rules, guides and strategy

Posts in category Table Games

Pachinko

Feb07
2011 Written by admin

Pachinko is a fascinating game that has gradually gained worldwide acceptance after being

popular in Japan for many years.  Western readers familiar with the game of Bagatelle may be unaware that Pachinko is though to derive from that parlor game rather than the other way around.  Specifically the first Pachinko machines were called Corinth Games and were originally a children’s toy.  The name Corinth derives from the name Corinthian Bagatelle popular from the 1920s onwards, hence the reasoning that Bagatelle precedes Pachinko. Pachinko became popular in Japan as an adult pastime in the 1930s but it fell out usage during the war years.

It’s a fairly simple game, the only skill required is adjusting the speed at which metal ball is propelled onto the board.  Pachinko is played on a vertical table and it may be thought of as a type of pinball without flippers for those who don’t remember Bagatelle.  The ball is propelled up the side of the board and follows the curve of the machine, dropping down through a maze of pins into one of possibly hundreds of slots at the bottom.

In Japan, where gambling for money is illegal, when the ball drops into a winning slot the player will be rewarded with more balls.  These can be swapped with tokens which can then be swapped for cash at a type of black market premises nearby.  The two establishments may well be owned by the same company.  Pachinko is phenomenally popular in Japan and to a similar extant in Taiwan.  In Japan especially it is not unknown for players to queue for hours before the parlours open and even for the parlour to operate a type of lottery to decide who the first hundred players will be (assuming 100 machines).

I made the statement at the beginning of the post that Pachinko has gained worldwide acceptance but I should qualify this by saying that online it is becoming popular – bricks and mortar casinos are less willing to feature the machines – possibly because of a lack of direct cash prizes.

More In-Depth Pachinko to follow…..

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Roulette

Dec16
2010 Written by admin

Roulette is an outstandingly popular casino game. It has been played in it’s present form for more than two hundred years and various versions date back well before then.  The name is derived from the French term for ‘little wheel’ for obvious reasons.

Like the best ideas, it’s a very simple concept with depths of strategy and betting systems that hook the player in and make him think that it’s possible to beat the house.  Roulette is played on a wheel spun by the croupier.  A ball is then placed into the wheel spinning in the opposite direction and eventually falls into one of the slots as the ball and the wheel slows.

A European wheel is numbered 1 – 36 plus one zero (totalling 37 numbers) while an American wheel has one zero and one double zero (totalling 38 numbers).  Odd numbers are red and even numbers are black in the ranges 1 – 10 and 19 – 28 while the opposite is the case for the remaining numbers. The zeros are coloured green.

The Betting Layout

The Layout

The diagram to the left shows the betting layout for a European wheel (hence only one zero at the top).

After the croupier has spun the wheel he will indicate a point at which no more bets can be placed and the ball will eventually fall into one of the numbered slots.

Before the ‘no more bets’ , the players must decide which bets they want to place.  They place chips onto the betting mat accordingly and at a basic level it’s a very simple.

If you place a chip on number one you have a 1 in 37 chance of winning and would receive a payout of your stake x 35 if the ball fell kindly.

You can also place bets according to the other markers on the mat, red or black, odds or evens, numbers 1 – 12, column one etc and the payout differs according to the bet.  It’s even possible to bet on groups of numbers by placing chips on the line between two numbers (to bet on both), or on the corner of four numbers (to bet on all four).

Once the ball is in it’s resting place, no-one touches the table or chips until the croupier has determined the winning placings.  He will sweep the losing chips away and awards the payouts to the winners.

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