What the School is
The Mayfair Casino School is the free course catalogue at the centre of this site. Fifty lessons, each available as a narrated audio track and a parallel structured article. The voice is mine; the maths is Helena's; the standards below are the contract.
The School isn't a marketing funnel. We don't sell anything inside a lesson. We don't run sponsored content. We don't take affiliate links inside the body copy. The affiliate side of this site is one click away in the navigation; the lessons are a separate proposition, kept clean.
Who signs what
Every page on the School carries a byline. The byline is the contract. Two names sign:
- Annabel Cavendish writes the editorial side: rules, history, dress codes, venue practice, the Gaming Act, the rooms that closed and the ones that didn't. If you're reading prose, it's mine.
- Dr Helena Marchant signs the quantitative side: house edges, variance windows, Kelly fractions, basic strategy charts, every Monte Carlo run, every probability claim. If there's a decimal point in it, it's hers.
Anything under /tools/ is Helena's. Everything else is mine. Both bios are on the Authors page.
Editorial standards
These are the rules the School holds itself to. They sit above any individual lesson. If a piece on this site doesn't meet them, it's a mistake and we'll fix it.
- Specific over general. Real venue names, real years, real edges to two decimal places, real legislation by section. Not 'some casinos', not 'around 2-3%', not 'gambling regulations'.
- Primary sources where they exist. UKGC guidance, Hansard, the court judgment, the casino's own published table rules, the manufacturer's product page. Wikipedia is a tie-breaker, not a citation.
- No selling inside a lesson. The body of a lesson contains no operator names as calls-to-action, no 'sign up here' boxes, no promo codes. We trust the reader to find the affiliate side of the site if they want it.
- No moralising. If a system doesn't work, we say so once with the maths. We don't lecture. We assume an adult reader who can decide.
- No banned phrases. 'Winning strategy', 'foolproof', 'savvy gamblers', 'smart players', 'guaranteed'. These are the vocabulary of bad gambling content. We don't use them.
Source policy
Every factual claim that names a venue, a year, a ruling, an edge, or a manufacturer is cited inline to a real published URL. Acceptable sources include:
- UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) published guidance and regulatory decisions
- Primary legislation (the Gaming Act 1968, the Gambling Act 2005) via legislation.gov.uk or Hansard
- UK Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judgments (BAILII, supremecourt.uk)
- Casino operators' own published rule cards, table-game pages, and dress codes
- Equipment manufacturers' product pages (Cammegh, TCS John Huxley, Light & Wonder)
- Neutral encyclopedic sources for definitions (Britannica, Oxford reference)
- Reputable press (BBC, The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, The Conversation)
Sources we don't cite: strategy-system sellers, affiliate marketing sites, operator-paid 'reviews', industry trade publications that conflate journalism with sponsorship. If a claim can only be sourced to one of those, the claim is cut.
Fact-check process
Every lesson goes through three passes before publication:
- Editorial draft. I write the article and the spoken script from primary sources, with citations inline as the prose develops.
- Quantitative review. Helena verifies every number that appears in the lesson. Edges, payouts, probability statements, expected-value calculations, Kelly fractions. If the maths doesn't reconcile to her independent calculation, the number gets corrected before it ships.
- Voice and venue pass. I do a final read-through against the factual canon: venue closures dated correctly, named rulings cited correctly, table limits stated in the right currency. Anything not in the canon and not citable gets cut.
The audio is recorded against the final approved script. The teleprompter line timings are then re-aligned to the spoken audio, so the karaoke highlight tracks what's actually being said.
Reviews and corrections
Every lesson carries a 'Reviewed' date in its byline. Lessons are re-reviewed every six months, sooner if a regulatory change or a venue closure affects the content. Corrections are made silently for typos and grammar; substantive corrections (a wrong edge, a misattributed quote, a closed venue still listed as open) are logged at the top of the affected lesson with a date stamp.
If you spot an error, write to [email protected]. We read every email and we'd rather hear about a mistake from a reader than discover it ourselves three months later.
Compliance
The School is editorial content about casino games. It isn't gambling advertising and it isn't a financial advice service. That said, we run it under the same compliance standards we apply to the rest of MayfairCasino.com.
- UKGC. Although the School itself isn't promoting a licensed operator, the wider site is registered with the Gambling Commission as an affiliate. We treat all editorial as if it were subject to LCCP social-responsibility and fair-marketing rules.
- 18+ throughout. Every page on the site carries the 18+ responsible-gambling block. The School is not aimed at, and not accessible without acknowledgement of, an adult audience.
- Responsible gambling. Every lesson links to GamCare and GAMSTOP. No lesson promises any positive expected value at any casino game. The maths is the maths.
- ICO. The site is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office. The privacy notice covers what data we collect, why, and how to ask us to delete it.
Methodology for the numbers
For the maths assumptions behind every edge, payout, and Kelly figure used in the School, see the dedicated Methodology page. That document is updated whenever an assumption changes.
