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What Are Blackjack Side Bets?Side bets are bonus bets placed on a round of Blackjack on outcomes beyond whether the player or dealer will win. The majority are staked at the start of the round before the cards have been dealt alongside regular bets and many have fixed odds that usually offer greater payouts than the simple 2:1 rewarded for beating the dealer.Play Blackjack at Pinnacle Casino

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Side bets provide an exciting way to make Blackjack games more interesting whilst offering you a greater number of ways to win. So what are side bets, what side bets are available and are they worth it? Read on to find out.

Blackjack Side Bets Explained

Finding a niche market in betting can often lead to value. This can be anything from specialist knowledge of handball betting to extensive experience in betting on Japanese baseball. Providing you know more than the bookmaker, there is money to be made.  &lt;Bet on soccer at Pinnacle&gt; They also make for interesting and potentially profitable bets, as they can be a little more reliable

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A corner is one of the most inexplicably exciting events in soccer. Only around three per cent of them lead to a goal, but you can guarantee that the attacking team’s fans will roar their approval and encouragement if their team are awarded one. Read on to find out how you can benefit from betting on corners.

Corners betting in soccer: Value in a lesser-known market

Poisson Distribution is a mathematical concept for translating mean averages into a probability for variable outcomes across a distribution. For example, if we know Manchester City average 1.7 goals per game, so by putting the Poisson Distribution formula tells us that this average equates to Manchester City&nbsp;scoring 0 goals 18.3% of the time, 1 goal 31% of the time, 2 goals 26.4% of the time and 3 goals 15% of the time.

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Poisson Distribution: Predict the score in soccer betting

What is Expected Value?The amount a player can expect to win or lose if they were to place a bet on the same odds many times over, calculated through a simple equation multiplying your probability of winning with the amount you could win per bet, and subtracting the probability of losing multiplied by the amount lost per bet.A simple example of Expected Value (EV) put into practice -&nbsp;if you were

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The Expected Value of a bet shows us how much we can expect to win (on average) per bet, and as such is the most valuable calculation a bettor can make when comparing bookmakers' odds. How can you calculate Expected Value in sports betting in order to predict your winnings? Read on to find out.

How to Calculate Expected Value

We have a team of editors and writers at Pinnacle, as well as a collection of external contributors, ranging from university lecturers and renowned authors, to ex-traders and esteemed sports experts. Collectively, the Pinnacle team and external contributors produce the educational content within Betting Resources.

Although the first <g class="gr_ gr_51 gr-alert gr_spell gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling" id="51" data-gr-id="51">signs</g> of a lottery trace back to the Han Dynasty in China around 200BC, it wasn’t until the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, that lotteries - the way we understand them today - were created.
<h3>Lotteries as a tax alternative in ancient Rome</h3>
At the time, the City of Rome was in dire need of repairs, but the people were so heavily taxed that any further tax increase would stir public unrest. Augustus Caesar was the first to come up with the idea of organising a lottery as a way of both raising revenues and his popularity. More than two millennia since Augustus Caesar, governments are still using lotteries as a way to raise funds for civic projects.
<blockquote>Augustus Caesar was the first to come up with the idea of organising a lottery as a way of both raising revenues and his popularity.</blockquote>
About 200 years later, another Roman emperor, named Elagabalus, took a peculiar interest in lotteries. What initially started as a game with prizes like slaves and land, soon turned into forced public lotteries, in which tickets were released by a catapult into the crowd.
With live snakes being released along with the tickets and prizes such as wasps, bees, dead animals and death sentences, the young emperor found himself assassinated at the age of 18.
<h3>How Voltaire made a fortune on the lottery</h3>
It wasn’t until the French philosopher, known by his nom de plume Voltaire, met the mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine that he finally became financially free. The two men met at a dinner party, where La Condamine suggested a plan that would make them rich beyond their wildest imagination.
The government of France had set up a lottery aiming to entice people to buy bonds. Each bond owner could purchase a lottery ticket at a cost of 1/1000th of the bond's value, with the winners cashing a jackpot of 500,000 <g class="gr_ gr_60 gr-alert gr_spell gr_run_anim ContextualSpelling ins-del multiReplace" id="60" data-gr-id="60">livres</g>&nbsp;- an insane amount of money for the time.
The French government, however, was not mathematically savvy. The jackpot was not dependent on the price of the bond and what La Condamine realised was that by buying up all the cheaper bonds, he was greatly increasing his odds of winning.
La Condamine and Voltaire went on to form a lottery syndicate with a group of wealthy patrons and split the prize money. After years of repeated wins, the government caught onto their scheme and took them to court, where it was proven that no illegal action had taken place. This wealth gave Voltaire the freedom to spend the rest of his life writing.
<h3>Lotteries and the US Presidents&nbsp;</h3>
The Founding Fathers of the United States were avid users of the lottery both for political and personal gains. From George Washington to Ben Franklin, they were all setting up lotteries in the name of freedom and funding.
<blockquote>No US President defended lotteries more than Thomas Jefferson, who tried to run a lottery later in life in order to pay off his debts.</blockquote>
Back in 1747, the most urgent problem was not armed men, but money. Franklin’s solution was to run a lottery and it was so successful that he boasted that the Philadelphians came as near to selling out in seven weeks as New York and New England lotteries did in seven months. With the revenues, he bought a cannon for the protection of Philadelphia.
About 30 years later, George Washington attempted to run a lottery in order to raise funds for the creation of a road through the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia and a resort in the area now known as The Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia.
The lottery endeavour failed partly due to the increased number of lotteries at the time. The lottery tickets were signed by George Washington and have now become collector's items. The latest price of one of the 25 remaining tickets was sold for $13,500 in 2006.
However, nobody defended lotteries more than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson tried, along with his grandson, to run a lottery in order to pay off his debts. In an attempt to convince the Virginia legislature, he famously wrote: “Far from being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence of man”. Fortunately for him, he died without knowing that his scheme did not work.
Lotteries have captured the imagination of people for centuries and continue to be popular despite the astronomical odds against winning a life-changing jackpot. But exactly how low are the odds and what can you do to make money on the lottery? To find out, read our article <a href="https://www.pinnacle.com/en/betting-psychology/optimism-bias-in-gambling">What are the real chances of winning the lottery</a>?&nbsp;

The dream of winning the lottery has been an integral part of human history throughout the ages. Politicians, philosophers, emperors and - last but not least - lottery winners, have all profited in different ways. But who invented the lottery and why? Which historical figures benefitted the most out of lotteries and how? Read on to find out the astonishing history of the lottery from its inception to today.