With the final table set for the WSOP Main Event, I got the itch to play some poker. I kept seeing those commercials on TV about how Hollywood Casino at Charles Town in West Virginia just opened up with table games and poker room, along with slots and such, so a couple friends and I decided to take the 80 min drive and check it out this past weekend. Normally, whenever we have the urge to gamble a bit, we always head up to Borgata in Atlantic City, but that’s 2.5-3 hr drive each way. We figured if Hollywood Casino made a good impression on us, we would make this our home casino.

Well, our first impression was not…well, let’s just say it wasn’t good. Waiting 90 minutes just to put our names down on the waiting list for poker was already ridiculous and waiting another 5 hours to sit down at a poker table was even more ridiculous. Just based on that experience alone, I never want to go back to Hollywood Casino ever again. Why wait 6.5 hours to play when I can drive to Borgata in less than 3 hours? I could also decide to play poker online at Pokerstars and try to win money like Boku87 instead.

While waiting for a seat at the poker table, we figured we’ll wait it out by at least playing some table games, such as blackjack, 3-card poker, pai gow poker, craps, and roulette.  We then ran into two major problems. One problem was that there was no open tables to play at. All of the seats were filled by other players and each table was hovered by dozens of people just watching. On top of that, the table game minimum limits were too high for our bankroll. At $50 minimums, we could only afford to play 4-5 hands before we go bust. Anyway, we were finally able to play some poker at around 7:30pm. We ended up leaving at around midnight.

I have to say that I cannot recommend going to Hollywood Casino for some table game action. You would be lucky if you can even find a seat.

If you enjoy the volatility of table games such as roulette or blackjack, consider opening an account with EZtrader. EZtrader is essentially gambling with the stock market. Basically, you choose whether a certain stock will go up or go down within the next hour. If you guess right, you get paid. If you guess wrong, you lose your bet. You can read my full review of EZtrader here, for more detailed analysis of how EZtrader works.

With that said, if you ever decide to make a trip to Las Vegas or Atlantic City with your buddies, you should learn which games have the best odds of winning. Here are my top 5 games that have the best odds.

My Top 5 Best Odds Casino Game

1. Blackjack (0.48%)

House has 0.48% edge. Dealer stands on soft 17, player may double on any two cards, player may double after splitting, no surrender, no resplitting of Aces. This is a fast game and averages about 70 hands per hour.

2. Three-Card Poker (3.37%)

House has 3.37% edge, assuming you play both Ante and Play. The edge increases to 5.32% if you play Ante, Play, and Pair Plus. Three-Card Poker is a little slower than Blackjack and can expect to see about 50 hands per hour.

3. Mini-Baccarat (1.2%)

House has about 1.2% edge. This is also a fast paced game with expected hands per hour at around 70.

4. Pai-Gow Poker (1.96%)

In Pai-Gow Poker, you make two hands from 7 cards dealt to you. one 5-card hand and one 2-card hand. The odds of player winning both hands is 28.61%. The odds of house winning both hands is 29.91%. The odds of a tie or a push is 41.48%. So if you do the math, you will win or tie 7 of 10 hands played.  The game is played very slow at about 30 hands per hour.

5. Spanish 21 (0.40%)

House has 0.40% provided that House stands on soft 17. If house hits on soft 17, the house edge increases to 0.76%. This game is very similar to the traditional blackjack and is played at about 70 hands per hour.

What’s your favorite casino game to play? Also check out Ultimate Money Blog’s Yakezie Carnival.

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2010 World Series of Poker is well under way as the grueling day after day progresses. Players are scrambling to win chips from their opponents in hopes to be the last player standing at the end of the massive 13-day poker tournament. This year’s main event tournament was amassed by the second largest number of players in live poker tournament history with 7,319 players and $8.9 million going to the winner of the tournament. It’s very exciting for poker players in the world and fortunately for non poker players like us, a few money lessons can be derived from these poker tournaments. I came up with 4 lessons that can be learned from this year’s WSOP tournaments.

1. Bankroll Management

A good poker player will have a smart bankroll management plan. A bankroll is the amount of money a poker player will always have available to play poker with. With this money, he will use to purchase buy-in tournament fees into various poker tournaments. He will also use this money to play cash games.  With a smart bankroll management plan in place, the poker player will never ever go broke, unless he plays out of his bankroll plan. As long as he is within the means of his bankroll, he should be able to play poker forever without going broke. For instance, a good bankroll to have is about 100-250 times the amount of the highest buy-in fee for a poker tournament he is willing to play. The World Series of Poker Main Event tournament buy-in was $10,000. In order for any given poker player to be able to play in this tournament by directly buying into the tournament, he should have somewhere between $1,000,000 – $2,500,000 in his poker bankroll.  In the same way, he can play a cash game with maximum buy-in of $10,000 at the table to comfortably play without worrying about going broke. Poker is a game of skill and luck and professional players find ways to minimize luck and maximize skill. By playing within the bankroll, they minimize the risk and luck factor involved in the game. With this bankroll management practice, a poker player will never go broke. Refer to Boku87 Challenge for his bankroll strategy. Boku87 is an online professional poker player at Pokerstars who challenged himself to earn $100,000 from his $5 bankroll.

In the same way, we need to have a proper “bankroll management” with our money. We can do this by budgeting our everyday spending items carefully, and never spending outside of our budget limits. Once we spend outside of our spending budget, we’re allowing luck to factor in the system, which allows our budget to become less stable. Use a budgeting tool to help you limit on what you spend. If you budgeted yourself $500/mo for credit card purchases, do everything you can do to ensure you don’t exceed that amount in credit card purchases. You can download a free budgeting spreadsheet I personally use myself.

2. Patience Patience Patience

A poker player can not be judged on how good of a player he is after just one cash game session or one poker tournament. It only takes couple hours to learn the game of poker, but a lifetime to master it. A poker tournament is very similar. A single tournament can last well over 10 hours. The WSOP main event this year is played over 13 days, with each day lasting for over 10 hours. After only a couple of days, fatigue can definitely affect the way a poker player plays his game. Imagine just sitting there in your seat for hours and hours playing a card game. It can get quite boring and tedious and monotonous and will become a challenge to maintain a sharp mind to make optimal decisions hand after hand.

The same principle applies with your savings. Money doesn’t grow like wild weeds in your yard. But your savings will grow when they are properly taken care of.  It takes time though. If you put $1,000 in an online savings account such as Discover Bank or Ally which has an annual return of about 1.3% or so, you can expect to double your initial investment in about 55 years. If you are saving for your retirement, you are looking to save for about 30+ years. If you’re saving for college tuition for your kids, you will end up saving for about 18-20 years. The bottom line is that saving money takes time and patience. Keep working at it and stick to your original plan. The winner of this year’s WSOP will reap the rewards after 13 days of grueling poker. You, however, will reap your rewards in your future by being patient.

3. Avoid Emotions

Have you seen any WSOP coverage on ESPN lately? Have you observed the faces of poker players? They’re all emotionless, especially during a hand. Poker players must put all emotions aside when playing cash games or tournaments. If they allow their emotions to persuade their decisions, they will make decisions that they would not normally make, ultimately allowing them to bust out of the tournament or losing all their money in their cash game session. Seeing hundreds or even thousands of dollars move from one player to another player for many hours can have dramatic emotional effect. Good poker players are able to put their emotions aside and make sound decisions based on their poker experience, odds and probability, and their skills.

One thing I always used to do back when I was really into trading stocks was buying and selling according to my emotions. It cost me a lot of money trading this way. If I saw a stock falling, I would sell in panic. If I saw a stock rising, I would buy more in excitement. My emotions got the better of me. When you’re dealing with your money, whether in trading stocks or savings or personal budgets, you have to leave your emotions aside. Make sound decisions based on what’s reasonable. Don’t let your emotions influence your choices, especially when you’re shopping.

4. Short Term Goals

One thing a good poker player does is set short term goals and change gears in their gaming strategy as they reach their short term goals. If the poker player plays with the same strategy throughout the entire tournament, other players will catch on, allowing them to become vulnerable. If they don’t change gears in their strategy, they will lose all their chips to their opponents. Setting short term goals throughout the tournament will allow the poker player to change their playing strategy accordingly, ultimately confusing their opponents.

When you’re saving up for a big purchase, you need to set short term goals as well. If you need $10,000 in two years to upgrade your home or build a deck or need money for a down payment on a house, it can get a little overwhelming when you look at the final number of $10,000. But if you set goals in between, then it might become less intimidating. Set goals of saving $1,250 every 4 months and then re-evaluate. If you need to change your gears after the first 4 months, then do so to reach that ultimate goal of $10,000.

It’s definitely some exciting time of the year for poker players. It’s every poker player’s dream to win the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. What would you do with $8.9 million dollars?

When I first started my blog Money Green Life, the direction of the blog I was hoping was to write articles about saving energy and saving money at the same time. Since I have extensive knowledge about saving energy, I figured it was a good match. I still have visions of carrying out such hope as I will continue writing about the topic. However, I also have been having visions of expanding and writing about other topics that I am passionate about. I love the topic of energy, I’m always in the lookout for money saving/making opportunities, and I love playing poker. If these topics were to be combined together, you get a single common denominator in personal finance.

In this new direction of the blog, I plan to write about tips, advice, and reviews of products that help save energy thus saving money as I have been doing currently. In addition, I will also write about poker strategies that I have learned over the course of a few years I have been playing. With the money saved and money earned from saving energy and playing poker respectively, personal finance will come into play and I will write about tips and strategies that help to optimize money savings.

I am very excited with this new direction of this blog. I hope that you will find it useful.