Article by Paul Hoemke

Standard playing cards are … boring? Actually if you take the time to look at them, you might discover that they have properties that make them very versatile.

A playing card is easily recognized by the two symbols on the face of the card in the upper-left and lower-right corners — a ‘suit’ and an ‘identifier’.

A deck of 52 cards is divided evenly into four ‘suits’ — Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades. This allows you to have a flush, cards all of the same suit (Cribbage, Poker). This also allows trick-taking games that use a trump suit and that require playing a card ‘with the suit that was lead’ (Bridge, Euchre, Five-Hundred, Pinochle, Whist). This also allows games where you have to play a card with the suit that was last played (Crazy Eights).

Each of the four suits has 13 cards that are marked with the same 13 ‘identifiers’ or ids — 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A. So for each id, there are exactly four cards, one for each suit. This allows you to have two cards that match (Concentration, Crazy Eights, Old Maid, War), two-or-more-of-a-kind (Cribbage, Go Fish, Poker), three-or-more-of-a-kind (Canasta, Gin Rummy, Rummy), and special combinations of matching cards such as a full-house, a pair plus three-of-a-kind (Poker).

Four of the ids are ‘letters’ which represent special cards — three face-cards (‘J’ = Jack, ‘Q’ = Queen, and ‘K’ = King) and an Ace (‘A’ = Ace). This allows you to have special scoring for these special cards (Hearts, Michigan, Pinochle, Tripoli). Each face-card has a double picture of the King, Queen, or Jack so that there is always a right-side-up picture on the upper half of the card. The Ace has a suit at the center.

Nine of the ids are ‘numbers’. This allows you to add the number value of the cards. Face-cards and aces can be included by assigning a value such as 10 for face-cards and 1 or 11 for Aces (Blackjack, Cribbage). In addition to the two suit symbols, a number of suits symbols equal to the id number are printed on each number card.

The suits have two ‘colors’ that divide a deck of cards evenly in two — Black (Clubs, Spades) and Red (Diamonds, Hearts). This allows you to link cards from two suits with the same color such as using the Jacks of one color as high trump cards (Euchre, Five Hundred).

Each of the 13 ids is part of a ‘sequence’ of ids — usually from ‘A’ (high) to ’2′ (low). This allows you to have a straight, five cards in sequence (Poker), or a run, three or more cards in sequence (Cribbage). If these cards also have the same suit, you can have a straight-flush (Poker) or a single-suit run (Gin Rummy, Rummy). You can also lay down cards of a given suit in sequence (Fan Tan, Michigan).

The ids are also called ‘ranks’ because each id has a rank when compared to any other id — again the highest id is often ‘A’ and the lowest ’2′. This allows you to have the high-card take a trick (Bridge, Euchre, Five Hundred, Hearts, Pinochle, Whist). This also allows you to have comparison games where a high-rank card takes a low-rank card, and cards of equal rank lead to war (War), and a high-rank pair beats a low-rank pair (Poker).

In addition to the regular cards, a deck of cards may also contain two Jokers. These cards have the word ‘Joker’ in the upper-left and lower-right corners. This allows you to add a wild card or two to games (Canasta, Five Hundred, Poker).

All cards in a deck of cards have identical backs containing anything from a solid color to a complex design. This allows you to see the value of your own cards but not your opponent’s cards (most games). This also allows you to play games in which you try to remember the location of face-down cards (Concentration). And this allows you to play games where a participant can look at cards, and then lay them face-down so that others cannot see them (Texas Holdum’ Poker).

And the suits and identifiers and face-card pictures and backs are all printed on card stock with a plastic coating or on plastic. This makes the cards durable and allows you to play plenty of card games, alone or with friends (Blackjack, Bridge, Canasta, Concentration, Crazy Eights, Cribbage, Euchre, Fan Tan, Five-Hundred, Gin Rummy, Go Fish, Hearts, Michigan, Old Maid, Pinochle, Poker, Tripoli, War, Whist).

Did I miss anything? I’m sure I did.

So a standard deck of playing cards is very versatile.

About the Author

Paul Hoemke is the owner of the Animal Game Mart located at http://www.AnimalGameMart.com/. Here you will find simple card games, dice games, and checkerboard games using standard game supplies. Both traditional and new games, each with variations. Free and inexpensive instructions available. Contact Paul at pchoemke2@AnimalGameMart.com.

Article by Julia Jonson

Article by Julia Jonson

Dusty Springfield – The Look of Love (1967)

Article by Sheldon Valdez

Article by Sarah Harrigan

Online casino gambling made its first debut on the internet in mid nineties. This came about when the Government of the small Caribbean island of Antigua and Barbuda passed a law called “The Free Trade and Processing Zone Act” in 1994, which allowed online casinos to be based there (through Offshore Accounts). At just about the same time that this law was being introduced the very first online gambling developing software provider was being formed called “Microgaming”. With these new developments in favor of online casino gambling there was no stopping the rising success of the online casino gambling industry.

This law is directly responsible for making online casino gambling the huge success that it has become, and even today most online casinos operate in accordance with this “Free Trade and Processing Zone Act”, and Antigua and Barbuda continue to be the number one choice of licensing jurisdiction in the online casino industry. During that same year, many online casino Companies as well as online gaming developing software Companies were formed, including the Company “Cryptologic” which was responsible for developing the first security software needed to ensure safe monetary transactions over the internet.

A note of interest: InterCasino was the first ever online casino to open up for business on the internet and is still open to this day.

There is no doubt that online casino gambling was on a roll although not everyone was in favor of this new way of gambling; as a matter of fact there were many who questioned the legality of online gambling in general.US Senator John Kyl was the first to speak up against online gambling and attempted to make online gambling illegal by introducing “the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act” several times but to no avail. Still, online casino gambling continued to grow in popularity, more and more people were becoming aware of the benefits of gambling online. Probably the most alluring of all was the fact that one did not have to leave the comfort of their own home to actually have some excitement and fun of and an actually casino and still had the same possibilities of winning a little cash, or perhaps even hitting a big jackpot.

In 2006 the USA passed a bill making it illegal for commercial banks and credit card companies to conduct business transactions on their customer’s behalf when pertaining to any online gambling transaction. This resulted in many online gambling casinos refusing to accept USA players, although there are still quite a number of websites that still accept USA players. Also because of this new law most online casinos are opting for alternative methods of money transfer methods such as e-wallet, PayPal, Click2Pay, e-cash and a lot of other internet based companies that offer these type services. Despite what some people might want to believe online casino gambling will be around for a long time to come, some people just love the thrill and fun of gambling, and they will find a way to gamble no matter what anyone might believe.

About the Author

Sarah Harrigan is a professional casino player and reviewer. For straight talking honest advice on online gambling be sure to visit her website for comprehensive reviews on the most secure online casinos and winning casino strategies.

Read this article if You are looking for good online poker rooms. It will show You what exactly makes up a good online poker room and how to find one. I will discuss all the aspects You should look for before You decide to join online poker rooms.

First of I want to give You a list of things to consider when choosing a poker room. Some might be very obvious to You while others won’t. So let’s get started.

The most important thing in my opinion is the poker client or poker software the room uses. There are many different poker softwares on there on the net. Some are used by many poker rooms, like the microgaming or the boss media client. Other poker rooms have developed their own software.

As important as the software is the reputation of the poker room. You will not want to play at sites that are not fully secure or where You encounter problems when trying to cash out Your money.

Third thing is customer support. You should check this out before signing up, just by contacting the room and see how long You will have to wait for a response.

Fourth important point is the quantity of games offered and how many players are online, as well as the quality of Your opponents.

Now let’s get back to the poker software. If You play poker a lot then You will use it for many hours. So if the look and feel of the client doesn’t appeal to You then You will not enjoy the game as much as You should. It is also important that the software supports all features that You as a player needs. If You play at multiple tables at the same time then it is vital to You that You can freely resize and move tables on Your Desktop. Not all poker rooms support this. A great software for this is Full Tilt Poker where You can even store multiple layouts for different numbers of open tables and easily switch between them while playing.

The reputation of the room. Check out the website of the poker room. Are their games monitored by a third party to ensure that the games are fair and the random number generator used to shuffle the cards is truly random? Which authority or legislation is the poker room regulated by ? You will want to avoid offshore sites that are barely regulated by anyone at all. Have there been payment issues in the past?

Good customer support is also a must have for a good online poker room. If You send them an email You can expect them to get back to You within 24 hours. At least during weekdays. In my experience the customer support is usually a good way to measure how long it will take for Your payouts to be handled. If a simple email takes them more than a day, then You will probably have to wait even longer when requesting a cashout.

The quantity of the games offered is important too. Not everyone likes to play No Limit Hold’Em all day long and good poker rooms will offer You many more games like Omaha, Stud or Draw Poker Games.

The quantity of players online is also important, especially for people who prefer the not so popular varieties of poker. It’s of no use to You when the poker room offers Omaha games, but it takes hours before a table is filled because there are few opponents.

The quality of Your opponents is vital to You of course. Rooms with many weak players will give You more profit, but unless You have access to poker databases ( there are some available online, but usually You will have to pay to use them ) it will be hard to know in advance. On the other site rooms with many good players enable You to learn from them and become a superb player Yourself faster.

I use too be a casino games dealer and I’m Pretty good at handling cards. I had an Idea to design My business cards like playing cards so I can pass them out to people like I was dealing poker. If anyone can give me a website or a company name where I can get this done I’d appreciate it.