If we’re talking from a purely financial perspective, poker is the only game that rewards expertise. I didn’t play any casino games before I knew the rules, but slot gaming, roulette and blackjack are almost exclusively based on luck. While the odd scene from The Hangover might suggest there’s a card-counting genius method to win money at blackjack, that is very much the stuff of movies.
Although blackjack card counting is technically a method that worked for a particular time, it’s become far more complex in the modern gaming environment. Online casino platforms now using numerous decks to wipe out any possibility of tricky math whizzes gaining an edge over the house. Poker is the only game that places great importance on expertise. Otherwise, there’d be professional roulette and slot machine competitions — which, of course, there aren’t.
Gaming rewards vs gaming expertise
There are other types of rewards in casino gaming, but players are rewarded for their experience rather than their expertise. While the words sound the same, there’s a big difference. Gaming rewards can include credits, welcome promotions and point systems. This is a loose connection though as expertise and the number of times you play a game or use a specific casino are two different ball games altogether.
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Why poker is the exception to the rule
There’s a reason that there are dozens of professional poker players and no such thing as professional roulette or blackjack tournaments. While some influencers and gambling content creators may perpetuate the idea that they know strategies or ideas that can help improve your chances — this is a fallacy.
Only poker has the potential to generate rewards with expertise. If you have sat down and played at a table with a professional player like I have, you start to notice the subtleties that give them this edge. It’s a combination of skill, strategy and experience, which is the recipe for expertise.
Even skimming through the games from the most popular online casinos, the vast majority of them are slot games or table games like roulette, designed as a source of entertainment, not as a way to reward expertise or knowledge.
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For those who doubt that there’s expertise involved in poker and that it’s not all about luck, I sat and watched Jonathan Tamayo claw his way to victory in the World Series of Poker this year. There’s definitely a lot of expertise and skill at the elite level of this game.
Why do casinos reward return customers?
The most common way that casinos reward gamers is by providing betting credits or free spins; I’ve come across more platforms lately that combine these two into a single reward. Casinos often monitor gamers’ activity to see which games they most enjoy. Transaction and activity monitoring is one of the leading AI implementations in the casino gaming market.
Although we’ve seen AI make great strides, like the implementation of it in the latest Chromebook, it hasn’t made the sort of inroads into online casino gaming that some people expected to see a couple of years ago when ChatGPT exploded onto the scene. As AI is helping platforms track user data more efficiently, they can provide customized promotions and reward gamers based on their activity.
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The relationship between responsible gambling and expertise
Poker is the only game that can reward you for having an elite skill set and even then, this is exclusive to a tiny slice of the millions of people who play poker online. If you’re interested in finding out more about responsible gambling, we’d recommend checking out services like:
- Gamblers Anonymous
- Responsible gambling pages on casino sites
- Cooling-off periods and how to implement time-outs
It doesn’t matter if you only picked up a game a few months ago or you’ve sat at a blackjack table with someone who has played it for 20 years, casino gaming is one of the few sectors where expertise counts for very little. It’s all arbitrary.
This isn’t just me voicing my opinion either, this is a demonstrable fact. All casino games are games of luck, with the exception of poker. If you take any fact away from today’s piece, this should be it. Enjoy the game for what it is, and don’t focus too much on trying to beat the house — because you will come undone. Lay the foundations and learn how these games work. Herein lies a lot of the expertise, but that’s not to say casinos will necessarily reward you for it either.
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