Every gambler worth a hill of beans needs to understand the lingo of the game. While the gambling world is full of lingo, today I’ll present some of the more common and interesting words and phrases you should know.

Action - The action is the total amount of money that’s wagered. It’s also a term that can be used to signify that an amount of money is in play.

Ante - This is a poker term that means the amount of money one needs to pony up to get into the action. You’ll see it in regular poker, Caribbean Stud and other games.

Bankroll - Your bankroll is the amount of money you have to gamble with. It could be an amount of money for the night, a week, a sports season or whatever.

Betting Right or Wrong - At the Craps table, you are betting right when you’re betting with the dice-a pass line wager. And you’re betting wrong when you’re going against the dice.

Biased Wheel - A Roulette wheel that seems to be favoring one part of itself-ball seems to land in one section a bit more often than other sections.

Burn Card - This is the first card of a new deck that’s discarded before play begins.

Cage - It’s the cashier’s cage. This is where you cash in your chips, cash checks and so forth.

Face card - The Jacks, Queens and Kings of a deck of cards.

Field Bet - In Craps, a field bet is a one-roll wager that wins if the combination of the dice is a 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, or 12.

Greens - Green casino chips valued at $25 each. Dealers, etc will typically talk about chips by their color-greens, blacks, reds, etc.

Hole card - In Blackjack, this is the dealer’s card that’s face down on the felt.

House Advantage - This is the difference between the actual (or real) odds and the payout. The house maintains an advantage in all games, but some are way more than others. For instance, the Pass Line wager in Craps has a much smaller house edge than playing Roulette and thus that wager in Craps is better for players over the long run.

Random Number Generator - Also called the RNG, it’s a little computer program that constantly picks random numbers. These numbers then generate an outcome-like in a slot machine. When you go to play the slot machine, a number is spit out randomly. This determines if you win or lose. And there you have it. Some interesting gambling terms that you should know.

Gambling is great and all, but it’s really something that takes a lot of concentration. Without sounding too negative, casinos get a lot of joy from lazy and stupid players. It’s the smart ones, like you, that keep them on their toes.

I want to tell you a quick story about a lazy gambler who lost $1,000 in less than three seconds.

The event took place at a Craps table. The lazy gambler in question walked up to the Craps table and watched for all of five seconds. Rather than getting some chips and getting involved with the game, he decided that he had better things to do-like walk out of the casino $1,000 lighter.

So the guy grabs his $1,000 out of his pocket and throws it down on the Field. Why? The Field is a sucker’s one-roll wager and it only pays even money unless a two or twelve is rolled. Makes no sense.

Three seconds later the shooter lets the dice fly from his hands. Clunk, clunk, clunk the dice rattled around. The first die landed squarely on the four. The other die spun for a few seconds. It must have seemed like an eternity. You just knew what was coming. Sure enough, the second die finally sat squarely on the table-a three.

“Seven out, line away,” the Craps dealer proclaimed. And just like that, the $1,000 was happily swept off the field and stuffed into the money slot. Dejected, the man slumped over and walked away. Too bad, he probably could have gotten a free drink or buffet for that kind of loss.

What’s the point here? Thinking, that’s the point. Why would you take all of your gambling money for the day, week, whatever and casually throw it down on a one-roll sucker’s bet that doesn’t pay much?

He could have put the $1,000 on the Pass Line the next come out and had a much better chance of winning and it’s potentially multiple rolls instead of just one.

Stupid moves like this are what will separate you from your money in the blink of the eye. It’s a battlefield out there. Guard your money and be smart about it. It might take a lot of effort to build up a bankroll, but one boneheaded move can wipe it all out in a New York minute.

Don’t be foolish. Learn the game and don’t get greedy.

Today I’ll give you four general gambling tips that every gambler should know. I won’t go into a long, exhaustive detail, because these tips don’t require it. The concept is fairly simple. Know them, use them, do better. Let’s get started.

Gambling Tip One: Bankroll

Before going out to gambling you must set limits for yourself. By simply telling yourself how much you can afford to lose and how much you’d like to win, you’ll be ahead of most gamblers. For instance, you might have $100 to lose and you might be willing to stop when you have won $200.

Gambling Tip Two: No Big Six Wheel

The Big Six Wheel is a carnival game that will just suck your money out of your hands. You’ll know this game when you see it. It’s like a standing wheel from the Wheel of Fortune TV show. If you look at the wheel, you’ll see that most of the spaces return even money. Therefore, if you wager on anything else, you’re getting a really bad deal. And there are just enough non-even money spaces to screw you when you wager on the even money spot. You lose either way you play this game. I don’t know if it’s offered online, but if it is, run away.

Gambling Tip Three: Keno is Dinner

Keno was designed to be played while you eat dinner in the casino. Since you can’t gambling while eating, Keno comes to the rescue. However, playing it any other time is somewhat foolish. It’s okay to play for pure fun-if you really love the game. But playing it thinking that you’ll win some big payoff isn’t too wise. Keno is like the lotto expect with much worse payoffs. Many Keno players play while eating or they put in tickets when playing other games, such as poker.

Gambling Tip Four: No Strategy is Foolproof

There is no gambling strategy-other than not playing-that works 100% of the time. Read that again. There are some interesting and fun strategies that can help you have more fun and possible win a little more. In the end, they all fail-yes, all. But don’t take my word for it, go out and play one system for 24 hours at any casino and see how you do. And there’s nothing new under the sun. All the systems being sold as new are just repackages of old systems or they are actually based off of original gambling systems.

Have fun, play smart.

Being social in the online realm has never historically been part of the big picture. This has certainly changed over the last few years and the cyber realm has become a large part of who people are. The ability to interface with others across the globe has made the Internet so much more than simply a gaming platform. It has made it a place for people to meet, greet, and evolve with each other in a way that has never been seen before.

But in a casino? The answer is unequivocally yes. With today’s online casinos offering chat in many of their games people can get together and play their favorite games just as the inventors of the games intended. I can assure you that the people that developed Blackjack years and years ago never envisioned a time when their game would be played on a screen with little digital cards flipping up and down, or maybe they did, who knows? What they did know was that people were supposed to gather, and chat, and above all have a good time.

The ability for players to chat with each other in a real time environment while playing cards opens up a myriad of possibilities to the casual and professional online gambler. Sometimes just the possibility of the chat makes the game of cards a secondary interest in the room. Some people are obviously more social than others and some may simply enjoy the type of chat that they are able to experience in an online casino better than the type of chat that they might become involved in in a more traditional type of chat room.

Today’s online casinos now offer the option for players to use avatars. If you aren’t familiar with avatars they are simply a small picture, or image, that says a little something about the player’s personality. Some of the times these avatars are little cartoon like characters that the players customize themselves. Other times casinos allow players to use their own images further enabling the player to customize their image exactly and calculating what they want to say to the rest of the world.

While there are many options available to the tech savvy player that wants a little “face” time with the other players when they are playing, many people don’t know how to get started chatting in a casino environment. Unfortunately there are many casinos, including some of the premier casinos, that don’t offer chat room capability with their games. Either they haven’t seen the benefit and increased customer base that is capable with chat rooms, or the technology just isn’t as pervasive as I think that it is. I’m not sure which it is. What I am sure of is that chat is big enough that in the future only a handful of online casinos won’t have online chat capability for at least a portion of their games. And after that a whole new world will open up for everybody.

Keno. It’s one of those casino games you either really love or really hate. There’s almost no in-between. The game itself operates much like the lotto; you pick numbers, numbers are drawn and you win based on the amount of numbers picked and hit.

As a gambler, you should consider at least trying out Keno. You may find it’s a fun game or at least a pressure-less release from other casino games. There are two types of Keno games-live and electronic.

In Las Vegas, for instance, there are a handful of live Keno lounges. You can place your ticket and kick back in the lounge as the games are run. Or you can venture off into the casino and follow the game on the keno boards posted. In the old days, all the Keno games were “called” by a human, so it was more personal. Today, the games are “called” by an electronic machine that imitates a human voice (some better than others).

The nice thing about live Keno is that you don’t have to sit there to win. Keno kind of evolved from food. When people would stop gambling to eat, no action was being conducted. To solve this problem, Keno runners would come into the eatery and check to see if anyone wanted to play. It become sort of a “thing to do” in casinos. Now, many people do this. Others place tickets and then head off to other games.

Electronic Keno has two forms. First, there are the video Keno machines that you’d find in any casino. Second, there is online Keno. Both operate in the same fashion. Unlike live Keno, you have to dedicate yourself to playing just Keno with the electronic version. The game runs about the same, but the pace is set by you. If you want to play one game every 20 minutes, you can. At live Keno lounges, they try to run a game every 3-5 minutes.

No matter what version of Keno you want to play, they all revolve around the same basics. The payouts are usually a little different. In fact, this is a great point to bring up before we continue in this Keno series. The payouts on Keno aren’t globally set, like Blackjack, Craps, etc.

Each casino sets its own payouts, usually to be competitive. Some casinos may wish to emphasize 8-spot tickets, others smaller tickets. If you are going to play Keno online, make sure you shop around first. And make sure you look for the payouts for the tickets you plan to play. While an online casino might pay great on a 10-spot, they could pay poorly on a 6-spot. If you’re playing 6-spots, then that casino isn’t good for you. Next, we’ll get into the basics of the game.