That all said, here is a beginner’s guide to a few casino games and what they won’t tell you at the casinos.

Roulette:  The object of the game is to walk up to the table, lose a large sum of money, and walk away with a blondie on your arm.  Bonus points if you scream “COME OOOOOOOON, RED!”

Slots:  The goal of slots is to first gather all the coins from underneath your couch cushion, put them into a plastic cup, and then turn into a 75 year-old woman who reeks of cigarettes.  Then feed your coins into a machine, lose, and walk away.

These people are 135 years old. 
They are well on their way to being big winners.

Keno:  Keno is kind of like playing the lottery where you try to pick the winning numbers.  In other words, kind of like withdrawing money from the ATM and then lighting it on fire.

Craps:  This game is tricky.  First, in order to succeed in understanding the craps table and odds, you must first graduate from MIT with a degree in advanced mathematics.  Then roll the dice and do your best not to ”crap out” which sounds more like something that happens after  a night of Taco Bell.

Happy gambling, everybody!   

Check out this news item from Casino Tropez Mobile.  Seems that some dude from Norway, “Janne,” took home a whopping 28 big ones playing video poker.  In and of itself, that is a big deal.  But on a freaking cell phone???  ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

Seriously, I can’t even send a 200 character text message without my mom calling while I’m typing, causing me to lose the entire thing.  HOW DOES ANYBODY IN THE YEAR 2008 GAMBLE LONG ENOUGH….ON A CELLULAR PHONE!?!?!….TO WIN TWENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS!?!?!

How much time does it even require in one sitting to win that much money anyway?  When I’m playing casino games online or in Vegas, I drop what I’m doing to call my friends after going up five hundy!  I start getting the shakes when my handset gives me the low battery message.   

So yeah…props to you, Janne.  You made out like a bandit.  But you probably missed three calls about the hot blondie at the kegger down the street.  So in the end, you’re probably broke even.

BEEP!  “Hi, Janne, it’s Veronica.  I reaaaaaally wish you had answered.  I have a special surprise for you but alas, you’re not there.  I guess I’ll just have to call Tom.  I’m SURE he’ll answer…” 

So now I’m watching the proverbial toaster (or pot of boiling water), waiting for it to hit.  This isn’t going to take years, is it?  This is 2008, man, and I’m a card-carrying member of the short attention span generation who has no understanding of long-term gratification.  Let’s go already!

I told my buddy in Vegas last weekend to ask people about Crazy21…no one had even heard of it yet.  So far only 888 seems to be offering it.

On another note, what determines which movies spark trends and which don’t?  Kevin Spacey’s in this movie.  Everyone loved “The Usual Suspects”.  How come that didn’t cause everyone to go out and burn down entire villages like Keyser Soze?  Just wondering.

Allright, Crazy21, let’s go.  Coming soon to online casinos near you.

If you’re serious about betting though, there are a few caveats you’ll want to be aware of.  Oh sure, there are the obvious ones, the sports betting blunders that you can find on any gambling site, such as the gamblers’ fallacy which states that past history does not determine future performance.  Fifty consecutive coin flips resulting in heads doesn’t mean a fifty-first is any more likely.  (Although if you’re flipping a coin fifty times, you might want to re-examine how you’re spending your time.)

Now I’d like to examine a few more lesser-known sports betting blunders that you’ll need to be aware to take the big step from Losing Joe to Betting Pro.

1)  Never compete with your girlfriend in a March Madness tournament bracket.  For most sporting events, betting success is determined by things like knowledge, wisdom, and experience.  For the NCAA tournament, however, your average pool winner tends to have watched approximately 2 minutes of basketball EVER, makes picks based on jersey color, and oh yes, is a woman.  Losing to someone who admittedly knows nothing about sports is about as pleasing as having your toenails ripped off your feet by a pair of pliers.

2) Never make sports bets on games and proceed to chug multiple Bud Lights in the second half of a Final Four qualifier.  I’m not saying I did it, I’m just saying somebody in my house was running to the bathroom every seven minutes like an 80 year-old as Stephen Curry was bringing Davidson back against Kansas.  (Ok, I did it.)

3) Never make your picks, then change them, then change them again, then regret changing them back, then tell yourself you’ll beat yourself if you don’t take that trendy upset in the second round.  This is a surefire way to want to douse your hair in gasoline and light your head on fire.  Bracket regret sucks so trust your gut the first time around. 

Is it the Final Four yet?  Excuse me while I go make my picks. 

Unfortunately, much of Day 1 of the NCAA Tournament was uneventful and my temperature soared.  With the lack of upsets, I had to pacify myself with a few games of online blackjack to get myself right. 

Friday morning?  Even worse.  With the games not beginning till mid-day, I felt like hell.  Throbbing head, hives, double vision.  Then something happened.  I won $85 on slots before going 12-4 in my picks that day, capped by my pick of Cinderella Davidson.  With each correct pick, my bracket looked better and I felt my strength returning. 

Just to be safe, I squeezed in a doctor’s appointment between the 2nd and 3rd games in Tampa.  What he told me confirmed my suspicions…

Yup.  I’ve got a case of March Madness. 

With Davidson’s Stephen Curry…who needs penicillin?

Well, if you want to get a look at what that would be like, you don’t have to wait long.  On March 28th, “21″ will be released in theaters, a Kevin Spacey movie based on a group of MIT students in the book “Bringing Down the House.”  Oh yeah…did I mention that THIS REALLY HAPPENED???  ARE YOU KIDDING ME???  When I was college-age, I was eating pizza for breakfast and watching the same “SportsCenter” highlights for the third time.  I think I need to re-evaluate my life.

Anyhoo, I’m not going to beat myself up at the lost millions (or my lack of tape burns) because now I have a shot at redemption.  To prepare for what many think will be an all-out blackjack blitz, online casino game provider Entertasia has released the new game Crazy21 which puts a spin on the classic blackjack game.  I’m all over this one.

What makes Crazy21 special are the side bets.  There’s the Safe Bet, the Highest Hand Bet, and the 777 Jackpot Bet, which allows you to place money on the odds of you being dealt three straight 7s.  I like to call this the “Pull a Crisp Bill Out of Your Pocket and Light It on Fire” bet.  Call me crazy.

But the other bets make the game intriguing. 

Online gambling is such a different animal from old-fashioned brick-and-mortar casinos.  Real casinos get your adrenaline going like nothing else.  It’s been a while since I’ve been to the City of Sin so I decided to relive the Las Vegas casino experience by renting a classic movie:  “Casino”.

“Casino” stars everybody’s favorite tough guys, Robert “Are you talkin’ to me?” De Niro and Joe “What do ya mean, funny?” Pesci.  That should have been enough to let me know how this movie would unfold.  This movie is just like the real Vegas casino experience.

I remember my last time in the Bellagio, when someone pissed off my friend so he stabbed him.  That was cool.  And then there was the time that we beat up some guys in the Luxor, sticking icepicks in their hoo-has and then squeezing one’s head till his eyeball popped out.  That rocked. 

Ok, seriously, this one time, I was logging on to this online casino, and this one bad dude Nicky Two Fingers broke into my place and buried me alive.  It sucked.

Yep…upon further review, “Casino” is just like a real-life casino experience.  I give it two severed thumbs up.

Heh heh, what was I saying again?  Heh heh….heh heh.  I’m pretty funny.

Anyway, Reefer Poker is one of the newcomers to the online gambling community and they’re, like, pretty cool.  They have players from all over, make it easy for you to deposit money and get started, and their site is real nice looking.  

Hey, is it 4:20?  Deal the chronic, Spicoli…I mean cards.   

You read that correctly.  This woman was so unable to walk away from the table that she “brushed her teeth” using disposable wipes and spent days at the table without eating or sleeping.  Ok, that’s just disgusting. 

For some reason, I don’t see this happening with online blackjack.

Why am I reminded of the old lady who sued McDonald’s after spilling hot coffee on herself?  It’s a sad story; Taveras lost her law firm, her apartment, her PARENTS’ home, and owes the IRS $58,000. 

DISPOSABLE WIPES???

Call me callous but if you were in her situation, don’t you think you would have summoned the strength to walk away somewhere around, I don’t know, $50,000?  If you had the strength and discipline to pass the bar exam, shouldn’t you have had a little left in the tank to stand up and leave before cleaning the ol’ teeth with wipes?

Yikes.

At the end of the day though, what attracts me to these casino games is the fact that you can hit it big.  In five minutes at the craps table, you can go from even to up five hundred bucks in the blink of an eye.

Then there’s slots.  This is a game I’ve never gotten.  Not the idea of the game, more the motivations of some people to play.  Ok, maybe you’re not a big gambler and don’t know the rules of the various games.  Slots is a safe way to have the feeling of gambling minus the fear of not knowing what you’re doing. 

But what’s up with penny slots?  I have a friend who plays online slots, five cents at a time.  With the twenty bucks she’s out at the end of the year, couldn’t she have been better served, I don’t know, buying a book on how to win at slots?  What happens if she wins and is up five bucks at year’s end?  Does she celebrate by taking herself out for a McDonald’s value meal?  I’m just saying.