Poker is by far the most populat casino game. There could be many reasons why no other game can compete with poker, but we know one of them for sure: the battle is player vs player, the bank is not involved in deciding the winner. When you play slots for example, the slot machine will have set a payout rate, that usually is over 95% since slots are known for having the highest payout rate compared to all other casino games. Though the payout rate is very close to 100% as all the popular casinos set a 99% payout rate, you have to rely on luck very much. There can be 9 players that lose and the 10-th gets 99% of what the other 9 lost.

Poker is a lot different. It does rely on luck too since the cards you get at the start of the game are random, but you have a much better control over the situation during the game. Let’s take holdem poker as an example. After you get the cards you have a first chance to get in control of your own hand, as you can drop right away if you have a weak combination of cards. As we said in a previous review, it is not all about winning, a good gambler thinks about minimising the loss too, since more than 50% of the rounds are lost. Therefore when you recognise a bad hand just let it go, drop you cards and wait for better chances.
Then comes the the flop, meaning the first three cards on the table are shown.

Another round of betting and drops, then the turn, meaning the fourth card on the table is shown. One more control round, with betting and drops before the fifth card is shown, called the river. A final round of betting and drops before the players turn their own cards around and the winner is decided. Now let’s count: you have no less then four steps to decide what you have to do. Each step consists of one or more chances to “speak”. This means you can have sometimes over 10 chances to decide your hand is not good enaugh. That is how a casino game can be controled. How many other games allow you to decide for yourself beside the different poker versions? Not many. So this is one explanation for the fact that poker is so popular.

After you decided you want to gamble your money on poker you have to pick a poker room that suits your needs. You could choose poker room that offers promotions for beginners, meaning those who register as new players will have a lot of options for zero-buy in tournaments and other low entry fee tournaments. Other poker rooms will offer more expensive entry fee tournaments but with the chance of inning big jackpots. It’s up to you to decide.

Some of the most populat poker rooms at the moment are:

www.titanpoker.com
www.pokerstars.com
www.carbonpoker.com
poker.bwin.com
www.fulltiltpoker.com

Casino gambling can be successful and relaxing, or can lead to loosing a lot of money and can become frustrating. What decides if you are a winner or a looser is the level of knowledge that a player has reached by learning certain strategies. Of course the games provided by casino owners involve a quite high amount of luck, but there is an explanation for the fact that some gamblers loose a lot of money, others win from time to time and few earn constant winnings.

The explanation is exactly the strategies we were talking earlier about. Each game is different, therefore each game has it’s own algorithm, meaning that based on statistics there are certain moves a player can choose to make at a certain point of a game. The higher the level of knowledge the better the control on the game. Controlling the game is what makes you a winner.

Beside luck and learning the strategies there is a third thing gamblers should be aware of, and I know for sure some players, specially the new ones don’t pay attention to this third thing. In each casino and for each game there is set a certain payout rate, that can vary from around 100% down to under 60%. Obviously there can’t be set a payout rate for the game of blackjack played in a real casino, therefore we are talking only about games that involve an electronic device, such as slot machines in real casinos, some models of roulettes and all of the online casino games.

The good news is some of these games are set even to over 100% payout rate, for a limited period of time (also called promotions). I know, some of you will say it can’t be true, because this way casinos would loose instead of winning, but believe me, for the purpose of gaining new players and popularity casino owners will do it. For example, instead of paying for advertising a certain casino can choose to announce a 105% payout rate as a limited time offer and they might win more popularity than they would through advertising. These are possible reasons to set the payout rate over 100% and I’m telling you all this just to make sure you understand there are logical reasons for the casino owners to act like that.

All this being said, what’s left to do? You better start searching for the best casinos around. Usually that takes a lot of time, thats why some sites provide you with all these information, with the casinos already reviewed and rated. If you’re looking to spare some time then Casino Gambling Index is exactly what you need. Because slot machines contribute about 60% of the entire casino bets, they have a slots online guide area where you will find listed, reviewed and rated some of the most popular online casinos that provide this game. Beside the reviews and the ratings that will quickly help you choose the right casino there is another important advantage: the casinos listed by Casino Gambling Index are all secure and certified. You wouldn’t want to play in casino that offers 150% payout rate but does not allow you to cash out (so called scammers).

Unfortunately some online gamblers have another problem: certain casinos have country restrictions. Usually the restrictions come from a lack of financial/economical agreement between the country of residence of the player and the host-country of a certain casino. USA is one of the countries that has this problem, therefore Casino Gambling Index provides a special area were they offer a list of online casinos for USA players. Again, the listed casinos are reviewed, rated and certified.