Whenever you write about the insurance market, the one thing you must always commit yourself to is the truth. So many people set out to sell and will bend their ethics to make the sale. This site stands in the middle, acting only as a gateway to the market. It’s always your decision to buy. This leaves us free to give you clear guidance. So, let’s start with current economic reality. As you will have noticed, we are still in a recession. No matter what Washington may try to tell you, the unemployment situation is bad and likely not to get any better over the next six months. Although the repossession situation has slightly slowed now the extent of the scam over the documentation has been revealed, everyone with a home is still struggling to find every month’s installments. Household budgets are seriously under pressure. Middle-class Americans are voting with their bank balances and the number of insurance policies has been falling steadily. This is what happened in previous depressions/recessions. People decide to risk insuring themselves. So, given the current state of the economy, the majority of people who buy insurance are buying term policies. As an aside, we should note the total value of the insurance market is unchanged. The falling value of sales to the middle classes is being offset by sales of permanent policies to the wealthy. During a recession, it becomes even more tax advantageous for the rich to divert their money into insurance policies. This is a perfectly legal way of getting the best investment returns with the least tax liability. The wealthy always find a way to keep their money. In an ideal world, everyone would buy permanent life policies. The cash value offers a buffer against inflation and allows all policy holders the chance to see their money grow. But, with money tight, the more logical choice is to get your foot in the door with a term policy. This gives you and your dependents cover while you weather the economic storm. However, unless your finances are really stretched, you should not buy the basic term policy. You should opt for either a renewable or convertible policy. As the names suggest, these require the insurer to renew or to convert the policy into a whole or permanent policy when you can afford it. Thus, once you have life insurance in place, you force the insurer to continue the cover. The better option is the right to convert into a whole or permanent policy. Note this is a positive right even though there may have been a change in your health. So long as you have been paying your premiums on time and in full, you can upgrade and take the additional value of the cash sum. Obviously, if your finances remain rocky or your family circumstances change, there is no obligation to convert. But this “privilege” keeps all your options open – a good thing when dealing with life insurance companies. Suppose you did nothing now. Your family circumstances change and you then want a policy. A medical examination shows health problems. Now you are shut out of the market. With term policies being relatively cheap, you benefit from having a foot in the door.
MisterHouse looks like a powerful open source software package for home automation. Its mainly for getting things to switch on and off according to timers or sensor readings, but some people are hacking it to do more complex things like monitoring heating system performance, which is a good application for environmental and cost-cutting reasons.
It would be a good idea to download the software and play about with it some time. I only wish the documentation was a little more straightforward. So often it’s the documentation and usability that holds back open source projects more than anything else.
Home automation is going to become bigger and bigger business, particularly for reducing energy costs as energy becomes more expensive and scarce. MisterHouse looks like a solid choice for technical types.
The game is one of the simplest ever invented. The rules are few and there’s no physical effort involved in playing it. You just sit, look at a few cards and make your bets. That’s probably why it’s become one of the most popular casino games of all time. Of course everyone knows the House has an edge. That’s how it pays all the expenses for running the casino. Remember it makes no difference whether this is a casino in the real world or online. You still need people and a base. So common sense tells you that no-one beats the House unless they invest some effort. Put another way: if everyone could beat the House without breaking sweat, the casino would go out of business in a day. This produces the headline: no pain, no gain. You have to put in some study time to master the basic strategy.
So what is this strategy? Over the years, some serious math types did all the work for you. They calculated the best way to play all the card combinations and wrote them down in simple charts. If you were going to play in a real casino, you would have to learn all these rules. That saves you having to pause before every decision to check the charts. Not only would the other players around the table be less than impressed, the casino would probably suggest you leave. But playing online changes all that. You can consult the charts as often as you like before deciding which card to play. It may be slow but, if you get the strategy right for every hand, you just shifted the odds in your favor.
So what are these charts? The first gives you the rules on when to split a pair. The strategy changes depending on the value of the cards dealt to you and the value of the card you can see the Dealer holding. So it starts with the rule that you split a pair of aces no matter what the Dealer holds, and goes down to the choices when you hold a pair of 2s. The other two charts deal with hard hands and soft hands. A hard hand is when neither card is an ace and the strategy changes significantly depending on the card held by the Dealer and the table rules on when the Dealer must stand or draw. A soft hand contains an ace and is easier to play because you can always draw one more card without busting – this takes some of the pressure off the play. I started off by saying blackjack is an easy game but, like all games, you can play for fun or you can take it seriously and play to win. In this case, you are more likely to win if you learn the charts and can play the strategy without thinking. To really take on the House edge, you also have to become a card counter but that’s a whole new story because it does not work in a virtual casino. For now, focus on the basic strategy and start your winning blackjack career.
There’s a sad fact about playing in a casino, whether real or virtual. The operators have worked out how to play the games on offer and set the odds to favor themselves. After all, if the majority did not lose, there would be no money to pay out all the money you win. Needless to say, the casinos have invested time and money into working out every possible variation on the rules and the ways to play under them. So, if you are going to take on the House edge, you have to become as big an expert on the rules as the operators. So let’s start with one of the more interesting rules which decides when you are allowed to double down. This applies when you have received your two cards. If you decide you are going to draw only one more card, the casino rules can allow you to double your initial bet. The different possibilities are to double:
- on any card combination;
- only when the two cards total 9, 10 or 11; or
- after splitting.
Why should you double your bet? The answer is deceptively simple. You double the bet when you think you are going to beat the Dealer. That really does make sense. But because you are suddenly investing more money in playing the game and have more to lose, you need to get on board with the math. You need to know the frequency with which the Dealer is likely to go bust based on the card you can see. If the Dealer’s card suggests a bust is probable, i.e. the Dealer’s hand is weak, you double the bet when you have a strong hand. You are maximizing the chance of making a good profit on the hand. If you build the doubling rule into your basic strategy, you reduce the House edge. If you refuse to play the doubling rule, the House edge actually increases. This is not to claim you will win every hand when you double down. If you are on a losing streak, you could lose every doubled bet for the session. But, in the long term, you will win more than you lose if you double. If you hesitate to double the bet, it suggests you are outside your comfort zone and already playing for higher stakes than you can afford.
At the blackjack table, the Dealer is weakest when showing a card in the range 2 through 6. With a 2, the bust percentage is 35%. It rises to a 42% chance of busting with a 5 or 6. Your hand is strongest if the two card total is less than 11. Do not be thrown off the basic strategy by the casinos that allow you to add less than the original bet. Blackjack is a game for winners. Never give up the chance to double and take the maximum win against the Dealer. Adding a few dollars to the original bet but not doubling is half-hearted and cowardly.
Software protection is need of the day. It is estimated that about 30% revenue is lost due to piracy but these figures fail to explain the fact that piracy also increases legal sales. Director of a software company told me they learn about some companies using their pirated software but they did not took any action. The director was not surprised when he received order from the same company next year. He said in the absence of a workable demo or just to try full features before making a purchase decision many people use pirated versions. This does not mean that software companies should not protect their products but only mean that a legal demonstrable product should be made available to customer for evaluation for a sufficient period of time.