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Casino Games are Universal in any Language
 
 
Casinos of the real physical sort are now so standardised around the world that you can walk into any of them and expect to be able to play a table game or machine without understanding the local language. Indeed many casinos in countries where the official language is other than English insist on their table staff being able to speak English. But when it comes to online gambling things are strangely a bit different.

The simplest test for a piece of casino software based in far-flung parts of the world is to select English (if this is possible) as your langauge of choice and then read some of the translations of its normal menu system and help screens. You immediately see that they really haven't spent much money on getting a native English speaker to check what they are presenting to their users as its sometimes very cluncky and occasionally nonsensical.

The situation is even stranger when you want to see your casino in one of the main classical languages, like French, and you want to play jokaroom online casino games and see all the instructions in your native tongue. There are just not that many online casinos, even from the big operators, offering you the choice of playing in their casino and communicating in a language other than English. Home grown french operators have their own language as standard but finding a UK based casino which then allows you to switch to another language is actually difficult.

The major poker websites do cater for different languages but then there are only a few that are truly global and it is their job to get people from Russia to play with people from Brazil or any other country. Here too however, if you want to chat with other players you are only allowed to do it in English or risk having your membership suspended. This is also the case in live chat rooms for casino, bingo and slot sites.

Game Play is Mostly Universal

Much of the problem of not seeing the instructions for game-play in your own language is however resolved by the fact that casinos games are played the same way all over the planet. And, for instance, the small differences in some of the rules of roulette are covered by different versions of the game that you can select to play. So there will often be a choice of European roulette (which is English roulette), US roulette (which has a double-zero – why would you choose this?) and French roulette. So you know that if playing French roulette and the green zero comes up when you have an Even money bet on a colour, then you will be subject to the En prison rule, meaning your bet will stay put for the next spin and lose all if your colour does not come up or get your stake back if it does. In European roulette you lose half your stake immediately and in American you lose all!

Blackjack is a different propostion. There are so many side bet opportunites offered by different casinos that you really must check the rules in English and then use a translation service to see if it is clear what the bet actually means. Even if you have a native speaker level of English you should still go into the details of any side-bets in blackjack because they have implications to the way that you should play your blackjack hand.

Pay Attention to the Odds

One place where different juristictions can differ in an important way is the payout odds. Firstly and most importantly you must know that 9 for 1 is not the same as 9 to 1. 9 for 1 is 8-1 in true odds where as 9 to 1 is 9-1 in true odds. A big difference. You will most often see this difference in Baccarat Egalite bets where UK casinos pay 9-1 (4.84% house edge) and US casinos pay 9 for 1 which is actually 8-1 (14.4% house edge).

Further to this trick of describing the odds differently you might find the local way in an online casino South Africa as being “1 wins 9”. 1 wins 60 can be seen on a Sic Bo table in South Africa for the payout on a three dice total of 17. This is the regular odds you should find with a house edge of 15.3% but if you wanted Chinese as your language of choice and ended up at an online casino based In Macau then you would be getting 1 wins 50 or 29.2% house edge. If you could play an Australian casino you would get 1 wins 62 or 12.5% house edge.

Currencies

It is a similar picture with your money. The big casino operators have a narrow selection of currencies that you can deposit in. Euro, US dollar, Canadian dollar, UK pounds and th up-and-coming Bitcoin are you options. If your main currency is not one of these then your options are to play at casino that is run within your borders or suffer the cost of currency conversion. It might be small but it adds up if you make many deposits and withdrawls.

Conclusion

So the universality of casino game play means your best option is play using the English language and and have one of the big five currencies as your gambling bankroll currency. The internet is just not as versatile as you might think.
 
 
 

 
 
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