Jim Wagner

There are days where it seems like my entire day is spent telling other gamblers the dangers of sucker bets. I write about the sinister nature of these bets and advise you all to never touch them.  That’s because I take a lot of time trying to save gamblers from themselves. If you can learn to leverage your casino bankroll effectively, you’ll have a better experience and lose less money.  Many of us are risk takers by nature. That’s a big part of why we gamble in the first place.  Sometimes Read more [...]

The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine who asked me how to find a bookie near me. Here's how that discussion came about: We were talking about a college football game, and my friend asked me which team the sportsbooks favored in the game. He knows that I bet on games, and he wanted to know which team the sportsbooks predicted to win. We talked about the line, and he decided that he wanted to make a bet. That's when he asked me about local bookies. I’ve been placing bets for so long Read more [...]

Learning how to read Las Vegas odds is a prerequisite to success in sports betting. So, in this post, I'm going to explain Vegas odds as best I can. In fact, once you understand Vegas lines, you can bet on sports online or offline just about anywhere. What Are Vegas Odds? (Meaning) Las Vegas odds are the numbers that most (if not all) United States sportsbooks use to handle their betting. It's a system that gives bettors the details about what they're betting on. And it includes moneylines and Read more [...]

If you're a fan of slot machines, as I'm sure most of my readers are, you might want to know which games constitute the most popular slots in the world as of 2021. It's hard to answer this question definitively, as most slot machine manufacturers don't publish details about how many of their games are extant or how much money each machine averages. Also, which slot machines are near you vary according to where you live. But I can draw some conclusions about which are the most popular slots Read more [...]

Casinos in California host roulette games that don’t use roulette wheels. I want to write a post to clear the air about California-style roulette, similar to what we did for California craps. This post offers all the details you need to understand the game of roulette in California. Luckily, the roulette with no roulette wheel game in California is almost identical to the standard American roulette game with different game equipment used to arrive at the same kind of outcome.  Because the Read more [...]

Here's a post I've been dreading to write--the one about blackjack cheating. I don't like cheaters, and the casinos hate them even worse than I do. Depending on where you're playing, cheating at any kind of gambling is a crime. (In Nevada, it's a felony.) But people like to read about blackjack cheating, and my job is to entertain and educate. I've tried to put everything you might ever want or need to know about blackjack cheating in this one post. But if I've left something out, please leave Read more [...]

Slot machines are more fun when you understand what's going on with the game. If you don't know what the slot machine symbols mean, and if you don't know what it takes to get a winning combination, you might as well just play rocks scissors, and paper with some stranger. The purpose of this post is to take a detailed look at some of the inner workings of slot machines, especially as it relates to the slot machine symbols most commonly in use. I've written other posts about slot machines, too, Read more [...]

The game of craps in California casinos doesn't use dice. This might be confusing to some of my readers, so I thought I'd write a blog post about California craps games. This post examines how California craps is played and why the odds aren't really any different -- even though they're using a different mechanism to arrive at the outcomes. Also, if you love "shooting dice," you might want to play craps in a different state. You can play craps online for free, no matter which state you live Read more [...]

If you're new to Texas holdem (or any other poker game), one of the first things you need to learn and understand is who goes first in poker. In Texas holdem games, this is related to your position relative to the blinds. In other games, other criteria determine the order in which you bet. The purpose of this post is to explain poker rules related to the position and who bets first and reveals first. It can be a complicated subject if you're new to the game, but it's hard to overstate how important Read more [...]

You should avoid offshore gambling sites if you can bet with a legal United States gambling site instead. Offshore bingo, casino, poker, and sports betting sites are legal in their country of origin, but the United States has a different opinion. That said, the probability that you'll face any kind of legal issues when betting at offshore gambling sites is minimal. You should be more worried about having trouble depositing and withdrawing money from these offshore sportsbooks. Below, Read more [...]