Archive for the Baccarat category.
October 26, 2007
Baccarat is an easy and straightforward game. There are no confusing strategies or systems in work at the baccarat table. You only need to have a clear understanding of the game rules to play and win at a game of baccarat. However, certain simple tips can help you play this interesting game confidently.
Baccarat Tips
(1) There are normally eight decks of cards in a game of Baccarat. You have a better advantage of winning through the banker’s hand if the game is with lesser number of card decks.
(2) Baccarat offers three options for betting-Banker’s hand, player’s hand, and tie. Banker’s and player’s hand offer almost similar house edge and betting on either can bring similar winnings.
(3) Occurrence of a tie in a game of baccarat is very remote. However, you get back your initial bet amounts in case of a tie. However, if any player bets on a tie, you cannot get back your bet amount.
(4) Betting on a tie as the outcome of a baccarat game is very rare as house odds for a tie are as high as 14%. Hence, if you bet on a tie as the result, and if it is so, you have to pay 14% of your winnings to the casino.
(5) House edge for the banker’s hand is 1.09% and casinos charge an extra 5% as taxes or commissions for winnings on this hand. Even then, you stand to gain by betting on the banker’s hand as the outcome of a baccarat game.
(6) House edge for the player’s hand is 1.24%. Hence, you pay the equivalent percentage of your winnings from the player’s hand to the casino.
(7) There is no set pattern for the outcomes of any baccarat game. Baccarat is a game of chance and you cannot bet on any eventuality as the sure outcome of the next round of play.
(8) Have a clear and through understanding and knowledge of the game rules of Baccarat to be aware of any mistakes by any player or dealer in a game.
(9) Dealer burns that many cards as the number that appears on the face up card on the baccarat table.
(10) Player receives the first and third dealt cards while banker receives the second and fourth dealt cards.
(11) You take only the last of the two-digit card totals. If total of your cards is 12, it is only two.
(12) If the total of the initially dealt cards is eight or nine, the player or the banker automatically wins and it is a natural hand. This becomes a tie situation only if two hands have the similar occurrence.
(13) Only a natural nine can beat a natural eight hand.
(14) You need to draw if your card total is less than six or seven.
(15) Bank always draws on a total from zero to two. Card total of three makes the bank draw only if the player draws a third card of eight. If the player’s third card is an eight, nine or an Ace, Banker can draw on card total of four.
(16) A third card between four and seven with the player can help the bank draw on a total of five. Bank stands on a total of six if player has a third card of either six or seven only.
(17) Bank always stands on a total of seven.
October 17, 2007
On September 17th, 2007, DEQ Systems announced that the Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino in San Diego, California has leased four baccarat gaming tables by EZ and is the first in the whole world to acquire DEQ’s EZTRAKTM.
The EZTRAKTM is an LCD baccarat card hand tracking system which takes note of the trends in a baccarat game and side bets. Barona’s Director of Table Games, Michael Patterson said that EZ BaccaratTM table, which has no casino commission, has received good reviews from their most important players because it removes the hurdle and trouble of counting how much the casino commission and collection.
They are honored and happy to be the first casino in the state of California to feature the EZ Baccarat tables in their gaming area. It is a good development for both players and the casino.
Earle G. Hall, DEQ Systems Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer said that the Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino is a top class gaming establishment and has good reputation for being an experience gaming innovator. That is the reason that they have chosen to debut their baccarat tables.
The baccarat tables of DEQ also help players to keep track of their present and previous statistics from the information of the shoe. The EZ Baccarat table removes the commission without affecting the game.
It only replaces the five percent commission on every winning hand by not allowing one bank hand, which is the “Dragon7TM. Gamblers can make the “Dragon7TM” wager that has a payout of 40:1 when the 3 card winning bank hand happens.
October 02, 2007
On September 17th, 2007, it was publicly announced that the Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino facility is putting up brand new baccarat tables that have LCD screens accompanied with good and clear gambling sounds.
Earl G. Hall, the DEQ Systems Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer EZTRAK said that their company’s baccarat table helps players in keeping track of their progress with the use of physical statistics and keeping track of present and past data from the shoe. The main difference of DEQ systems’ baccarat table from the normal baccarat table is that they have removed the casino commission.
In the normal baccarat table, players will have to pay a 5% commission if they bet on the banker hand. There is no commission required for the wagers on the player hand. This is good news for baccarat lovers because they will not be anymore bothered by the fact that they have to pay a percentage of their winnings to the casino.
Barona’s Director of Table Games, Michael Patterson said that they are very happy to be the first casino in the state of California to feature DEQ’s EZ Baccarat tables on their gambling floor. He added that this new development in baccarat gaming plays in a faster pace compared to the regular baccarat with commission and offers a more interesting gaming experience for players.
It’s a one-of-a kind good situation for both the gamer and the house. But it remains to be seen if a faster pace is good in the game or not considering a player’s bankroll. It also does not mean that because of the advantage of wagering on the banker hand rather than the player hand, it makes an unequal wagering opportunity.
So how does the house make any profit if the commission is removed from the new baccarat table of EZ Q? The EZ Baccarat table removes the commission and replaces the 5% commission on a winning bank hand by “prohibiting” one winning banker hand, which is a 3 card total of seven called the Dragon seven. Gamblers can make an insurance wager call the Dragon 7 wager that gives a total payout of 40:1 ratio when a 3 card bank hand happens.
September 18, 2007
By any standard, the Sept. 11 opening gala of Ingo Maurer’s new show at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Provoking Magic, was entirely conventional. Downstairs, a crowd of art glitterati and New York scenesters noshed and gabbed, little
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noting the design works around them. But, upstairs, where the German artist’s striking light installations and sculptural pieces will be on display until Jan. 27, 2008, jaw wagging quickly gave way to dropped jaws.
The 75-year-old Maurer, whose light-bathed work ranges from macro-scale sculptures of flowing, gilded ribbons to chandeliers reconstructed from shards of exploded tableware, is a visionary — an artist as well as a technical and entrepreneurial innovator. For 40 years, Maurer has been in the vanguard of a technological and aesthetic revolution that has transformed lighting from a mere convenience into a high-cachet object of desire. In the process, he has worked with designers from companies including Chanel, Issey Miyake, and DaimlerBenz (DAI) — and become a guru to artists and commercial manufacturers alike.
With the help of his wife, Jenny Lau, Maurer runs a small manufacturing operation in Munich, employing about 70. He believes that even the most radical innovations can eventually lead to commercially successful products. “I work on different levels,” he says. “By taking risks, we can bridge the fields of commercial products and what many people call art.”
Art Meets Commerce
Industry insiders often liken Maurer to other stars of the design world such as Philippe Starck or Michael Graves, though he is less well-known to the public. And yet, anyone who has strolled down Fifth Avenue in midtown New York in wintertime has likely walked under his giant, gleaming Unicef snowflake, made of some 10,000 Baccarat (Paris: FR0000064123 - news) crystals. Colossal hanging lamps, such as the ones he first installed in Munich’s Westfriedhof subway station in 1998, have become a staple of high-end retail and architectural design. And he’s working with style-savvy mass retailer Target (TGT) on a series of less costly products that could hit shelves next year. “I’m not just interested in creating for people who can pay,” he says of that development project. “I have no hesitation in being commercial. It’s what helps make the world go around.”
“His work marks a turning point, a reconciliation of what have until now been different trajectories, on the one hand, pure art, and on the other, commercial production,” says Ned Cramer, the editor in chief of Architectural Lighting magazine. “He’s taken these threads and woven them together, getting the public, whether they know it or not, to embrace edgier design and more provocative lighting.”
Maurer began his career in the early 1950s as an apprentice typographer. Eventually, he studied graphic design in Munich before working briefly in the U.S. He began experimenting with lighting after being struck by the beauty of a lightbulb in a Venetian pension, and in 1963, he founded Design M, later renamed Ingo Maurer. The design and manufacturing company has offices in the two cities Maurer calls home: Munich, where products are designed and produced, and New York.
Lighting the Way
Today, Maurer argues that while interest in lighting has flourished, too many designers are content to stay within fairly limited confines. In contrast, some of his designs, such as the Lucellino series — bare bulbs with soft feathered wings — or Wo bist du, Edison ? — an oversize hanging lamp with a lightbulb made of a 360-degree hologram — make him look positively anarchistic. “The mind must be provoked,” he says. “Some [of my] designs are a kind of protest against really boring commercial expositions that are too slick.”
But Maurer is not on the periphery of the industry. Rather, from an early age he focused on becoming a successful entrepreneur, developing new technologies to realize his visions. Products such as the MaMo Nouchies series and the Campari Light, a deep-red lamp composed of clustered Campari (Milan: CPR.MI - news) soda bottles, are now staples of posh, design-focused outlets such as Design Within Reach and are also available from his SoHo boutique, a retail store that opened in 1999. Pieces range in price from several hundred to many tens of thousands of dollars.
“He’s in a category by himself because the fixtures are so unusual,” says Bonnie Fogel, co-owner of the tony online modern furniture outlet UnicaHome.com. “It’s not a standard company because the lighting itself is an architectural element. It’s more than light.”
LED’ing by Example
In the 1980s, Maurer pioneered a low-voltage halogen lighting and cabling scheme, dubbed YaYaHo, which set the standard for the industry. More recently, he’s been at the forefront of development of light-emitting diode technology, and his pioneering experimentation has led the way for others to follow. LEDs are quickly becoming a technology du jour, hailed for their longevity and relatively sustainable qualities and showing up in a vast array of new designs from the headlamps of Audi (VLKAF) cars to Herman Miller (NASDAQ: MLHR - news) ’s (MLHR) award-winning LEAF lamp.
A series of Maurer’s LED pieces is on display at the Cooper-Hewitt show, his first solo museum exhibit in the U.S. Some embed hundreds of pulsing lights in transparent tables and benches. For the first time, he is also showing a prototype of LED wallpaper, the material comprising an intricate pattern of the small, light-emitting semiconductors. Maurer claims it’s the thinnest application of the technology in the world, and he is in talks with various potential partners to begin commercial production and distribution.
With the U.S. exhibition as a platform, Maurer has now turned his attention toward minimizing the energy footprint of some lighting. He is working on perfecting a more energy-efficient version of LED technology — organic light-emitting diodes [OLEDs]. These OLEDS could be embedded in thin, flexible materials and programmed to change color. Maurer champions this technology to counter the current trend for compact-fluorescent lighting. While acknowledging the need for energy-efficient developments within the industry, he believes compact fluorescents provide “boring” light — and move the industry in the wrong direction.
It’s a characteristically strong opinion from a man who, despite having passed retirement age some time ago, refuses to slow down just yet. His status as an artist has been solidified by a series of worldwide museum exhibitions, held at artistic centers such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museu de Arte Brasileira in Sao Paulo. And he remains a guiding light for other designers.
September 10, 2007
An ex-dealer from the Nooksack River Casino pleaded guilty to charges of one count of conspiracy from his participation in an alleged cheating ring that cost the casino more than $90,000 dollars.
In a plea agreement approved by the court, 24 year-old Levi Mayfield pleaded guilty of cheating card shufflers that allowed two of his co-suspects, George Lee and Tien Duc Vu to repeatedly cheat at the mini-baccarat game back in October 2005.
Mayfield also admitted that he was recruited to participate in the cheating scheme conducted by Jacob Nickels, the son of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. Nickels worked as a pit boss at a casino facility in Deming, Whatcom County from October 2003 until October 2006.
It is still not clear what affect Mayfield’s plea bargain will have on the case of Jacob Nickels. Atty. Jeffrey Robinson, Nickel’s Attorney, has no comment on the case at the moment.
Nickels has pleaded not guilty in June to one count of conspiracy and four counts of theft of money from a gaming facility on Indian reservations.
Mayfield and Nickels were among the dozen suspects that were arrested and subsequently indicted by the federal grand juries in Seattle and San Diego last May 2007.
The two suspects were allegedly involved in cheating rings that utilize bribes, electronic transmitters and card counters to embezzle casino facilities in Washington, California, Nevada, Connecticut, Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana and Canada of more than $3 million.
Prosecutors said that by not correctly shuffling the cards, the dealers fixed the games so that their co-conspirators will know which cards will be given next, allowing them to win huge amounts of cash in mini-baccarat and blackjack.
Prosecutors also said that Lee and Vu contacted Nickels in August 2005 and pleaded with him to introduce them to casino dealers that are interested in participating in a cheating ring with them.
Nickels then recruited Mayfield and another dealer, Kasey McKillip to join the cheating ring. Nickels allegedly accepted $5,000 dollars from Lee for introducing them to the two dealers.
A lawyer for McKillip petitioned the court last week to postpone the trial to September 14th, 2007 from August 13th, 2007 to give them more time to review all the evidence in the case. Atty. Jeffrey Robinson said that they will file a petition for the continuance of the case.