A Laughing Stock

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A Laughing Stock

            Invariably when I get into a discussion with someone about the gaming industry, whether it is someone in the industry or not, the game of War comes up.  To be more accurate the name of the game you see in the casino is Casino War.  It really isn't much different than the game you used to play as a kid.  You get one card, Dealer gets one card.  High Card wins.  If you tie, you go to war.  In the casino version it ends at one war in order to keep the speed up and as a means of creating a house edge.  You play for money instead of trying to win the whole deck, which in this case is usually a shoe of 6 or 8 decks of cards.

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Different Strokes

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Different Strokes

           Over the years, I've worked with a lot of inventors and seen a lot of games.  Most of the games never made it into a casino at all.  While casinos are more receptive to new games today than they were years ago, the odds of getting your game into a casino are pretty long.  The odds of the game being successful are even longer.  If you look at the games that are in the casino, most of them are poker based and nearly all the rest are blackjack variants.  Once in a while, I'll get an inventor who will try and convince me how desperately the casino needs a game based on neither of those - whether it be dominoes, backgammon, 3 dice or a 14-sided die.

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