Expert Bet

The Footy 15 game from The New Football Pools website is offering its registered players the chance to win their share of £260,000 this week for correctly picking the outcome of 15 select soccer games.

Footy 15 challenges players to predict whether 15 games taking place in the UK and Europe will end in a home win, away win or draw and has already paid out over £850,000 this season alongside in excess of 16,000 prizes.

Equally as challenging as the Footy 15 game, Premier 10 from The New Football Pools asks competitors to correctly predict the outcomes of ten Premier League games. It has so far awarded over £500,000 in prize money to take the tally for the season for the two games to in excess of £1.215 million.

If you want to compete for the attractive award, you should be acquainted with the general rules and conditions required by The New Football Pools website. In order to compete for the challenging prizes provided by The New Football Pools, contestants will have to put in a stake as low as £1 Sterling per line. That means that, if you want to play 3 doubles, for instance, you would have to put in a £8 stake (3 doubles actually means 8 lines).

The New Football Pools also offers players the chance to benefit from the weekly insights and predictions of soccer legends Alan Hansen, John Barnes and Tony Cascarino along with former referee Graham Poll.

“These games were designed to allow football fans to test their knowledge, have fun and also make some money in the process,” said Ian Penrose, Chief Executive Officer for Sportech, owners of The New Football Pools.

“This season we’ve already given out over £1.25million on our new games, which really is an incredible amount to have paid out.”

In order to enter either game or to read the views of the pundits, you can visit FootballPools.com. The competition can also be played at many PayPoint locations in the UK across a network of 17,000 retailers and through over 1,750 Ladbrokes outlets.

By its very nature, Internet gambling might be considered as a semi-underground industry, as online gambling defies precise analysis of its global and national scope. But several organizations have developed estimates that seem to exist within a similar range.

It is generally accepted that the first Internet gambling site came online in mid-1995, some have come and gone since then, and several thousand sites now exist.

Christiansen Capital Advisors, a firm that tracks online and other forms of gambling, estimates that the industry currently accounts for about $22 billion a year in global revenue, a number that will grow to nearly $25 billion a year by 2010.

About half of that will be wagered by Americans, the company says.

The U.S. General Accounting Office, in a December 2002 report, provided similar statistics, saying that “U.S. customers are reported to constitute anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of total operator revenues from Internet gambling.”

Those who support federal regulation and taxing of Internet gambling - rather than its ban - cite a December 2007 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The above-mentioned study found that taxes on the industry could pump $8.7 billion to $17.6 billion into the U.S. Treasury during the next 10 years, depending on which - if any - states opt out of a regulatory plan. If sports leagues agree to participate, $42.8 billion could be produced, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers study.

Here is one of the most useful tips a casino player can get. If you want to become a successful gambler, playing for free is essential and there are many benefits a player can get by taking advantage of this opportunity.

Playing for free before using real money is, maybe, the best thing you can do to enrich your gambling experience which you can turn into a more enjoyable and ultimately, successful activity.

Most reputable sites allow you to download their software and start out on any number of games playing for free. For this, you usually don’t even need to register and / or provide personal information.

No matter whether you are a casino gambler or just a passionate player of casino games, you should take advantage of this opportunity. What are your benefits?

The free play will help you to familiarize yourself with the software of that particular site.

You get the chance to really understand the rules and terminology of the particular game you are anticipating playing. You also have all the time in the world to do that, without the pressure from other players.

You can always try out several different games and decide which one may become your favorite or possesses the most potential for success.

In order to achieve some gambling experience and embrace a successful carrer as a gambler, you need to practice as much as you possibly can. Don’t forget that practice makes perfect!

You can think of this opportunity to play for free as of your own personal “training period” where you learn through trial and error and through practice.

Also, once you have started playing with and for real money, you can always return to the “no money” areas to perfect your gambling skills and and / or try out and learn new games.

Playing for free is probably one the best aspects of online casinos versus their brick and mortar (land-based) counterparts. You can have fun and keep the money in your pockets / accounts at the same time. There is no reason in missing such an opportunity!

On top of that, many online casinos offer “no deposit required” free bonuses which not only give you the chance to play for free, but also to win some real money.

A more subtle version of the fallacy is that an “interesting” (non-random looking) outcome is “unlikely” (for instance, that a sequence of “1,2,3,4,5,6″ in a lottery result is less likely than any other individual outcome). Even apart from the debate about what constitutes an “interesting” result, this can be seen as a version of the gambler’s fallacy because it is saying that a random event is less likely to occur if the result, taken in conjunction with recent events, will produce an “interesting” pattern.

As an example, the popular doubling strategy of the Martingale betting system (where a gambler starts with a bet of $1, and doubles their stake after each loss, until they win) is flawed. Situations like these are investigated in the mathematical theory of random walks. This and similar strategies either trade many small wins for a few huge losses (as in this case) or vice versa. With an infinite amount of working capital, one would come out ahead using this strategy; as it stands, one is better off betting a constant amount if only because it makes it easier to estimate how much one stands to lose in an hour or day of play.

In fact a fair gambling system is one on which the probability of some outcome remains exactly the same on each occasion: a roulette wheel has no memory.

It should be noticed that if a system is not known to be like this there may be no fallacy. If we are betting on the weather, or a horse, it may be quite reasonable to take a sequence of rainy days, or a sequence of wins, as increasing the chance of another.

Other examples

What is the probability of flipping 21 heads in a row, with a fair coin?

Answer: 1 in 2,097,152 = approximately 0.000000477.

What is the probability of doing it, given that you have already flipped 20 heads in a row?

Answer: 0.5.

Will you eventually come out ahead at roulette by betting double what you lost the previous time, and adding an extra amount? (Answer: given infinite time and funds, yes, you will eventually win on that color in a fair game. However, given finite time and even more finite funds, the chance exists that you will exhaust your money before winning. Regardless of the odds of a color losing (or winning) several times in a row, the probability of the ball landing on that color in a given spin is the number of that color that exist, divided by all possibilities. In the case of a Vegas roulette wheel, the chances of hitting red are 18/38, or ~.47, regardless of previous results.)

Are you more likely to win the lottery jackpot by choosing the same numbers every time or by choosing different numbers every time? (Answer: Either strategy is equally likely to win.)

Are you more or less likely to win the lottery jackpot by picking the numbers which won last week, or picking numbers at random? (Answer: Either strategy is equally likely to win, but if others choose the same numbers your payout is likely to be less.

A rational gambler might attempt to predict other players’ choices and then deliberately avoid these numbers.

Also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy, or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, the gambler’s fallacy is the false belief that the probability of an event in a random sequence is dependent on preceding events, its probability increasing with each successive occasion on which it fails to occur.

Thus if black has come up many times in succession at a roulette table, a false belief may develop that red is increasingly likely on each subsequent spin of the wheel, to even out the sequence in the long run; or if a mother gives birth to several girls in succession, she may come to believe that the probability of a boy is greater than 50% for her next baby.

For example, consider a series of 20 coin flips that have all landed with the “heads” side up. Under the gambler’s fallacy, a person might predict that the next coin flip is more likely to land with the “tails” side up.

This line of thinking represents an inaccurate understanding of probability because the likelihood of a fair coin turning up heads is always 50%. Each coin flip is an independent event, which means that any and all previous flips have no bearing on future flips.

The gambler’s fallacy gets its name from the fact that, where the random event is the throw of a die or the spin of a roulette wheel, gamblers will risk money on their belief in “a run of luck” or a mistaken understanding of “the law of averages”. It often arises because a similarity between random processes is mistakenly interpreted as a predictive relationship between them. For instance, two fair dice are similar in that they each have the same chances of yielding each number - but they are independent in that they do not actually influence one another.

The gambler’s fallacy often takes one of these forms:

A particular outcome of a random event is more likely to occur because it has happened recently (”run of good luck”);

A particular outcome is more likely to occur because it has not happened recently (”law of averages” or “it’s my turn now”).

Similarly,

A particular outcome is less likely to occur because it has happened recently (”law of averages” or “exhausted its luck”);

A particular outcome is less likely to occur because it has not happened recently (”run of bad luck”).

Few people know the difference between these two similar but quite opposite concepts: gaming and gambling.

The word “gambling” is generally used to discuss an activity that may violate applicable criminal laws. The word “gaming” is usually reserved for those instances where the activity has been specifically legalized by applicable laws or where the activity is exempted from the criminal laws.

Gambling has a specific economic definition, referring to wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the wager is evident within a short period of time.

The term gaming in this context typically refers to instances in which the activity has been specifically permitted by law.

Nevertheless, the two words are not mutually exclusive. For example, a “gaming” company offers “gambling” activities to the public. Thus, playing a casino-style game at a for-profit website online in the United States is referred to as gambling, since no state has yet finalized any law specifically authorizing a for-profit website operator to offer any casino games. Therefore, a gaming activity could turn out to be gambling where applicable laws regulating that particular gaming are violated.

Similarly, a gambling activity may turn out to be gaming if it is exempted from a given criminal statute.

Some people assume the word gaming was created as a way to “re-invent” the casino industry. But history tells a different story. The word “gaming”, defined as the action or habit of playing at games of chance for stakes, actually dates back to 1510, predating use of the word “gambling” by 265 years.

The words “gambler”, “gambling” and “gamble” all were considered slang when they came into use in the 18th century, implying that the activity involved unduly high stakes. The word “gamble” was essentially considered a term of reproach, according to The Oxford English Dictionary, and would only be used by those who “condemn playing for money altogether.”

In 1891, even The Anti-Gambling Association referred to the activity as “gaming” in a publication: “Before the third crusade, there was no check upon the gaming vice, and no limit to the stakes. ? During subsequent reigns gaming, although generally condemned, was vigorously pursued.”

Casinos in Nevada have been referred to as part of the “gaming” industry ever since they were legalized there in 1931. As the industry expanded outside of Nevada, it continued to carry that name. As opposed to the business term “gaming”, the word “gamble” is now commonly used to refer to the actual activity. A 1987 reference dictionary uses the two terms interchangeably, defining gaming as ?the playing of games of chance for stakes; gambling.” (”Dictionary of Gambling and Gaming”, by Thomas L. Clark, 1987)

Casinos can be divided into two main categories: traditional casinos and online casinos. A “traditional casino”, that is a brick and mortar casino, generally has slot machines and table games and can be set up on land or as a riverboat, based on state and local gambling laws.

Online casinos are the perfect alternative to traditional casinos, as they allow people to enjoy a wide range of popular games from the comfort of their home, enabling gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet.

Online casinos can be divided into three groups based on their interface: web-based casinos, download-based casinos, and more recently live casinos.

Web-based online casinos are sites at which players can directly play casino games without having to download and/or run any software from their own computer. Games are mainly represented in the browser plug-ins Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Shockwave, or Java and require respective browser support. So, users actually must have considerable bandwidth to load the graphics, sounds, and animations since these all come from the site, itself, and require the web-browser plug-ins which most internet users already use anyway for all kinds of other websites; online newspapers, entertainment sites.

A very small number of casinos allow games played through a plain HTML interface and the graphics on these sites are generally quite inferior to those provided through download-based casinos. Another huge difference is the speed of games. This is generally hampered by bandwidth restrictions, traffic, etc. Disconnection problems can be a huge disturbance as well. Generally speaking, most of the bigger casinos prefer to use download-based software and you’ll find a much larger choice of games and options with these sites. For example, most, if not all, of the sites reviewed by GamblingPlanet.org rely on download-based software.

Download-based online casinos are the most common and popular casino sites on the web. Here, users have to download certain software in order to play that casino’s games. Once the software is installed, it connects to the casino service provider and handles contact without browser support. The biggest advantage here is speed. All the graphics and animations are included in the software and run from the computer instead of the internet. The only downside, of course, is the initial download and the need for the installation of the program. Some people worry as well about the risk of downloading a virus and/or spyware but so long as you’re acquiring software from reliable sites and use a solid anti-virus program, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Live-based casino gaming allows web players to interact with games played in a real world casino environment. Online players can see, hear, and interact with live dealers at tables in casino studios worldwide.

    Billions of people play lotteries every day, but haven’t got a clue about how old they are.

    Have you ever wondered what the first gamblers were like? Why they decided to start rolling dices? Playing bingo, slot machines, craps, and poker or betting on football, basketball, and boxing is a multi-billion dollar industry today. People spend nearly one trillion dollars worldwide on gambling a year. But did you know that gambling evolved from friendly bets on pedestrianism?

    Did you know that there are historians of gambling like David G. Schwartz, who wrote an entire book on gambling, a 500-page-plus tome called The History Of Gambling: Roll The Bones? Did you know that there is a CENTER for Gaming Research, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conducted by the same remarkable historian of gambling, David G. Schwartz?

    Gambling and casinos are not modern day inventions. Desire to become rich overnight is a theory which rules all the gambling centers worldwide. No one can deny the fact that there is an innermost desire in all individuals to get rich overnight.

    Gambling has existed since ancient times. Archeological extracts and historians strongly prove the existence of gambling events carried out by our predecessors and there is evidence that most cultures supported gambling in some form or another. Gambling was also a popular entertainment activity for our ancestors.

    Implements associated with the practice of gambling have been found in ancient China sites dating back to about 2300 B.C. A pair of ivory dice made sometime before 1500 B.C. have been found in Egypt. In fact, writings mentioning gambling have been discovered on a tablet in one of the pyramids at Giza. Inhabitants of ancient India, Greece and Rome also practiced some form of gambling.