I forget exactly when this series was published on the 'Net at Rolling Good Times, of which I was a founding partner, but it had to be sometime in 1996 judging by the fact that the computer I used was a 486-66 that ran Win95 and this was, to the best of my knowledge, the first public review of the casino.

Anyway, the casino I talk about here was the very first operation set up by what is today Microgaming Systems, one of the leading suppliers of software to the Internet casino industry. The story mostly speaks for itself, so I won't bore you any more other than to say that the first server they used was a Pentium 90! It's absolutely amazing how far we have come. I'm starting to feel old....naaah.

Well, actually a visit to a casino on a computer which is located in South Africa. The operators arranged for me to visit as a guest recently and allowed me to play the games they offer with "funny money". The casino is located at www.casino.co.za, but please don't call , since it is open only to residents of South Africa at this time. The operators obviously hope that will change someday, but for the moment, they're only accepting accounts from verified residents of their country.

I gained entrance to the casino by first downloading their casino software package. For my Windows 95 format, it was a 1408 K file which came in quickly and was easily installed. Once that was in, I logged into my internet server and transferred to the casino site. The casino software was all I required for this; I did not have my Web browser fuctioning. After logging in with the ID and password they gave me, a screen notified me that I had a 100 Rand balance in my account, and did I wish to purchase more? The screen advised me the purchase would be charged to my credit card which they had on file and since I didn't have a card on file, I naturally went ahead and purchased another 1000 Rand, giving me a balance of 1100 Rand. (I'm sure that if I wasn't a guest, that purchase would not have been approved.) By the way, there was no sign of any fees being charged for this, no setup fees, registration fees, etc. Free to get in; the way it should be. I should also mention that in all the steps along the way, the casino's toll-free number was made available to me if I needed to talk to a real person. I never needed any help, so I don't know how efficient their tech help staff is, but it seemed they were eager to assist.

Getting to the game of your choice is easy. Once the financials are completed, a menu of the games which are available is displayed. Currently Casino.co.az has five games available: Blackjack; Roulette; Video Poker, "Numbers" slots and "Lucky 7s" slots. I played them all, so I'll describe each more fully in its appropriate section.

At last! A dream come true.... the chance to play Blackjack at home. I took off my pants (always wanted to play in my shorts) and logged into the game at 8:30 pm CDT on Saturday, April 20. Now these guys are about 8 hours ahead of me (7 with daylight savings?....hell, I don't know), so it was early in the AM there when I entered the casino. The blackjack game is a lot like most of those free games on the 'Net; just room for the dealer's cards, my hand, a few command buttons, tool bar at the top and a box at the bottom displaying my balance: 1100 Rand. (That equates to about US$280, since a Rand is worth just over $.25.) Hey...blackjack on the cheap! The minimum bet was 1 Rand, so I could play quarter BJ, if I wanted. The limits of betting are determined by the player through a pull-down menu; the spreads are 1-10; 5-50; 10-100, etc. The maximum bet per hand which they will take is 1000R ($250.00). Not too shabby.

Now the bad news: The only options available to the player are "Hit" and "Stand". Yo, guys. I need "Double" and "Split" and "Insurance" (and, in a perfect world, "Surrender" ) to play the game my way. Got a pair of eights? "Hit" or "Stand". Ouch! They also do not reveal the number of decks they are using, either. I'm sure if I ask, they'll tell me, but I get the feeling it's single deck which is shuffled before each hand. There goes the card-counting.

But, it hasn't cost me a thing to get to this point, and I'm literally playing on their money, so....let's see some cards. On my first hand I bet 10R and the cards came sliding sloooowly out from the right: Upcard for the dealer (a 7), Queen for me; hole card for the dealer, a King for me. "Hit" or "Stand"? Well, I'll "Stand". Hit the button and a sign came up: "You Stand". The dealer sloooowly turned over her (his?...it's?) holecard to display a Jack. "You Win!". Bink. Credit the account 10R. That's how it went: slooowly, until about hand #6, when I had a 13 vs the dealer's 10. I called for a "Hit" and it didn't come. I waited for about 4 minutes before giving up. My balance at that point showed 1130 Rand (hey... they don't call me The GameMaster for nothing, you know; even in cyberspace), so I hit "Exit'. A prompt came up about leaving an unresolved hand, but I hit "Exit Anyway"... the last time I played BJ at the rate of 15 hands an hour was at Resorts in Atlantic City on their opening day in 1978. So, I went to play Roulette, and when I got in, I saw my 1130 had arrived with me. The 10R on the table at Blackjack was evidently lost, but that's OK; it was a loser anyway.

Now, you've got to know that I hate this game. Everytime I'm in a casino, I see the players at the roulette tables pretending to be in Monte Carlo while bucking a house edge of 5.26%. The game may feel glamorous, and you may look alluring at the tables - sophisticated, even - but the price is too high. At least if they were in Monte Carlo, the game there has a much lower edge: 1.32% on the "outside" bets (High-Low; Red-Black; Odd-Even) and, because of a single 0, an edge of 2.63% on all other bets. There you stand a fighting chance, but roulette in America sucks...plain and simple. At the casino.co.za, the roulette wheel has just one zero, but they do announce that all bets lose on zero (except for a bet on zero itself, of course), so their edge is 2.63% on all bets; they don't have an "en prison" rule which makes European roulette a decent game. Still, not a bad deal, particulalrly when one is playing on house money. Just point the mouse and click to place bets: 1R here, 1R there, 3R on red, 5R on even.... and so it goes. I bet 20R in various combinations and hit "Spin". The wheel doesn't spin; the ball rotates around the wheel. I counted the revolutions the ball made and it appeared to be random, so "clocking" probably won't work here. (Hey, I grab all the edge I can get. It didn't hurt to see if it might work; plus it's a small sample, it may not be random!) So, I played for a while, hit 2 numbers straight up for a 35 to 1 payoff and left a few $$$...er, RRR ahead. I quit when the ball kept going around and around and around....130 times. Again, I lost the monety which was bet on that round.

I went on to play the other games and I'll be going back to play some more. I'll update all this in a few days.

I then visited the "Poker" spot which is actually a 9/6 Jacks or Better machine with a 4000-coin Royal Flush. It offers a 99.5% payback to the player who uses perfect basic strategy. Just like a "real" video poker machine, one can bet from 1 to 5 coins, and various denominations are available. I chose .5R coins, so with the maximum of 5 coins played, my bet was 2.5 Rand or about $.63. When you hit "Play", five cards rise out of their holders and then you may click to hold any or all. You then click "Draw" and new cards replace those which you've discarded. Payouts are made and you may go again, if you choose.

I liked this game though it too was rather slow; a minute or two could pass until the new cards came up. No 500 hands an hour on this baby, but all in all, not bad. I lost a few bets and went on to the slots.

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Numbers Slots

I have never encountered a slot machine like this before, either in Europe or the Caribbean, so it may be unique to this site, or maybe it's all the rage in South Africa's "regular" casinos; I don't know. It's simply a four-window slot machines where all the symbols are numbers from 1 to 7. The payoff is as follows

One to three coins are playable and various denominations may be chosen through a pull-down menu. I didn't take the time to analyze this game, but it is possible to do so, if the reels of the machine are consistent in their format from spin to spin. But my "feel" here is that the house has an edge approaching 10% on this game. I lost and left for the "Lucky 7's" slots.

This is a slot machine which will be quickly recognized by most casino patrons the old, bars cherries and 7's format. One to three coins are playable and the Jackpot is 2500 coins for getting 7 7 7. The payback on this machine could be set anywhere, but my guess is that it will be at around 85%. I played 13 rounds ; the first 10 were losers, on hand 11 I hit three bars (all different) for a 15-coin payoff, lost on hand 12 and on hand 13, the reels kept spinning, so I exited and went home.

My initial impression of my first visit to a "virtual" casino is mixed. One one hand, I'm fascinated by the fact that I could have been playing for real money, in my shorts, at home. While the technology has to be improved considerably, I have no doubt that will eventually happen so play will speed up and the player's choices will increase. On the other hand, there's nothing at the site which I could find that helps to build a potential player's confidence regarding the integrity of the game. That's not to say the people who are running this site are shady characters; to the contrary, they've been quick to answer questions and seem to be very nice people. But I searched the site and nowhere did I find the house rules for Blackjack such as number of decks used, hit on A-6, etc. My concerns regarding that will become evident to you when I relate my experiences with the Blackjack game on my second visit. To be continued.....

On my next trip back, with a bankroll of R1078 waiting, I logged in and sure enough, my money was there. I went right to Blackjack and chosen the 5 to 50 Rand betting option. This time, if the game went quickly, I was going to count the cards and spread my bets if the deck got positive. Of course, I have no idea of how many decks they are using, nor do I know if they shuffle after each hand, but I was going to try it anyway.

My first bet was for R5 and I received (after a 2-minute wait) Ace-6 versus a dealer's 4. I pressed "Hit", a sign came up "You Hit" and a 3 came sliding slowly over from the left. he dealer's 4 was joined by the hole card, a 6; he (??) then got a 2, another 4 and finally an Ace for a total of 17 against my 20. A sign came up "Dealer Magic" and I lost! Yes, lost with a 20 against a dealer's 5-card 17! Dealer Magic? That's a dealer mugging! I couldn't believe it. I have never heard of a rule like that in my life. But I continued to play to see what other weirdness was going to happen to me. I especially wanted to see if insurance was offered when the dealer's up card is an Ace; on hand 9, he (??) did get an Ace up and as I suspected, no insurance was offered.

Let's see now These folks are offering a Blackjack game which allows no doubling, no splitting of pairs, no insurance and the dealer wins with a hand of 5 or more cards, regardless of the total. Here's a big NO THANK YOU from the GameMaster. Even on "funny money", that game is too expensive for me. If they are dealing a single deck game, the house edge on that is probably over 5%!

I went on to play some Video Poker and for the first four or five hands, things went quickly, but they soon slowed down and I ended up leaving with R1053 in my bankroll. As I stated earlier, if something like this is to succeed, the casino must tell the players up front what the rules are, and let the player decide if those rules are to their liking. I've never played Blackjack at a "real" casino in South Africa, so I don't know if the 5-card rule is used there or not, but if it is, I won't be going there soon. All of us, I think, want this idea to work, but it has to be done in such a way as to give some prospect of winning to the player. Blackjack is the most popular table game in casinos today because players know it can be beat. Few players can actually beat it, but the appeal is there, nonetheless. I don't see that here, but I'm hopeful that the management of casino.co.za will recognize the shortcomings of their game and straighten it out. Until then, I can only say "Player Beware."

Some time ago, I wrote about a visit to a casino in Cyberspace (South Africa, actually) and reported on my findings after playing there on a press pass. Recently, I was given a copy of the beta version of their new software, so I went back and this time I really saw the future.

While it's still only open to residents of South Africa for actual play, I wanted to tell you about what they're doing because it may one day be available here. I hope so. What they have put together is very impressive; it's a fair deal for the players and the technology behind it is obviously superior to anything else out there which is accessible by an "ordinary" computer. It doesn't matter which kind of browser you have, since your browser is not used to get into the site. You just dial up your Internet Service Provider, then click on the casino software. It logs in for you, checks your password and gives you the balance in your account (they use the Rand there). Once you've arrived, you may choose from Blackjack, Roulette, Video Poker or three types of slots. I played them all extensively and was more and more impressed as I went along. Here's a review of each game

Of course, I had to go here first. The game now pays 3 to 2 for a player's "natural", insurance is available, you may double on 9, 10 or 11 and split pairs, but not resplit. Double after splitting is not available. The dealer stands on A-6 and ties result in a "push". Dealt from a single deck which is shuffled after each hand, card-counting is of limited use (it will work in a few playing situations, but it's of no help in betting or insurance.) The dealer does not "peek" to see if s/he (it?) has a natural whenever the up card is a ten or ace. If you double or split pairs against a dealer's up card of ten or ace and s/he does have a "natural, you lose BOTH bets. This is the "European" no-hole card rule which dictates that you only split aces against a dealer's up card of 10; DO NOT otherwise split or double against a ten or ace! That rule change adds about .1% to the house edge. Thus, with a single deck being dealt, the house edge here is about .5% which is about the same as a typical six-deck game in the US. All-in-all, not bad.

The game is dealt quickly and cleanly. Due to Java technology, the page does not "jump" (reload) when a new card is called out; it just slides very elegantly out from the side, not unlike the action in a "real" casino. That feature earns high marks from me and it makes the game a joy to play. The permitted bet spreads are on a ratio of 110, ie., 1-10 Rand,; 5-50 Rand, etc. The top bet is 200 Rand (about $56).

This is not a game I like, because the house edge is so big, but here, with a single-zero rule, odds are a lot better than the typical "American" wheel, so it's not bad if roulette's your game. Think about it! You can sit at home with pencil and pad; figure all the patterns you think you see in the play of the wheel and play your "system" until your heart's content. You can even have another computer standing by to generate strings of numbers and probabilities and who-knows-what as you try to "break the bank". You'll still lose, but you can have the time of your life with this thing. And, who knows? There might be a bias in the wheel of this game which you can exploit. I must admit that I won a fair amount of Rand at roulette by betting in such a way as to capitalize on a perceived bias. I think it was just short-term luck, but who knows? The game is simple just point and click and your bets go down; you can even repeat your last bet. A real fanatic could sit there and point and click the family fortune away or, get lucky and point and click their way to a new family fortune.

This is a standard Jacks or Better game in a 9/6 format which gives the player who uses proper basic strategy a 99.5% long term payback. Various denominations of bets are available; I played 5 Rand per hand or about $1.40 a round. Again, the technology here is excellent. When you draw, for example, the cards come up nicely from their holders at the bottom of the game; there is no reloading of the page. There's no slot club, of course, but otherwise this game is as good as or better than 90% of all the video poker out there. Figure in what you save in gas, boarding fees and the cost of drinks and you'll be ahead if you play this, rather than venturing to a riverboat casino near you, let alone flying to Vegas or Reno.

I'm no fan of the mindless pursuit of playing slots, but a lot of people are. I just hope none of them own computers. There are three different slot machines available and one need only to point and click to throw one's money away. Bright graphics and excellent performance of the software involved makes it kinda fun, but slots aren't where you should be with such a good Blackjack and video poker game available.

Because the software for these games are loaded on your hard drive, you may play in a "practice" mode for play money. The games function exactly as they will at the casino, except you can't collect your winnings. This mode does not utilize your actual credit balance; it sets up a 2000 Rand account for betting purposes. This is an excellent idea and it will allow you to learn proper play (or give you the reasons not to play the slots) without any cost to you.

The people behind this online casino have done a great job in preparing for the next step; here they have set the standard for all others to follow. The only caveat I want to bring out is that I have no information regarding the financial integrity of this casino. They seem like nice people and they're obviously going to a lot of trouble to do this right. But, it will take a lot more than that to get me to venture real money in this casino. I hope the necessary "bonafides" will be forthcoming, since I'd like to have this as another venue for my pursuit of gaming profits. My rating for this is a solid 4 Aces.

The rest, as they say, is history....