Dizzy spells (thespinroom.com)

Member Name: Rumblefish

Product:	thespinroom.com
Date:	13/08/01 (177 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good design, fairness, option to play for fun

Disadvantages: It's not beyond the realms of possibility that you'll lose some money

Heywood Broun once said, “The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil.”

Here then, is an opinion on evil. For The Spin Room is the UK’s premier online casino. If one has a taste for such establishments, it is no longer necessary in the modern age to journey to Vegas or Monte Carlo (or indeed Margate or London’s Chinatown) to enjoy the thrill of casino gaming. The Spin Room recreates, as far as it can, the casino experience wherever there is a PC. Of course it cannot reproduce some elements of casino life – the smoky atmosphere, the socializing/commiserating, the burly doormen, and the free sandwiches. But for those repulsed by the often-seedy ambience of British casinos in particular, this may well be a good thing. And of course, The Spin Room is faithful to the true casino in the most important sense for most gamblers – it is a place where you can win or lose a great deal of money.

When you first visit The Spin Room you are presented with a choice: to “PLAY FOR FUN” or “PLAY FOR REAL”. All but the most experienced gamblers should first play for fun, which enables you to play as a guest without staking any money. If, as is seemingly always the way, you find yourself winning bags of non-existent money playing for fun, you may want to try playing for real, no doubt with dreams of giving up that crap job at last after making tens of thousands of pounds in a few hours. If so, you are invited to complete a fairly simple registration process, after which you may deposit funds into your account via debit or credit card, convert the funds to “chips” and begin losing…ahem…gambling your hard-earned cash. Minimum deposit is £10 and the minimum stake per game is £1.

There is a choice of ten available games at The Spin Room. There are three variations of poker, two of roulette, blackjack, craps, sicbo, baccarat, and a
slot machine. All of these games are played by standard casino rules, and are simulated as realistically as can reasonably be expected. There are smooth graphical representations of the poker tables, roulette wheels etc., and you can actually hear the shuffle of the cards and thud of tumbling dice. For those understandably concerned about the fairness of proceedings the site is at pains to point out that a “random number generator” is used to decide all outcomes and that The Spin Room has been designed “with complete fairness in mind” (and not at all with making money in mind of course - heaven forbid!). Having used the site often myself I certainly have found nothing to suggest that everything is not completely fair and above board (although if I do keep getting a Three when doubling up on the Blackjack table I may change mind…).

Casino gaming, one of Dostoyevsky’s favourite pastimes, has always attracted a colourful range of characters, and which of the ten games appeals to you most is likely to be a matter of taste and, to a certain degree, personal style and philosophy. Cavalier high rollers will instinctively head for the roulette wheel, whereas cool-headed thinkers will usually prefer blackjack. Baccarat is traditionally associated with a certain class and nobility, whereas poker - once known simply as “the cheating game” – is still to some extent seen as the pastime of devious and shady individuals. Of course The Spin Room treats everyone the same anyway, and you would be well advised to simply try every game for fun and see which games suit you best.

Here is a brief introduction to the ten games available to play at The Spin Room:

POKER

Once the game of Wild West saloons and Mississippi riverboats, poker has lost none of its popularity over the years. Unfortunately the nature of The Spin Room is such that the psychological warfare that is traditionally so much a part
of the game counts for nothing here. There is no “bluffing”, and scowling at your monitor with your best “poker face” will be unlikely to help your chances. CARIBBEAN POKER is a variation of Five Card Stud, in which the player plays the dealer and is paid according to the rank of the winning hand (a Pair pays 2-1, Two Pairs 2-1, right up to a Royal Flush, which pays 100-1). An interesting game, a pattern soon emerges from playing Caribbean Poker – a pattern of steady loss of money. PAIGOW POKER is a hybrid of American poker and the ancient Chinese game of PaiGow, in which both the player and dealer are dealt seven cards, which are then divided into a “high hand” of five cards and a “low hand” of two cards. The player wins if both hands are superior to those of the dealer, and loses if both hands are inferior (otherwise it’s a tie). Although it is a predictably difficult game at which to win with regularity, PaiGow Poker does at least afford the player some room for skill and judgment in dividing up his seven cards. Finally there is VIDEO POKER, a recreation of the poker machines found in amusement arcades. Video Poker is in itself a bizarre offshoot of real poker, and here we have a card game filtered through an arcade game filtered through the Internet. This is the game to choose if you want to lose your money with minimal excitement and maximum speed.

BLACKJACK

Absolutely the only game you can play at The Spin Room and have a reasonable chance of regularly winning. The object of Blackjack, which is sometimes known as Pontoon or 21, is to attain a hand as close as possible to 21 without exceeding it (or going “bust”). The rules are those of a standard casino, so you have the options of splitting and doubling when applicable, and blackjack itself (21 with your initial two cards) pays 3:2 (all other wins pay even money). Interestingly The Spin Room includes in its “How to
play” section the accepted mathematical chart which reveals exactly what to do in every conceivable situation to maximize your chances (exactly when to split and double, when to take a card and when not to etc.). However discreetly tucked away beneath this chart is the proviso: “* This strategy does not guarantee that the player will win” (damn and blast!) Nevertheless it is generally accepted in the world of blackjack that using this strategy narrows the house advantage to around a half of a per cent, so playing modestly and sensibly (as opposed to relentlessly and stupidly) can often yield a decent profit. Just remember the golden rule of golden rules of gambling – QUIT WHILE YOU’RE AHEAD! Incidentally the strategy of professional blackjack players, “card counting”, will not work in The Spin Room because of that annoyingly fair random number generator.

CRAPS

Invented in New Orleans and based on a game called Hazard, Craps involves betting on dice rolls. Initially mystifying if you don’t know the game, possibly the most striking aspect of Craps for newcomers is the hilarity the game’s terminology will elicit in those predisposed to schoolyard humour – “the come bet”, “the don’t come bet”, “the shooter” etc. (stop sniggering at the back!) Once though you have absorbed the complex rules and range of bets, Craps is good fun, and again odds charts are provided to make it easier and hopefully less expensive. However this game suffers greatly without the atmosphere and audience participation that makes real Craps so thrilling. The only way around this is to have some friends or family huddle round your monitor and have them whoop and cheer as you play.

SICBO

In Sicbo you bet on the outcome of a 3-dice roll. For example a total score of 9-12 pays out at 6-1, 4 and 17 pays 60-1 (3 and 18 always lose) and so on. You can also bet at evens
on “big” (11-17) and “small” (4-10), or pairs (two dice the same) and triples (all three dice the same). Though you always have a chance, there is zero skill in Sicbo, and as such you might just as well bet on the toss of a coin. It’s really “it could be you” on a considerably less grand scale.

ROULETTE

Depending on whom you believe, roulette was invented by the seventeenth century mathematician Blaise Pascal, or by a French monk looking to relieve the tedium of monastery life. Whichever, it is the cornerstone of almost every casino in the world, and a game where big wins and big losses can occur on literally the spin of a wheel. Most people will already know how roulette works. A wheel of thirty-seven numbered slots is spun and bets are paid out according to the slot in which a small ball lands. You may bet not just on individual numbers (0-36), but also on groups of numbers (streets, corners etc.), as well as odds/evens, black/red, high/low etc. (these are called “outside bets”). Indeed if you are either rich or playing for fun, you might well be tempted to simply scatter your chips haphazardly all over the table and hope that you come out on top (though this tactic is not recommended). In truth, and despite what optimists might tell you of “systems”, there is simply no way to consistently win at roulette, and any number of ways to consistently lose. The Spin Room does though faithfully reproduce casino roulette (and helpfully you can click on “repeat bet” to save you scattering your chips between each spin), so it does serve its purpose well. There are two variations available at The Spin Room. EUROPEAN ROULETTE and AMERICAN ROULETTE. They are identical in all respects except that the latter has a thirty-eight numbered wheel with a 00 (double zero) as well as a 0. In European Roulette a zero results in all outside bets being halved, whereas in American Roulette a zero
or double zero results in all outside bets being lost. In short there is absolutely no point whatsoever in playing American Roulette rather than European Roulette. Unless perhaps, you are a rich, homesick American.

BACCARAT

The classiest casino card game, Baccarat entails predicting if the player or dealer will win, or if there will be a tie. The winner is decided by which hand is closest to a point value of nine with two or more cards. All tens and face cards are worth zero, and totals more than ten have ten points deducted. For example an Eight and a Seven totals five points (8 + 7 – 10 = 5). In certain circumstances a third card will be drawn after the original two. It’s simple to pick up, and is surprisingly addictive (if that is a good thing about a betting game). The real allure of Baccarat though is that playing it, let alone being good at, instils you with instant style and panache. It’s James Bond’s favourite game. Need I say more?

SLOTS

Last and most definitely least, The Spin Room offers an internet version of a standard pub slot machine, the aim of which is to obtain a winning combination of three symbols. There is a choice of “themes”, such as “Wild West”, “Space Invasion”, and for the pure ‘fruity’ enthusiast, “Fruit Basket”. The game is reasonably faithful in both sound and graphics, but even the sound of a large payout rings hollow when you’re not in a pub smugly acknowledging the envious stares.

As I’ve highlighted the main problem with The Spin Room is that it cannot replicate such intangibles as atmosphere and group adrenalin. Gambling is in essence a solitary experience in any environment, but The Spin Room threatens to turn it into simply a lonely experience. The artificiality can sometimes be annoying, not least when you’ve heard the same merry voice uttering the words “Bets please!” a
few hundred times - even, rather tactlessly, when you’ve run out of money (happily there is a mute button). Then again, similar criticisms could be levelled at many Internet based activities, and the practical advantages of being able to visit The Spin Room from home twenty-four hours a day should not be understated.

From a design point of view it’s a good site, with plenty of style and colour, and the games load reasonably quickly. The “How to Play” section is intelligently constructed, and there is both an email address and ‘phone number if you need to ask questions, reports bugs and so on. On the down side, the statement page from which to view your account transactions is needlessly confusing, and there is little that can be done to protect your wagers from the possibility of power cuts and computer crashes mid-game (for this reason it is unwise to ever stake heavily).

The option of playing without registering and staking money makes The Spin Room a good site to visit just to while away the time, and simply to learn a little about some of the world’s most popular games. But make no mistake - The Spin Room desperately want you to join and bet for real, and keep betting for real for a long time. A few weeks after joining The Spin Room, I was sent a laminated, credit card-sized membership card, embossed with my account number. Since I think I would be just about capable of writing down my account number with a pen if I needed to, this membership card is actually fundamentally useless. But I’ll hang on to it all the same, to serve as some kind of dubious evidence of what a dashing, devil-may-care fellow I really am.

But evil or not, what most people say about gambling is that it is “a mug’s game”. They’re probably right. But for those of us who enjoy being a mug once in a while, The Spin Room is a fine approximation of a real casino. Although personally, I really do miss t
hose free sandwiches.

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