By the way, we don’t like #SOPA so feel free to share our infographic, like it, googleplusit, post it, email it, you name it: it’s yours.

The Prism blog staff and I, as game enthusiasts (fanatics, shall I say) and casino know-it -alls have a latent fascination for anything games related.

Personally, I must admit I would’ve never been able to predict the level of super stardom achieved by the social gaming industry back at the time, when the first of my coworkers came to tell me about his online farm and some virtual cows made of pixels,…blah, blah and all that multi-billion-dollar-generating nonsense.

If you haven’t quite grasped the concept of why in the world are people so addicted to Mafia Wars and keep requesting your help to load up on weapons and armour…let us show you why in our detailed infographic:

I want to thank all the great sources (above) where we got this information from and because we know you loved it so much you want even more, here are a few facts that didn’t make the graphic cut:

• 44% of social gamers use these games “as a form of communication”
• 57% of social gamers have sex once per week vs. 52% of non-gamers
• Social games give back: 1.49M dollars have been raised for charity Between games like YoVille, MafiaWars, World of Warcraft and Fupa Games
• 61% of women social gamers play between 8 p.m. and midnight
• Social gamers will buy $6 billion in virtual goods by 2013

Got any more stats you want to share with us? What games DO you play but most importantly, why do you love them so much? Tell us, in the comments section.

Sources:

• Socialnomics
• NavigateBoomerMedia
• Corporate-eye
• Info Solutions Group
• Next Berlin
• Scribbal
• Games.com blog
• Seek Omega
• Social Times
• Mashable
• App Data.com
• The Real Time Report
• TechCrunch

The thing is, you don’t have to have an off the charts, Stephen Hawking-crushing IQ to win massive amounts of cash. Nor do you need to tag-team the casino with a bunch of math prodigies while wearing really lame disguises to rake in huge stacks of Benjamins.

All you really need to do is follow a tiny bit of strategy to start winning at the Blackjack tables.

The movie 21 does teach us one valuable lesson. Blackjack is a game of mathematics and a game of odds. Because it’s more about proven numbers than it is about luck, Blackjack is a game that can’t be played with bonus money at Prism. Unfortunately, because the game is so easy to beat, we need to reserve the bonus money for other games.

If you’ve never played Blackjack before, the rules are simple. You need to get as close to 21 without going over to beat the dealer. You’re dealt two cards face up and the dealer is also dealt two cards—one face up and the other face down. You need to make your hit me decision (another card please) or stay decision (no more cards please) while only knowing one of the dealer’s cards.

Blackjack goes far beyond being able to count to 21. Anyone over two years old can do that. The world’s most popular table game is about understanding how many possibilities exist for you to actually hit the card you’re looking for.

That’s why champion Blackjack players follow some key basic strategies that tell them when to hit and when to stay based on what they’re holding and what the dealer is showing.

It’s not card counting, but when you follow this basic strategy you’ll likely have a better chance of winning over the long haul.

Wishful thinking, right? Let’s face it. None of Las Vegas pit bosses will do that (especially if they’ve seen “The Hangover” before). It goes without saying that getting them to hand out free cash is pretty much out of the question.

But that’s not the case at Prism Casino.

No, we’re not handing out free money just to bring your friends over to trash the casino and wake up with a tiger in your room. No.. We’re handing out cash—real money—to players who bring their friends to Prism to enjoy all our great casino games!

If you’re the type of guy who also we “made a pact. Wolfpack only” we’ve got good news. With Prism’s refer-a-friend offer, you could potentially make enough cash to pay for a 5-star Vegas vacation for you AND your inseparable buddies.

But enough about those frat rats you call friends . Let’s talk cash. Here’s how Prism’s refer-a-friend bonus works:

1) Log into the software, head to the cashier and hit the Redeem Coupon tab
2) Enter the email addresses of the friends you want to refer
3) Choose which type of payment you want to receive:
a) Get 20% of your friend’s first deposit
b) Get $5 free each time a referred friend opens an account
c) Get 10% of your referred friends’ losses

Once you hit the Send Mail button, we’ll do the legwork and tell your friends about Prism Casino.

All you need to do is wait for your friends to deposit. Better yet, facebook them and tell them to play at Prism where the same refer-a-friend bonus is available for them and their friends.

We’ll credit your account with gaming credits the following month after your friends have deposited. And there are no wagering requirements with our refer-a-friend bonus. You’re free to withdraw your bonus as cash at any time.

Enjoy, and tell your friends too. After all, you owe it to them

Archie Karas – Everyone dreams of turning a $50 casino deposit into big money. Archie Karas, who goes by the name The Greek, lived the dream in 1992, turning $50 into $40 million in a span of three years playing poker, pool, and random casino games. In true Greek financial crisis spirit, Karas went on to lose it all.

Frank Sarakakis – Speaking of Greek tragedies, in 1988, Greek millionaire Frank Sarakakis handed over millions to the Ritz casino playing roulette. You’d think a loss that big would scar you for life. Not Sarakakis. He lost more than £8m in just one year playing roulette in London.

Akio Kashiwagi – Most big losses happen over time. A few thousand here, a few thousand there. And if you have willpower, you can control those losses, walk away, come back later when you’ve refocused, and start winning again. Akio Kashiwagi clearly didn’t have that focus. In 1992, he recorded the biggest baccarat loss of all time when he dropped $10 million at the Trump Casino in one session.

Faoud-al-Zayat – What do you do when you lose £500,000 in just 15 minutes playing roulette at a UK casino? If you’re Faoud-al-Zayat, you drop another £500,000. And when that doesn’t go so well, you drop another £1.25 million. Over the span of just a few years, Faoud-al-Zayat found himself owing £4 million to the London casino he frequented.

Omar Siddiqui – Omar Siddiqui was a self-made millionaire with a hidden secret. He made his millions skimming money from the company he worked for through kickbacks. Rather than investing the money and living off the interest like any honest fraudster would do, Siddiqui took the cash and played $200,000 hands of blackjack. He lost over $65 million to casinos across America and he faced 140 years in jail for fraud before making a deal with the IRS.

Terrance Watanabe – In 2007, a Nebraska businessman named Terrance Watanabe (who clearly had a lot of money to burn) lost close to $127 million in a one-year span. According to the businessman, he was gambling under the influence of cases of Russian vodka and other unmentionables provided to him by the casino.

Mr. Ye – The Mexican-Chinese businessman (what’s with all these businessmen losing money, by the way?) used to bet $200,000 per hand playing Baccarat at the Venetian. Known as Mr. Ye on the strip, his real name is Zhenli Ye Gon. And gone is exactly what happened to his money. He apparently lost around $126 million in Vegas.

Kerry Packer – Some guys have all the luck. Kerry Packer, an Australian media mogul, isn’t one of them. He holds the record of having one of the biggest losing streaks in UK history when he lost close to £20 million.

Robert Maxwell – Another UK media kingpin (again, what’s with the pattern) is credited with one of the fastest casino losses in history when he lost £1.5 million in three minutes playing three roulette wheels simultaneously.

Mr. C – Imagine winning thousands in cash but feeling like a loser. That’s what happened to a guy named Mr. C who won $4,444 playing a progressive jackpot at an online casino. Unfortunately, quadruple four signifies death in Chinese culture, so the player refused to collect his winnings. Talk about a quadruple bad beat.

That’s why so many poker players who love the game but want to experience something a little less stressful turn to video poker.

Online video poker is an entirely different animal. Unlike traditional poker where you’re trying to outsmart and outplay poker fanatics just like you, video poker pits you against the house in a one-on-one battle for supremacy.

Prism offers many varieties of video poker, but if you’re used to playing regular Hold’em and have a strategy already in place, throw it out the window.

Just like No Limit Texas Hold’em poker requires a different strategy than Pot Limit Hold’em, online video poker requires a different type of strategy based on the type of game you’re playing.

Today we’ll take a quick look at Joker Poker and the best strategy to beat the house.

Joker Poker is basically five-card draw poker, except jokers are thrown into the mix. The object of the game is to build the best 5-card hand. But you don’t have to keep the cards you’re dealt. You’re actually given the opportunity to toss away any number of cards you like. If you chooseto toss some cards, you’ll receive replacement cards from the deck to give you a 5-card hand.

So how do you know when to toss cards away? And how do you know which cards to get rid? Just follow the charts below. We’ve got one for when you’re holding a joker and one for when you’re not.

Follow these two strategy charts while playing Joker Poker and you could find yourself laughing all the way to the bank.

But does it make sense to completely cut out your online gaming budget when money’s a bit tight? For sure, the same way it makes sense to cut off your arm if you wanted to lose 10 lbs.

Recession-related studies continue to show that the best way to navigate through a recession is to make cuts that will save you money without changing your lifestyle. And the best way to accomplish that is to cut a little but from every department as opposed to cutting something off completely.

For example, let’s say your cable bill is $70 a month, your high-speed Internet bill is $60 a month, you spend about $300 a month eating out at restaurants, and you budget about $100 a month for online gaming (and that’s assuming you don’t actually win).

So your budget for these four things runs $530 a month. Now, you can cut out gaming completely to save $100. Or you can budget smarter and not notice much of a lifestyle change across the board.

Cut out some of the channels you don’t watch on TV and you shave your $70 bill down to $50. Move down a tier in Internet speed and shave off another $15. Commit to going out three times a month instead of four, or change where you eat and drop your dining budget from $300 to $250.

Without really noticing, you’ve shaved $85 off your monthly budget for cable, Internet and dining.

 So, instead of cutting out gaming completely, you’d only have to shave $15 off your monthly gaming budget.

And, of course, if you win, you won’t have to make any cuts next month.

If you haven’t played in a slot tourney, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s just like playing regular slots, only instead of playing against the house, slot tournaments pit you against other players. The player with the highest score at the end of the tournament wins the tourney and takes home the first place prize. But in many tourneys, more than one player takes home cash.

Right now, we’re running Cumulative Prize Pool tournaments, where the prize pool keeps getting bigger as more players enter the tourney, and Set Prize tournaments, where more players get to share in the fixed prize pool as more entrants fill seats.

Now, we said that every slot tournament crowns winners. But that doesn’t mean you should rely completely on luck to finish first. Even more so than playing solo slots, slot tournaments involve an element of strategy. So, we’ve put together a few tips to help you win.

Tip #1 – Keep your eye on your credits

Remember, every player starts the slot tournament with the exact same number of credits. You want to win as many points as possible before the clock runs out. But you also don’t want to run out of chips too soon. So pay attention to your credits. If you find that more than half your credits are gone halfway through the tourney, change your strategy by lowering your bet size

Tip #2 –  Bring your favorite slots strategy into the mix

Most new players enter slot tournaments blindly, not really knowing that there’s actually a good deal of strategy involved. So add a strategy that’s worked for you in regular slot games to the mix. Consider an Up the Steps strategy, where you increase your bet when you win and decrease it when you lose. We talked about online casino slot strategies in a previous post, so if you haven’t read that, now’s a good time to take a look at a few solid ideas that could work for you.

Tip #3 – Practice for free

We have a play-money tournament option. Try your luck there before getting involved in the real deal.

Yeah, we know. At a casino, you aren’t necessarily playing against other slot machine players. It’s you vs. the machine. But we’re willing to bet your number one goal is to set off the jackpot bells before anyone else seated within spitting distance of your machine has a chance to do the same. It’s human nature. You want the spotlight. You want to win before anyone else has a chance.

That’s why you’re going to love Slot Tournaments at Prism Casino. It’s an awesome experience that pumps out a winner, or several winners, every single time.

Instead of playing against the house, you’re pitted directly against other slot players in the tournament. And you all have the same goal—to have the highest score at the end of the tournament. Here’s how it works:

1. You enter a tournament. The tournament has a clock and you’ve got a certain number of credits to play with until the clock runs out.
2. You play.

That’s pretty much it. The goal is to get the highest score using the credits you have within the set amount of time. If you run out of credits, you won’t be issued any more, so there is a bit of strategy involved, which we’ll talk about in an upcoming post. You should also know that it’s impossible to stop the clock, even if you log out and log back in, so no stopping in the middle of the tournament to make yourself a sandwich.

Right now, Prism is offering three types of tourneys:

1. Freeroll tournaments where we throw a bunch of money into the prize pool and you pay absolutely nothing to enter it.
2. Cumulative Prize Pool tournaments where the prize pool keeps getting bigger as more players enter it.
3. Set Prize tournaments where the prize pool is set and doesn’t grow. But as more people enter the tourney, more people get to share in the prize pool.

Ready to play? Just launch Prism and look for the Tournaments button at the bottom of the lobby.

I smell an HBO show. 90 years from now, HBO’s going to make a show starring Steve Buscemi’s great, great grandson called Offshore Empire. It’ll be much like Boardwalk Empire, only instead of covering the sale and distribution of alcohol, it will be about online gaming.

Actually, come to think of it, online gaming today really isn’t anything like alcohol was during prohibition. Yeah, the US government doesn’t think Americans should be free to choose their own type of online entertainment with their own money, just as they didn’t think Americans should be able to drink.

So the fact that the US government wants to ban gaming is the same. But the operations of the people who provide the two “vices” are completely different.

During prohibition, the sale and distribution of alcohol was controlled by a select few. Today, countless online casinos and poker sites exist, each one run by internationally respect companies that pay taxes to the governments in which they operate, employ thousand of talented people, and actually put money into the global economy.

If you’re a fan of the hit HBO show Boardwalk Empire, or if you’re even vaguely familiar with the era of prohibition, you know that banning the sale of alcohol was something that just didn’t work (today, you can walk into any corner store and buy a beer in the United States). If anything, prohibiting alcohol only made it more in demand, driving the sale and distribution of alcohol underground.

So should that leave you concerned about playing at online casino or poker site? Well, the truth is, today, if you’re thinking about playing at one of these sites you should rest assured knowing your money is safe. While many online gaming sites serve US players, only a select few were targeted on Black Friday. And the sites targeted on that infamous day were poker sites, not online casinos.

With a lot of money to be made taxing online casinos, it should be interesting to see how online gaming in the US plays out over the next year or so. No matter what happens, you’re free to pour yourself a drink and enjoy the slots and tables.