Massive competition in the online gaming market has meant online casinos are forever trying different things to get you to sign up with them (and stay with them).  If you perform a quick internet search for a term such as “online casino bonus”, this is what gets returned to you:

So 25 million or so results.  Obviously they’re not all relevant but it should give an indication of the scale of the industry in 2011.  Anyway the following is a brief overview of the main bonuses available to those on the lookout for some free stuff.

Sign-up bonus – also known as the new player bonus, this will reward new sign-ups with a cash bonus equal to a percentage of the amount they have deposited.  Deposit $1000 for example and receive 30%  ($300) as a bonus.

Refer-a-friend bonus – some of us have friends and if you do too, get them to join the same site with you as referrer and you’ll be rewarded with some sort of free gift.  Your friend will then be eligible for all the new player bonuses available as well.  The casino retains one player and nets one more.

VIP bonus – this is more of a loyalty/reward scheme than anything else and there’s no effort required on your part to partake in it.  Just by playing online games and depositing a bit of cash occasionally you’ll be accruing points which can, at certain levels, be swapped for free stuff, tournament entries and the like.  The more you play, the greater value bonuses you will receive.

Deposit Bonus – A deceptively lucrative bonus this one – it can reward you with a percentage of your deposit each time you do so, depending on the deposit method.  A certain debit card may provide a 15% deposit bonus or a NETeller transfer may garner 15%.  It all depends on the casino but it can be quite a nice little earner.

Digital Wallet

For a while, the Digital Wallet was a solution to a problem that didn’t really exist.  It was designed as a mechanism to store electronic money before there was any need to do that. Even now, systems which provides that sort of technology are not widely used.

The Digital Wallet however, morphed into a different sort of creature which actually became useful for some people.  With the advent of online shopping, some institutions saw a need for a method by which customers could store all of their personal details in one place – credit card details, driving licence information, loyalty card information or anything you wished.  As the boom in online shopping continued, online retailers recognised a need to simplify the purchasing procedure and began to link up with Digital Wallet providers.

If the systems were compatible and well designed, no longer would customers have to fill in addresses, credit card details and other information for every purchase, they could now direct the retailer to a single, Digital Wallet ID.

For online casinos, the system is as useful as for any other retailer – they can offer a hassle-free way of transferring money and one that can be considered secure.  Obviously for the customer it offers all the advantages (and disadvantages) of the payment method chosen.

For some though, handing over large amounts of your personal information to a third party and trusting them with those details is a step too far.  For others, security is too much of a perceived risk to use this service – better to hang on to your credit cards and just fill in the information each time (the website will probably remember most of the details anyway).

As always however, the choice is yours!

Anyone can use a Prepaid Card and this is undoubtedly the main benefit of this deposit method.  Perhaps you don’t have a bank account – in developing countries this is not particularly unusual but those people are still eligible to gamble online if they so desire.  Of course if you can’t get a bank account, there’s no way you’re going to be getting a credit card either.  Without either there’s also no point in having a digital wallet of some sort.  Or maybe you’ve donned your tin foil hat and are just trying to stay off the grid, so to speak.

Prepaid Cards have been around for some years now for various other purposes.  Most of us are probably familiar with topping up credit on mobile phones using this method.  Similarly online casinos have, in recent years, discovered that there is a market for this particular method and have embraced it somewhat.

It works like this, you head down to your local store or corner shop (or wherever the casino recommends you buy a card from) and hand over however much money you want to deposit.  You’ll get a card or some sort of voucher in return and now you can head home, log in and follow the instructions to transfer the money to the casino.  That’s it.

There are a couple of variations, for example UK operator William Hill produces its own cards which can be purchased at any of their many bricks and mortar outlets.  Some cards can be retained and topped up repeatedly, cutting down on a bit of plastic waste.

An additional benefit is security – even if you’re account was somehow compromised, there’s no credit card or bank account details to be stolen.  The worst that can happen is that you lose your card on the way home from the shop.

Because of the international nature of many online casinos, you may often find yourself transferring money abroad.  This type of arrangement has been around since 1974 when a group of international banks got together to devise a way to make the previously laborious process easier.  This resulted in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and we now refer to the codes allotted to banks and accounts as SWIFT codes.  In Europe the International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is also used.

The main advantage of a bank transfer is its trustworthyness and reliability.  It is extremely rare for a transfer to go wrong.  As we mentioned previously, if you have a reliable internet connection, there’s no need event to step away from your computer to initiate the transfer.

Disadvantages?  There’s a couple – firstly it can be expensive, depending on what country you’re transferring from and to.  Following legislation covering Europe, Europeans can transfer money within the European Union for the price of a national transfer.  This means it’s free or very cheap.  Americans tend to be worse off – it’s not uncommon for one transaction to cost up to $50 which makes it unsuitable for all but the largest transfers.

The second disadvantage is the length of time it can take.  A few days to complete is not unusual and of course if you’re desperate to play right now this may not be the method for you.  So the choice is yours, very reliable but you need some patience.

It is certainly similar to Texas Hold’em but the differences are enough to create an entirely different game.  For a refresher of the rules of Texas Hold’em, have a look here if you can’t remember the sequences of betting and dealing.

So what’s the big differences then?  In Omaha each player is dealt four cards, not the standard two in Hold’em.  That is not the crucial difference though.  To make the best five card hand, each player must use two cards from his hand and three from the five community cards available.  This may may not sound too complicated but if you’re coming from the mindset of Hold’em, it can take a small leap of logic to adjust to the new rules.  This can be especially tough if you’re playing H.O.R.S.E, or some other multi-variant game.

Imagine in your four card hand you are holding an Ace of Clubs, a 3 of Hearts, a 7 of Hearts and a 5 of Diamonds.   The community card draw results in a Ten, Jack, Queen and King of Clubs and 8 of Spades.  In some other game this would be fantastic hand, a Royal Flush, but not in this game.  You must use two of the cards in your hand and three from the community draw, meaning this suddenly becomes a very weak hand – just a high card in fact.

It is this feature of the game which often catches out new players, especially when it comes to betting early on in a hand.  It’s a game which should be practised before gambling your own money against a seasoned Omaha veteran.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL6XQOQhfGA

If it’s starting to sound a bit familiar now then that’s no surprise.  This is one of the simplest poker variants to learn and if not as exciting as Texas Hold’em or a Stud game, at least it will teach you the basics of betting, bluffing and the had rankings.

So this is how it works – a game is played with one deck and this limits the number of players to a maximum of about six/seven.  Each player is attempting to end up with the best possible hand according to general poker hand rankings, or to bluff their opponents into believing they have the best hand.  The game uses the blinds or ante betting system.

The dealer is one of the players and this task rotates clockwise after every hand.  Each player is dealt five cards and the game proceeds as follows:

A first round of betting – each player can call, raise, check of fold as the hand requires.  If more than one player remains after this round we see the Draw.

The Draw – each player can now discard any number of cards they wish and have them replaced with a similar number from the top of the deck.  When each remaining player has completed this task we have another round of betting.

A second round of betting - each player can call, raise, check or fold and when this is completed, if two or more players remain in the hand we see the showdown, in which hands are revealed and a winner is proclaimed.

Pretty easy eh?  And a good way to learn the basics of poker.

Credit Cards

This is usually the method of choice for performing any transactions online, not just at casinos.  It’s virtually instant, flexible and easy to use, although that can of course be a disadvantage.  Some gamblers can find it all too easy to spend money they may struggle to pay back eventually.

Every online casino will accept credit cards but you should be aware of the costs.  The agreement you signed between yourself and the credit card provider will stipulate an amount of interest to be paid on any borrowed money.  It’s also not unknown for online casinos to treat a credit card payment as a cash advance – this will incur a payment similar to that charged if you were to were withdraw money from an ATM with your credit card.

Debit Cards

Debit cards are an excellent method of payment if you’re unsure of your ability to resist temptation.  It’s directly linked to your bank account and in almost all cases you can not spend more than you have in that account.  As always though, check your terms and conditions because in a few cases it is possible to use more money than you have, especially if you have an overdraft facility.  This will obviously incur charges.

For responsible gamblers, the credit card’s the one, for those easily tempted the debit card may be a better choice.

In this article we are going to explain the basic rules of Seven Card Stud and the re-emergence of it as a popular poker variant.  Seven Card Stud was a very popular game in 19th century America, especially on the East coast.  Prior to this it is also widely reported to have been played by Civil War soldiers, gold rush miners and of course cowboys.

The aim of Seven Card Stud is to win the hand by having the best five card selection according to standard poker rankings or to bluff everyone else out of the game.  It can be played by two to eight people, any more and it’s possible to run out of cards.

The dealer is always one of the players and the dealership rotates after every hand.  The dealer first deals three cards to each player – two face down and one face up.  Seven Card Stud features a bring-in – a small, mandatory, pre-determined bet to stimulate the wagering and this is laid by the person with the lowest ranking face up card.  The first round of betting now follows and as long as two or more players are remaining, another card is dealt to each player.  This is the fourth card and known as the fourth street.

Further rounds of betting, elimination and dealing now follow – known as fifth, sixth and seventh streets – each round assuming that more than one person remains in the game.  Following seventh street and a final round of betting, we head towards the showdown where each player still in the game reveals his best hand.

With eight players it is still possible to run out of cards – eight players times seven cards equals fifty six cards, four more than a standard deck.  If no players fold this situation can be rectified by replacing seventh street with one community card which all players are able to use.

The subject of this article is the Heads Up.  This is possibly one of the most dramatic of gameplay styles and it features just two players.  There are two occasions on which a heads up can occur. the first is during a match set up just for that purpose and the second is when a multi-player match comes down to the final two contenders.

The first example can offer some of the most dramatic gameplay – many specific two player heads up matches tend to be high stakes affairs and large amounts of money can be won and lost in a scarily short amount of time.  Some matches of course take a lot longer – for example the legendary (and possibly apocryphal) match between Johnny Moss and Nick ‘The Greek’ Dandolos in 1951.  If the stories are to be believed Johnny Moss, regarded as best all-round poker player at the time, relieved the high stakes gambler Dandolos of between $2 million and $4 million over a period of several months.  The match was set up by Benny Binion as an attraction at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas.  To read more about this famous match up and why it may not have happened, please go here.

The second category of heads up play will occur at the end of every multi-player game when just two players are left.  The rules, in a game such as Texas Hold’em, are usually tweaked slightly to take this into account.  For example the dealer now lays the small blind while the other player is the big blind. Additionally the dealer acts first before the flop but second in all other instances.

A shootout for example requires a mix of patience and aggression – if you’re too patient, your stack will be depleted when the blinds are raised, leaving you in a weak position.  If you’re too aggressive, you’ll usually be called and found out sooner rather than later.

In a standard game with no time limit and no raised blinds however, patience is usually the key and a cautious player may have the advantage.

In this article we’re going to talk about a third tournament type – the Sit ‘n’ Go. When you view the table details for Sit ‘n’ Go tournaments in your online casino lobby, you’ll see something like $100 buy-in and blinds of $0.50 – $1.00.  If there are ten players that’s usually $1000 to the winner (minus the rake).  Sometimes the top three players will split the winnings in an appropriate ratio – perhaps 50% to the winner, 30% to second place and 20% to third.

Usually this is just a one table game – unlike a shootout the winner won’t progress to the next table, he or she is just the winner.  Occasionally though you will see multi-table Sit ‘n’ Go’s but only because it’s easy to set up online.  As players are eliminated, tables will close down and contestants will be reallocated to to other tables.  It’s really like having one giant table but in a user friendly format.

So what skills do you need for a Sit ‘n’ Go?  It depends a lot on the blinds – if they increase, let’s say every five minutes, you have to be fairly aggressive as if you were playing a shootout.  If the blinds don’t increase then patience may be a virtue.