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Being in Play-Money Games

In the Internet, one may join poker websites that are hosting play-money games. In such games, what kind of players will be found?

Learning poker can be done when one registers in an online casino. But what does a person finds when he registers in online poker? He will find that many online poker websites host play-money games. Play-money games are online poker games that don't use real money. A new poker player can join such games so that he can learn the ropes of poker without having to waste a lot of money and to win online poker tournaments eventually.

However, joining in play-money games may not exactly meet the expectations of the new online poker player. This is because most of play-money games represent only one kind of poker game. And that is the loose-aggressive poker game. Other kinds of poker games may not be experienced in play-money poker.

Still, one can join in play-money games to have practice when one actually finds himself in a real-money loose-aggressive games. But before one joins the play-money games, one should know beforehand what to expect in such play-money games. Here are three of the most distinct characteristics of play-money poker:

- There will be raising wars - The players will often reach the raising cap for each round. This is because the poker players will raise, not because they are holding strong hands but because they enjoy the thrill of gambling away money. Thus, the players may bet even when they are holding garbage cards.

- There is little caution - Even when scary cards or cards with Faces or Aces appear on the flop, the poker players will still bet and call bets. And if the raising cap has not been reached, some of the players will raise. The players at play-money poker don't consider the probability that with face cards at the flop, one of them may already be holding the nuts. These players can afford to be quite careless since they are not playing with real money.

- There will be high competition - Since the money in the poker game is not real, there is only one reason left for playing poker. And this reason is called "competition". Players will challenge each other just for the sake of competing.

When in play-money games, a poker player may imitate the playing styles of his opponents and end up not developing a technique. Or the poker player can employ a strategy that will make him win the games, even when he is winning worthless play-money only. He may not gain real money by playing wisely at play-money, but he will develop the discipline needed in order to win at real loose-aggressive games.

Leading Las Vegas Football Handicapper, FatVinny.com, creates a free picks podcast for the 2005 college and pro football seasons.

Nassau, Bahamas (PRWEB) August 24, 2005 -- The 2005 football season will see the end of the football handicapping industry as it is known today. FatVinny.com announces the beginning of a weekly, free picks podcast, providing football fans with 100% free pro and college football picks during the 2005 pro and college American football season.

FatVinny.com is owned and operated by the real Fat Vinny, the football handicapping legend from Brooklyn New York, now living in Las Vegas and former sportsbook manager at one of the strip’s leading casinos. Fat Vinny offers this service for free, as this is the first gambling Podcast to be produced exclusively by sponsorship dollars. The main sponsor for FatVinny.com is MonkeyBet.com, a leading online poker, sportsbook and casino. Jeff Fuller, VP of Business Development for MonkeyBet said, "This is our second year as the premier sponsor for FatVinny. Last season, the site brought us thousands of customers, and we are excited that Vinny is putting together the weekly podcast. Football betting is such a major part of the popularity of the sport, both college and pro, that providing professional advice for free really is a needed service to gamblers." Other leading online casinos are posted on the site as affiliate sponsors.

Fat Vinny said, "I’ve always been in this for the little guy, and I hope to make a lot of people happy. I need to give something back to the community and this is the best way I can do it."

Jeff Fuller continued, "A new weekly podcast will be available every Wednesday evening once the regular season begins." He concluded, "My prediction is that online gaming sites, especially the larger ones like BoDog.com, Bet Jamaica, Bet365 and Pinnacle, will soon be the corporate sponsors for a plethora of original digital entertainment. MonkeyBet, as is normally the case, is getting ahead of the curve. Watch for the others to follow shortly."

The man behind the odds

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
September 6, 2005

LAS VEGAS - You can see neither neon nor stadium lights from inside Bob Scucci's windowless office tucked behind the betting windows of the Stardust sports book on The Strip. You can see three televisions, three computers, a stack of oddsmaking consultant reports and even a spare preseason NFL guide. This is an office for work, not show, and there's nothing fancy about it except for some impressive sports memorabilia gathering dust - an autographed Jordan jersey here, a signed 2004 USC Trojan helmet there. It sure doesn't live up to the esoteric standards you might expect of the single person outside of the obvious official power structure (Paul Tagliabue) who may have the most impact on how NFL and NCAA football games are viewed, enjoyed and anticipated. This is, after all, a Football Nation.

Scucci's impact is undeniable. "Football as a whole is 43 percent of our entire handle for a year," said Scucci, "and the majority of that is on the NFL." Scucci is officially the race and sports book manager of the Stardust Resort and Casino. But he is better known as the man who sets the first real odds and betting lines in Vegas, where his numbers filter all the way down to the local street bookie. Nevada is the only state that offers legal sports wagering. "On Sunday night, right after the Sunday afternoon games end, I put the line out for the following week," said Scucci, who, of course, was excluding the Sunday night and Monday night games. "Generally most of Vegas waits until Monday morning to see how we get those games bet on to limit their exposure. If [I] put a pick out as even and by morning it is plus three, then they will use what we currently are." So for 12 or so long, lonely hours, Scucci and six other Boyd Gaming Corporation (Stardust's parent company) employees set the point spreads that are then exposed to bettors who might see a flaw in one of those lines. That is why everyone else in town waits. And Scucci worries.

A brief explanation for non-gamblers: In an effort to attract action on an otherwise lopsided game (say New England Patriots-San Francisco 49ers), a sports book will offer extra points to the underdog 49ers, say 10. That way, if you bet the Niners plus 10 and New England wins the actual game 28-20, you win the bet with a score of 30-28 San Francisco. A betting line is fluid and will correct itself as money pours in for the favorite or underdog. The goal of a sports book is to have an equal amount of money on each side of the game, so if too many bettors view the Niners plus 10 as enticing, the line will drop (i.e., Niners plus nine, eight, whatever) and more people will begin betting on the Patriots. For Scucci and the Stardust, the risk of being first is that they can't anticipate the bettors' reactions. Even a one-point mistake in a line can leave them open to hundreds of thousands in losses as bets get locked in. Caution is the best policy. But someone has to be first. Which is why Scucci spends his NFL Sundays seated at his wooden desk absorbing and analyzing as much information as possible. He gets recommendations from five oddsmaking consultants, but as he notes, "a consultant can make any line he wants, ultimately he doesn't have to pay it." Scucci doesn't, either; the Stardust covers the bets. But if he is wrong too often, he will lose his job. Since the single, dark-haired 41-year-old native of Belleville, N.J., has been in the business since 1989, he isn't often wrong. Scucci wasn't a competitive athlete and says that, while he knows football, he doesn't possess the strategic knowledge of a coach or even the personnel knowledge of some hardcore fans. "I don't know every roster by heart," he said. But Scucci clearly knows what he is doing. Some lines are easier to pick than others - there are obvious favorites and underdogs. Other games feature teams that are unpredictable.

The three televisions will show the current games featuring those teams and Scucci will try to glean whatever trend he can. The computers will be set up on live play-by-play action or in-game reports from websites. He looks for all sorts of things: from the obvious stuff, such as a team's running attack coming together the week before facing a weak run-stopping team, to the off-field things - like a coach losing confidence in a quarterback, something that might come out in a postgame press conference or a QB and a receiver feuding in the locker room. Scucci tries to be aware of as much late-breaking info as possible.

"Bettors have more information now than ever before," he said. "It is critical that we have all the information they have and then some. And it is important we get it before them." Then there are injuries. If the status of a key player such as Brett Favre or Peyton Manning is in question, the game will stay off the board. One computer keeps a running tab of how much action is bet on each team because setting the line for a popular team is different than a good team. "Right now, the Colts [are the most wagered team] because they are the most exciting team to watch," Scucci said. "It is not always the good teams that draw money. It is the exciting team." So the Colts' odds have to reflect that. Which means professional bettors will realize that there is often value on the team the Colts are playing because the fun money [amateur bettors] is on the Colts and the line is moved accordingly. Invariably around 8 p.m. ET, Scucci makes a decision on about 10 games. Being wrong by even one point can be costly. And he admits that after all of the analysis from the TVs, computers and consultants, sometimes it isn't that scientific. "Most of it is gut instinct."

Consider this gut check for Scucci - the AFC divisional playoff game last January between the Colts and Patriots. The highly-anticipated showdown featured two of the league's most popular teams, so there was going to be major action on this game. Scucci couldn't be wrong. "I made the Patriots a small favorite, one point," said Scucci, meaning Indianapolis was getting a point. The pro-Indy bettors went nuts and money poured in quickly to lock up such odds. The line moved swiftly to adjust. "The bettors just pounded the Colts," Scucci said. "[Indy] wound up a 2½-point favorite, that's a 3½-point line move. I took a lot of heat. "But I thought the Patriots as a favorite were good. Put the two coaches against each other and I'll take [Pats coach Bill] Belichick every time. The Patriots were at home and they are one of the biggest winners." Patriots 20, Colts 3. The Stardust, with all of that Indianapolis money on the table, cleans up. "It was one of our best days," Scucci said.

His worst day? Try Super Bowl XXXV, when St. Louis, behind previously unknown quarterback Kurt Warner, beat Tennessee, 23-16. How come? Before the season, the Stardust takes futures bets - odds on a team winning the Super Bowl. Right now, you can bet a favorite such as the Patriots, Eagles or Colts at 4 to 1. You can take a long shot such as the 49ers at 150 to 1. In 2000, the Rams were going off as 200-to-1. For the most part, it is a bet to lure in fans of the particular long-shot teams, some guy from San Francisco who is willing to throw $10 on his Niners for the fun of it, knowing full well there is almost no chance they will win it all. "One guy put $500 [for the Rams] to win," Scucci said. "I had to approve that bet in July and I thought they would not even get to the Super Bowl. But then Trent Green went down and the quarterback became Kurt Warner."

The rest is history. The Stardust, with all that long-odds St. Louis money on the table, took a bath. "Then, to make it even worse, the line was Tennessee plus seven and the Super Bowl pushed," Scucci recalled. "So we had to pay out all of the front-bet money and we didn't make a dime on the game." Before he got into the house side of the business, Scucci tried to bet on the game professionally. It didn't work out like he thought. Because of his job, he is legally barred from betting on any game, but if he could bet, "I would do it for an insignificant dollar amount." Take heed in that. And for all of the people who figure this guy has the sports fan's ultimate dream job - including, Scucci said, all of his buddies back in Jersey - consider that he is no longer a sports fan, per se. "Being in this building just about ruined me as a sports fan," he said. "It led me to this business but I will never be able to watch a game like an average sports fan. Always, in terms of rooting interests, it is which side I need. I grew up a Yankees fan but I can't even [watch them] the same way."

But he can provide some advice for bettors. He claims home field is worth between three and five points. The most dangerous thing to his profession is an unexpectedly good team that surprises oddsmakers - "The Chargers covered more games last year. They were the best team to bet, but the worst for us," Scucci said. And never underestimate the importance of coaching. "Bill Belichick is the best coach in football," Scucci said. The most risky? "[Pittsburgh's Bill] Cowler is one of the coaches in terms of betting that at the end of the year you [shift the line] against him," said Scucci, meaning the Steelers underperform in key, late season games. "The biggest games we've won are the games he's lost." That is why the Patriots' AFC title-game whipping of the Steelers was no surprise to Scucci. So as the season is set to open, who does Scucci think will win Super Bowl XL? "I like the Colts," he said without hesitation. "I think they will get over the hump on the Patriots. The Colts shored up their defense a little bit. The Patriots [lost linebackers Tedy] Bruschi and Ted Johnson. That's big. "The key [for the Colts] is getting home-field advantage. They don't want to go to the Patriots in the AFC championship game." That pick, like everything else, is subject to change, of course.

Nevada Casinos Moving Into Mobile Gambling - Aug 3, 2005

Casinos in the U.S. are eager to find ways to compete with the burgeoning online gambling industry, which is based in offshore locations but is drawing millions of dollars from U.S. gamblers, especially those interested in sport betting and in casino-style games such as poker.

Casinos in Nevada might become the first to explore a new area of the Internet gambling frontier, enabling users to gamble on mobile devices while they're in and around casinos.

A recently passed law makes Nevada the first state in the U.S. to allow the use of hand-held devices for gambling at casinos and resorts. Gov. Kenny Guinn has signed the legislation into law and analysts believe casinos are now working hard to put the technology in place to make mobile gambling happen, possibly within several months.

There will be restrictions. For instance, the law allows for such devices to be used only in public areas of casinos that have 100 or more slot machines and one other gambling activity, and they cannot be used in hotel rooms. They will also have limited hours, with prohibitions on overnight use.

Another Reason to use Neteller

U.S. customs detains casino payment

July 11, 2005

The week saw the intervention of U.S. Customs in an intriguing case that has yet to be fully explained.

A well established and reputable online casino group based outside of the USA sent $25 000 worth of legitimate cheques on an American bank to a winning US player.

What happened next is not easy to understand, but somehow the Customs confiscated the Fedex letter containing the cheques, apparently opened this private mail and then claimed that the cheques were "counterfeit."

Despite vigorous protests from the player, and confident assertions from the casino that the cheques were perfectly valid and legitimate, officialdom refused to release either cheques or correspondence.

As we went to press, the player had engaged legal representation to find out why Customs were alleging the cheques were counterfeit, and under what authority her private mail had been opened.

The denouement in this incident will be followed with interest.

Update: As we went to press last week, the reputable casino group involved continued to assert that the $25 000 worth of cheques were definitely not counterfeit, and the player involved had engaged a lawyer to find out from US Customs why they thought there was counterfeiting going on, and why they had opened her private mail.

This week the player reported that the casino group had successfully cancelled the cheques, again confirming through their bank that there were no counterfeits. An alternative payment method had been found to speedily pay the player, along with an inconvenience bonus, and the player was happy with the casino (although as we reported last week the casino needed to learn a communication lesson from this issue)

On the Customs front no evidence had yet been produced to back up officialdom's claim that the cheques had been counterfeit. Nevertheless, the cheques remained impounded by Customs in the "Penalty and Fines" department, and the player was asked to sign a letter agreeing to "...abandon her property seized by US Customs"

And that's as far as anyone would go.

The player's lawyer advised her to simply accept the status quo; the player was happy that she had been paid anyway and everyone else intrigued by this story was left with the frustration of only being able to speculate on how and what had really happened!