sports led to an increase in the popularity of both. Due to the new opportunities televised sports broadcasting presented sports fans, those fans could now place bets on their favorite games and watch live as the events unfolded.

The 1950s marked a new era in television. New genres were emerging, and these helped set television apart from its two older sisters - the radio and the big screen. The talk show, the sitcom and popular game shows would dominate and define television for decades to come. Nevertheless, TV also stuck by its devotion to sports. During the 60s and 70s, television helped boos the popularity of many major sports, turning such events as the Super Bowl, the Olympics and, most notably, the Football World Cup into worldwide celebrations. The increasing interest in sports naturally brought with it an increase in sports betting.

One crucial turning point in sports broadcasting was the 1958 NFL championship game, a game which has come to be known simply as ‘the greatest game ever played’. For the very first time, an American football championship game was to be televised across the nation by NBC. It turned out to be the first ever NFL game to go into sudden death overtime, in which the Baltimore Colts scored first to beat the New York Giants 23 to 17. This game is still cited as one of the main reasons for the NFL’s overwhelming surge in popularity, making it the league with the most lucrative and expensive television rights in the world.

The popularity of the NFL, which was made possible by the sheer power of televised broadcasting, later became a major force in sports betting. Though spread betting was introduced in the 1940s by Charles K. McNeil, an American mathematics teacher who eventually opened his own bookmaking operation, it wasn’t until 1969 that the idea actually caught on. Once again, the catalyst was an American Football championship game.

Super Bowl III came only three years after the long-established NFL was forced into a merger agreement by the newly formed AFL. The AFL representatives were easily defeated in the first two Super Bowls, and everyone was expecting NFL champion Baltimore Colts to crush the AFL champions New York Jets. This posed a serious problem for the bookmakers. Punters betting on the Jets to win were hard to come by, and using the traditional odds betting system resulted in very unbalanced books.

Las Vegas legend Bob ‘The Man’ Martin came up with a betting line that would go down in wagering history. Martin made the Jets 18-point underdogs, and the masses ran to place their bets. Thanks to Martin the books were once again balanced, and America learned to love the spread wager. The game also turned out to be one of the biggest upsets in sports history, and, subsequently, one of the greatest spread reversals ever. The heavy underdog AFL Jets beat the highly favored NFL Colts 16 to 7, and gave the AFL its first Super Bowl victory.

Both television and betting have been evolving in great leaps ever since. The biggest leap, no doubt, was the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The world of gambling was greatly revolutionized by new online possibilities, as millions were granted access to various betting activities right from the comfort of their homes. Television was also changing rapidly in an attempt to keep up with the innovations made possible by the internet. The examples are numerous, and touch on every aspect of televised broadcasting.

The most notable breakthrough, in my opinion, was the introduction of ‘on demand’ viewing, which was made possible through innovative digital technologies. Watching television ‘on demand’ allows viewers to directly choose the content they consume, as well as the order in which they consume it (hence the name). Viewers could also choose to pause live shows and resume playing later on. This new way of watching TV imitates and draws directly from the newly formed web-surfing culture. The instant gratification found by the simple action of clicking on a link was finally translated into the world of television. Some believe that it won’t be long before major television networks stop using broadcasting schedules all together, and let each viewer create their own schedule.

The same technology that turned passive viewers into active consumers is now being utilized towards interactive TV gambling, expanding the entertainment opportunities that come with your television set. Interactive TV could now allow viewers to place bets using their remote control, directly from their couch. These systems are currently being used in the UK by British SKY Broadcasting and others. Similar systems are being tested in Australia as well. With digital TV taking over in all Western Europe, operators everywhere are looking to develop their interactive services, and betting is one of the more lucrative opportunities.

Interactive TV betting is clearly an element TV incorporated into its system directly from the internet. But there is yet another bold connection between TV and gambling that was made possible through the World Wide Web revolution.

The internet influenced not only the way we watch TV, but also the content we find on it. The dominating genre since the year 2000 has been ‘reality TV’ shows. This genre owes its distinct look to the web-cam phenomena, and its credibility and charm to YouTube-stlye camerawork and editing. Shows featuring ordinary people that have been thrown into (allegedly) unscripted dramatic or comic situations now captured the imagination of a new generation of TV viewers. And this new genre brought with it a new betting opportunity.

Reality-competition shows are similar to sports shows in many ways. Both are unscripted events in which the participants have control over the game and can alter its course. Competitors on reality shows are voted off either by their peers, the viewing audience, a panel of judges, or some combination of the three. The results are kept secret by the producers, and are revealed live. Needless to say, these shows launched a brand new betting culture. All major online bookmakers now offer odds for American Idol, Big Brother, Survivor and the likes. Reality TV money-line and proposition bets have become popular online betting options, and are rapidly growing in annual revenue.

Be it reality TV or sports broadcasting, the technology is now available for people to bet on the outcome of a TV show while watching it live, and to do so directly through their TV set. As I have tried to demonstrate, there has always been a strong connection between gambling and television. Now - and with a little help from the internet - the connection is more direct than ever. As gambling and TV prepare for a shared future, the circle is finally complete.

Slots Tournaments Strategy

editor — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:29:43 -0400

It may come as a surprise to some of our readers that a straight-forward activity like slots tournaments comes with strategic guidelines. At the end of the day, tournament or no tournament, players simply pull a lever (or press a button) and wait for the slot machine to work its magic. The truth is that there is no effective strategy to playing slots on your own, but there are several tips, mostly involving bankroll management and choosing the best machine, that can improve your overall balance at the end of the day. When it comes to tournament play, however, other factors are involved, and strategy should be applied to your game.

The first thing to remember is that tournaments are played against other players and the clock. You are not battling a machine, but rather the other entrants to the tournament. With a guaranteed prize pool, it is irrelevant how many chips/credits you end up with. Remember: payouts are not in proportion to your winnings. They are according to your relative finishing position.

Based on the previous statement, it makes sense to follow these guidelines:

Play fast! That is the most important tip.
There are two basic types of slots tournaments, and playing fast is especially important when playing the more popular “designated machines, no chips” type. In these tournaments, once the time has run out credits you didn’t use are lost, and don’t count towards your winning, so speed is of the essence.
Don’t waste time counting your winnings. The casino will do that for you as soon as the tournament is over. You should spend whatever time you have pushing those buttons and spinning those wheels. This tip strongly applies to both types of tournaments.
Stay focused! Don’t waste valuable time worrying about other players. No one is ever eliminated during a tournament, and each player is sitting at his or her machine, so there really isn’t much going on. Just concentrate on using up your credits before the time is up.

Tackling the tangle of presidential betting vs. political conscience

editor — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:57:37 -0400

It was murder. The only Democrat among my local watering hole’s swarm of born Republicans, I had just spent the last two hours listening my drinking buddies launch a litany of my party’s worst PR catastrophes in my direction. Not only did they hit the obvious ones, the current primary “situation” and the Rev. Wright’s blustering; but they’d also made sure to work in the scandals of yesteryear like White Water, Monica Lewinski and NAFTA. Then Paul, the owner of the place and—despite what I consider his shitbrick political leanings—a good friend, pointed at me with the detached beer pull in his hand and asked the one question I’d been dreading all night.

“Who are you betting on?” he said.

And without missing a beat or even having to think about it, “McCain” slipped from my mouth like a pair of broken teeth….

It’s a sad fact but 100-percent true that if you’re a good partisan—pitching your party a couple grand in donations; making all the stump speeches, debates and conventions; and reading every issue of your subscription of The Nation or The National Review—you probably won’t make a good election bettor. After all, winning money on any prop requires you keep a clear head, and for many Americans, this year’s U.S. presidential race has had more emotional impact than their best friends’ weddings.

Is your conscience costing you, this election?

I had been thinking about this and my night out with the guys when I first pitched this piece to the editors at GP three weeks ago. Of course it’s true, I spieled during a quick lunch-time e-mail, with plenty of yanks backing their favorite candidates right now, there are plenty of chances to make money and not a few lessons to be learned in a how-to section. But the real problem is, even for those who aren’t directly involved in the election process , the question of who will become America’s next president still makes a huge difference—And that kind of content, I reasoned, demands an editorial.

Well, as you can see, the rest of the GP crew bit, and so I started on my way building up the background. Logging hours in chat rooms and constantly monitoring the odds posted by sites like Bodog and William Hill, I found that—much to my own miserable chagrin—Mr. McCain’s odds had actually peaked at 5-4 while, as I watched them, Senators Clinton and Obama’s had sunk to 11-2 and 1-1 respectively. Still the odds did bring up another question for a hopeless dreamer like myself: Did my beloved donkeys’ dismal numbers really portend a November failure, or like playing the dogs and the horses, could the odds just reflect an over-anxious rabble looking to make a quick quid with the offshore books?

To get my answers, I turned to one of the web’s most vocal election-betting gurus, Offshoreinsiders.com head honcho Joe Duffy, who’s been solidly blogging the topic in his personal blog-space, http://www.joeduffy.net/, since the primaries began last year. After a couple hit-and-miss attempts to connect, I finally got him on the phone last Friday, and after some opening banter on our earlier years in Pennsylvania—Joe went to college just 45 minutes from where I grew up—I sank in with my first (and probably most obvious) question: “So who are you backing to win the presidential race?” I asked.

Sadly Joe’s response wasn’t exactly what I had been hoping for.

“Right now,” he explained, “All the books are leaning towards McCain because the feeling is everything bad about him—the fact that he’s a Republican and the alleged affair from the [New York] Times article—is already out in the open…. There’s a real sense with most people at this point that both [Democratic] candidates are not done digging up dirt on each other, and the only thing that has changed my mind [about backing them] is that things are getting nasty.”

So okay, I thought, so that’s bad, but how about the quality of the books’ interpretation? There has to be some flaw here, right?—I let the verbal equivalent of this stream-of-consciousness fly then and waited with baited breath…. But again Joe’s answer hit me like a punch in the face: “The books’ numbers on an election are the most objective,” he said. “The traditional wisdom is Gallop swings right and the Times swings left, while [the books] consider all of them before setting the odds.

“Basically if the odds say one thing and the polls say the opposite, go with the odds because there’s really no reason to doubt them. Normally, the books cap bets at $50 because it’s just for publicity and nobody’s making a lot of money from it.”

Needless to say all this was hellova devastating for yours-truly, and as I listened to Joe and took notes, I found myself compulsively multitasking online, staking another $25 on McCain. It turned my stomach doing it, and yet at the same time, I reasoned, I’m definitely going to need the money if he ends up winning.

But then, the other shoe dropped.

No sooner had I submitted my second wager than Joe pointed out another dimension to election betting. “Basically,” he explained, “Hillary’s 5-4 odds are only a matter of whether or not a Washington insider like her can snatch up the super delegates, while Obama’s got all the intangibles going for him…. And after all, every political expert has thought, ‘The worst publicity is no publicity,’ which is exactly where McCain sits at the moment.

“Also, [the odds] will definitely change after PA,” he continued. “When you handicap a poll it’s a snapshot in time…. I don’t think the odds influence the polls nearly as much as the polls influence the odds. During the last presidential election, the exit polls were going for John Kerry and so the odds shifted a couple times per day.”

And so there I was, in a complete bind. Having bet for and against my party and voted for them, and even contributed to both candidates’ campaign funds, I realized I had become so worried about splitting my world between my conscience and my bottom line that I had essentially flubbed the same rule of gambling I was trying to live up to. My many bets, both with the books and otherwise, had left me no further ahead. In fact, I was in it deeper than a rooky roulette player placing chips on both red and black, not stopping for the moment it takes to figure out that he’s just breaking even.

As Mr. Duffy and I finished out interview then, I thanked him not only for the scads of information he’d provided but also (secretly) for helping me screw my head back on straight. The fact of the matter is, I now understood, this election would be like any democratic election from here to Australia. There would be dips, and there would be doosies; there would be moments when I, personally, would feel like the march of progress had finally reached my front door, and there would be times when I would despair that my country was about to fall back into the Dark Ages. And so, finally—FINALLY—I decided the only thing to do when it comes to election betting is cut my losses, hope for the best and be surprised at nothing. At least that way, I’ll still have a few dollars left to hit the track this spring.

Joe Duffy's 5 Secrets for election-betting success

5. GET ACQUAINTED: According to Joe Duffy, “The more you know about the candidates, the more likely you are to win.” He suggests forgetting the talking heads and going to the most objective site he’s found: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/.

4. DON’T GET ATTACHED: As you can see from writer Phill Provance’s experience, politics is a hard game to keep your heart out of. Joe suggests keeping your nose out of the money game if you can’t keep an objective stance since you’ll more than likely be throwing your money away.

3. DON’T WALK THE PLANK:“Platforms and specific planks can help in other races, but they don’t generally affect the presidential race,” Joe says. Generally as a rule then, bet the guy with the sparkle in his eye, not the guy who could actually make a positive difference.

2. WATCH THE PRESSES: Joes says, “When you’re going to bet, you’re basically going to have to anticipate what will come out in the news.” Obviously unless you’re a top-level political strategist or Washington newspaper’s bureau chief, this will be pretty difficult. Still, being a long-time reader of some of America’s more partisan publications can at least give you perspective on prior scandals that didn’t make the evening news.

1. NEVER GO ALL-IN: The ultimate lesson to be learned according to Joe is that “American voters are fickle.” Hence, wagering your mortgage on them, in the end, is an absolute no-no.

Slots Tournaments FAQ

editor — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:58:19 -0400

Many of our dedicated readers have lately sent us questions regarding the nature of slots tournaments. These tournaments have been around for some time, and can be found both online and offline. Since this is a gambling activity that is lately gaining much attention and popularity, the expert writing team at GamblingPlanet.org feels it’s a good time to answer some of your questions.

Q: What are slots tournament?
A: New technology allows slots to be played as a competitive game, amongst a number of gamers who are playing simultaneously against each-other. Of course, most people still consider slots to be a solitary activity, but that no longer has to be the case. Thanks to the popularity of table games such as poker and blackjack, slots have now also become communal.

Griffin Investigations – Protecting the Gambling Industry

editor — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:29:18 -0400

The gambling industry is worth billions of dollars in annual revenue, and wherever there’s that much money involved, there will always be people scheming to get a slice of the pie. Some using more legal means than others, people have always been searching for ways to ‘break the casino’. There are two basic types of physical security threats to casinos: Teams like Ocean’s Eleven represent one type while the MIT Blackjack Team is a completely different story.

In the first remake of the film Ocean’s Eleven, a team of highly-specialized heist men rob the central vault shared by three Las Vegas casinos: The Mirage, the Bellagio and the MGM Grand. Whether acting as individuals or as a team, people like Ocean and his eleven men are usually confronted by ordinary law-enforcement agencies, as their actions are straight-out illegal. Casinos tend to have state-of-the-art security systems and many paid guards, due to the simple fact that a lot of money is at stake. However, dealing with tough guys and criminals is usually a job left to the cops.

Will Smoking Restrictions Hit Atlantic City Casinos?

editor — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:41:56 -0400

Gambling and smoking have always seemed to go hand in hand. The classic image of the casino floor usually comes complete with heavy cigarette smoke in the dim lights. Is all that about to change? As awareness to the dangers of passive smoking rises, more and more casinos are facing anti-smoking laws that may put out the smoke in casinos for good. Next in line is Atlantic City, where casino owners, headed by Donald Trump, are ready to fight for their clients’ right to smoke, and their own right to make more money.