Games at the Casinos Introduction 

The oldest saying regarding casinos has to be the one that comments on the fact that a casino is only as good as the games that it has. This is definitely true in the online realm, where casinos have little else to measure themselves by except the entertainment, but it is also true in the offline realm where casinos have free beverages and alternate forms of entertainment they can offer. As far as games at the casino are concerned, there are a number of different groups they can be divided into. Some of the major groups are discussed below.

Card Games 

Card games are big at casinos, since a deck of cards is perhaps the single most used example to illustrate statistics, chance, probability and betting odds. There are many great card games that you can play at casinos, the most famous of which is probably blackjack. In addition to this excellent game however, there is also baccarat, casino war, Pai Gow poker and many other card games that are variously available between different casinos. Nowadays, all casinos will offer blackjack and baccarat and depending on the specific casino you visit, they might offer more than that as well.

 Table Games 

Card games are technically known as table games as well in some casinos, but the differentiating factor between table games and card games is that table games do not include cards in any of their forms. For this reason, games like blackjack and baccarat which are played on tables are not part of the table games category in most of the casinos around. Table games instead include games like European Roulette, American Roulette and craps. All of these games involve the use of tables, but instead of cards they have other things like wheels, balls and dice to be used. Sic Bo is another example of a table game that you will find in many casinos both online and offline.

 Slot Machines 

Another major category of game that you will find at all casinos is the slot machine. Slot machines are available all over the place, but they make their primary home in the casinos of the world. Slot machines are often placed in casinos by the hundreds and many different varieties of slot machine are often available. As far as games at the casinos are concerned, slot machines are perhaps the most popular as well as the biggest money maker for the actual casino.

 Video Poker Machines 

Just like slot machines, video poker machines can be found in many different places outside the casino, but casinos are where their primary homes tend to be. Also like slot machines, video poker machines are usually placed within casinos by the hundreds, allowing people the chance to play this high demand machine any time they want. There are many different variants of video poker in typical casinos such as jacks or better and deuces wild and the more modern video poker machines you will find in most casinos let you choose between the different variants to decide which one you want to play. The same is also true for online casinos.

If there ever was going to be a buyer’s market in the city of Las Vegas, many people would argue that we have hit the time now. It is perhaps the first time in history (certainly the first time in recorded history) that property values have been down all across the city of Las Vegas. Because of its intimate connections to casinos and gambling, Las Vegas has always been a centre that has been able to weather a lot of the economic problems that the rest of the country has been experiencing. However, it appears that with a potential Second Great Depression on the way for not just the United States but the world market as well, Las Vegas has seen its fair share of tanking just like the rest of the property values in the rest of the country.

This was brought home in no finer way than by the selling of a house that was done by a casino manager in the city of Las Vegas just recently. The man’s name is K. Krishna Murthy and while he has not been a casino manager his whole life, he does have ties to the MGM Mirage Casinos. He worked the quality assurance department of the casino as the manager and therefore knows quite a bit about how things work in the gambling industry. Ever since leaving that post however he has been in portfolio management for InfoSys. When he and his wife Radhika sold their house on October 7th, the asking price they ended up getting for it was $414,510. The house is a four-bedroom and three-bathroom home and when they initially purchased it five years ago they paid $400,000 for it.

The house was worth a lot more than the just under $415,000 they got for it just a few months ago, but the softening housing market has really caused property values in the city of Las Vegas to tank. In 2008 alone the housing market in Las Vegas has seen around 14,500 sales with the median price of a home sale in Las Vegas being around $215,000. All of these numbers are somewhat complicated to interpret, but the bottom line that one has to draw after comparing time trends is that the housing market in Las Vegas has gone downhill big time. This is not the time to be selling homes in Las Vegas unless you really have no other choice, but it is the time to be purchasing property in preparation for the upward swing in the long term that absolutely has to come at some point in time.

Casinos are experiencing the property crunch as well, with many of them being forced to put projects on hold because the equity holdings of their current properties have not gotten them enough loan money to make the expansions they had planned before the bottom fell out of the market. When casinos will be able to get back on track is anybody’s guess, but chances are good it will not be anytime soon.