A Complete Guide Casino War: Strategy, Tips and More
One game that s not particularly well known outside the niche of casino-goers and gambling fans comes Casino War, the two-card military-named game that should be everybody s casino bucket list.
Although it may sound like a mission in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas , there s nothing criminal nor violent about casino war, well, bar the name. It is, however, one of the most fun and satisfying games that you can play while on the casino floor.
It s fast-paced, easy to pick-up and (like blackjack) involves a party of players all going up against the dealer to try and pick winnings and strip the casino of its revenue. Granted, there s still a 2-3 percent house edge, but it s still tremendous fun to try and bulk up your bankroll alongside fellow players.
You re able to play both online and in the traditional brick-and-mortar casinos, so whatever your preference might be, you ll be catered for. There are countless places to play the card-based favorite wherever you may be!
If you re interested and want to know how to play, discover useful tips, investigate odds, and implement the very best strategies to use in your game look no further. Welcome to the complete guide to Casino War.
How to play casino war?
The game is up there with one of the easiest real money card games that you ll find in any casino, whether you prefer to play in the traditional brick-and-mortar or are more of an online-based player.
The game works with a total of 6 decks, but it s usually only two cards that you ll be focusing on each hand, so you won t be needing to memorize complex hands and odd rankings for the game.
Starting off the game
A dealer deals one card face-up to each of the players in the game as well as a single card for themselves, this leads to one of three scenarios:
- The value of the player s card is higher than the dealer s card The player wins
- The value of the player s card is lower than the dealer s card The dealer wins
- The value of the player s card is equal to the dealer s card Tie
It s the final scenario that s the most interesting and gives the game its trademark name in which a player can choose whether to surrender or whether to go to war .
If a player opts to surrender, they re able to leave the game and receive half of their wager back for their trouble. However, if the player opts to go to war, the player will make their bet and the dealer will burn three cards, dealing one to the player and another to themselves, again face-up.
If the player s second card is lower the dealer s, the dealer will win and both the original and second bet will be lost. However, if the player s second card matches or beats the dealer s, the original wager will return to the player and more money will be won.
It s super simple and super fun to play just make sure you re not placing the dummy side bet…
One bet to avoid
When looking at the table during a game of casino war, you ll also notice a third betting option alongside the ante (original bet) and the war (second bet) options known as the tie (or side bet).
This option is the highest paying of the wagers and will usually offer 10 to 1 odds, a nice payday if you re predicting ties on the regular. However, this will give a huge casino advantage of 18.65 percent, not exactly something that you ll want to be facing.
Unless you re feeling particularly lucky, it s best to avoid opting for the tie.
The best casino war strategy
For such a simple card game, it might sound a little surprising that strategies to maximize winnings do exist but dive into the details of the game and it ll start to make sense as to how you should play the game to avoid silly mistakes.
It s a good idea to start off playing Casino War for free to get a feel for the game you ll eventually be putting real money into. This way, you can perfect your techniques and grasp exactly how the game works before your hard-earned cash on the line.
Never surrender
The very first piece of strategy you should be taking onto the casino floor when looking to play the war-based game is to know to never surrender , Winston Churchill would be proud.
When a player opts to surrender during the game, they re actually decreasing their odds of winning rather than playing it safe (as you d expect).
When a player surrenders, they will sacrifice half of their original wager and the house will boast a 3.7 percent edge. However, when going to war the edge will reduce to a much more manageable 2.8 percent.
If you hang on, go the distance and never surrender, you ll have a 50-50 chance to win despite having to wager once more for your first bet to continue. It s always worth it.
Eye spy with my little eye an Ace that s high
Ace s are high when you re playing casino war so it s no surprise that it pays to have them on your side.
By keeping your eyes peeled and trying to spot patterns in which Aces are dealt you may be able to predict when they re next appearing. It might seem like simple practice and, of course, there s no way to know for certain what the next card that you re being dealt will be. But it s always a good idea to pay close attention to the cards that have already been dealt and the cards you re expecting next up.
What you do with the information is up to you. Either bet big or conservatively when you re feeling an Ace is due after all, it s either going to the players or the dealer and I know where I d rather be sat.
Play with smaller wagers
Another key part of the strategy when playing casino war is the size of bets your making and you ll be smarter to play with the smaller money during your time at the table.
As with every game on the casino floor, casino war puts the house at the advantage with a 2.8 percent edge when choosing to go to war (which you always should). There s no Jackpot or bonus to be won that you ll get an advantage on when betting big and you ll only get back what you ve put in.
It s for this reason that bankroll management is of utmost importance. There s no reason to bet big, especially if you can t afford it. If you re having fun with the smaller wagers, stick with them and focus on relative wins.
After all, you ll still be doubling your wagers on your wins and any profit is still profit. That s good enough in my book.
Avoid the tie (side bet)
I d touched on this a little earlier, but there s no reason that it shouldn t form a key part of your strategy too you should always avoid the tie (side bet), no matter how lucky you re feeling.
At first glance the side bet sounds pretty appealing, it s good odds with a 10 to 1 payout and there s plenty of ties throughout the game that s the fun in it so why not? Thing is, the bet is essentially worthless with the chance of hitting a tie too low to warrant the wager.
During a standard game of casino war, a player and dealer have an equal chance to win the game of 46.3 percent each to find victory. It doesn t take a genius to work out that there s therefore only a 7.4 percent chance to hit the tie not what you want to hear, especially given 10 to 1 odds.
As soon as you re making the bet, you re increasing the house edge to 18.5 percent. It sounds bad, but when you consider that it d only be around the 3 percent mark, it makes it all the much worse.
Know when to walk away
Last but not least in your casino war strategy, it s vital that you know exactly when to walk away from the table, try your hand at another game or head on home for the night.
It s good practice to either set a time in which you re going to be calling it a day or know at what point in your bankroll that you re going to throw in the towel. It doesn t matter whether you re feeling lucky, whether you re on a winning or losing streak or whether you re wanting to keep on going when your predetermined time comes it s important to get going.
Although not specifically strategy, it s also vital to ensure that you re only betting with money that you can afford to lose. After all, you can use your betting money for rent, but you should never use your rent money for betting.
Playing casino war online
With such easy rules and fast-paced play, casino war proves popular with online casinos so it s no surprise that there s plenty of different places to play when shopping around.
12 Sneaky Ways To Cheat At Slots
Slot machines are some of the most lucrative games on the casino floor for both the players and the house and cheaters.
With such huge payouts available, its no wonder that slot machines have always been a game of cat and mouse between cheaters and the house ever since they were invented.
Lets check out some of the naughty tricks used by slots cheaters over the years. We dont recommend ever trying them yourself, though!
1. Cheat Code
Gambling authorities are there to ensure that the gaming industry is operating correctly and fairly.
Engineers design gaming machines so that they can be monitored and audited whilst also delivering quality gameplay. But what happens when an engineer decides to rig the codes for their own advantage?
The infamous slots cheat Ronald Dale Harris aka an engineer from The Nevada Gaming Commission did exactly that. He sure knew how to manipulate a slot machine!
For years, he cheated machines by knowing the source codes. It wasnt until his partner had a big win in the casino $100,000 on a keno game in 1995 that the scam was discovered.
2. Shaved Coins
This scam using shaved coins doesnt really exist today, but its still interesting to know about.
As technology advanced, slot machines began to use a light sensor to register payment. In a large number of machines, the optic sensor worked separately from the physical comparator.
Basically, that meant that if a shaved coin was sent down at the same time as an object that matched the shape and size of the required stake coin, the shaved coin would be returned whilst the other object would land in the machine and start play.
3. Fake Coins
Another method of slots cheating used throughout history were fake coins.
Fake coins were used by con artist Louis The Coin Colavecchio to scam casinos for years until his arrest in 1998.
He was released in 2006 and quickly re-started his cheating. It was a matter of months before he was unsurprisingly sussed again.
4. Magnet
We often get asked how to cheat a slot machine with a magnet.
Let s get one thing clear: it s not actually possible to cheat modern day slot machines with a magnet, since they re all programmed by computer software and aren t magnetic.
However, people used to be able to cheat with a magnet on the older machines, when they were made of metal.
To cheat at slots using a magnet, you could spin the reels and then use a strong magnet on the outside of the machine to stop them spinning when you saw your winning combination.
Cheaters would then remove the magnet and claim the payout.
This wasnt the most subtle cheat but, if done well, people could easily win lots of cash!
5. Yo-Yo
This slots cheat was all about the technique.
A string is attached to the coin, the coin is sent into the machine until it triggers the start of the game, and then the player brings the coin back up using the string.
Nowadays, this technique is all but redundant thanks to the march of technology.
Its a real classic though and, if it worked, you would have seen a big win.
6. Light Wand
Tommy Glenn Carmichael is one of the most notorious slot cheats in gambling history. He is responsible for the light wand.
Magicians such as David Copperfield, Dynamo and David Blaine might have the ability to create the illusion of something happening but Carmichael would use his light wand to make jackpot wins magically appear out of thin air.
The light wand would effectively blind the optical sensor on slot machines so it couldnt work out how many coins had been deposited into the machine, meaning it wouldnt know when to pay out or how much.
This meant Carmichael could manipulate a slot machine to his advantage, by turning small wins into massive payouts.
7. Piano Wire
This is an oldie but a goody in the world of slots cheats.
A group of men worked together at the Caesars Boardwalk Regency casino in Atlantic City back in 1982. One man opened the targeted slot machine and attached 20-inch long piano wires to the whirring guts of the game.
The wires could then be used to jam the clock that measured the wheel rotations, allowing the group to manipulate the spins.
They hit the $50,000 jackpot but, unfortunately, their whole scam had been filmed and the winning player was arrested before he left the premises.
8. Top-Bottom Joint
This is one of the most cunning methods of cheating at slots and was popular with scammers in the 1970s and 1980s.
They used a special tool that was split into two parts. A top (a metal rod with its end bent in the shape of a q ) and a bottom (a long wire).
By putting the bottom in through the coin chute and the top through the coin slot, the cheats were able to jam the machine and force the game to release all the coins it had stored.
Big wins galore!
9. Monkey Paw
Its that man Carmichael again. He was a total genius, in cheating terms.
He was the creator of the monkey paw . After testing out new methods on a video poker machine, he eventually built the correct contraption. It was amazingly simple.
He got a guitar string and attached it to a bent metal rod. He would thrust it into the machines air vent and wriggle it around until he clicked the trigger switch for the coin hopper.
Cue the avalanche of coins.
10. Bill Validator Device
A simple yet very effective slots cheat.
This is a little device that is wrapped around a bill to fool the slot machine into thinking it is accepting a $100 bill when in reality it is just accepting a humble $1 bill.
11. Computer Chip Replacement
Dennis Nikrasch changed the slots cheating game with this idea.
He bought a slot machine and messed about with it in his garage to figure out its flaws.
He worked out the computer chips inside the machines could be re-programmed to be manipulated to pay out jackpots on tap.
Nikrasch ordered a load of these chips, hired a team of scammers, got hold of a bunch of slot machine keys and started a reign of scamming that would bleed casinos dry for years.
And he did it all just by switching the independent chips for his manipulated chips.
12. Software Glitch
Software glitches have been manipulated by cheats for decades.
By playing a certain pattern of stakes and games, players could confuse the machine and trigger a glitch that pays out the jackpot.
Many slots cheats benefited from this over the years but now many jackpot winners are also being denied their winnings because of it.
The most famous incident happened in 2015 when 90-year-old grandmother Pauline McKee, from Illinois, won $41 million on a Miss Kitty slot machine at the Isle Casino Hotel Waterloo.
She tried to sue the casino initially in 2012 but her final appeal was rejected three years later. Unfortunately, historical instances are the reason for the casino winning this case.
How to Win in a Casino
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Twinkling lights, a surreal atmosphere, and a chance to win some money gambling in a casino can be really fun! There are a few things you can do to help yourself have a more successful casino trip and hopefully leave with more money than you came with. For example, setting a budget for yourself, leaving while you re ahead, and carefully choosing which games to play are all things that can bolster your winnings.
- This helps you to win by reducing your chances of losing more and more money. Also, if you know you have a limited amount of funds, you ll be more choosy when deciding which games to play.
- If you re going gambling for several days in a row, try putting your allotted gambling money into a separate envelope for each day that way you won t accidentally start using money that s meant for the end of the week on a Monday!
- An added bonus of visiting when it s less busy you may be able to play a game while a dealer gives you a breakdown of the technical aspects.
- It can be tempting to drink a lot of free complementary beverages but remember, casinos are able to offer so much free alcohol because they re calculating how much money they re winning every day from people losing their games.
- It s so easy to lose track of time in a casino and the longer you spend there, the more money you will be spending. If you have a budget and still have money left when your timer goes off, transfer that money over to the next day s budget.
- Some casinos will even start offering you free things: a room for the night, meals, and gifts, in an effort to get you to stay and play. It s okay to accept the gifts (because who doesn t want a complimentary room for the night?) just remember to leave the gambling area!
- For example, the wheel of fortune game and the slots are all very flashy because they have the worst odds.
- If you love playing slots, set aside a smaller, specific amount of money that is just for them. That way, you can use the rest of your money on the table games while still getting to enjoy everything you like.
- The house edge on blackjack is low, meaning you have the highest odds of winning, whereas its edge on games like the wheel of fortune or the slots is very high, about 2% for blackjack versus about 11% for the wheel of fortune.
- If you sit down at a table and the dealer is able to greet everyone by name, you should probably get up and switch to another game unless you are a professional poker player!
- Not familiar with craps? Look up some online tutorials and virtual games to get some experience before stepping into the fast-paced atmosphere of the craps table at a casino.
- Happening to see a card dealt by a clumsy dealer is different from counting cards, which is frowned upon.
- Baccarat is a really fast-paced game! Sometimes the dealers will get anywhere from 150-200 decisions per game, so practice playing ahead of time!
- Another good tip is to choose a table with only a single-zero slot rather than both single- and double-zero slots again, this lowers the house s odds by about half because the percentage of the house s edge goes from about 5.25% to 2.7%.
- Slots are really all about chance. Everything is random by design, and just because a machine hasn t paid out in a while doesn t mean that it s due for a big win. They re fun to play, but nothing is guaranteed! [16] X Research source
Related wikiHows
- ^http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130919-what-las-vegas-casinos-wont-tell-you-about-gambling
- ^https://www.askgamblers.com/gambling-news/blog/gambling-budget/
- ^https://www.news5cleveland.com/money/consumer/dont-waste-your-money/before-you-go-gambling-the-best-and-worst-casino-game-odds
- ^http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130919-what-las-vegas-casinos-wont-tell-you-about-gambling
- ^http://mentalfloss.com/article/56376/10-tips-beat-odds-casino
- ^http://mentalfloss.com/article/56376/10-tips-beat-odds-casino
- ^http://mentalfloss.com/article/56376/10-tips-beat-odds-casino
- ^https://www.news5cleveland.com/money/consumer/dont-waste-your-money/before-you-go-gambling-the-best-and-worst-casino-game-odds
- ^https://www.forbes.com/2007/06/14/gambling-casino-risk-ent-manage-cx rd 0614riskcasino.php#4f5a6bc62866
- ^https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/nov/16/top-10-vegas-casino-secrets
- ^https://www.888casino.com/blog/top-8-craps-tips
- ^http://mentalfloss.com/article/56376/10-tips-beat-odds-casino
- ^https://www.888casino.com/blog/strategy-tips-on-how-to-play-baccarat
- ^https://www.888casino.com/blog/the-8-best-roulette-tips
- ^http://mentalfloss.com/article/56376/10-tips-beat-odds-casino
- ^https://betoclock.com/strategies-to-play-slots/
About This Article
To win in a casino, practice games online beforehand, like Blackjack or poker, so you know how they work. Before you go to the casino, set a budget for yourself, which will help you avoid losing more and more, and encourage you to be more choosy about which games you play. Take a watch with you to keep track of time, because the longer you stay in the casino, the more likely you are to lose, since the odds are always in the house s favor. If you ll be drinking alcohol, have a glass of water between each beverage, since you won t be able to focus on your games if you re drunk. Remember to leave if you re lucky enough to hit a big win, since the casino will try to persuade you to stay so they can win their money back. For tips on how to pick games that give you a better chance of winning, keep reading!
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