How to play Casino online
Casino was designed for the Atari paddle controllers. You turn the paddle to choose your bet or your move, and press its button to confirm. The emulator switches to paddle mode automatically for this game.
- Change your bet or choice: left and right arrow keys
- Confirm: Space bar
- Choose one of the four games: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Start over with a fresh bank: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- How often the deck is shuffled: F4 (Player 1 difficulty switch)
- Dealer rules for blackjack: F9 (Player 2 difficulty switch)
- Switch between paddle and joystick mode: Alt + L
The original cartridge supports three or four players with two pairs of paddles. On a keyboard it is easiest to play alone against the computer.
The four games
Every player starts with a bank of 1,000 chips. If you reach 10,000 chips you have broken the bank, and you can carry on with a fresh 1,000.
- Game 1 – Blackjack for one or two players. You play against the computer dealer and try to get closer to 21 than the dealer without going over. You can hit, stay, double down or split a pair, and you can take insurance when the dealer shows an ace. A win pays even money, and a blackjack pays one and a half times your bet.
- Game 2 – Blackjack for up to four players. The same rules, but you cannot split and you can take at most three hits.
- Game 3 – Stud poker for up to four players. Everyone antes between 10 and 100 chips, then five cards are dealt one at a time, with a round of betting after each card. You can fold at any point. Standard poker hands decide the winner, from high card up to a royal flush.
- Game 4 – Poker solitaire for one player. Twenty-five cards arrive one by one, and you place each one in a five-by-five grid. When the grid is full, the game scores twelve poker hands: the five rows, the five columns and the two diagonals. A royal flush is worth 500 points, and the best possible total is 3,340.
Difficulty switches
The left difficulty switch sets the shuffle. In position A the computer shuffles after 34 hands, so a careful player can keep track of which cards are gone. In position B it shuffles after every hand. The right switch picks between two sets of house rules for the blackjack dealer, called Casino I and Casino II in the manual. They differ in when the dealer must stop drawing, for example on 17 or on 18.
Tips
- Count cards with the A setting. With 34 hands between shuffles, many high cards left in the deck is a good moment to bet more in blackjack.
- Plan your solitaire grid. Each card counts in a row, a column and sometimes a diagonal. Keep one row or column for flushes and another for pairs and three of a kind.
- Fold early in stud poker. Since there is a betting round after every card, a weak start costs you more the longer you stay in.
History
Bob Whitehead had already programmed Atari’s Blackjack cartridge, released in 1977, which also used the paddles. Casino adds poker and room for more players. Like many early Atari titles, it was sold by Sears under its own name. The game was later included in the Atari: 80 Classic Games in One! collection for Windows in 2003 and in Atari Anthology for Xbox and PlayStation 2 in 2004.
