By Samantha Williams

Sports betting is a whole new adventure of its own, and a natural progression from the bookie shops to an online presence has taken place, as every conceivable form of gambling becomes more widely available online. Sports betting entails some skill, and to be successful it generally means you have to know about the sports you are betting on.

If you fancy a name in the Grand National and take a stab at it, this is all in the name of good fun where luck counts. But real horse race betting is a true and pure adventure. This applies to betting on football, golf, baseball, cricket and even the name or sex of the next new member of the Royal Family will take some research. Conducting research into past and present form, historical outcomes and all kinds of other factors is for many people the learning aspect which makes this betting game so exciting.

“Was I right in my prediction based on the empirical knowledge I gained by learning about the subject I placed money on?”

Betting on horses is completely different to any other kind of betting, you have to consider, horse, breeding, jockey, trainer, track, weather and manager as well as many other factors, but this is truly the sport of Kings. All these factors come into play before you even look at the kind of wager you want to place, and before you know it the race is run and over with, while you are still trying to understand what a trifecta is.

People have been racing horses since time immemorial; in fact it is one of our most ancient sports. It dates back to as far as 4 500 BC when prehistoric Central Asian nomadic tribesmen were very competitive. But it was reserved for royalty! So horse racing is ancient, exotic, wild and betting on it can also be very confusing.

It is a professional sport and the second most attended spectator sport in the US after baseball (which you can also bet on). People of the US wager over $10 billion annually on this sport, so it is a major industry. It is popular all over the world including Canada, UK, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and South America.

Humankind has a naturally competitive and challenging spirit and they will place bets on anything that races – even hamsters and frogs. Modern horse racing has only grown in popularity to the extent that it has, as a result of widely legalized gambling, and venues for the provision of this.

Yes the language of betting on this sport is all over the map, but it fortunately does reward a few hours of study. Pasting the betting pages on the wall and throwing a dart at it to take your pick, may work for the lucky few, but this is not a game for fools so learn to know your horses.

By Samantha Williams

There is a huge amount of information available regarding slot machines, what your chances of winning are and if the outcome of any game can be influenced by human hand. Most winning or losing strategies and myths are completely untrue; a slot machine is a slot machine is a slot machine. They are completely random games, governed by random number generators which have to be independently tested and audited and there is absolutely no way to influence a winning outcome, maybe you win or maybe you lose it is as simple as that. One thing however is very true; playing these games is a huge amount of fun!

Myths such as a certain sequence of spins is set before a win takes place on a slot machine, is completely untrue, this simply cannot be done, if it could, gambling would be completely outlawed. Fair play is the name of the game and gambling concerns have to adhere to very strict licensing laws, whether online or off. Fairness applies to both the operator and the player – you have seen what trouble people get into if they try to collude to win illegally against a casino. This rule works both ways!

A RNG or random number generator generates millions if not billions of combinations of numbers in minutes, as these are random, no computer or human can track them. Even a special computer set up to do this would take years to compute the calculations and years to spit out such extensive data. Slot machines are also never “due” to pay out, not if you sit on them for days at a time, you have to leave for a pee break and it’s sods law dictates that the next person to sit down at the slot machine will win the jackpot. Only luck counts in this game.

The same odds apply to a slot machine regardless of whether is has just paid out a prize or not. The percentage payout is designed into the machine, but this is over millions of spins, so if a machine has just paid out a $500 prize it does not mean to say that the progressive prize won’t drop out of it on the next maximum bet and spin. The odds always remain the same, either before or after a jackpot prize has been paid, a slot machine cannot compute or control what happens next.

I can go on and on about this subject, but what you really need to understand is the slot machine is meant to be fun. You should never look at them as a means to supplement your house-keeping money, more as a means for entertainment – like going to the movies should be. You budget what you can afford to lose, not what you can’t afford to lose and have fun. If you win, great, if not, you had fun playing. Simple as that!