I legitimately think there are 0 people in the world playing online virtual blackjack for the ev without the aid of promos. It’s just a losing venture.
Plus, it’s rogged.
Technology may be cheap, but the cost of getting licensed, paying taxes and complying with casino regulations as a licensed site isn’t. And you have customer acquisition costs. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but at the very least you’d need a lot of cash on hand to burn on start up costs before you build up a big enough user base that you can start charging significant ad rates.
Eta: also, the reason why google/FB/Amazon are so valuable to advertisers is the ability to target ads based on data users provide about themselves. How much data mining will the hypothetical free gambling site be able to do?
Eta2: Just to reiterate that people do really irrational things when it comes to gambling. There are already marginally +ev online slots. Right now, I can log onto myVegasrewards and play free play money slot games that allow me to earn credits that can be redeemed for real things like food and drinks at MGM properties. It is completely free. People manage to turn it into a negative ev game by buying more “play money” chips when they run out of the free allowance that the game provides.
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These are basically just all Adelson scare tactic arguments. Canada, Europe etc have had online gambling forever and their casinos are doing fine.
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Wouldn’t they just become bot farms basically?
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It’s a genuinely bad idea. Now, promos that get players to deposit money, play games they usually wouldn’t or for higher stakes than they usually do are “good” promos for the casino. Online and live casinos have given poker players vouchers for table games/free plays forever with tournament entries. These make them money.
Pokerstars opened up their casino/sportsbook to Canadians maybe 2 months ago. I get a free sports bet or casino bet literally every day. I’m up on sports, but this probably gets the average person to lose money.
But if you just had Blackjack with infinite splits, paying extra on blackjack and whatever else where its actually +ev, you’re going broke unless you start banning people or only doing it in games with a like $25 cap.
You might like the Ringer pod on the girl who basically flew all over the world finding blackjack dealers that would expose cards. Fun podcast.
I’m amazed online poker exists in any capacity given the current state of AI.
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Online poker really isn’t much tougher than a decade ago. Most players are still really bad. Just the player pools are smaller and smaller. If you’re playing a game other than NL at stakes and/or at higher stakes, games are harder to find.
But people always have overrated how tough poker is. Most people are idiots and bots aren’t super tough to detect.
It’s just better to offer a boost. First time picking a # in roulette in a day pays 50:1
First blackjack in a session pays 3:1.
These get people to play and play more.
The official UP rap!
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Emphatically disagree with this statement.
Yeah that seems super wrong.
I mean from an average skill point of view, up through midstakes.
The things that have made online poker tougher are further segregated player pools, less rakeback in the last 10 years. The average person playing nl50 isn’t any better.
This seems objectively wrong. With HUDs this must be provable. I’d bet heavily on the side that the average NL50 player is far better today than ten years ago.
Not sure NL50 would be my yardstick. What about NL600
HUDs were in use 10 years ago. Good players move up, bad ones lose/move down. Higher stakes games where every reg knows proper ranges, is running sims and such are obviously well tougher. NL50 is absolutely brainless.
Most sites have done away with 3/6 online, but I think 2/5 online is my cut off for “actually would have to put in sizable work to stay a winning player”
My point about HUDs wasn’t that they provide a new edge but that a database of billions of hands exists that can objectively show if players are better or worse today. Surely someone has looked at this?
How would a HUD show this?
It contains every bet, size. position, ect for billions of online hands.
My point is just that real world data exists. This doesn’t seem like a question that has to rely on peoples subjective experience of play.