Author: Chris

Ken Uston grew up in New York City and a highly intelligent individual graduating from both Yale and Harvard Universities. While working at the Pacific Stock Exchange, Uston began to read a book that would eventually shape his life.

That book was Beat the Dealer, a book about how players could count cards to give themselves an advantage when playing blackjack at casinos.

Uston became what is genuinely regarded by many as a genius card-counter. After initially starting out as part of poker player turned card-counter Al Francesco’s team, Uston’s talents soon saw him take the lead role.

He would regularly use his card-counting skills either individually or as part of a team, to win money from casinos across the United States, moving from one state to the other as various jurisdictions around the US banned him from their gaming halls due to his inordinate success rate.

At this point Uston was regularly betting as much as $12,000 on a single hand when the count was in his favour, and he was now blacklisted in Las Vegas and then in the newly formed Atlantic City.

However, Uston fought back and filed a lawsuit claiming that casinos should not unfairly ban what he termed ‘skilled players’. Uston won, which is why to this day card counting remains legal, though actively discouraged in US casinos.

Uston’s skill level was so high that once the ruling had been passed that he could play, casinos across the US took further steps to cut his advantage by introducing more packs of cards to the shoe, increasing the frequency of shuffles and similar to negate his advantage.

No player in the history of blackjack has shaped the future of a game moreso than Ken Uston. His genius for being able to count cards and make the right bets at the right time is the reason we play blackjack as we do today.

Online casino enthusiasts will be pleased to hear that the much awaited Castle Builder slot game from Rabcat is now available from multiple online casino game operators. The signing of a distribution deal between Rabcat and Microgaming means that the 23 language multilevel slot game can now be accessed from virtually any place in the world with an internet connection. It’s even more pleasing to note that the games features and interesting concept is what makes it even more appealing. Come with me and let us take a tour into the past learning what this game truly holds for all interested enthusiasts.

The Castle Builder slots game is a five slot 15 pay line online casino game. Players take the form of a castle builder in medieval times tasked with building castles in three separate kingdoms. The building of subsequent castles tends to be more complicated and expensive as compared to previous ones. To make the castle building task more interesting the player is a required to put together the necessary building resources. The player is required to collect castle building resources by spinning the slots. On completion of a castle, the player qualifies for a reward from the king of the respective kingdom.

Castle Builder has earned a lot of praise from different operators and the developers as well due to the continuity in gameplay. The game does not end on completion of the castle building mission but continues, giving the player subsequent opportunities in earning additional winnings as demonstrated below.

After the castle building task is successfully done, a princess will occupy the castle. Here she will receive multiple suitors all with varying amounts of wealth, which is kept hidden before the wedding. The suitors include rich men with unimaginable wealth, average Joes with a lower amount of wealth and poor fellows who lie at the bottom of the pile. It is up to the builder to build the best castles as the value of the castle has a direct impact on the suitors attracted. The higher the value of the castle the wealthier the suitors and the more the player stands to gain as a reward from the king.

A lot of the beginner card counters usually choose to use KISS III counting method especially when they have become familiar with the KISS I and KISS II counting systems. However when you look closer you can easily see that there are very few differences between KISS III and the other methods. The best ever explanation of this method was done in Fred Renzey’s book, Blackjack Bluebook II.

This counting system was introduced to help in improving the efficiency of the counting system by changing the indices of two cards within the system. As a result of this change, a new difficulty level was introduced into the system. In as much as a new difficulty level was introduced, beginners need not worry because it is still a very simple counting method altogether. As a matter of fact, you can learn it so fast and be able to implement what you have learned in live play, hence the name Keep it short and simple (KISS)

This is basically an unbalanced system, which means that once all the cards that are available in the deck have been dealt the ending total does not necessarily have to be 0, and this is one of the main differences between this and all the other counting systems in the game. The reasonable explanation behind this is that when you are using this counting system, it is not mandatory that you start counting at 0. As a matter of fact it is actually possible for you to start counting from a negative range or above the negative figures.

The whole concept of introducing the idea of an unbalanced system is because in this way it is actually possible to clearly give a representation of the state of the game, especially when the deck is most or least favorable for the player. It is also worth noting that as a result of the unbalanced nature of this system, it is best applicable to single and double deck poker games.