Gambling

Air hostess Melissa Curry and flight attendant Matt Dockray made a bet with their life and their love and it paid off in full. Melissa had been seeing Matt for only a couple of months, when she decided to place a bet on him putting a ring on it, so to speak. Her desire was to give her new boyfriend a special Valentine’s gift, back in 2006 so she went on to ask bookmaker William Hill for odds on their future wedding.
Melissa said: “I was trying to think of something original to get Matt for a Valentine’s Day present – let’s be honest, a guy doesn’t really want flowers and chocolates. Matt’s really into betting so I approached the bookmakers and asked them what odds they would give me on us getting married.”
While the initial odds that she got were 25 to 1, the bookmaker felt uneasy with her chances of winning, so William Hill went on to double the odds to 50 to 1, if the couple were still married in ten years’ time. Now, exactly 10 years later, the couple is still happily married and very-much in love, so Melissa cashed in on her wager with the faded betting slip which they had framed and claimed her winnings – £1,500.
“With no discernible form to go by we had no way of knowing whether Melissa and Matt would last the distance. They clearly have, and given that marriage these days is not necessarily for life, we will certainly not begrudge paying out., William Hill spokesman Joe Crilly was cited in saying.
Melissa and Matt tied the knot back in 2008 Mandalay Bay resort and are now the happy parents of a beautiful four-year old girl. With the money from the wager, the couple plans on taking a family trip to Barcelona.

Martingale is hand-down the most commonly used roulette strategy both at land-based and at online casinos. Funny thing about it is that in theory it’s infallible while in practice it’s disastrous for the player. Let’s find out why.

What’s the Martingale System?

Martingale’s system is a roulette strategy which can be used for even money bets such as red/black or odd/even. It states that after a loss you have to double your bet and start over with the initial bet amount after a win. This way, in theory, you would always after each win, you end up with a win of one unit. For example, if your initial bet is £1 and you lose 4 consecutive times then you would have lost £1+£2+£4+£8, i.e. £15. Then, according to the strategy, in the next round you should bet 16 and if you win you’ll end up with £1 of a total win (as you would’ve lost £15 and then won £16). Another important part of the strategy is that you should always place the same bet, for example, only black or only even.

Similar Strategies

Martingale’s system is one of the so called progressive betting strategies, i.e. strategies that involve increasing of the bet size in certain situation. Another very famous progressive betting strategy is Fibonacci’s. In that strategy, instead of doubling your bet after each loss, you use Fibonacci’s progression: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and so on. In this progression, every number is equal to the sum of the two numbers that precede it. After each loss you move one number to the right in the progression, while after each win you move to numbers to the left. There are, of course, many other progressive betting systems such as the reversed Martingale’s, the Paroli System, The Labouchere system and so on.

Why Progressive Betting Does Not Work?

The reason why progressive betting systems including Martingale’s don’t work is because they entail that the player has an infinite bankroll and that there are no table limits, both of which are conditions that are impossible to fulfill. While to a certain point these systems might be very successful, especially if the allowed bet range at the table is wider and your bankroll is bigger, they pay out very slowly and bring a very high risk of busting. Even the highest table limits cannot guarantee that you’ll have a successful playing session, as if you have several consecutive losses, you’ll most likely bust, especially if you’re using the Martingale system. This is due to the fact that when you’re playing using Martingale’s, the bet amount is rapidly increasing with every single round. Just consider the fact that if you start from £1, after 8 consecutive losses (a case that sounds unlikely with even-money bets, but actually happens more often than anticipated), you’ll have to bet £254 in order to cover the past losses and all of that to end up with an overall win of only £1.
Nevertheless, if you would still like to try a progressive betting system, then I would advise you to give Fibonacci‘s a try. This system is slower to pay out compared to the Martingale one, but is much less risky as the bet amount increases at smaller steps. For comparison, as we already mentioned, after 8 consecutive losses, using Martingale’s system you’ll have to bet £254 while with Fibonacci’s you’ll have to bet only £34. That’s definitely way more affordable and this is why using Fibonacci’s strategy you are way less likely to bust.

When you sign up in an online casino, no matter which country you’re from, chances are you’re going to be bombarded with suggestions for games you could play. Most online casinos have between 50 and 300 games ready to go, and a good chunk of them are presented to you right there on the front page with no context at all, you’re just left to fend for yourself and figure things out on your own. And in an environment where literally every single time you play you have to pay real money, there’s really not a whole lot of room for testing stuff out and figuring everything all on your own. Sure, some online casinos offer a free play option where you can test the games without paying, but it’s not available everywhere and, when it is, it’s often limited to only certain games. So if you can’t figure things out on your own, what are you supposed to do?

Fear not, for I’m here to give you some very basic and brief directions on where you should focus your efforts! The question you need to ask yourself is how much you know about gambling in general, and how much experience you’ve got. In my limited experience as a player, I’d say that blackjack is definitely the place where you can earn the highest rewards, but it’s also where the highest risk is. Online blackjack works the same as real blackjack, in that there’s a set of cards which are randomly predetermined after a “shuffle” prior to the game. Contrary to popular belief, the order of the cards is NOT determined on the go, it’s preloaded in the system. So regardless of whether you choose Hit or Stop, you’ve got the exact same card waiting for you face-down. As such, various blackjack strategies, such as the ones described in the appropriately named “The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book” will still work.

If you’ve got some gambling experience, but not too much, then roulette is your game. It offers enough choice to allow players to make basic decisions (such as whether you want to bet on a color, or an odd/even number or a particular number), but for the most part is still very much a luck-based game. That way you can make certain decisions that you know for a fact (or from experience) have a higher probability of success, and if that doesn’t work you can always just rely on pure, blind luck to make you rich, which would be next to impossible in blackjack. If you’re a complete amateur at gambling and know literally nothing about it, then slots or lotto is your cup of tea. Those require little to no input – you literally just press a button and see if you win, and at the same time they allow you to win millions of pounds on even a smaller bet… And if you don’t, there’s always the chance that you can still win a pretty good sum.

I hope that was helpful for you! Now that you know a good place to start, it’s time for you to get some gambling done!

Oh, how the tide changes! Regarded as nothing but a fad that would be completely gone before the end of the last decade, online casinos have gown tremendously over the years to the point where they made a mind-blowing $41 billion this year alone, making it one of the most successful online-only markets… ever, really. Definitely not bad for something that a lot of people seemed to write off as obsolete, huh? While not really all that popular in the US, online gambling (and online casino in general) has made a tremendous impact in Europe. While UK, Spain and Germany are the biggest online casino markets by a huge margin, almost every EU country where gambling is legal has its own online casinos, including, but not limited to, the Netherlands, Greece, Bulgaria, Portugal and many, many, many more!

Picardie covers the European online casino market from a practitioner’s perspective — drawing on years of experience working across the industry in the UK and across the continent. The focus isn’t on individual games in isolation but on how online casinos are designed, what drives player behaviour, and how the market is evolving. If that’s the kind of thing you’re curious about, you’re in the right place.