Putting the fun
back in to Blackjack!

It’s that time of year folks! The weather is heating up, so there’s only one place to be – the casino! Not literally, of course, my wife would kill me. So what I like to do is keep the missus happy as well as quench my thirst for blackjack by heading abroad for some quality time in the sun, making sure I bring my trusty laptop with me.

My friends know I can make a living from playing blackjack, but they often don’t believe me when I tell them that online blackjack can be just as thrilling an experience as playing in a real casino. And ‘real’ is the operative word here. Some people may not consider playing online to be real but, trust me, the money and the payouts are very, very real.

Where you decide to play can really help you also, especially in terms of making you feel comfortable and setting the right mood. For example, there is nothing stopping you from staying in bed and attempting to play your cards right under the duvet or, as I’ll be doing this summer, attempting to pick up some extra holiday money on a beach somewhere exotic or by the hotel pool.

I’m torn between going to the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. I know that my wife is slightly less keen on the latter – believe it or not – because they have a wealth of offline casinos she’s worried I’ll skulk off to during the day. But I’m not so sure about the Mediterranean as we’ve been there before and at my age I’m a little bit bored of package holidays to places everybody has already been to. Basically, I’m not interested in sharing our hotel with a bunch of 20-year-olds. Perhaps my wife’s grandma was right – we should try ‘one of those Danish countries’!

Guys, please accept my apologies for the lack of updates. Places to go, people to see etc. Australia was awesome. Both me and Elizabeth had never been away over Christmas before, so it was exciting to wake up somewhere else on Christmas Day. It was particularly weird for the weather to be so, well, normal. Not extraordinarily hot, just a nice Christmas Day. Strange.

The big day itself came and went without a hitch. I managed to sneak in a quick game of blackjack while she was cooking Christmas dinner at the chalet we’d rented (we decided to stay on after our stint at the Ocean Palms resort and a coastal chalet seemed the obvious option). I didn’t win, much to my chagrin, but I figured that by spending Christmas in such a wonderful country I’d already pushed my luck a bit too far.

While I was out in Australia I decided to have a look at their online casino scene. It’s pretty similar to what we’ve got over here, lots of operators competing for players by offering sign-up and reload bonuses. Of course I spent the majority of my time racking up some nice little wins on the Aussie’s online blackjack offerings – always nice to take a memento away from a holiday – bit I did find out a few things about their casino culture. Did you know, for example, that they call slots games online pokies in Australia? Strange nation.

As you can imagine I’ve been reluctant to get back into the swing of ‘normal life’ since our return. I spent a little bit of time early in the month perusing the casinos. Since then I’ve had a bit of ‘down time’ to gather my thoughts. Maybe my strategy needs to be re-evaluated? There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, I just think I’m a bit bored. It isn’t easy winning all the time!

One thing this has allowed me to do is visit a few more online casinos. I won’t mention any names, but a blackjack ‘table’ on one website in particular allowed me to treat Elizabeth to “the best Valentine’s Day present ever” (her actual words), and let me upgrade my iPhone to something a little more, shall we say, swish.

I don’t know what the coming months will have in store for me. New year, new casinos? New game, perhaps? One thing I’ve been thinking about doing is visiting some of the casinos used in various films. Or at least, the sets. I’ve always felt a slight affinity with James Bond so maybe a visit to some of the areas where Casino Royale was used is in order?

Now, if only I could get my hands on some of his gadgets…