Trick-taking games can be traced back to the early 16th century. Whist became the dominant form, and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word bridge is the English pronunciation of “biritch”, an older name of the game of uncertain origin; the oldest known rule book, from 1886, calls it “Biritch, or Russian Whist”. This game, known today by the retronyms bridge-whist and straight bridge, became popular in the United States and the UK in the 1890s.

Biritch featured several significant developments from Whist: the trump suit was either chosen by the dealer, or he could pass the choice to his partner; there was a call of no trumps; and the dealer’s partner laid his cards on the table as dummy to be played by the dealer. It also featured other characteristics found in modern bridge: points scored above and below the line; game was 3NT, 4H and 5D (although 8 club tricks and 15 spade tricks were needed!); the score could be doubled and redoubled; there were slam bonuses.

In 1904 auction bridge arose where the players bid in a competitive auction to decide the contract and declarer. The object became to make at least as many tricks as were contracted for and penalties were introduced for failing to do so.

The modern game of contract bridge was the result of innovations to the scoring of auction bridge made by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and others. The most significant change was that only tricks contracted for were counted below the line towards game and for slam bonuses, which resulted in bidding becoming much more challenging and interesting. Also new was the concept of vulnerability to make it more expensive to sacrifice to protect the lead in a rubber, and the various scores were adjusted to produce a more balanced game. Vanderbilt set out his rules in 1925, and within a few years contract bridge had so supplanted other forms of the game that “bridge” became synonymous with “contract bridge.”

These days most bridge played is tournament bridge.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Play Modern Bridge with Andrew Robson Clip1

Twenty questions that could help identify problem gambling, from the Gamblers Anonymous website. 1. Did you ever lose time from work or school due to gambling?

Kansas legislators writing the next state budget have a lot less gambling revenue than once thought. Economic forecasters say the state’s share of casino revenues for the next budget year will be around $23.5 million.

Straperlo or Stra-Perlo was the brand of a fraudulent electric roulette game, promoted by Strauss and Perlowitz.In 1935 during the Second Spanish Republic, they tried to introduce the Stra-Perlo in the San Sebastián and Formentor casinos in Spain. Corruption connected with the prohibition of the game reached the nephew of Alejandro Lerroux and caused the downfall of his Radical Party. The political centre was abandoned and the Spanish public polarized, contributing to the Spanish Civil War.

After the war, estraperlo acquired the meaning of black market, the illegal trade of ration items.

Link

• estraperlo in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday she’s hoping there will be better days for the gambling industry in Kansas and nationwide after a second firm dropped plans to operate in Kansas.

After Sunday’s blown call in Pittsburgh, Peter Schrager says it’s time the NFL acknowledges gambling is a big part of its national allure.

 In poker, a drawing hand is a hand that is not yet “complete”; that is, one which does not yet rank highly, but which may later, depending on what cards a player receives. This contrasts with a made hand - a hand which is already somewhat strong.An illustrative example from Texas Hold ‘em: if Alice holds A♣ K♣, Bob holds 6♦ 7♦, and the flop comes 5♠ 8♠ K♥, then Alice has a fairly strong “made hand” (a pair of Kings, with an Ace kicker), while Bob has a drawing hand: an open-ended straight draw. If allowed to see the final two community cards, Bob can expect to catch a 4 or a 9 (thus completing his straight and winning) about a third of the time.

Whether to continue with a drawing hand is usually a function of pot odds. Typically, if a player with a strong “made hand” suspects another player of being “on a draw”, the player with the made hand will make a strong bet, so that it is mathematically incorrect for the other player to “chase”.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Faro is a card game, a descendant of Basset. It enjoyed great popularity during the 18th century, particularly in England and France, and in the 19th Century in the United States, particularly on the American Frontier, where it was practiced by ‘faro dealers’ such as the infamous Doc Holliday. It has since fallen completely out of fashion and is only practiced by dedicated Old West enthusiasts and Civil War re-enactors. Its name is believed to be a corruption of pharaoh, and refers to the Egyptian motif that commonly adorned French-made playing cards of the period.Faro is similar to the contemporary game of Mini-Baccarat.

Literary fiction

Faro is the game played in Aleksandr Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades. 
Faro is also played in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Movies

• Faro is played by characters in saloons on the HBO series “Deadwood”.
• Scenes involving the game of faro (with varying degrees of accuracy) appear in the Hollywood movies Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner, and Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.
• In the film The Sting, it is said that the gangster (and intended “mark”) Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) only plays faro when he goes out to casinos, and then only by himself.

References

Howard, M. The Traditional Game of faro Barbary Coast Vigilance Committee. 08 June 2004

Links

• Play faro online
• Faro Dealer
• Faro equipment

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Faro Shuffle Tutorial

Kansas racetracks want slot machines, but say the Legislature must first change the gambling law so they get a bigger slice. With the state’s budget crisis, they’re hoping adversity will create opportunity.

An athletic department investigation into alleged student-athlete gambling revealed that UF guard Nick Calathes reportedly ran up a $600 online poker debt.

After selecting their buttons, players assemble their dice. Most buttons have five dice, but some have more or fewer, and in certain cases the number of dice may change over the course of the game. The size—that is, number of sides—of most dice is specified and unchangeable, but most buttons have at least one Swing or Option die, which means that the player has a choice of sizes to use for that die. Swing dice, represented by letters like variables in algebra, may have any size within a certain range of integers: for example, an X Swing die may have any whole number of sides between 4 and 20, including odd numbers. Option dice, represented by two numbers separated by a line or slash, give the player a choice of only two sizes: for example, an Option 8/12 die may have either 8 or 12 sides, but no other number. Die sizes typically range between 1 and 30, and any fair random number generator may stand in for a “die” of a non-standard size. For example, a two-sided die is easily simulated by a tossed coin, and a coin plus an eight-sided die can serve as a sixteen-sider: if the coin lands heads, add 0 to the value on the eight-sider; if tails, add 8.

Conceptually, small dice represent speed, and large dice represent strength.

Players select the size of their Swing and Option dice in secret, and reveal them after selection is complete. Then all dice are rolled and arranged in size order in front of their owners. The player with the die showing the lowest value takes the first turn. In the case of a tie for the lowest value, the next lowest value is considered. If all dice are tied, the round ends in a draw, and is replayed. The right to take the first turn is called initiative. Some dice have special skills that change their effect on initiative.

Starting with the player who gained initiative, players take turns using their own dice to attack and capture their opponent’s dice. Most dice can participate in either of the two basic types of attack:

• Power: In a power attack, one attacking die captures an opposing die that is showing a value lower than or equal to its own.
• Skill: In a skill attack, one or more attacking dice capture an opposing die that is showing a value equal to the sum of their values.

After an attack is made, the captured die is added to the capturing player’s score pile. All dice that participated in the attack are rerolled. The player’s turn ends, and his opponent’s begins.

A player may not pass his turn unless he is unable to make a legal attack. When both players pass consecutively (which usually, but not always, happens because one player is out of dice), the round ends and scores are counted.

Each player scores the size, in points, of each captured die in his score pile, plus half the size of each of his dice that remained uncaptured (some die skills can alter this total). The player with the higher total wins the round. Usually it is the case that the player who captured more dice wins the round. However, when there is a large difference between the number of die sides each player owns, it may be possible for one player to lose all of his dice and still win the round.

Between rounds, players may, if they wish, change the size of their Swing and Option dice to any other size in the allowed range. In tournament play, only the losing player may do so.

The first player to win three rounds wins the game.

Die skills

Dice in Button Men can be assigned one or more of over 30 official and unofficial die skills, which may augment, reduce, or simply alter their abilities. Usually, die skills are assigned only to some of the dice on a button, so that the player can only use those skills while those dice remain in play. In a small number of cases, however, special skills (other than die skills) are assigned to a button rather than to its dice, so that its player can always use them.

Some common die skills and their meanings are:

• Focus: At the beginning of each round, the player who does not win initiative may, at his option, reduce the values showing on one or more of his Focus dice, if and only if he gains the initiative by so doing. His opponent may then respond by doing the same with her own Focus dice. The players continue “focusing” in this manner until one of them is unable to or chooses not to. Any Focus dice that were “turned down” as part of a successful bid for initiative are considered “dizzy” and may not participate in an attack during their owner’s first turn.
• Shadow: Shadow dice may not make power attacks. Instead, they make shadow attacks, in which they capture any die showing a value between their current value and their maximum value, inclusive. For example, a ten-sided Shadow die showing a value of 8 could capture any die showing an 8, 9, or 10. Shadow dice can participate in skill attacks as normal.
• Poison: Poison dice attack normally but are scored differently. At the end of the round, instead of adding the number of sides of a Poison die to their scores, players subtract half the number of sides on any Poison die they captured, and the full number of sides on any Poison die of their own that remained uncaptured.
• Stinger: When making a skill attack, Stinger dice may be counted as if they were showing any number between 1 and the value they are actually showing. Thus, a normal six-sided die showing 3 and an eight-sided Stinger die showing 6 could combine to capture any die showing a number between 4 and 9, inclusive. As a trade-off, Stinger dice are not considered when determining initiative.

Dice can have more than one skill assigned to them, but some skills contradict one another. For example, a Focus Stinger die could never be used for its Focus skill, since its owner could never gain initiative by reducing the value showing on a die that does not count towards initiative.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Associated Press - November 15, 2008 3:24 PM ET DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - State regulators have hired two consultants to study whether Iowa’s gambling industry has room for expansion, a possible…

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - State regulators have hired two consultants to study whether Iowa’s gambling industry has room for expansion, a possible first step toward handing out additional casino licenses.

The Kelly Criterion or as it is sometimes referred to as the Kelly formula is a formula used to maximize the long-term growth rate of repeated plays of a given gamble that has positive expected value. The formula specifies the percentage of the current bankroll to be bet at each iteration of the game. In addition to maximizing the growth rate in the long run, the formula has the added benefit of having zero risk of ruin, as the formula will never allow a loss of 100% of the bankroll on any bet. An assumption of the formula is that currency and bets are infinitely divisible, though this is met for practical purposes if the bankroll is large enough.The most general statement of the Kelly criterion is that long-term growth rate is maximized by finding the fraction f* of the bankroll that maximizes the expectation of the logarithm of the results. For simple bets with two outcomes, one involving losing the entire amount bet, and the other involving winning the bet amount multiplied by the payoff odds, the following formula can be derived from the general statement:

f* = (bp - q) / b where f* = percentage of current bankroll to wager; b = odds received on the wager; p = probability of winning; q = probability of losing = 1 - p.

As an example, if a gamble has a 40% chance of winning (p = 0.40), but the gambler receives 2:1 odds on a winning bet, the gambler should bet 10% of her bankroll at each opportunity, in order to maximize the long-run growth rate of the bankroll.

For even-money bets (i.e. when b = 1), the formula can be simplified to:

f* = 2p - 1

The Kelly Criterion was originally developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, based on the work of his colleague Claude Shannon, which applied to noise issues arising over long distance telephone lines. Kelly showed how Shannon’s information theory could be applied to the problem of a gambler who has inside information about a horse race, trying to determine the optimum bet size. The gambler’s inside information need not be perfect (noise-free) in order for him to exploit his edge. Kelly’s formula was later applied by another colleague of Shannon’s, Edward O. Thorp, both in blackjack and in the stock market.

Cited References

1. American Scientist online: Bettor Math, article and book review by Elwyn Berlekamp

Link

• Original Kelly paper

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Understanding Kelly Criterion

In New Zealand, calling nicknames are not used as much as in the UK, but here are some of the more common ones. When calling, the caller will usually say both digits on their own first, and then the number itself, for example, “Three and two, thirty-two”. Some callers will use many of these slang terms, others just a few. However, “Kelly’s Eye”, “Legs Eleven” and “Top of the Shop” are often used, even if none of the others are. See section below for usage.

Number Slang Expression 1 Kelly’s Eye / On its Own / At the Beginning / Start the Game 2 One Little Duck 3 Cup of Tea / One Little Flea / My little Fly 4 Knock at the Door 5 Man Alive 7 Lucky for Some 8 One Fat Lady / The Garden Gate 9 Doctor’s Orders 10 Tony’s Den (forename of current prime minister) 11 Chicken Legs / Legs Eleven 13 Unlucky for Some / Lucky for Some 16 Sweet Sixteen 21 Key of the Door 22 Two Little Ducks 23 Thee and Me 24 Two Dozen 30 Dirty Gertie 37 More Than Eleven 44 Droopy Drawers / All the fours 45 Halfway There 50 Bulls eye / Blind 50 51 Tweak of the Thumb 55 Snakes Alive / All the Fives 57 Heinz Varieties 59 Brighton Line 64 Red Raw 66 Clickety-Click 71 Bang on the Drum 76 7 and 6 - Was she worth it? / Trombones 79 One More Time 81 Stop and Run 86 Between the Sticks 88 Two Fat Ladies 90 Top of the Shop / Top of the House

There is at least one nickname for each bingo number called. See sources for more.

Sources

• Bingo Nicknames / Caller Slang

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Two partnerships of two players each are needed to play bridge. The four players sit around a table with partners opposite one another. The compass directions are often used to refer to the four players, aligned with their seating pattern. Thus, South and North form one partnership and East and West form the other.

A session of bridge consists of many deals (also called hands or boards); the game play of each deal consists of four phases: the deal, the bidding (or auction), the play of the cards, and scoring.

The goal is to achieve as high a numerical score as possible with the dealt cards. The score is affected by two principal factors: the number of tricks bid in the auction, and the number of tricks taken during play. Broadly said, there is incentive to the players to accurately bid the number of tricks that their hands are capable of delivering, as the bonuses for bid tricks increase with the bid level (number of tricks). Thus, in the bidding stage, the pairs compete to see who proposes the highest number of tricks, and the side who wins the bidding must then fulfill that bargain by taking at least the contracted quantity of tricks in play to obtain a score. The number of tricks bid and the trump suit (or lack thereof) are referred to as a contract. The trump suit, or its absence (no trumps) is referred to as denomination or strain. If the side who wins the auction then takes the contracted number of tricks (or more), it is said to have fulfilled the contract and is awarded a score; otherwise, the contract is said to be defeated and points are awarded to the defenders.

Dealing

The game is played with a complete deck of 52 cards. One of the players is the dealer. In rubber bridge (or other “friendly” games), the cards are shuffled and the dealer distributes all the cards clockwise one at a time, starting with his left-hand opponent and ending with himself, so each player receives a hand of thirteen cards. At the same time, for convenience, the dealer’s partner usually shuffles a second deck, to be ready for use on the following deal. The deal rotates clockwise, so the dealer’s left-hand opponent will deal next.

In duplicate bridge, the hands are shuffled only once, at the beginning of the tournament, and dealt clockwise one at a time (there are also special machines for pre-dealing on large tournaments), and placed into bridge boards. At each subsequent table, each player pulls his cards from the board and counts them to ensure that the deal has not been corrupted. Unlike in other trick-taking games, the players do not throw their cards to the middle of the table in each trick; instead, each player keeps his played cards before him, to allow the completed deal to be returned to the board unaltered.

Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge

Rules of contract bridge are standardized by World Bridge Federation and published in the book “Laws of Duplicate Contract Bridge”. The last edition is issued in 1997 and consists of 93 laws (articles). All duplicate bridge sponsoring organizations on lower levels must apply those rules. A large portion of the laws, though, is devoted to dealing with various irregular situations, and as such it is mostly used by tournament directors (referees) as the reference book. They are, of course, not binding for rubber and other “friendly game” players, and, instead, simpler rules for dealing with irregularities are often applied by the players themselves.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank yesterday issued new regulations spelling out how banks and other financial institutions must comply with a 2006 law that bans many forms of Internet gambling.

The Bush administration issued a final regulation Wednesday aimed at banning Internet gambling, drawing criticism from Democrats who said it would burden financial companies.

In gambling terminology a crimp is a bend that has been intentionally made on the corner(s) of a playing card to facilitate identification.A card cheat will typically bend some of the important cards during the game. Below are just several of the most popular examples.

In poker, for instance, a cheat may crimp one of the cards to mark off the exact location where he wishes his secret conspirator to cut the deck. Similarly, if the card cheat is not working with a confederate, he may bend one or more cards to force a cut upon an unsuspecting victim. In either case the deck will most likely be cut at the exact predetermined spot in the same way an old book always tends to open at the same page.

Another poker scenario (also popular in numerous other games) is to crimp some of the high-value cards during the early rounds. On subsequent rounds the cheat will be able to identify some of those cards during the deal. This enables the cheat to employ a second deal and deal some of those cards to the desired hand, or simply to identify some of the cards held by other players. In any event, the cheat has a mathematical edge over the other players.

In casino blackjack a crossroader may crimp all the 10-value cards. this will enable the cheat to sometimes identify the dealer’s hole card (the dealer has one card face up, called the up card, and one card face down, called the hole card). In those instances the cheat(s) will know the dealer’s total and play their hand(s) accordingly.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: ACE CUTTING ROUTINE - You can learn this

The Bush administration is moving in its last weeks to finalize regulations to enforce a controversial law that seeks to block Internet gambling. The move is drawing hot protests from Democratic lawmakers and supporters of online betting.