February 2008 Archives

As per Vegas we have set out a list of offline Casino venues available in Lake Tahoe - I have visted Tahoe and its awsome offers skiing amazing views of the lake and generally is fab place to live. Lake Tahoe is a gorgeous result of volcanic and glacial master planning. Lake Tahoe's North Shore, in particular, is a stunning 180 degree panorama that vividly narrates the impact of that ancient earth shaping. It also has plenty of Casinos to go play in.

We have put together a list of Casinos in Las Vegas in case anyone wnats to sort a trip out there the list includes phone numbers so you can get in touch.  Sometimes a simple phone call can yield a better deal than hunting around online for winning rates and deals.

Strictly Slots magazine published its fourth annual "The Best of Slots" survey. The winning games, in multiple categories, were chosen by slot players - not, as the magazine noted, by a panel of judges or gaming executives.

This is the list of the most popular games (in order of popularity) for each of the categories included in the survey intrestingly Getminted fetures many of these slots or variations of them:

We recently started a news section for Cashcade called onlinecasinopress.co.uk its a fantatstic resource and can cover topics which editorially we are not allowed to feature on this blog about what is going on in the market of gambling and bettting including coverage of some of the hottest issues facing the business.

British Horseracing Authority calls for new law on funding

I have put together a list of some of the more popular high street locations of Fruit Machine venues the likes of Quicksilver and Agora to try and make sense of the way that slot machines can be played in the UK high street.

BACCARAT

Renowned American writer Mark Twain once famously said " Baccarat is a game whereby the croupier gathers in money with a flexible sculling oar, then rakes it home. If I could have borrowed his oar I would have stayed."

Well at Getminted online casino we offer you the oar with the best odds of winning in the game you'll find anywhere on the net.

The object of the game of Baccarat is straight forward and this is why its been such a popular card game at casinos across the globe for as long as it has.

Players attempt to reach a card count total that is as close to '9' as possible. You have the option of betting on the Banker hand winning, the Player hand winning, or a tie between the two. Two cards are dealt to both the Player and the Banker, and depending upon the total value of the cards a third card might be dealt.  

Circus Casinos
A modern and dynamic casino destination for a good night out.

Circus casino claims to be a new experience and a new look in UK casinos offering contemporary surroundings, a lively and fun atmosphere, the latest gaming, the best in service and outstanding dining at their 110 Restaurants. All designed to ensure you have a stylish and perfect casino evening, every day of the week, in a modern and relaxed setting.

Maxims Casinos
For the most sophisticated casino experience in the UK today

Maxim Casino offers a sophisticated casino experience in the UK highstreet Stanely Casino's bigger brand although probably secondary to Crockfords. Maxims offers what they call high-class gaming, which includes service and top entertainment in sumptuous and intimate surroundings. Each with fine dining at our renowned Equations restaurants, Maxims offer good venues to game in style.

Mint Casinos
State of the art gaming in a great setting Mint is a relatively new highstreet brand and is meant to reflect the updated moderrn casino though slightly worse locations than a Maxims branded casino.

With 20 Mint casinos in the UK with a bigger emphasis on slots and fruit machines in a conducive atmosphere for gaming. Mint tries to ensure fewer distractions and the very best in service, eating and drinking, the Mint casino offers a great and easy evening out.

 

 

I have spent a lot of time this morning creating a list of all the UK Casino premises I could find for the UK surprisingly to me there are over 150 Casino locations in the UK I would have thought it would be far less.  The famous sit next to the not so famous and the new Aspers and others next to some of the older venues like Gala Tottenham Court Road.  Where we could find them we have put fax and telephone numbers in case you want to book anything special or make any arrangements.

Tennis which was hounded by bad press related to online betting and match-fixing following the investigation into world number four Nikolay Davydenko's defeat to lowly Martin Vassallo Arguello and the subsequent suspension of three Italian players for betting on other matches has again found itself in the spotlight afetr another gaming bust this time in the tennis arena itself.

2 Russians and 1 German attending Proximus Diamond Games women's tennis event outside Antwerp - were allegedly using the delay in the time it took for results to be posted on a gambling website in order to profit by using a clever system of wireless laptops to get their money on.

'Three spectators were removed," said Katia Stroobants, Spokeswoman for the Women's Tennis Association.

"The two Russians and one German were holding a laptop, logged on to a gambling website and were gambling on ongoing matches with live betting.

'The WTA takes a zero tolerance approach to this issue. The men were asked to leave or hand over their laptops and they decided to leave with their computers. Unfortunately, we do not have any other power to further investigate.'

I have to say surely the people at fault here are the dumb betting sites who seem to have left themselves open to abuse - next they will be banning people for using a blackberry whilst watching tennis.  if a bookmaker is stupid enough to offer a market via their website once the result has passed then they should expect to get raped by punters.

The Sunday Times reproted this weekend on the man much in the press during the week - Graham Calvert.

Graham is going after William Hill, the bookmakers, for £2m. His premise they allowed him to continue gambling when he was (a) heavily in debt and (b) absolutely useless at it.

Calvert claims he tried to have himself self excuded using William Hill's "do not accept money from me again" button. However, he then opened another betting account with the bookmakers and proceeded to place many more unsuccessful bets via this betting account one in particular for £300K + on the Ryder Cup believeing the US team woudl clean up.

Graham, blames not himself but William Hill for his current position of destitution - as the Times points out: "rather in the manner of those grotesquely fat American women who sue McDonald's for continuing to allow them to stuff their fat faces with Big Macs and super-size fries, despite the fact that they arrive, waddling, at the counter - with their poor hearts, encased in blubber, begging for mercy."

Calvert will possibly lose the case it will represent his final roll of the dice for him with the odds stacked against him.

Anatole Taubman and Daniel Craig have apparently filmed a huge fight scene in an art gallery whilst the old Casino Royale stages are rebuilt for the latest Bond film. The big news also leaked was that Al Pacino would be taking part in Bond filming.

Apparently Pacino would play the head of the terrorist group introduced in CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE. Al pacino will be a baddie and is said to come to Pinewood in April-May to film what is said to be a brief cameo for the latest Bond release.

A British casino based up North is predicted to attract up to 75,000 visitors a year.

When The Palace Casino opens on Thursday next to the existing Palace Bingo, it will take the investment of entrepreneur Patrick Duffy in the town's old Tesco site to more than £9m in five years.

Far from being daunted by competition for the new licence from Pleasure Beach boss Albert Jones for a larger casino in the area, Albert's consortium has already shown off plans for a £35m casino and leisure complex called The Edge, looking to transform a large swathe of the Golden Mile. Mr Duffy simply commented: "I have already shown I can deliver, investing nearly £1m in the town for every year I have been in business."

He said to meet the space criteria for a larger casino licence he would simply knock down two walls between the present Palacebingo and Palacecasino clubs to create a new gambling experince for the Yarmouth.

London Clubs International, is understood to have made a tentative approach to Gala Casino, the betting and gaming operator, about the possibility of merging LCI with Gala Casinos.

Genting, the Malaysian gaming company that owns Stanley Casinos, has announced it has lifted its stake in Rank the casino operator, the embattled bingo and casino operator, from 10 per cent to 11.03 per cent.

A merger of LCI and Gala Casinos would create a business with 40 casinos in Britain, just one fewer than Stanley and eight more than Rank's Grosvenor Casino brand.

Analysts said it remained unclear whether the mooted discussions with GalaCasino, which is controlled by Candover, Cinven and Permira, the private equity firms was an outright sale of LCI. Neither party would comment last night, although a source close to Gala Coral said they would look at any proposal.

London Clubs has ten casino premises in the UK, five of them in London. Its clubs in the capital include the Rendezvous, 50 St James and the newly opened Empire Casino, in Leicester Square. It has recently opened Glasgow Casino and Nottingham Casino and has another in the pipeline for Leeds.

The downturn in the fortunes of the UK casino industry means London Clubs will struggle to recoup investments in the event of any sale. 

This week, Guoco Group, the Malaysian owner of Thistle Hotels and the Clermont Club in Central London, raised its holding from 5.05 per cent to 6.05 per cent. The wealthy Richardson property family has built a holding of 9.3 per cent through contracts for difference.

It turns out that Al-Reyaysa is also being sued by London's Ritz Casino having given them bad cheques worth £2.25million

For the Claremont Club  and The Ritz in London's Berkeley Square to accept two cheques for a combined value of almost £7million, Ahmed al-Reyaysa must have had a fair credit rating.

Yesterday, the Claremont went to the High Court to try to get its cash.

Assured by the National Bank of Abu Dhabi that the his cheque would be honoured, the Claremont did not report Al-Reyaysa to Gamblers Anonymous or have a quiet word with him but cashed his cheque for £2.7million.

The casinos want their money. And rightly so. A promise is a promise.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Grosvenor won a judgment against Al-Reyaysa, a 45-year-old businessman from the United Arab Emirates, in May 2001, but claims it has yet to see a penny.

Grosvenor has taken action against Al Reyaysa on the grounds it is 'bound by verbal approval to honour' the two cheques he wrote to them. National Bank of Abu Dhabi , which denies liability, has twice tried to have the action struck out but the application has been rejected both times. Lawyers for Grosvenor Casino claim if a precedent is set, banks could be bound to the rules, which are not currently legally enforceable and have never been tested in court.

Grosvenor Casino, has launched a lawsuit against the National Bank of Abu Dhabi in a bid to recover money owed by regular gambler Ahmed Al Reyaysa, whose cheques to the casino for £3.07m and £3.61m bounced.

Craps is one of the best games around as regards house edge in other words the player has a very good chance of beating the house with this gamne the big problem with it is no one in the UK seems to know how to play the game so it often gets missed or skipped over by players.

Craps is a game based around the rolling of 2 dice on a large table it frwequently features in Casino films as it is a great dramatic way to show off the excitment of gambling in a live casino environment.  Typically a hot girl will be shown to throw dice, kiss the dice and generally look good whilst the chaps put all their money down on the different bets.

The object of the game of craps is to basically bet whether or not the person throwing the dice will either pass or not pass during any given roll.

The dice roller starts by shooting the first dice roll, known as the "come-out phase," whereby he/she wins by rolling either a 7 or 11. Rolling "craps," or a 2, 3, or 12 automatically causes a player to lose at the table. Should any other number be rolled, the shooter has known made what is called the "point," thus entering the game into the "point phase" of the craps game.

In order for the dice roller to win now, he or she must roll that same "point" number a 7 is rolled. Those surrounding the table bet on whether the shooter will make a pass and roll something other than a 7 or if her or she will NOT make a pass and hit 7 before the "point" is made. If the pass is not made, the shooter "sevens-out" and must move on and allow another shooter to roll.

As you can see the rules are relatively complicated so the best bet is to play some games for free messing around with the different bets to see if you can work it out whilst playing the actal game. 

Connoisseur Club is a great Casino in London. The casino features two slots and eight table games.

Royal Garden Hotel
Kensington High Street
London, England W8 4RE
United Kingdom

Blackjack- £5.00 to £1,000.00 bets
Roulette- £1.00 to £200.00 bets

With a good selection of draught beers; The Connoisseur Club Casino, is open from 12 noon until 6am daily, it is a great place to relax with friends over a drink or a meal.  With nice extras such as valet parking, live entertainment and a relaxing lounge area with plasma screens there's a good attention to detail here.

Perfect for advanced players and novices alike, the Connoisseur club offers a wide variety of games including American Roulette, Black Jack with Royal Match side-bet, Three Card Poker, Two Way Hold Em Poker, Casino Stud Poker with side bet, Electronic Roulette and 8 x  £4000 Jackpot Slot Machines.

The restaurant serves international cuisine from an A La Carte menu and running alongside this is a Table D Hote offering 2 courses for £15.99 or 3 courses for £19.99.  Fantastic value for this London location.

The atmosphere is warm and friendly and the staff are engaging and offer a personal service.

Colony Club is a Casino in London, England, United Kingdom and is open Sun-Sat. This casino features thirteen table games.

24 Hertford Street
London, England W1J 7SA
United Kingdom

Blackjack, 5 tables
Poker, 3 tables
Punto Banco, 1 tables
Roulette, 7 tables
Stud Poker, 3 tables

The Colony Club is one of Londons most stylish contemporary casinos.  It offers a good combination of fun and excitement.

This private casino club is one of the most exclusive in London.  It has a modern dimension of style and first class service from all staff.  The club features a cool lounge bar and offers expensive fine wine and cuisine.  It even strangely has a Teppan Yaki Bar.

Games within the modern casino floor include American Roulette, Blackjack, Punto Banco, Caribbean Stud Poker, Three Card Poker, WSOP (World Series Of Poker). There is also a VIP section for the high rollers looking for expensive fun.

Ideally located off Park Lane, the club is surrounded by top London hotels.

Aspinalls is a famous Casino based in London, England, it is open Sun / Fri. The casino features seventeen table games. The property has four restaurants.

27/28 Curzon Street
London, England W1J 7TJ
United Kingdom

Club founder, John Aspinall (known as "Aspers" to his friends) was a conservationist and breeder of wild animals who funded his zoos, in large part, from house winnings.

Aspinall's is still one of the most extravagant and elegant gambling venues in the world. It is not a glitzy casino in the vein of Las Vegas casinos. In its earlier days, Aspinall's clientele comprised the traditional aristocratic elite who gambled away their inheritances.

While this is still true to some extent, the gradual decline of the English landed gentry has forced Aspinalls to look elsewhere. The first notable foreign member to be invited to the club was King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The king became a regular patron of the club, then known as the Clermont.

Remarkably, Aspinalls evaded major public recognition until the 1970s. The notorious 7th Earl of Lucan was a close friend of John Aspinall. Lucans consequent disappearance catapulted the club into mainstream consciousness. Aspinall commissioned a bust of Lucan which remains displayed prominently.

There are few games available at Casinos throughout the world as high on drama as those found at a roulette wheel.

And Getminted.com brings all that high octane drama straight to your PC thanks to six top class roulette games.

Named after the French word meaning "small wheel" Roulette as a gambling game has attracted some magical stories over the years.

Take for example the case of Londoner, Ashley Revell.

In 2004, Revell sold all of his possessions, clothing included, and brought US$ 135,300 to the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas and put it all on "Red" at the roulette table in a double-or-nothing bet. The ball landed on "Red 7" and Revell walked away with his net-worth doubled to $270,600.

Thanks to Getminted's collection's of Roulette games you too can try your hand on the famous wheel keeping your finger's crossed that the ball falls where you want it to for big rewards.

Adrian Lyne buffs the premise of Honeymoon in Vegas to a fine gloss in this yuppie melodrama that poses the conundrum of whether the loving husband of an equally loving wife will accept $1 million to allow his wife to spend one night with a billionaire who looks like Robert Redford.

Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson play Diana and David Murphy, high-school sweethearts who marry and who are doing very well.

Diana is a successful real-estate agent, and David is an idealistic architect who has built a dream house by the ocean -- until the recession hits.

Suddenly, David loses his job, and they can't make the mortgage payments. Dead broke, they borrow $5000 from David's father and head to Las Vegas to try to win money to pay the mortgage on their house. At first, they get $25,000 ahead but inevitably the house always wins, and they end up losing it all. While Diana is in the fancy casino boutique trying to lift some candy, she is spotted by billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford), who is immediately attracted to her. John invites Diana and David to an opulent party, and it is there that John offers David $1 million for a night with his wife. David is wracked by this moral dilemma, but Diana finally makes the decision on her own, with ensuing consequences for their ideal marriage and their bank account.

Monsieur Le Chiffre, is an agent for the Soviet assassination bureau SMERSH, running a baccarat game at a French casino to raise needed operational funds--namely, to recover SMERSH's money that he lost in a failed attempt to establish a chain of brothels. Expert baccarat player James Bond is assigned the job of beating Le Chiffre, in the hope that the Russian agent's gambling debts will provoke SMERSH into killing him. After hours of intensive play, Bond manages to beat Le Chiffre, but only with extra money provided by Felix Leiter of the CIA, who is in attendance as a covert observer. Bond has been provided with an assistant, the beautiful but emotionally turbulent Vesper Lynd, who unsurprisingly becomes his lover. But she is hiding a terrible secret -- she is actually a Russian double agent, under orders to see Bond does not escape Le Chiffre. With her unwilling connivance, Bond is captured and tortured by Le Chiffre, but Le Chiffre is assassinated by SMERSH. After Bond's recovery, during which he expresses an intention to resign from the Service, he spends his convalescence with Vesper Lynd, but becomes suspicious of her. Vesper commits suicide and her body is discovered by Bond, who reports to his superiors, tersely: "The bitch is dead now." 

BUGSY tells the true story of legendary New York mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. Visiting Hollywood "on business" the reckless and volatile Bugsy is drawn to Tinseltown and the glamour of the movies. Leaving his wife and kids in Scarsdale indefinitely, the womanizing Bugsy spends his time on movie lots and at Hollywood extravaganzas, contemplating his own potential stardom.

Soon Bugsy falls hard for strong-willed actress Virginia, who isn't content with mistress status. A road trip to a down-trodden joint in the Nevada desert in a town called Las Vegas leads Bugsy to dream of building a world-class casino and turning the town into a moneymaker. Together Bugsy and Virginia with backing from the mob start building The Flamingo hotel and casino, hoping that legal gambling and five-star entertainment will entice the masses and rake in big bucks.

This is a film based on the book Breaking The House - a theme many casino companies dread.

It tells the true story of six nerdy university students from MIT - who used their genius math skills to win millions of dollars at Las Vegas casinos. The History Channel's thrilling documentary recounts this amazing story through archival footage, dramatic reenactments, and interviews with the former students, casino executives, security experts, gamblers, and Vegas historians. 

The film which is loosely realted to the gambling theme takes a look at the world of "boiler room"-- seedy pump and dump, dishonorable broking firms.

The film centers around Seth Davis (Ribisi), a budding underground casino owner in Queens whose life turns upside down when offered employment at J.T. Marlin, a less-than-reputable brokerage firm. Davis' opposition to his disapproving federal judge father drives the plot as Davis goes deeper into the operation at J.T. Marlin than he'd like, learning how the firm scams its clients out of serious money. The company runs a sort of ponzi scheme, similar to "pump and dump". The scheme works by pumping up a new IPO's price by creating artificial demand, cashing in, then reinvesting much of the earnings in yet another IPO.

An alcholic pool shark works his way up the ranks from small pool halls to the big-time in the Midwest. "Fast" Eddie Felson is a small-time pool hustler with a lot of talent but a self-destructive attitude. His bravado causes him to challenge the legendary "Minnesota Fats" to a high-stakes match, but he loses in a heartbreaking marathon.

Broke and without his long-time manager, Eddie faces an uphill battle to regain his confidence and the quallity of his game. He hits rock bottom and then agrees to join up with ruthless and cutthroat manager Bert Gordon. Gordon agrees to take him on the road to learn the ropes. Felson soon realizes that making it to the top could cost him his soul, and perhaps his girlfriend.

I am talking purely as reates to the gangster movie theme.

Casino is a gangster film directed by Martin Scosese. It is based on the book of the same name. Robert De Niro stars as Sam Rothstein, a gambling handicapper who is called by the Mob to oversee the operations at the Tangiers Casino in Vegas. The story is based on Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust, Fremont and the Hacienda casinos in Las Vegas for The Mob from the 1970s until the early 1980s.

BLACKJACK

For many the old games are the best and simplicity is the key to enjoying a good game of cards.

Thats why Getminted.com offer players a choice of 15 online card games so you see it's not just the glitz of Elvis and Baywatch we promote!

Blackjack, universally accepted as the world's most popular casino game, is something anyone can play even if you're a beginner to the world of online gaming.

Getminted offer a number of Blackjack games for players including the traditional and hugely popular 'Table Blackjack'.

Also a favorite of Getminted members is '21 + 3' Blackjack which offers an interesting side bet so that if you win in Blackjack you can multiply your winnings with success in the subseqent three card poker gamble.

Getminted.com is proud to offer you a fine selection of online slots games.  We have some of the most popular casino slots games around such as the new Elvis Multi-Strike online game as well as other Las Vegas favourites including Double Diamond, Five Times Pay, Cleopatra and Texas Tea.  Fans of TV show Dallas will spot that Texas Tea has a Dallas theme.  The site features two MegaJackpots games Cluedo and Monopoly Pass - Go.  These two slots based on the popular board games are progressive jackpot games, meaning the jackpot keeps rising until someone wins.  The minimum guarenteed jackpot for the MegaJackpots games is a cool £1.5 million!  This could be yours (if you play the maximum bet and match all MegaJackpot symbols)  by a click of the mouse button.  Also included on the site are slots based upon the TV shows Baywatch and Wheel of Fortune.  Together with the MegaJackpots casino games, Getminted is the only site allowing you to play all these games. 

 

Many of the games allow you to play for free so you can get used to them before playing for cash.  If playing for cash you will need to register your details and login, although you don't have to download software to play so you can play on any computer wherever that might be!

 

Getminted run some amazing promotions.  When you join you receive a 100 percent bonus on your first deposit.

 

The site also runs slots tournaments on The Price Is Right every week!  These all carry with them large prize money to reward the most competitive slots players.

 

Apart from these tournaments, Getminted regularly host the popular Payback days whereby players that lose to the house receive a cash Bonus.  No deposit is required to enter and unlike other online casinos, you don't need to wager to activate your payback bonus.

 

High-rollers should also take note, that Getminted offer a VIP scheme featuring GUARANTEED Monthly Paybacks quarterly Loyalty cash sums and exclusive bonus competitions.

 

Getminted is definitely THE place to play online casino slots games.