Casino gaming is a growing pastime which has grabbed more and more people over the years. Ever greater numbers of people are gambling in online and offline casinos, while those of us who don’t play at casinos still know plenty about it. Casino games pop up in popular culture all the time, which means that we all pick up bits of random knowledge. That kind of knowledge gets filed away in some corner of our brains, and when the time comes that we do play casino games we end up calling back to that knowledge to inform ourselves.
However… what if much of our knowledge about casino gaming was, in fact, not knowledge and was actually incorrect. We’re not talking about information from casino-specific sources such as the bonus breakdown you can read if you click here. We mean those little bits of knowledge you randomly pick up, the bits we all “know”, and which we file away for future use. Is it possible that some of that information is actually less than reliable? Well, yes … and here are some examples.
Counting cards is not illegal
Counting cards is a famous trick used by casino players to enhance their chances of winning at blackjack. It takes some effort to do, and you need to learn how to do it effectively. Crucially, it isn’t cheating, but the generally accepted line is that it goes against the spirit of things. Yet it absolutely isn’t illegal to count cards in a casino. You won’t be arrested for it, and any money you win by doing it is yours by right. So will casinos sit back and let you do it? Well, sort of. 50/50. They can’t prosecute you or punish you for doing it, but they can refuse to let you play if you’re obviously counting cards. But it’s more a “you can’t come in here with those shoes on” refusal than a “you can’t film our dealers” banning.
There’s no such thing as a “hot” or “cold” slot machine
If you hear of multiple players hitting big wins on a slot, whether online or offline, the word gets around that a particular slot is “hot”. If it’s not given anything away for a while, the line will be that it is, in fact, cold, and you should stay away. Machines aren’t programmed to give out more wins at some times, and give nothing at other times. They’re programmed to be random, but that randomness doesn’t happen in an ordered way. The chances of a coin landing on Heads or Tails are about 50-50 in each case, but if you flipped a coin 100 times from now, you might get 60 heads and 40 tails or vice versa. Random wins sometimes cluster, but they’re just that – random. So playing a hot slot doesn’t improve your chances.
The roulette wheel can be fixed when the bets are in
Again, the widespread belief is that some casinos, sometimes (not all the time, because that would be too obvious) will wait until bets are in and then ensure that the ball stops in a spot where it means nobody gets a payout. This is utterly untrue and it’s impossible to fix things in this way. If you lose repeatedly on the roulette wheel, it’s unfortunate, but it’s entirely conceivable that it will happen on a regular basis just by letting things run as normal. There’s no need to fix the wheel to make you lose, when you losing is the most likely legal outcome every time you play.