Author: Jeremiah Booker

If there’s a game where people bet something of value on the outcome, there are one or more betting systems in use. Gamblers love casino betting systems. The most popular betting systems are used in many different types of gambling games.

The two most popular betting systems are the Martingale and Paroli systems. Both systems have been used for several hundred years.

In this post, I will be discussing the differences between the Martingale and Paroli systems and which one is better.

Martingale vs. Paroli: History

The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (lived from 1623 to 1662) is the father of many of the theories and principles associated with gambling.

It’s possible that Pascal invented both the Martingale and Paroli betting systems. Historians actually agree that he and Pierre de Fermat developed the science of probabilities while discussing gambling problems via letters.

That early correspondence between Pascal and Fermat may have been the root of modern game theory.

Modern game theory predicts the possible outcomes of simple situations. The 20^th century mathematician John von Neumann is credited with proposing the first formal rules for modern game theory.

Betting systems like the Martingale and Paroli don’t resemble the classic prisoner dilemma, but they came from someone’s thought experiments about how to improve chances of winning in a gambling game. That is the essence of game theory, and it’s a fitting way to describe betting systems.

Why Do People Use Betting Systems?

This is one of those rhetorical questions inexperienced gamblers ask their elders. There are as many reasons to use betting systems as there are people making bets.

The most obvious reason for using a system is your hope of beating the game’s unfavorable odds. In casino games the house always has an edge. The payout odds are not as good as the probabilities.

In other words, you’ll lose money by making only even-money bets because the house wins slightly more often than the player over time. It depends on the game, but gambling writers frequently use roulette to illustrate how even money bets eventually cost you money.

If you only bet on the outside bets (even or odd, red or black, top half or bottom half of the wheel), the math says you’ll win about 48.6% of the time in European roulette. Just to break even, you need to win 50% of the time.

A betting system cannot change the payout odds. The appeal of a betting system is that it seeks to improve the return to player by strategically raising bets. Another way to look at a betting system is that it tries to reduce losses.

In theory, if you must lose, it’s better to lose the least amount of money possible, the minimum bet allowed in the game.

By the same token, in theory, if you’re going to win, it’s better to win the largest amount of money possible which is the maximum bet allowed.

The idea behind any betting system is that your wins should outweigh your losses over time.

The Flaw Is That They Don’t Change the Rules of the Game

Whether you use the Martingale system or the Paroli system, you’re still at a probabilistic disadvantage in the games casinos offer. The following games have some of the best odds in all casino games and they all favor the house:

• Baccarat
• Blackjack
• Roulette

Although blackjack requires skill, it’s still a game of chance. That means you can’t predict what the next card the dealer draws will be. If you could make such predictions, the house wouldn’t let you play blackjack, and you’d win more money by betting on what the next card will be anyway.

The randomness of any gambling game weakens the potential value of even the best betting system.

How the Martingale System Works and Where It Fails

The Martingale system is the classic betting strategy, the one most players have heard about. It’s a simple strategy and therefore, easy to learn.

The Martingale system is also game-independent. You can use it in every gambling scenario you can think of, as long as you can make a series of wagers.

The system relies on betting units. A unit is the smallest allowable bet, the table minimum in games like blackjack and roulette.

In the Martingale system, the player begins by wagering a single unit and continues betting only single units as long as he wins.

When the player loses the bet, he doubles the size of his bet on the next round. And where does the Martingale system fail?

You’ll either run out of money as you continue to raise your bets (if you fall into a losing streak), or you’ll run into the table limit, which forces you to stop increasing your bets.

I’ve heard of players trying to use a modified Martingale system where they keep betting the table maximum until they win back the money they’ve lost. I’ve never seen anyone use this system successfully, but I suppose it’s happened somewhere.

How the Paroli System Works and Where It Fails

The Paroli system is often called the Reverse Martingale system. Instead of raising bets after you lose, the Paroli system tells you to raise your bets after you win. The system assumes you can make more money by taking advantage of a winning streak.

Even so, the Paroli betting system calls for you to return to a single unit wager after the third consecutive win.

The Paroli system fails because it doesn’t take full advantage of a long winning streak. Assuming you win 40 wagers in a row, you’ll win, raise, raise, and start over 13 times.

What if you had continually raised your bets during that streak until you hit the table limit? The Paroli system is not a good choice for people who are prone to second-guess themselves.

The Paroli System Has One Clear Advantage Over the Martingale System

Since you don’t know how long your winning and losing streaks will be, or even if you’ll have any streaks, the Paroli system is a more conservative betting strategy.

In other words, your money should last longer if you use the Paroli system than if you use the Martingale system.

I don’t see it as an advantage that the Paroli system never leads to the table limit like the Martingale system. While you don’t have to worry about what to do when you can no longer raise your bet, the Martingale system has the theoretical advantage of paying really well on bets at or near the limit, if you win.

Shorter Streaks Are More Likely in Most Gambling Games

While it’s possible the roulette wheel could land on red 40 times in a row, or you could draw 10 blackjacks in a row, your winning and losing streaks will usually be much shorter.

Losing streaks in the Paroli system are much less expensive than losing streaks in the Martingale system.

On the other hand, winning streaks don’t exist in the Martingale system. If you use the Martingale system in a 40-win streak, you’ll only win on minimum bets. Like with the Paroli system, this is probably not a good strategy for people who tend to second-guess themselves when gambling with real money.

The high probability that any winning or losing streaks will be short-lived means that either betting system will fail to return its full potential value to the player.

Conclusion

About the only betting system I ever use is to be consistent with my wagers. I don’t count cards in blackjack, so I’m not looking for signs I should raise my bet.

I usually play outside bets in roulette. Call me a boring gambler, but I hate single-number bets because I don’t enjoy losing most of my wagers.

If you enjoy risk and the potential rewards, and you want to use a betting system, the Martingale is probably a better system for you. It entails a lot of risk and even if you only win one big wager before going back to the minimum, it could result in a nice payoff.

If you want to preserve your stake for as much as possible then you’ll probably feel better using the Paroli system.

Neither system guarantees you’ll leave the game with more money than you started, but it may be fun to test them both a few times and see which one you like the best.

I should start by pointing out that neither I nor this site has any association with the original 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Stephen Covey would disapprove of this post.

When I was younger, I read a lot of personal development material, and the 7 Habits had an almost cult-like following.

Now that I mostly write about real money casino gambling for a living, I thought it would be interesting to apply some of those principles to your career (or hobby) of gambling.

Below, I’ve provided my take on the seven habits of highly successful casino gamblers.

1 – Be Proactive With Your Casino Gambling

The first three habits in the traditional model have to do with personal victory as an individual. And the first step in that process is identifying what you can and cannot control and staying focused on what you CAN control.

What can you control when you’re a casino gambler?

You can choose which games to play. You can choose which bets to place. You can decide how to size those bets. You can decide whether to join the players club. You can decide to play when there are bonus points and rewards available for members of the players club.

You cannot decide what the outcomes are going to be for a specific bet. You have no way of knowing or controlling whether the ball lands on red or black in roulette, or whether the next roll of the dice at the craps table is 7 or 11.

By focusing on what you can control, you can be more effective. For example, at the craps table, you can choose the bets with the lowest house edge.

At the blackjack table, you can learn to count cards and raise and lower your bets based on whether the deck is favorable to you.

2 – Begin With the End in Mind

This is just a fancy way of saying you should set goals. With casino gambling, it’s mostly unrealistic to set a goal of making a living as a casino gambler (although it’s possible for advantage players like card counters in blackjack).

What kinds of goals should you set instead of being a winner? You might set goals related to how much time you get to spend playing. Or you might set a goal for how much you want to win and be willing to quit once you’ve won that much.

You should certainly have a limit on how much you’re willing to lose. (This is called a loss limit.) Most of these goals won’t change the odds. They’ll still be against you.

But without deciding what success looks like beforehand, it’s impossible to know when you’ve achieved it.

3 – Put First Things First

This basically means you need to prioritize. For a casino gambler, I think this has a lot to do with money management strategies.

Most people gambling in a casino have traveled to that casino on vacation. If that’s the case, you need to know how much money to budget for things like transportation, food, and room and board.

It’s sad but true that a lot of casino gamblers lose so much money gambling that they’re tired and hungry before they return for their trip.

It’s easy to lose track and lose a bunch of money before your trip is over.

Put first things first. Set aside the money you need for other purposes before deciding how much money you’re going to gamble with. Be extremely self-disciplined and diligent about staying within your budget.

Don’t even take a trip to a casino unless you’re already in good financial shape to begin with.

4 – Think Win-Win

The next three habits have to do with dealing with other people. You might not see how this applies to the life of a casino gambler, but let’s face it, dealing with other people matters everywhere no matter what.

Thinking win-win is the idea that you’re going to look for a solution that looks like a win to both parties.

Let’s say you’re playing slots in the casino and you really enjoy beer. The cocktail waitress comes by and brings you a beer. And you LOVE that it’s free because you’re gambling.

If you don’t tip her, guess how many more rounds you’re getting? Not only will the cocktail waitress you stiffed refuse to bring you more drinks, she’ll warn the other waitresses about you.

On the other hand, if you tip her a $5, $10, or $20 when she brings you the first beer, she’ll make sure you’re toward the top of the list of customers to bring drinks to for the rest of the night. All you’ll need to do is tip her $1 every time she brings you a drink.

If you spend a lot of time in the casino, it might be worthwhile to give her another $5 every couple of hours just to keep her happy.

You both win. She makes a decent amount of money, and you get to drink cheap without having to wait for service.

5 – Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

The idea is that most people are trying so hard to convey their ideas to other people that they lose valuable rapport with that other person.

When does something like this come up? Let’s suppose you’re a reasonably high-dollar gambler, and you have your own casino host assigned to you.

If you think about what his goals are first, you’re more likely to work out situations where you can get your goals achieved, whatever those might be.

Maybe you want to get an upgrade to a suite to impress your girlfriend. If you talk to your casino host with an attitude of what you can do to help him, you’ll be more likely to get what you want.

This works with everyone else in the casino, too. You can often get an upgraded room by slipping the hotel desk clerk a $20 bill when you check in.

6 – Synergize

This is a fancy word for using teamwork. I know that there are gamblers who prefer to gamble on their own without dealing with other people. This habit might not apply to them. But think about the people it does apply to.

For example, the most successful card counters in history belong to teams. Some of the most successful poker players also belong to teams.

This is an example of combining multiple people’s strengths to achieve results you couldn’t achieve on your own.

For example, you might not be a great poker player, but you might have a huge bankroll. It might be worth your while to find a couple of young poker winners to sponsor. You pay for their buy-ins, then you get a cut of their winnings.

I recently bought 2% of a poker player’s action in the World Series of Poker. He didn’t place in the money, but it sure was fun. He probably could have entered the event without any investors, but some poker pros really do need financial backing to get into the game.

7 – Sharpen the Saw

This is based on the old story about how someone asked Abraham Lincoln what he would do if he had eight hours to cut down a tree. He said he’d spend the first seven hours sharpening his saw.

In your case, YOU are the saw. You can’t play the game of poker effectively if you’re drunk, tired, or sick. Sharpening the saw means taking care of your health and well-being so that you can perform effectively. This is true of world-class sports bettors or card counters in blackjack, too.

But it also applies to recreational gamblers.

Guess what happens to your self-discipline and willpower if you’re not well rested?

Conclusion

So, yes, the seven habits of highly effective people do have specific applications to being a casino gambler, even if Stephen Covey would disapprove.

Do you have any examples of how these habits of highly successful casino gamblers have informed your casino play?

Nobody likes to lose when gambling with real money. But at the end of the day, most losers are mature enough to pay their debts and avoid causing an incident.

Unfortunately, certain gamblers don’t believe in this code. Some people might refuse to pay up or even cause physical harm to others.

Neither scenario is pleasant. However, there are players who  just can’t handle themselves properly after losing money. Below, you can read about the biggest sore losers to ever gamble.

1 – Harry Kakavas

By all means, Harry Kakavas never should’ve had to worry about money. The real estate developer made an estimated $1 billion by selling luxury homes on Australia’s Gold Coast.

But like many people who get filthy rich, Kakavas got tired of always winning. So, he started gambling in casinos…a lot.

The billionaire didn’t fare so well in these games. He quickly lost his billionaire status and more after taking a beating on the baccarat tables.

Unhappy with his luck, Kakavas made trips to Las Vegas and Macau in hopes of turning things around. These gambling excursions didn’t go any better. In fact, he once lost $164 million through a single Vegas session in 2006.

Rather than taking his losses like a man, Kakavas spent several years attempting to sue various casinos. His case revolved around the VIP perks and casino comps that were offered.

He argued that the VIP rewards were merely used to keep luring him back to casinos. Kakavas lost every lawsuit and failed to recoup any of his massive losses.

2 – Jack McCall

Jack McCall may be the saltiest loser on this list. In fact, he’s such a sore loser that he actually murdered “Wild” Bill Hickok over a poker game.

This story began in August 1876, when Hickok was gambling at Nuttal and Mann’s Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, South Dakota (formerly Dakota Territory). He was drunk and quickly lost all of his money to Hickok.

The latter encouraged McCall to stop playing poker. Hickok also bought the losing player breakfast and offered him money. McCall accepted the money, but he was also insulted by the gesture.

The following day, Hickok was at the poker tables again. He normally sat with his back against a wall so he that he could see any potential enemies coming. However, the only seat available at the time was one that faced away from the entrance. He begrudgingly took the seat.

McCall entered the saloon during the game and shot Hickok in the back of the head. Wild Bill died instantly. After murdering Hickok, McCall was summoned to appear in court. He claimed that he was avenging his brother’s death (Lew McCall) at the hands of Wild Bill.

But the poker losses were largely believed to be the main reason behind the murder. Nevertheless, he was acquitted and allowed to go free.

McCall was later reported after bragging about shooting Wild Bill. He was subsequently retried on grounds that the first trial happened on Indian lands, rather than on true American soil.

This time, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. McCall was hanged on March 1, 1877. One interesting side note to this bitter gambler story is that the hand Hickok died with—two black aces and two black eights (fifth card unknown)—is called “dead man’s hand.”

3 – Terrance Watanabe

Terrance Watanabe was once a very successful businessman. As the CEO of Oriental Trading, he helped the company grow to the point where it was selling $300 million annually.

In 2000, after over two decades in the family business, Watanabe decided to sell his controlling stake in the company. The Japanese-American tycoon always had a business-first mentality up to this point. But he decided to relax and start enjoying his fortune after selling Oriental Trading.

Unfortunately, part of this relaxation included long stays at casino resorts. Watanabe would play everything from slot machines to roulette during his stays.

Watanabe was treated like a king as a result. Casinos spared no expense when it came to comping him. Watanabe asked few questions and continued gambling away his fortune. His losses hit a peak in 2007, when he dropped over $120 million.

He eventually lost so much that he couldn’t cover his debts. Caesars Palace sued Watanabe for $14.75 million in bad checks. The latter countersued Caesars Entertainment on grounds that the casino gave him drugs just to keep him playing. It turns out that this part of the case did have some validity.

The Nevada Gaming Commission hit Caesars with a $225,000 fine for letting Watanabe use drugs on their property and sexually harass waitresses. But the countersuit didn’t save Watanabe from having to pay the casino. He ended up settling with Caesars out of court for an undisclosed amount.

4 – Safa Abdulla Al Geabury

Safa Al Geabury bears similarities to Terrance Watanabe. He’s a very wealthy individual who refused to cover his gambling debts when the time came.

The Swiss businessman owns an Islamic art collection that was once valued as high as $1 billion. He received a huge marker at London’s Ritz Club in 2014 as a result of his wealthy reputation.

But when it came to pay the marker, Al Geabury was very cheap. He lost £2.2 million at the Ritz Club and ignored the debt. The casino eventually sued him for the money. Al Geabury defended himself by saying that the Ritz took advantage of his compulsive gambling problem.

If true, this might have helped his case. But the Ritz produced signed documents from Al Geabury where he agreed that he no longer had a gambling problem.

The judge in the case ruled in favor of the Ritz Club. He saw too many inconsistencies in Al Geabury’s testimony and didn’t believe that he suffered from compulsive gambling.

Even after the court ruling, the art collector still refused to pay up. Al Geabury was ordered to make another court appearance, which he skipped under the guise that he couldn’t afford the trip.

The judge reached his limit and charged Al Geabury with contempt of court. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison as a result.

5 – Arnold Rothstein

Arnold Rothstein became a legendary bookmaker and gambler. He originally built his fortune by winning in poker games and sports betting.

However, part of Rothstein’s success was attributed to match fixing. He was the central figure behind the Chicago Black Sox Scandal of 1919.

Rothstein had his friend and employee, Abe Attell, pay players on the Black Sox team to throw the 1919 World Series. He was able to escape legal consequences by denying everything in court, but privately, he admitted to fixing the World Series.

This blackmark didn’t affect his finances. Rothstein became wealthier than ever after opening brothels and nightclubs across New York City. He also had a very respected image in the criminal underworld. Case in point, he was once paid $500,000 just to mediate a feud between two gangs.

However, Rothstein would suffer a fall throughout the late 1920s. He went through a long losing streak in different forms of gambling.

In September of 1928, he lost $320,000 in a poker game. Rothstein refused to pay after alleging that the game was rigged. He was invited to another poker game in October. Here, he was fatally shot over what was certainly retaliation for not covering the $320k debt.

Rothstein was asked to identify his shooter as he was dying. But even in his last moments, he wouldn’t snitch on a fellow gangster.

6 – Leonard Tose

Leonard Tose is yet another successful businessman who went down the wrong path with high stakes gambling.

Tose earned a $20 million fortune through his trucking company. In 1969, he used $16.1 million of this amount to buy the Philadelphia Eagles.

$16.1 million would only buy a fraction of an NFL team today. After all, some franchises are worth billions of dollars. But the amount that Tose paid for the Eagles was a record at the time.

Tose held onto his football franchise until 1985, when he sold the team for $65 million. He was forced to sell after losing over $25 million at Las Vegas casinos.

He attempted to sue various casinos for $500,000 apiece on grounds that they kept serving him free drinks and encouraging him to gamble. Tose lost every one of these lawsuits.

Things didn’t go much better for him afterward. He continued losing his fortune and everything else that he’d accumulated through trucking and the Eagles.

Conclusion

Anybody who sits down to a casino table or engages in other types of gambling must be prepared to lose. After all, they’re dealing with negative expectation games in many cases.

However, the gamblers discussed here weren’t prepared to lose. And when they did suffer losses, they either didn’t want to pay up or wanted revenge.

Jack McCall is the most extreme case discussed here. And Rothstein is the one person on this list that died as a result of gambling debts. Kakavas, Watanabe, Al Geabury, and Tose all fall into the category of businessmen-turned-gambling-addicts.

As you can see, it never pays to be bitter over a gambling loss. You’re better off paying the cost and moving on.

There are two differences between the stock market and gambling games. First, the stock market represents the equity in business operations. That equity includes the value of assets and potential future income. Buying stock, mutual shares, or options is treated as an exchange of value.

When you gamble, you’re not buying into anything.

Second, when you gamble, there’s a middleman (typically a casino or bookmaker) who is carving some of the money out of the exchange for themselves.

Gamblers pay each others’ winnings. In theory, established casinos stake their bets against players from players’ money. Only a new game or casino requires business owners to risk wealth on early wagers.

Where playing the stock market begins to resemble real money gambling is in the uncertainty of what happens next. The investor must decide whether to “keep playing” or to bail out of a declining investment.

Even so, there are several ways investors can turn their investments into high-stakes gambles. All the equity they believed they were buying vanishes.

Equity Is No Longer the Most Important Value in Stocks

Anyone who has taken an accounting course or two should be familiar with the following formula:

The shareholders’ equity in a publicly traded company is whatever its net assets are worth, including intangible assets like intellectual property rights.

Future potential income isn’t included in basic accounting equity formula, but investors looking for potential gains or returns are interested in some kind of future income. So-called income investors want to be paid dividends. The best dividends are paid from profits. The worst dividends are paid from loans.

Since the 1980s, equity investing has gained more popularity than income investing. The equity investor doesn’t care if the stock pays dividends or even if the company makes a profit.

All the equity investor wants is to buy low and sell high. That’s similar to how gamblers want to put money into a game and receive a high payout.

While you may not be buying equity in the craps table, you’re risking your money on a potential outcome. Equity investors could lose everything if the stocks they buy drop to zero.

Every year, the major markets delist stocks whose market prices per share have dropped below required minimums. These companies may own valuable assets, but their stock prices reflect a lack of investor confidence in their futures.

True net asset value isn’t as important as market price in the stock market.

Equity Investors Bet on Uncertain Outcomes

During the good times, the stock market tends to carry most stock prices up with it. There will always be losing stocks, but as the major indexes grow in value, most stocks follow.

But even good, strong companies may experience sudden loss in share price. The market may panic if a corporation’s CEO is charged with a crime or otherwise loses investors’ trust.

You might be thinking investors should just use a buy and hold strategy. That’s a great theory, but it creates an unrealistic expectation.

One of the mechanisms at work in the stock market is automatic trading. There’s more than one kind of automated trading. The officers of publicly held corporations must exercise their options (to buy stock at discounted prices then sell it at market price) in a careful, transparent way.

If you track insider trading, you’ll often see reports about programmed sales that go through when stock prices are volatile. The executives have no choice but to let some sales happen and take a loss.

For all intents and purposes, because you don’t know when the next natural disaster or scandal affects your equity investments, you’re gambling that your stocks won’t lose share price value when you’re ready to sell.

It’s similar to betting on a slot machine or any game of roulette. No matter how skilled the investor, the future is still a big unknown for all of us.

Some Investments and Gambling Games Are Extremely Volatile

One of the saddest investment stories I remember following was for a company whose stock fell from about $50 a share to less than $10 a share.

The stock eventually stabilized, and new investors were able to get a great deal. But I saw a few people complaining on investor forums about how they were never going to recover their lost equity.

One guy bought 1000 shares at $50. By the time he sold, he lost more than $40,000 on that investment. This is why equity investors should set loss limits on their purchases. Income investors should protect their capital, too, but they tend to buy companies whose stocks are less volatile.

Most gambling games offer volatility.

High volatility slot machine games pay less often but are more likely to pay higher prizes. By comparison, an outside bet in roulette is a low volatility wager, but a single number bet is a high volatility wager.

Gamblers and Investors Fall Prey to Sunk Cost Fallacy

The sunk cost fallacy assumes that if you’ve already sunk a lot of money into a project, then you can’t afford to abandon the project. The fallacy leads you to continue dumping money, time, and energy into the project even though all signs indicate it’s failing.

Investors do this when they “average down” on stock prices. They believe they’re reducing the cost of their shares and improving future equity gains. It’s true that many stock prices are cyclical in nature. They regularly move up and down within a “trading window.” The principle of buy low, sell high is important for investors who buy stable stocks.

Inexperienced investors often fail to realize when stocks they’ve chosen have fallen through the floor of their previous trading range. These stocks are bad investments because more people are trying to get out than are trying to get in.

By comparison, many gamblers will lose their entire casino bankroll on a single game. Their thinking is based more on the randomness of the games they’re playing. This is especially true in slots and roulette.

Appearances are always deceiving in these games. Whereas some players conclude, “If I just keep playing I’ll win it all back,” other players assume that any hot or cold streak will run for a while.

In reality, a hot streak of wins occurs just as randomly as an individual win. By statistical measures, these variances are perfectly normal in the estimated probabilities. Gambling game probabilities are calculated on the assumption that the games are played continually without end.

Good gambling budget guides recommend setting loss limits. Even if you’re playing a game you know well and you have full confidence in future wins, it’s a good idea to take a break when you’re losing.

Savvy Investors Study Companies and Markets

Just as many gamblers study probability tables and strategy guides for games like blackjack, keno, and poker, many investors study companies and their market sectors.

By the same token, knowing the odds and probabilities for your favorite games doesn’t guarantee you’ll always make good wagers. Experienced players sometimes make bad decisions.

Warren Buffett is the greatest investor in history. On several occasions, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, has lost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on investments. The losses only count if they must be charged off on corporate income statements, but even Berkshire Hathaway occasionally does that.

The stock market isn’t necessarily a safe place to put your money. It’s a better investment channel than gambling by far, but there is one way big investors are piling into gambling.

Some Gamblers Attract Sponsors With Deep Pockets

Although the casino industry is big business and some casinos are owned by publicly traded companies, world-class poker players may be backed by sponsors.

If you don’t trust your own gambling skills and instincts, then bet on someone with a winning track record. Professional poker has attracted a lot of money.

Even state lottery games sometimes attract syndicates of investors who hope to buy jackpots. Although there is no skill involved in playing a lottery game, large jackpots make it mathematically profitable to buy a lot of tickets.

Conclusion

Gambling is like attending a music concert. You’re paying for an evening’s entertainment. But whereas the concert audience may go home with a ticket stub and t-shirt, gamblers may go home with more money than they took into the game.

Given the possibility of making money from gambling, it does work like the stock market in some ways. Gambling is a more volatile channel for investment. At least with the stock market, you can invest in index funds that are stable and have good long-term prospects.

There are two kinds of people in the world: you and everyone else. No matter what skill you decide to master, sooner or later, you’ll depart from the basics.

In gambling, that means you learn the basic strategy first then start experimenting with unorthodox strategies. Basic strategy exists because it works. It may not make you wealthy, but it keeps you grounded as you play the game. When you start taking risks you rationalize your decisions.

In your own mind it’s okay to be the exception because you know what you are doing. But it wouldn’t be gambling if everything worked out the way we wanted it to.

In blackjack, it takes time to master basic strategy. And when you stop playing for a while you begin to forget some of those rules. The best players I know play basic strategy most of the time.

When Should You Work on Improving Your Blackjack Game?

If you’re practicing the game every time you play, then why do you need more practice?

Odd as it may sound, I learned the difference between practice and habitual play from a corporate motivational speaker. To paraphrase what she told us, you’ll keep practicing a bad habit just as much as you’ll practice a good habit.

When it comes to playing a game like blackjack, you should work on improving when you realize you’ve developed a bad habit.

And how do you know when you’re playing badly? Go back to basic strategy. Check yourself against the standard plays. If you’re not sure whether to split sevens and eights, it’s time to review basic strategy.

Why Do We Develop Bad Habits in the First Place?

When I first learned to play blackjack, I made a lot of mistakes. Everyone does that. And like many other people, I bought a book that explained basic strategy.

But the day came when I put that book down and never opened it again. I don’t even have it around anymore. At one point in my gambling life, I was confident in my ability to play the game. I wish I could say I left the casino a winner every time, but I only did okay. Still, I was proud of my blackjack skills.

I had friends that wouldn’t go near the tables. Whenever we went to a casino, I looked for a blackjack game and they headed for the slot machines. And I think I grew bored with the basic game. It wasn’t fun anymore. So, I began experimenting with unusual decisions.

Sometimes, I would hit on 17 and win. Sometimes, I would stand on 16 and lose. There’s no rhyme or reason to my departures from basic strategy. I was being rebellious. I was looking for a little more risk in the game. And after a while, my bad play became a habit.

The bad habit didn’t form in a single night. I had to make a conscious effort to bend the rules again and again until I stopped feeling guilty or stupid for taking an unnecessary risk.

Substituting a Good Habit for a Bad Habit Isn’t Always Easy

Getting back to basic strategy isn’t hard. If you’ve forgotten some parts of it, the internet makes it easy to find all the play tables and strategy cards you need.

What makes it hard to go back to basics is that the game stops feeling exciting. I found a video blackjack game and didn’t enjoy it. After hearing that motivational speaker talk about bad habits versus good habits, I came to the realization that I was trying to elevate my game. But I took the wrong path.

If it’s more risk you want, then move out of your comfort zone by increasing your bets. Stick with basic strategy and adjust your betting.

Basic strategy is wager-neutral. Although the house edge in blackjack is small, it’s still hard to pull ahead by much if you’re not a high roller. So, become a middle roller.

The One Good Habit Every Blackjack Player Needs

You can call it self-testing or self-evaluation. Whatever you call it, you should review how you play the game in a conscious, detailed way.

Challenge yourself to stick to the basic strategy and make some sort of note about when you change. I didn’t want to keep a blackjack strategy so I challenged myself to take one chip off the table when I gave into the temptation to depart from basic strategy.

I didn’t literally take the chip off the table. I just pulled it back. It’s like putting a dollar in a swear jar. If it costs you money to follow your bad habit, how long will you keep doing it?

It’s not a perfect system, but I amazed myself the first time I tried this. I watched that little stack grow and asked myself what I was doing.

Two Ways to Raise the Cost of Your Game

By indulging in bad habits, I allowed myself to lose more money than I should have. And what made this habit so difficult to break was that the losses weren’t obvious.

When the cost of your risk isn’t obvious, the risk feels safe in a false way. Taking on falsely safe risks isn’t smart gambling. By taking money off the table, I reminded myself of what my risky plays were costing me. I made the costs obvious.

When I realized I had been playing badly out of habit, I decided that if I wanted to take on extra risk in the future, I needed to be open and honest with myself. I decided to raise my bets rather than make dumb plays out of some rebellion against boredom.

Ask Yourself How Much Your Strategy Is Costing You

It’s surprising how quickly we begin lying to ourselves. If that sounds like something a motivational speaker would say, that’s because I got it from her.

If you’re not sure how much a risky strategy is costing you, then why are you taking the risk? You should know what you’re wagering when you gamble. If you don’t, you’re losing control.

A skillful player maintains control and awareness. The casino accounts for nearly every wager it makes every day. It’s easy for the house because they have accountants and software tracking their money.

Players don’t have the luxury of asking the accounting department how much money is left in the bank. You’re not just deciding how to play the game but also how to manage your money.

Conclusion

You don’t have to make your entertainment complicated to keep it exciting. There are other ways, besides raising your bet, that can make your blackjack game more interesting.

If you can choose between two styles of blackjack, you can choose to play the one that has a slightly higher house edge. Learning the rules of that game will keep you awake for a while. While I don’t recommend playing 6:5 blackjack, if you want a slightly tougher game where you still play basic strategy, that’s one way to go.

Instead of adopting bad habits under the pretense of making the game more interesting, in the future, I’ll look for more interesting ways to play with basic strategy.

A more skillful player may feel confident leveraging ideas beyond the basic strategy. I don’t need to be the world champion blackjack player. And I don’t need to be a show off.

I just want to enjoy the game and walk away a winner. If I can’t do both, then at least I’ll enjoy the game without guilt.

No one wants to admit they lose money gambling, but we all do. It’s all part of the game. When gambling on a budget, it’s important to decide in advance where to stop losing.

When you’re winning, you don’t need to stop playing if you’re still aware and feeling good. Gambling budgets are only necessary to limit your losses. The reason they say “don’t bet your rent check” is that too many people have done exactly that.

I look at the reasonable loss as what I’m willing to pay for an evening’s entertainment. For comparison, I look at how much it costs to watch a sports game live at the stadium. I can watch the New England Patriots for about $40 a seat. Toss in some drinks and food, and I could cover a sports date with about $150.

A trip to the casino is more expensive. We’re willing to go as deep as $500 per visit. We have friends who don’t think twice about dropping $2000 at a casino.

The most important question is, what are you willing to pay for your entertainment? Another good question to ask yourself is how long do you want to stay there?

How Many Hours Do You Want to Spend in the Casino?

This is the first question I think about when planning a trip to the casino. We might drive to the next state over and visit one of the Native American casinos. Or we might visit Las Vegas for a weekend getaway.

How much time I think I’ll be there correlates to my budget.

If my wife and I make it a Saturday evening date, we’ll plan on getting a hotel room and driving back in the morning. Hence, we increase our budget to cover more time and meals.

I count the time we spend in the restaurant as entertainment time.

Playing in a Local Casino May Make a Difference

A few years back, I lived about a 30-minute drive from a casino. It was a modest size place. There weren’t many table games but a lot of slot machines.

If we wanted to spend an afternoon there, we budgeted about $50 to $100. We could always go back another time. It was more like a dinner date than a big sports date or weekend outing.

With $50, I usually started out on a quarter machine and rolled my money up. That could take a while. I often lost the first $10 to $20 before pulling ahead.

There were days when I would give up after three hours. I think the quality of the time you spend gambling with real money is affected by how far from home you are.

Subtract Meals and Other Expenses Before Calculating Acceptable Losses

When I first started gambling, I just assumed I would keep track of my money. That story ended quickly when I had to drive home hungry because I didn’t have anything for a snack.

If you’re playing $100 a week for fun, then knock about $20 off the top for food and gas. That’s cutting it close, but it should work for most people who live near a casino.

It’s a rare day for me when I lose $80 off the top. I love to play blackjack anyway, and that game takes a while to leech your money from you.

Assume a 4- to 8-Hour Gaming Budget

You know your gaming habits better than anyone else. Adjust this formula as you see fit.

We spend somewhere between four and eight hours in a casino.

If we’re willing to lose $500 a night, that works out to about $80 an hour. That’s slightly more than $1 per minute.

Calculate How Many Bets You Make per Hour

Assume you’ll lose more than you win. Budgeting for wins won’t work because you’re assuming the best-case scenario.

On a slow day, where hardly anyone is playing the tables, you can easily burn through 100 hands of blackjack in an hour. Assuming a slightly positive bias in cards, you’ll win about half those hands.

Playing $10 a hand, your stake should stay about the same. I can lose $100 in an hour when the cards go against me. Most nights, I’m only down $20 to $30 when making $5 bets and about $50 when making $10 bets.

I rarely play craps, but I like to play roulette with three to six people at the table. That’s not too crowded, and I don’t feel like I’m all alone. I expect to get about 45 to 50 spins at a roulette table.

I play a lot of outside bets in roulette to offset some of my riskier inside bets. I’ll risk two table-minimum bets most of the time unless I get lucky. If I stay with the game, I budget about $150. If I’m not getting anywhere after 30 minutes, I move on.

I tried estimating slot games per hour and couldn’t find a number I liked. If I’m playing slots, I’ll divide my bankroll in half and stop playing when I lose half. If I win enough to replace that slots stake, I may not visit the blackjack table at all.

Stretch the Time Out If You’re Losing Faster Than You Anticipated

If you’re willing to lose $150 in the first hour, but you’re down $200 in the first 15 minutes, take a break. When I first started gambling, I thought aggressive bets were the way to go. A friend intervened and saved about a third of my first night’s stake.

Paying attention to the time is important. If you don’t know how much time has passed while playing a game, then budgeting doesn’t help. You may be down $200 because you’re making bad bets or because you played longer than you realized.

Winning is easy. Losing is hard work if you don’t want to go home early.

If I see my wife hunkered down on a slot game ignoring the world, I check her casino bankroll. Either she’s winning and taking the machine for all she can or she’s trying to get back what she lost. If she’s losing faster than we expect, I’ll invite her to take a break with me.

And what goes around comes around. She’s pulled me out off a few bad blackjack tables. She’ll ask if I’m hungry or invite me to go for a walk in the fresh air. That’s one of our signals to take a break.

Conclusion

There’s an unwritten rule that gambling friends don’t share their winnings. I can’t swear I’ve never seen anyone hand money to someone they weren’t married to. It just feels like people only share with their significant partners.

Nothing is more embarrassing than losing all your money while everyone else is having fun. Since you can’t count on anyone to hand you $100, you need to practice good money management.

If you know the bus doesn’t leave for five to six hours, count your blessings when it’s time to eat. That break for dinner might be what saves you from standing around with your hands in your pockets.

Otherwise, budget your bets so your money lasts a while. If that means playing the 25-cent slots, then play the slots. Roll it up.

My parents used to gamble a lot. Mom always hit the cheap slots first no matter how much money she had. Her philosophy was to let the casino fund the bankroll you lose.

Somehow, she made that system work more often than statistics say it should.

Casinos win enough of your money even when you do everything right. They make even more money when you make consistent mistakes.

The purpose of this post is to point out the seven biggest casino gambling mistakes you can make and provide you with tips for avoiding them.

Your goal when visiting a casino should be to lose as little money as possible while having as much fun as possible. Making fewer mistakes is one way to accomplish this goal.

1 – Playing Slot Machines

Slot machines are the most popular game in the casino, which is one of the reasons why it’s at the top of the list of casino gambling mistakes. Here’s why I think playing slot machines is a mistake.

Other Games Are More Fun

Slot machines involve putting money into a machine, pressing a button, and watching some reels spin around. You hope they land on something that will win. You have no influence over the outcome with a slot machine game, though, and frankly, the slots are boring as a result.

Other Games Offer Better Odds

Any table game in the casino will offer you better odds than the slots, especially if you stick with the right bets.

Video Poker Is Much Better

A video poker game looks like a slot machine but has significant advantages. One of those is that you actually know what you’re getting into, odds-wise, because you know the odds of getting a specific card in a poker game. The odds of getting a specific symbol on a slot machine could be anything.

Slot Machines Are the Fastest Games in the Casino

Not only are the odds on the slot machine games worse than the odds on any other game, but you’ll lose more money on them because of their rate of play. The average slot machine player makes 60 spins per hour, while the average roulette player might only place 40 bets per hour. Guess who’s going to lose more money in that comparison?

2 – Ignoring Basic Strategy in Blackjack

Blackjack has a reputation for offering the savvy casino gambler the best odds in the casino. The game deserves this reputation, because it does indeed offer great odds.

But you only realize those odds by making the optimal decision in every situation. And that optimal decision isn’t always intuitive. In fact, it’s often counterintuitive. You face 10 possible dealer up-cards, and you have only a handful of totals to compare those up-cards to when you’re deciding whether to hit or stand.

If you make the mathematically optimal option in every one of those situations, you’re a basic strategy player, and the house edge for the game is probably well under 1%.

The house edge, by the way, is how you measure how big an advantage the casino has over you, mathematically. The casino doesn’t cheat. They just maintain a mathematical edge.

In casino blackjack, they do this by making you play your hand before the dealer plays his. If you go bust, you lose immediately, even if the dealer busts later in the hand.

If you try to just wing it instead of memorizing basic strategy or using a chart, you’ll give the casino another 2% or 3%, depending on close you get to the real basic strategy. Playing blackjack without basic strategy is a huge mistake that’s easy to avoid.

3 – Drinking Too Much

My niece recently took her driver’s license written exam. One of the questions was a multiple-choice question asking what alcohol affects first. The correct answer was “judgment.”

The last thing a casino gambler needs is impaired judgment. You have all these flashing lights and exciting sounds going on around you. People are winning money left and right. Women are prancing around offering you free drinks, and they’re half-dressed.

And even if you’re a hardened heavy drinker, if you’re new to the casino, alcohol will impair your judgment and cause you to lose money you don’t need to lose.

My advice to the casino gambler is to abstain completely from alcohol while gambling.

4 – Playing With Scared Money

Gamblers have a saying: “Scared money always loses.” What’s scared money?

In the context of gambling, it’s money you can’t afford to lose. The only money you should be gambling with at the casino is money you don’t need for other purposes.

Don’t be like those knuckleheads in Indecent Proposal who try to win enough money to save their real estate by playing roulette and/or craps. Sure, you might win, but the odds are against you.

And the odds get worse when you’re playing with money you can’t afford to lose. This is especially true if you’re playing blackjack. You might make a decision that isn’t mathematically optimal because you’re playing too conservatively and you’re scared of losing.

Budget for your gambling and stay within that budget. Know how much you’re willing to lose during a period of time. And don’t use money you’ve set aside for other purposes to gamble with. Always practice proper bankroll management.

I have a buddy who went to Vegas one time who lost all his money on his first day, including his food budget. He spent the next four days in his hotel room eating potato chips and watching movies because he needed to hang on to just enough money to catch the cab to the airport.

Don’t gamble with scared money. You’ll regret it if you do.

5 – Playing for Comps

Don’t misinterpret this mistake. I’m not saying you should ignore the player’s club. You absolutely get comps for your action. That’s part of the deal in the casino.

A friend of mine visits a relatively local casino at least once a week. He gambles so much that he has his own casino host. He explained to me that the rewards program at the casino has three tiers, and he was in the second tier and wanted to move into the top tier.

THAT is an example of playing for comps. He was gambling more than he would have normally just to get more free stuff. That’s playing right into the casino’s hand. You should avoid that if you can, because the casino has one goal—to separate you from your money as fast as possible.

Get your casino comps, but don’t let it be an incentive to gamble more than you would have otherwise.

6 – Trying to Cheat

I’m not talking about counting cards, here. That’s not really cheating. After all, counting cards is just using your mind to think about the game you’re playing so that you can make mathematically optimal decisions. There’s nothing illegal or unethical about counting cards in blackjack.

When I say that trying to cheat is a mistake, I mean things like stealing chips or trying to befriend a dealer as a confederate to collude at a specific game. Trying to change the size of your bet after the outcome has been determined is cheating, too.

The main reason I’m opposed to these “techniques” is because they can get you arrested and you might even have to serve time.

You’ll read interesting and colorful stories about slot machine cheats like Tommy Glenn Carmichael, too, and you might even think that sounds pretty cool. The reality of his situation is that he’s spent a lot of time behind bars.

Winning a few bucks at a gambling game isn’t worth even a few weeks of your life behind bars, much less months or years. And cheating at gambling games in Nevada is a felony.

7 – Playing 6/5 Blackjack

In a standard blackjack game, a blackjack (or a “natural”) pays off at 3:2 odds.

This means that for every dollar you bet, you get 1.5x that in winnings when you get a natural. A natural is just a two-card hand that totals 21. In other words, it’s a hand that consists of an ace and a 10.

And some casinos even have the chutzpah to try to spin this as a bonus for the player, because a six is bigger than a three. And some casino gamblers’ math skills are bad enough to fall for that.

But a 3:2 payout on a $5 bet is $7.50. A 6:5 payout on a $5 bet, though, is $6. One is obviously better than the other. How much better? The house edge increases by over 2% when you’re playing in a 6:5 game.

Just don’t ever play such a game. You’re better off playing almost any other game in the casino, besides slots, of course.

Conclusion

Those are the seven biggest casino gambling mistakes I see most often. And if you’re looking to become a profitable gambler, you should definitely steer clear of them. Did I leave anything out?

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in a casino?

Certain casino games have little skill involved. Slot machines are perfect examples, because they merely require making bets and spinning the reels.

However, casinos have recently begun rethinking their model on slots. They’re now trying out skill-based slot machines in an effort to judge their popularity.

Of course, creating the perfect skill-based game isn’t easy. I’m going to discuss more on these games and why developers have a hard time getting them right.

What Is a Skill-Based Casino Game?

Skill-based gambling certainly isn’t new in casinos. Blackjack, which has been around for centuries, has long required skill.

Poker is another example. This player-vs-player game features more strategy than anything else in the casino.

But these days, gambling venues use the term “skill based” to define a slot machine that requires skill. After all, slots have traditionally lacked any sort of complex play throughout their history.

A skill-based slot machine is one that gives players some degree of control over their results. Typically, the bonus round is more interactive and offers talented players a better chance to rack up credits.

Here’s how it works:

• You’re playing a racing themed slot.
• You trigger the bonus.
• You must race against AI opponents.
• Your score (payout) is based on your finish.

Other than this aspect, skill-based games play just like any other slot machine. You spin the reels and let luck do the rest.

This category of gaming can also refer to new touchscreen table games. For example, Gamblit is making unique products that introduce skill in a new way.

Gambling Poker, for example, sends cards flying across the touchscreen. The goal is to touch the best cards, or at least those that help your hand the most, before other players.

Again, poker already features plenty of strategy. But this version requires hand-eye coordination, rather than just mulling over whether to bet, raise, or fold.

I’ll focus on skill-based slot machines for the remainder of this discussion. However, I just wanted to explain how this new breed of games goes beyond just slots.

Why Are Casinos Offering Skill-Based Games?

Some casino games have existed in their current form for centuries, including blackjack and roulette gambling. Others rely on technology to stay current with the times.

Slot machines are definitely in the latter category. They’ve undergone a lot of changes since being introduced on gaming floors in the 1970s.

Today’s slots offer multiple features, such as second-screen bonuses, unique wild symbols, and cascading reels. These additions have been enough to appease the average slots player.

But casinos have found out that millennials aren’t playing slot machines like previous generations. The current technology boom is perhaps the main reason why.

Millennials have grown up with smartphones, Xbox One, and social gaming. Their definition of the latest tech and hottest trends is far different from what Generation X and Baby Boomers expect.

They’re not impressed with a walking wild symbol or cascading reels. They demand more from gaming, because they’ve witnessed rapid advances in the field their whole lives.

The gambling industry is now trying to figure out what this generation will play. Millennials do play table games like blackjack and poker to a degree.

The problem, though, is that slot machines are the big breadwinner for gambling establishments. They can only rely on Gen X and Baby Boomer slots players for so long.

Skill-based gaming is an attempt to attract millennial gamblers. The skill-based bonuses are something new that may or may not appeal to young adults who love both advanced and social gaming.

The first attempts at this style of gaming have centered on arcade games like Scientific Games’ Space Invaders and IGT’s Centipede. Both are based on old Atari games and include bonuses that involve blasting invading aliens.

Arcade machines from the 1980s don’t seem like the perfect pitch to young adults. But they’re at least a step in the right direction.

Getting the Right Balance Is Difficult

Skill-based gambling is nothing new when considering blackjack and poker. However, this is the first time that casinos have made a serious attempt at introducing skilled electronic games.

Designing such products isn’t easy. Developers need to figure out the right blend of skill, luck, and entertainment.

Create a game that’s too easy and the casino will lose money. Make a game that’s too hard and everybody will see it as a losing bet.

Therefore, one of the biggest challenges is developing a game that appeals to both casual and advanced gamers.

Casinos are walking on delicate ground by making forays into this niche. Tournament.com provides an example of what can go wrong in this category.

In the late 2000s, Tournament.com created a platform where video gamers could bet on Valve’s Half-Life and Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). The site let players wager on their individual and team performances in each match.

Unfortunately, the platform went awry almost from the beginning. Pros could perform worse to lower their rating, then bet big while competing against amateurs.

Players soon came to distrust the site and wouldn’t deposit. Tournament.com was also struggling to pay their high server costs.

Another example involves a partnership between Sweden’s Jadestone Group and GamArena. The two sides worked together to create a betting platform for Tetris, golf, racing, and table tennis games.

Lack of demand and interest quickly became problems. Much like with Tournament.com, gamblers were leery of betting outside of the more common sportsbooks, casinos, and poker sites.

Of course, major casino brands that offer skill-based gaming have established more trust with players. So, they may not deal with the same problems as the Jadestone/GamArena and Tournament.com efforts.

But these stories show that good ideas don’t always translate into success. This is especially true when calling on gamblers to rely more on their skill versus luck.

Casino Gaming Regulation Has Arrived

The good news for skill-based gaming efforts is that the regulatory powers seem to approve. Nevada, which often sets an international standard for these matters, has already given their blessing.

The state legislature passed Senate Bill 9 in May 2019. This law makes way for skill-based slot machines. Politicians in the Silver State understand the situation that Las Vegas casinos are facing. Therefore, they were quick to approve legislation that will possibly help attract younger players.

“This bill allows gaming manufacturers to use cutting-edge technology to meet the challenges prompted by a younger, more technologically engaged, visitor demographic,” said Gov. Brian Sandoval.

“Passing this legislation into law is an important step forward in providing new opportunities for this critical industry to progress, while ensuring that Nevada remains the global epicenter for gaming innovation and development.”

The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has also given their stamp of approval. They’ve allowed GameCo to trial Danger Arena and Nothin’ But Net at Atlantic City casinos.

Danger Arena (first-person shooter) and Nothin’ But Net (basketball) are interesting because they’re not slot machines. Instead, they’re general video games that have been adapted for casino play.

Companies Are Working on the Matter

Plenty of gaming companies have jumped on the mission to develop casino games with skill. GameCo, Gamblit, IGT, and Scientific Games are just some of the developers that have produced such games.

Eric Meyerhofer, the CEO of Gamblit, believes that the goal of such efforts is to focus on fun above all.

“It’s as much about the modern-day, fun arcade experience as it is just a pure gambling experience,” said Meyerhofer.

GameCo CEO Blaine Graboyes highlighted the massive group of adult gamers that these products can potentially attract.

“Attracting millennials to the casino floor is the most critical issue facing gaming destinations today,” he explained. “[…] We have created a truly state-of-the-art experience that speaks directly to the nearly 93 million adult Americans that play video games.”

Conclusion

Slot machines still appear to have plenty of life left on casinos floors in their current form. However, the situation may very well change within the next few years.

Gregg Giuffria, a former rocker who now heads G2 Game Design, believes that the industry is in dire straits.

“It’s an emergency situation that we’re in right now,” explained Giuffria. Slot machines as we know them—it’s over. Five years from now, there will be casinos operating with about 50% slots. 10 years from now, only 10% to 15% of the casino floor will be filled with slots. People will talk about how their parents played those.”

10 years may be a short time frame for slot machines to nearly vanish from casino floors. After all, they currently take up around 80% of gaming floors today.

However, Giuffria and others involved in the industry can see the writing on the wall. Traditional slots aren’t the same draw they were in the past.

As for what will ultimately take their place remains to be seen. Giuffria sees gambling versions of Call of Duty and Candy Crush as the future.

Gambling on a complex game like Call of Duty seems ways off. However, social gaming like Candy Crush could definitely be on casino floors in the near future.

Social gaming has the perfect balance between skill and casual play. That said, you can probably look forward to skill-based gambling versions of Candy Crush and Plants vs. Zombies—sometime soon.

You may not pay much attention to how long you play casino games. Instead, you might just gamble for entertainment without a second thought.

This scenario represents the ideal way to play casino games. You can enjoy yourself without stressing about the amount of time you’ve spent playing.

However, you should definitely consider tracking how long you play casino games. The reason being is that you want to make decisions with a clear head and use optimal strategy.

Unfortunately, no perfect blueprint exists for how long to play casino games. But you can form a better idea on this matter by checking out the following advice.

Factors to Consider

Again, no universal answer exists on how long to play casino games. Therefore, you should consider how your own situation relates to the following factors before deciding.

Skill-Based vs. Non-Skilled Casino Games

One of the biggest divisions in casino gaming is skilled vs. unskilled play. The former refers to games that require a large degree of strategy, while the unskilled category includes games that don’t require much thinking.

Blackjack and poker fall into the skill-based class. You need to use extensive strategy with these games to boost your chances of winning.

Skill-based games are more mentally draining. After all, you need to think about each decision to improve your odds.

Therefore, you won’t be able to play these games as long and still use optimal strategy. On the other hand, you can keep playing slot machines or baccarat for hours without using much brain power.

Your Experience With Gambling

Gambling isn’t thought of like running or lifting weights, where you gradually see improvement over time. Instead, it’s viewed as pure mental stimulation and entertainment.

However, your capacity for gambling increases over time just like with weightlifting or running. Going further, your decisions become more automatic as you become familiar with games.

Even poker, which requires more thought than pretty much any casino game, can be mastered with enough time. If you play the same stakes for hours each day, you’ll eventually notice patterns in your opponents.

These patterns allow you to essentially play on autopilot after a while. You don’t have to use as much mental energy as a result.

That said, experience is a defining factor in how long you can gamble. The more experienced you are with certain casino games, the longer you’ll be able to play.

Bankroll Size

You obviously can’t gamble as long if you don’t have the money to do so. Unfortunately, many a player has ignored this logic and blown money they can’t afford to lose.

Therefore, you definitely want to account for your bankroll size with regard to gambling. If you’re well-funded, then you should have no problem gambling for hours.

With a smaller bankroll, you should be more aware of how long you’re playing casino games. You might even set an alarm on your smartphone to avoid losing track of time.

Sleep

Your amount of rest before a gambling session has a big impact on your thinking capacity. With more sleep, you’ll make better decisions and have additional mental energy.

The old rule stands that you want to get at least seven to nine hours of sleep each night. You should especially follow this standard if you plan on gambling a lot the next day.

Diet

One of the biggest factors that gamblers overlook is their diet. They don’t realize that eating crappy food has an effect on how long they can efficiently play casino games.

Therefore, stopping by McDonald’s or Wendy’s before your casino session is a bad idea. Meanwhile, lean meats, vegetables, and fruits have the ability to boost your mental abilities.

Wins and Losses

Considering the luck associated with any form of gambling, you’re going to have both good and bad sessions.

Cold streaks don’t technically have any bearing on how long you play. However, you’re not a robot and will experience emotions when you’re on an up or a downswing.

You may be able to gamble all night when Lady Luck is smiling on you and you’re winning lots of money. But you’ll struggle mightily when stuck in a cold streak.

If you have any inclination of leaving during a downswing, then follow your feelings. The last thing you want to do is continue playing when you’re not having a good time and risk making bad decisions.

Applying Work Science to the Optimal Gambling Time

As mentioned before, no ideal time exists for how long you should play casino games. In fact, the subject is rarely discussed in gambling circles.

But you’ll gain insight into the matter by looking at how the office world handles optimal working times. Office work and gambling bear some similarities, because they both involve using brain power over brawn.

Time and time again, research has shown that four hours per day is the optimal amount of time for critical thinking.

Why then does the modern work world require people to log at least eight hours every day? A big reason why is because few people work optimally for four hours straight.

Nevertheless, four hours seem to be the gold standard for how long you can reasonably gamble before suffering a decline.

How Can Some Pro Gamblers Play All Day?

You might look at the above advice and think, “But I’ve heard stories of gamblers playing all day and night. Why should I stop after four hours?”

Professionals can gamble for hours on end due to a combination of factors. For starters, they have a big enough edge to where they continue making profits even after their play drops off.

Another factor is that they have a high level of experience. Some gamblers have been playing a certain game for so long that making good decisions is automatic.

Finally, they have the mental fortitude to handle both winning and losing sessions without blinking. Somebody who earns a living through poker or card counting won’t freak out when they’re having a terrible session.

Taking everything into account, you shouldn’t compare yourself to professionals when figuring out how long to gamble. Instead, concentrate on your own situation and decide what’s best for you.

Keep Track of Your Casino Sessions

You don’t want to just wing it with regard to determining your gambling session length. Instead, you should have some documentation on how long you can play.

I suggest keeping notes on you how long you play each session. You can use these notes to form a composite average.

You might even consider keeping detailed notes that cover how you’re feeling based on how long you’re playing. For example, you might jot down that you lost concentration after three straight hours of play.

The idea behind these detailed notes is to figure out when you begin playing sub-optimally during a long session. You may eventually notice a pattern and determine exactly when to quit for the day.

Why Is Figuring Out Your Gambling Time so Important?

Gambling is a thrilling activity that keeps you playing for hours. The downside is that your concentration can diminish before you even realize it.

Once this happens, you may play worse and lose more money. This problem is particularly worrisome with skill-based games like blackjack and poker, where bad decisions lead to more losses.

That said, you should formulate an idea on how long you can reasonably gamble before losing your edge. The goal is to stop when your performance begins going downhill, or even beforehand.

Conclusion

The best way to determine how long to play casino games involves considering your own situation.

• Are you playing skill-based or non-skilled games?
• How long have you been gambling?
• What’s your bankroll size?
• How is your diet and do you get enough sleep?
• Are you on a hot or cold streak?

These are the main questions to ask yourself when determining how long to play. Each of these factors play a significant role in your gambling capacity.

For example, skill-based games are more mentally draining than the unskilled category. Therefore, you won’t be able to adequately play poker or blackjack as long as slot machines or roulette.

Your experience also has a big role in how long you can play. The more experienced you are, the better able you’ll be to gamble on autopilot. Your diet and sleep are some of the most overlooked aspects in this regard. Eating well and sleeping enough give you the mental stamina for long gambling sessions.

Defining the amount of time you can reasonably play casino games is important. After all, you don’t want to gamble for hours when you’re mentally exhausted. This scenario leads to making bad decisions that drain your bankroll. That said, you should figure out your optimal gambling time and stick to it until improving in this regard.

Casino surveillance is one of the most mysterious parts of the gambling world. We all know that surveillance exists in casinos, but what exactly do they do?

You’ve likely seen movies or TV shows that depict casino surveillance as desk jockeys who watch computer monitors all day. You might be surprised to know, though, that their duties extend beyond just looking at monitors.

If you’re interested in learning exactly what surveillance does, then keep reading as I discuss their daily tasks and what it takes to land one of these jobs.

Duties of Casino Surveillance

As mentioned before, casino surveillance does more than just watch computer monitors. Their job requires multiple skills, including everything from catching cheaters to writing reports on notable incidents.

Monitor the Casino Floor

The chief duty of a casino gaming surveillance officer is to monitor the gambling floor. They use audio and video equipment to watch gamblers and employees.

However, they also need to pay mild attention to dealers, given that croupiers are occasionally corrupt.

Watch for Advantage Players

Casinos have the right to refuse service to advantage gamblers, who are players that hold an edge over the house in one or more games. Blackjack card counters are the best-known examples of advantage players.

Any good pro gambler will take steps to mask their skills. After all, casinos will escort advantage players out of their establishments and possibly ban them, too.

That said, surveillance becomes a huge part of catching skilled gamblers. This crew is trained to look for signs of pro gambling and alert the floor if necessary.

Watch for Potential Cheaters

Unlike advantage play, cheating in casino games is flat-out illegal. Casinos have the right to detain crooked players until law enforcement arrives.

Common types of cheating include card marking, concealing cards, dice sliding (craps), chip dumping (poker), and using electronic devices in roulette. The best cheaters are adept at hiding whatever technique they’re using to make profits.

Surveillance provides a big helping hand in identifying potential cheaters. Much like with advantage gambling, surveillance is trained on the different cheating tactics that players use.

Work With Law Enforcement if Cheating Is Uncovered

Law enforcement will surely be involved if a player is caught using illegal means to beat the casino. Of course, the justice system can’t just prosecute players based on the casino’s word alone.

Instead, a gambling establishment has to provide proof that a player was cheating. Surveillance, thanks to their video evidence, can help successfully prosecute cheating gamblers.

Provide Extra Security for the Cashier’s Cage

The floor isn’t the only part of the casino that needs monitoring. Other sections of these establishments also need help from the “eye in the sky.”

Good surveillance footage can identify perpetrators and help police arrest them later.

Write Reports on Notable Incidents

Manning cameras and monitoring various areas of the casino are big parts of surveillance. However, these officers need to do more than just watch video monitors.

They also have to fill out reports when notable incidents happen. These reports can be based on a cheater, advantage gambler, crooked employee, or other matters.

Escort Unruly Gamblers Off the Floor

You might think of casino security as just being burly guys in suits who wrestle away problem gamblers. However, surveillance may also be called upon to help escort such gamblers off the floor as well.

Part of this duty depends upon the size of the casino. A major Las Vegas resort like the Bellagio may have special security whose job is to deal with unruly gamblers.

At smaller casinos, though, surveillance might provide backup and strength in numbers to more easily detain problem players.

How Much Does Casino Surveillance Get Paid?

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics defines casino surveillance as gaming investigators or gaming surveillance officers.

A look at either job title reveals that a casino surveillance worker makes around $33,000 per year on average. This works out to $15.97 per hour over the course of a 40-hour week.

Those in the highest 10% of this field earn a median salary of $48,600. Those in the lowest 10% collect $21,000 on average.

One reason for the wide discrepancy in salaries is the type of employer. Local governments pay casino surveillance an average of $33,350. Private gambling companies offer $30,870 and travel accommodation employers pay $35,430.

Location is another key factor in surveillance officers’ salaries. Those working in Connecticut and Indiana earn an average of $46,080 and $43,290, respectively.

Employees in South Dakota and West Virginia only receive $26,320 and $26,540 on average, respectively. That said, casino surveillance workers can benefit by relocating to more lucrative markets with bigger casinos.

What Does It Take to Become a Surveillance Officer?

You might think that surveillance officers need an extensive tech background. After all, they must use electronic equipment and be experts at switching camera views.

The reality, though, is that they don’t need elite education. Schooling requirements don’t usually extend beyond a high school diploma or even GED.

Such workers usually have to obtain licensing as well before they’re eligible to become surveillance officers. This licensing isn’t hard to acquire in most states.

Surveillance employees can further their careers by going through additional programs and classes. Such courses are available through both universities and organizations.

Challenges That Gaming Investigators Deal With

One problem with trying to become a surveillance officer is the limited number of opportunities.

At one point, this field was booming due to all of the casino growth throughout the US. But the number of new casinos has stagnated in recent years.

Job growth for gambling surveillance was just 9% over the past decade. Compare this to the average growth rate of 14% for all job fields across America.

Another challenge is the moderate to low salary. These officers need quite a bit of training to carry out their duties.

However, they don’t earn any more than the average factory worker. This problem is particularly highlighted in rural states like West Virginia and South Dakota, where surveillance earns meager salaries.

But there’s some hope for this field. More states are expected to legalize casino gambling in the future.

Such expansion will no doubt lead to more casinos. Likewise, the demand and salaries for surveillance employees could grow in this event.

Conclusion

Casino surveillance is stereotyped as having one duty—to watch video monitors. But as you can see, their job description goes beyond just manning cameras.

They also write reports, provide extra physical security, and work with law enforcement when necessary. Of course, their primary responsibility remains viewing monitors to catch advantage gamblers, cheaters, and crooked dealers.

The eye in the sky serves as a big deterrent for cheating the casino or just trying to gain an edge on them. Potential advantage gamblers and cheaters will think twice before trying to profit off casinos.

Unfortunately, surveillance is a thankless and often underpaid job. The average officer only makes around $33,000 per year.

Job growth has been slow for gambling surveillance over the past decade, too. This profession has grown at a rate that’s 5% slower compared to the average job field.

Much of the problem is due to casino saturation. States that already have gambling establishments feature more than enough casinos relative to their population.

But surveillance employees can look forward to potential growth in the future. After all, a number of states have yet to legalize casino gambling.

That said, this profession could be more lucrative in future years, especially if demand for employees becomes higher.

One of my fellow gambling bloggers is a huge fan of the show Jeopardy! In fact, he watches it every day with his elderly mom. We’ve discussed the show at length on multiple occasions, and our discussions invariably wind up focusing on how to gamble on Jeopardy.

You’re probably familiar with the game show already, as it’s practically an American institution. The original version of the show was on from 1964 to 1975, and the most recent version has been on the air since 1984. (I was 14 years old when Alex Trebek went to work hosting this new version.)

Can you believe they’ve aired 8000+ episodes of Jeopardy now? It’s won multiple Daytime Emmys, too.

I’d argue that besides baseball and poker, the only thing more quintessentially American (leisure-wise) than Jeopardy is gambling. So, here are some thoughts about how to gamble on Jeopardy.

Jeopardy Slot Machines

Of course, everyone knows now that slot machine games are the biggest revenue generator in almost any American casino. I used to see reports that estimated the gambling machines made 70% of a casino’s money. I think the number now is closer to 80% in most casinos.

One of the big revolutions in slot machine gaming was the launch of The Wheel of Fortune slot machine, which was based on the game show of the same name. The gimmick for that game is that you get to spin a wheel just like the one on the show.

Wheel of Fortune is the most popular slot machine franchise in history, so it’s no surprise that IGT and other slot machine manufacturers have tried to duplicate that success by launching slot machines based on other TV game shows.

Games like Deal or No Deal, Press Your Luck, and The Price Is Right are all popular examples of game shows that have been translated into slot machine games.

But if you want to gamble on Jeopardy, the easiest way is probably to just find a casino with a Jeopardy slot machine game and play it.

It’s a five-reel video slot machine game with nine paylines. The game also features several bonus games. The graphics and sound effects are all specifically based on Jeopardy. The symbols include the logo for the show, along with some of the famous question categories.

Jeopardy slots are dollar games, which means you must bet at least $1 per spin. You can bet up to $5 per spin, and you can bet on anywhere from one to nine paylines. The jackpot is 25,000 coins.

The main bonus game features a screen with Jeopardy categories on it, and the amount won on each of the 30 spots is randomly determined. You don’t have to answer in the form of a question either, or even answer a question at all. It’s basically like a bonus game on any other slot machine.

Still, if you want to gamble on Jeopardy, this is one good way to do it.

Become a Contestant

Being a contestant on Jeopardy could also be considered gambling, although you don’t have to risk any of your own money to play on the show. If you consider the time and expense involved in becoming a contestant, you can see that you do have something at stake in exchange for the chance to win money with Alex Trebek.

To become a Jeopardy contestant, you must follow a specific process. That process begins with an online test on Jeopardy’s official website. If you pass the test, your name goes into a pool of potential contestants. The show’s producers randomly choose names from that pool to audition.

If you do well during your audition, they might invite you to compete.

You also must meet the eligibility requirements for the show. These aren’t complicated, you need to be over 18 years old, unless you’re competing in the teen tournament, in which case you must be between the ages of 13 and 17. If you’re applying for the college show, you must be a full-time undergraduate student. You’re ineligible for this version of the show if you already have a degree.

You also can’t have appeared on the show with Alex Trebek before. You and your relatives also can’t have been employed by Sony, Quadra, CBS, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, any TV station, or any company which provides prizes to these shows.

How much can you win on Jeopardy? Well, that depends on how well you do, but as far as I know, there’s no cap to your winnings. James Holzhauer won over $2.4 million during his time on the show. (Coincidentally, he’s a professional sports bettor.)

Jeopardy Strategy for Winning the Most Money

I want to further address James Holzhauer, by the way. He won over $2.4 million during the 33 episodes of Jeopardy on which he appeared.

This is more than anyone except Ken Jennings, who won $2.5 million during 74 episodes. If you look at the amount won versus the number of episodes, you’ll see that Holzhauer did a lot better on a per-episode basis.

How did he do it? What was different about his strategy? Most contestants on Jeopardy start with the $200 questions and work their way up to the $1000 questions. Holzhauer did the opposite by starting at the bottom of the board with the $1000 questions. This enabled him to stack up money faster than other contestants.

The next component of his strategy was to find the Daily Double as fast as possible so he could double his money and get a big lead over the other contestants. During the first round, Holzhauer almost always bet everything he had on the Daily Double.

During Final Jeopardy, Holzhauer always wagered more than he probably needed to, but he never wagered enough to result in a loss if he got the answer wrong.

Of course, it helps to get 97% of your answers right, which Holzhauer did. Also, you need to be fast with the buzzer to have any hope of winning. Holzhauer says he read a book on the subject, Secrets of the Buzzer by Fritz Holznagel.

How do you develop the kind of broad knowledge you need to win at a trivia game like Jeopardy? I’ve read that one of the best ways is to spend time reviewing children’s non-fiction books. They’re less dense than non-fiction books written for adults. And they often include answers to questions that are often asked on the show.

Bet on the Results With Your Friends or a Sportsbook

Finally, you can also bet on Jeopardy by just placing a friendly wager at your local bar or in your living room with your buddies watching the show.

Another option is to find an internet sportsbook accepting action on the contestants. These are prop bets, and they’re not always available. But when a player starts seeing unusual success on Jeopardy, some books, like Bovada, will offer action on how long a contestant will last or how much money he’ll win.

Conclusion

That’s how to bet on Jeopardy. You can play slot machines, get on the show, or bet on the show with someone else.

Do you have other ways to gamble on Jeopardy?

Have you ever dreamed about getting rich gambling? Some gamblers are able to do it, so why not you? What could be better than taking a risk and having it pay off in a big way?

Gamblers have been trying to get rich for years. Some of them have been able to do it by getting lucky and hitting a big progressive jackpot or a big lottery. But others have been able to amass riches by a more practical and straightforward method.

I’ve put together seven ways you can get rich gambling with real money below. Some of them are easy, just requiring a small bet and a great deal of luck. But some of them are within your reach, if you’re willing to do the work and put in the time.

1 – Win a Big Poker Tournament

Just about every poker player knows the winner of the WSOP main event takes home millions every year. But did you know there are hundreds of poker tournaments that pay out over $100,000 played every year?

You don’t have to win the WSOP main event to win a big score. But even if you only look at the biggest poker tournament in the world, your odds of winning are still much better than you get with things like one of the big lottery drawings.

2 – Grind It out as a Blackjack Card Counter

This one isn’t glamorous like some of the other ways to get rich gambling on this list, but it’s one of the things that offers a realistic opportunity for anyone with the skill and desire to make some serious money.

When you buy a lottery ticket, you have the chance to win a huge prize, but the odds are strongly stacked against you. If you learn how to count cards, you can methodically make money.

But there’s one thing you need to understand, and it’s in the title of this section. Getting rich by blackjack card counting is a grind. You have to play as much as you can, you have to keep your mind in top shape, and you’re always doing your best not to get caught.

Even if the money is good, the grind can wear you down. On the plus side, you don’t have to be a genius to learn how to count cards, and like I mentioned above, it gives you a realistic opportunity to make money gambling. Anyone with average intelligence and the desire to master it can become a winning card counter.

3 – Hit a Progressive Jackpot

Most large progressive jackpots are available on slot machines, but some other games have them also. The problem with slot machines is they have a high house edge. The odds of hitting a progressive jackpot are also highly against you, but they’re not worse than hitting the lottery.

One thing you need to watch for is many of the slot machines with big progressives require a large bet per spin to be eligible for the top prize. If you’re betting $2 or $2.50 per spin, it doesn’t take long to burn through your bankroll.

4 – Win a Big Lottery

If you’re like me and most other people, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about what you’d do if you hit a big lottery prize. After all, most of us have never had a million to spend, much less 10 or 100 million. And the cost of a ticket is only $2 or $3.

I don’t know of any other bet you can make that offers the chance at such a high return for a small investment. This is one of the reasons why the lottery is so popular, and I’m all for taking a small risk for a big reward.

The odds of you hitting a big lottery, even if you play every day your entire life, are very small. It’s not really a realistic chance, but someone is going to win, so I don’t blame you for buying a ticket. If you want a better chance at riches, read one of the two sections on this page about grinding out your fortune.

5 – Poker Grinding

It’s not as flashy as it looks on television, but many poker players are able to grind out a good living at the tables. They play hour after hour, making $20 to $30 or even $50 an hour.

The first thing you need to do is learn how to win on a consistent basis. This isn’t easy, but it’s possible with enough study and practice. Once you learn how to win, the next key is to find the most profitable games and play in them as much as possible.

It might become less profitable because the players change or because you start getting tired and start making mistakes. But if you’re killing the game, you need to ride it until you can’t do it anymore.

Just like grinding out a living as a card counter, making good money as a poker player is a grind. It quickly changes from a fun game to something much like a job. This is acceptable to some players, but it makes many players quit playing. Only you can decide if this is a good option for you, but be aware that it can turn a game you love into one you dread.

6 – Sports Gambling

Sports gambling is a tough business to get rich in, but a few players are able to do it. I cover it more in the next section, but one way to use sports betting to take a shot at fast riches is by trying to win multiple bets in a row while rolling your profits into the next bet. Another way to try for quick money is by betting a multi-team parlay ticket.

Most sports bettors who try to roll their profits, or win a big parlay, usually fail. The sports bettors who make money are the ones that grind out wins over time, like some poker players and blackjack card counters.

Most successful sports bettors develop their own systems or models and use them to find games and lines that might be profitable. Then, they combine their models and systems with study of the players and teams involved, and find profitable betting situations.

The biggest problem sports bettors run into while trying to get rich, even when they figure out how to win more than they lose, is getting a large enough amount of money in action to win big. It’s easy to get large bets down on big games like the Super Bowl, but how do you get $50,000 or $100,000 down on a small conference game in the middle of the season?

If you want to try for fast riches sports betting, pick a multi-team parlay and take your chances. The odds are better than the lottery, but the rewards are smaller, too.

7 – Let It Ride

I’m not talking about the popular table game Let It Ride here. Instead, I’m talking about making a bet and betting the total amount again when you win. When you win a bet and place the original wager, then win back into action, it’s often called “let it ride.”

Many times, these types of bets are made on even money wagers, like red or odd at the roulette wheel. But this requires a long series of wins to add up to a large amount. The same concept is in use in sports betting using multiple game parlay bets.

But let’s look at the numbers using an example with a much higher pay out than even money.

If you place a $100 wager on a single number on roulette, you get your original wager back and a win of $3,500 when you win. If you let the $3,600 ride and hit a single number again, you suddenly have $126,000 plus your bet of $3,600.

The odds are heavily stacked against you, but not as much as they’re stacked against you in the lottery. If you’re playing on a single zero wheel, you have a 1 in 37 chance of hitting any single number. The odds of hitting a single number two times in a row are 1 in 1,369. This translates to .0007304602, or if you convert it to a percentage, it’s .073%.

You can use the “let it ride” strategy in many different situations. At the dog or horse track, you can bet on a long shot, then let your win ride on another long shot to try for a big win.

Conclusion

If you want to get rich gambling, you can either try to develop the skills you need then grind out profits over time, or you can rely on luck of the draw and try for a huge win on very long odds. The grinding method offers a more realistic path, but it takes a great deal of work.

Even if you aren’t willing to be a grinder, you can still take a shot from time to time at a big poker tournament, the lottery, or by letting your profits ride.

The main difference between most gamblers, who lose on a consistent basis, and the small group who’re able to beat the casinos is a lack of knowledge. Some gamblers don’t have any idea that they can win in the long run, and some simply don’t know how to win, though they might understand that it can be done.

If you need a recap on how advantage gamblers differ from casual gamblers, take a look at my previous blog for more details.

One thing is certain, in order to become a winning gambler, which I call an “advantage gambler,” you need to understand advantage gambling math.

I’m not trying to convince you that being an advantage gambler is easy. The truth is that it’s hard work. But the truth is also that it can be done, and if you have any interest in learning how to be a long-term winner, it starts with advantage gambling math.

Expected Value

Expected value is the basic math that is the foundation of all advantage gambling. Until you understand what it is and how it works, you’re going to have a hard time beating the casinos. The good news is that you’re going to learn everything you need to know about expected value in this section.

The first time I read about expected value I didn’t understand it. It was in a book by David Sklansky, and it sounded like something important, but it was a bit difficult to wrap my head around. Eventually, I started to understand it and went back over the basics many times.

Expected Value, Explained

Every decision you make as a gambler has an average value over the long run. If you make the same decision or play hundreds or thousands of times, there’s an average value. In the short term, usually just a single decision or play, the value is either just a win or a loss.

But if you average the value over many times, you can determine if a play is profitable or unprofitable on average. Advantage gamblers look for profitable expected value and do everything they can to make these bets. This is called positive expectation.

If you make positive expectation wagers more often than negative expectation ones, you win more than you lose. This is why expected value is the most important mathematical concept for advantage gamblers.

Here’s an example of determining expected value:

If you study casino games, you’re aware that almost all of the games and bets offered in the casino have a house edge. With a casino house edge, how are you supposed to find positive expected value?

The answer is that most gamblers never learn how to find and make positive expected value bets. But smart players learn how to find and exploit them. I cover some of the best places to find positive expectation in the next section, but before you move on, consider what happens when you make positive expected value wagers.

Making Money With an Edge

Let’s say you’ve found a blackjack game with good rules and have mastered card counting. Instead of playing a game with a house edge, you’re playing a game with a small edge in your favor. Overall, you’re playing with an edge of .5% over the casino and are betting $2,000 per hour.

.005 X $2,000 = $10

This doesn’t seem like much, but compare winning $10 an hour to losing hour after hour. All of a sudden, instead of gambling for fun and exchanging money for entertainment, you’re being entertained and making money while you do it.

Some games don’t offer a chance to play with positive expected value. Advantage gamblers avoid these games. Here’s a list of games that generally don’t offer advantage play opportunities:

• Slots
• Craps
• Roulette
• Baccarat
• Video poker
• Bingo
• Keno

The reason I used the word “generally” above is because there are a few specific instances where you can play some of these games with a positive expectation. Occasionally, a progressive slot machine will have the jackpot climb so high that it effectively eliminates the house edge. You can also play a few video poker games, combined with perfect strategy and comps, which eliminate the house edge.

You can even find special situations, involving comps, promotions, coupons, or tournaments, where some of the other games on the list offer a small positive expected value. But for the most part, these games should be avoided. Once you master some of the advantage play methods for the gambling activities in the next section, you can start looking for positive expected value elsewhere. Just don’t start with the games listed above.

Potentially Profitable Gambling Activities

The most common forms of advantage gambling include poker, sports betting, blackjack, horse racing, dog racing, daily fantasy sports, and esports betting. Most gamblers still lose while participating in these gambling activities, but they all offer the opportunity for advantage gamblers to play with long-term positive expectation.

Poker is my favorite advantage play game because, other than a small rake collected by the casino or poker room, you’re competing directly against the other players. By studying the game and improving your skills, you can overcome the rake and make money in the long run.

Smart poker players put themselves in more positive expectation situations than their opponents, locking in a long-term profit.

Some gamblers that play real money blackjack have learned how to find games with favorable rules, use the best possible strategy, and have mastered a card-counting system that gives them a long-term edge against the casino.

Sports betting is somewhat like poker, in that the sportsbook charges a fee on losing wagers called the “vig” to make money. This creates a situation where smart sports bettors can handicap games well enough to overcome the vig, creating a positive long-term expectation.

Horse racing and dog racing works somewhat like poker and sports betting, because all of the money collected is put in a pool and the track keeps a percentage of the pool. The rest of the money in the pool is paid out to gamblers who place bets on the winning animals. This gives the best handicappers a chance to win more than they lose in the long run.

Daily fantasy sports and esports betting both work on similar models to poker and sports betting. This gives the best gamblers an opportunity to win more than they lose.

The step by step process of beating each of the gambling activities on this list can fill entire books, so it’s outside of the scope of this article. The important thing is to know that you can become a winning gambler, and the place to start is understanding what you need to do.

Understanding Advantage Gambling Math

Let’s say you’re playing Texas hold’em and have four cards to a flush after the turn. The pot has $500 in it and your opponent bets $100. From your experience and what you know about your opponent, you know that if you hit your flush on the river, you’re going to win the hand. And if you don’t hit your flush, you’re going to lose the hand.

After the $100 bet is added to the pot, the total is $600. You have to risk $100 for the chance to win the $600. You know the value of the two cards in your hand and the four cards on the board, so this leaves 46 unseen cards that can land on the river. Nine of these cards complete your flush and 37 of them don’t.

Because there are 46 possible river cards, if you run the numbers for each possible card and average the results, you can learn if it’s profitable to call.

By making the $100 call 46 times, your total investment is $4,600. When you lose, you receive nothing back. The nine times that you win, you receive the $600 in the pot back as well as your $100 call. This is a total of $700 and when you multiply this with the nine times you win, the total is $6,300.

In this situation, you win more than you lose, so the expectation is positive. To get the average expected value, you divide the difference between $6,300 and $4,600 by 46. This gives you a positive expected value of $36.96 every time you make the call.

You’re still going to lose 37 out of every 46 times you’re in this situation, but the nine times you win makes up for the losses. In addition, when you hit your flush sometimes, you might be able to win another bet on the river. Because you know you lose when you don’t hit your flush, you always fold on the river when you miss, so you don’t lose more money.

Advantage poker players learn about dozens of different situations like this and put themselves in these situations as often as possible. This locks in long-term profits for smart players.

Conclusion

Now that you understand how expected value is the key to advantage gambling math and how it works, you can quickly build your skills to start winning on a consistent basis. It’s not going to be easy, but with the skills you build, you can be an advantage gambler for the rest of your life.

I’ve read a saying that goes something like this, “If you want to get the results someone else is getting, do what they do.”

This makes a great deal of sense, but most gamblers refuse to do what winning players do. If you want to be a winning player, you need to start mimicking the actions of winning players who gamble with real money. Another common name for winning gamblers is “advantage gamblers.”

To help you get started, I’ve explained three ways advantage gamblers are different from normal gamblers below.

1 – They’re Always Looking for an Edge

Most gamblers have a favorite game, or a small group of favorite games, and simply go to the casino and play them. They get comfortable playing these games and fall into something like a rhythm. They play the same way they always do and lock in a profit for the casino.

Casinos love players like this, because they produce profits for the casino like clockwork.

Advantage players are always looking for an edge. If their best edge is at a particular game, they stick with that game and try to maximize their returns. But they aren’t afraid to switch games or activities if something else offers a higher return.

Most gamblers find a level of comfort and stick with it. This is why they only play one game or a small group of games. Advantage gamblers don’t seem to ever be entirely comfortable. They’re always looking for another edge.

Sometimes, this is simply trying to increase their current edge by a fraction of a percent, and sometimes, it’s trying to find a new angle to produce an edge a different way or in a different activity.

How One Advantage Gambler Got an Edge

I read an interesting story about an advantage gambler and how he got an edge during a special promotion a casino was running. A particular casino had a promotion where the gambler with the most play during a set period of time got to pick a single card from a series of giant playing cards.

Each giant playing card had a cash value that the gambler won. I don’t remember the actual values, but the top prize was big enough that it made it profitable to make sure he was the top player during the promotion. It was either $50,000 or $100,000, but if he picked one of the other cards, it wouldn’t cover his losses during the contest.

He watched the area where the drawing was going to take place, and when the casino employee went to set up the giant playing cards, the advantage player took a seat where he couldn’t be seen and watched the cards being set up.

The casino employee knew the values of the cards and spent more time looking at the highest value card and fidgeting with it. He basically told the advantage gambler where it was without consciously doing so.

When it came time to draw, the player picked the card with the top prize and made all of his play profitable.

Here are three things you need to recognize from this story:

1. He understood the promotion well enough to know that he could make money by being the top player if he was able to draw the top paying card.
2. He figured out a way to have the best chance to draw the top paying card.
3. He figured out how to take advantage of the situation while playing within the rules of the promotion. He didn’t cheat to earn the chance to draw a card, and he didn’t cheat to find out which card to pick.

When I read this story, I was floored. I’m an advantage player and always try to keep my eyes open for new ways to get an edge. But I’d have never thought about watching the employee set up the cards. This is an example of how you can use your mind to find an edge.

Even the best players miss things from time to time, but the majority of them are always willing to learn. This means they’re always looking for an edge.

2 – They Know the Numbers

If you read many articles that I post, one of the themes that run throughout many of them involves the numbers that run the gambling world. The reason for this is because numbers and math dictate everything that happens in the gambling world.

Most gamblers ignore the math, and they pay for this every time they gamble. This is the number one reason most gamblers lose. On the other hand, advantage gamblers know the math behind gambling, and know how to use it to gain an edge.

You can find all kinds of articles on this blog to help you learn more about the numbers behind gambling. I suggest finding them and reading them as soon as possible. Learn about the house edge, positive and negative expectation, and all of the math behind your favorite games.

Don’t stop until you know as much about the games that you play as the casinos do. If you’re a blackjack player, become a true student of the game. If you play poker, become a master of the game, including pot odds and expected value.

3 – They Always Have a Plan

Advantage gamblers start their gambling career like most other gamblers. They try their hand at getting lucky, but lose most of the time. Then, they realize that there are some ways to play with an advantage. This leads them to different areas, where they expand their knowledge and build their skills.

Once you become a true advantage player, you always have a plan before you gamble. You probably are willing to alter the plan when you recognize a better advantage, but you don’t gamble without a plan.

The best advantage players work with both short and long term plans. They build their skills over a long time so they can master their chosen activities in both the short and long term.

After an advantage player learns how to beat one game, they usually look for other advantage plays. Sometimes, this involves adding a second gambling activity, and sometimes, it’s simply getting better at what already works. And the best of the best do both at the same time.

I started planning how to play blackjack with an edge and developed several ways to bet on sports profitably. My main advantage play is still poker, but I’m always looking for an edge in everything I do.

If you want to be an advantage player, start with a solid plan. The fastest way to learn how to play with an edge is blackjack, and if I had to start over, that’s where I’d start.

Poker offers some advantages over blackjack, with the most important one being no heat, but it takes longer to master. Sports betting also offers some advantages, but it might take even longer than poker for many gamblers.

The best advice I can offer long-term is to make a plan and get started today. Your goal is to become an advantage gambler, and the only thing in your way is to develop a plan and get started.

Once you become an advantage gambler, you want to have to strategize every time you gamble. But you also want to keep your strategy flexible so you can find and exploit other opportunities.

If you’re on your way through the casino to the poker room and see a blackjack dealer or a Mississippi Stud dealer flashing hole cards, you need to forget the poker room and use the flashing dealer for as much profit as possible while the opportunity is available.

Conclusion

In order to become a winning gambler, you have to start doing things that winning gamblers do. I’ve explained three important ways that advantage gamblers are different than most gamblers. Use these three things to change the way you gamble, and start improving your results right away.

Have you ever heard anyone say they didn’t deserve something that happened to them? Have you ever thought that maybe you got something you didn’t deserve? This usually happens when you think life isn’t fair, but there are two ways to look at it.

The reason why most people think they’re getting something they don’t deserve is because something bad happens. A poker player that gets all in with the best of it and suffers a bad beat might be unhappy because they don’t think it’s fair that they didn’t win.

But there’s another side to getting something you didn’t deserve. What do you think when you win a jackpot on a slot machine or hit a long shot when you’re betting on the horses? Rarely does anyone think they don’t deserve a win. Instead, they think they got lucky or gained enough skill to benefit.

You can’t change the way people view things, but it doesn’t help when you believe you deserve or don’t deserve something that doesn’t fall within normal expectations. One of the things I like the most about gambling with real money is that, in the long run, you always get exactly what you deserve. This is true for the bad things that seem to happen and the good things.

If you want to embrace the fact that you get what you deserve, and find out how to benefit from it, find out how below.

What You Deserve Is Directly Related to Expectation

Gambling in any form is based on mathematical principles and equations. Some of them are simple and some are more challenging to understand. You don’t have to be a math genius to understand the math behind most gambling games, but you do need to understand a few principles.

Every game you play in a casino has a built-in house edge. The casino house edge is created in different ways, but the main thing to understand is that all casino games are designed to make the casino money.

Casino games have a house edge, which is an average percentage that the casino keeps from every dollar wagered on the game. Poker rooms make money by taking a percentage called a “rake” from each pot. Sportsbooks make money by charging more than you can win to make a bet in the form of vig.

If you know the house edge of a casino game, you can determine your expectation playing the game. Some games have strategies you can use that lower the house edge and some games don’t. When you play slot machines, you can’t change the house edge. But when you play video poker, you can use strategy to lower the house edge.

Here’s an example of the house edge and what it means for your expectation.

You’re playing roulette on a wheel with a double zero space and making $50 bets on black every spin. You play 50 spins every hour. The house edge on this bet is 5.26%.

Taking this another step, if every game in the casino is designed to hold a house edge, why does anyone play in the casino? It’s because they either don’t understand what it means they deserve, or they don’t care.

Before you decide to stop gambling forever because it’s obvious that you can’t win, there’s a bit of good news. You can gamble in certain ways that allow you to play with positive expectation. You can learn more about this in the next section.

How to Get on the Right Side of Expectation

In order to win when you gamble, you need to figure out how to play with an edge against the house instead of playing against the house edge. The good news is that there are a few things you can do to make this possible.

One way to play with an edge is to figure out how to play a casino game using strategy that reduces the house edge below zero. Most casino games are designed so this isn’t possible, so you can’t play them with positive expectation. But blackjack is one game where you can learn to play with an edge.

In order to play blackjack with an edge, you have to learn about card counting, find games with good rules, and learn how to use perfect strategy.

A few video poker games also offer an opportunity to play with a small edge when you combine a good pay table, proper strategy, and comps. These opportunities are rare, but a few do exist.

Another way to overcome the house edge is to play in games that make the house money in ways other than a built-in house edge. The two most common ways to do this are to play poker and bet on sports.

Poker is one of the best opportunities to gamble with an edge because you compete against other players instead of directly against the house. The poker room takes a rake from each hand instead of operating with a built-in edge.

This mean that, in order to make more than you lose playing poker, you simply need to learn how to play better than most of your opponents. This is called beating the rake, and it means that you win enough to cover the rake, leaving a profit.

Sportsbooks make money by collecting the vig on losing wagers.

While the vig is a built-in cost of betting, if you can learn how to pick winners 53% of the time or more, you overcome the vig. It’s not easy to learn how to beat the vig, but some sports bettors do it, and you can learn how to do it as well.

You can find a few other ways to gamble with a positive expectation, but these are the main ones. Learn how to do it one of these ways and either continue improving your skills on your chosen game or learn a new one.

Conclusion

Remember that in gambling, you get what you deserve. If you choose to play games that can’t be beat, you’re going to lose. If you choose to play games that can be beat in a way that still gives the house an edge, you’re still going to lose.

But you can choose to play games that allow you to beat other players and start winning on a regular basis. The choice is yours! Focus on turning the tables and make getting what you deserve work for you instead of against you.

Have you ever wished that you could pick up a some sort of ultimate gambling guide that made gambling simple? If such a guide existed, wouldn’t it be great if it not only made gambling simple, but it also explained how to win in simple terms?

A gambling guide that made things simple and explained all the ways you can win would be thousands of pages long. But I can offer you the next best thing. On this page, I’m going to give you an overview of what a guide to prosperity through gambling would cover.

You can look at this like an outline that touches on all of the important things you need to know. Go through this guide and find the areas that interest you, then you’ll know exactly what you need to learn more about.

This ultimate gambling guide is designed to be the starting point for everything you want to accomplish in gambling. By the time you finish reading this page, you’re going to find things you didn’t know you needed to learn.

What Every Gambler Needs to Know

Every gambler needs to understand why and how gambling games work. Every form of gambling available in land-based casinos, real money gambling sites, poker rooms, and sportsbooks has a base that drives it and basically controls everything. This base dictates how the house makes money, how much money the house makes, and is the secret that lets some players win while most players lose.

The base behind all forms of gambling is math. This might be scary for some people, but if you don’t accept and understand this, you’re never going to learn how to win. You don’t have to be a math expert, but you do need to learn how to use math to your advantage.

Some games are designed in a way that lets you use strategy and smart play to overcome the house edge. Others are designed in a way where nothing you do changes it. I cover more about both of these types in the next two sections.

Every game has a unique house edge. Some are available with different rules and pay tables, which change the house edge. The first thing you need to do is learn what the house edge is for the different variants and pay tables.

Once you learn how it works and know the edge for different games, the next step is to learn which games allow you to change the edge using strategy and smart play.

Gambling Activities You Can Beat

In this section, I’m going to quickly cover the gambling activities you can beat using strategy and smart play. In some of these games, you have to locate specific rules and pay tables, but if you want to win, you need to learn as much as possible.

Poker

Poker is one of the best options for advantage gamblers because the poker room takes a small fee from each pot for profit instead of a built in house edge. This means you just need to play poker better than the majority of your opponents to win.

Blackjack

Blackjack offers opportunities for players who learn to use basic strategy and card counting strategy. You can also keep your eyes open for hole carding possibilities. A lot has been written on card counting, so you can definitely find detailed information on it.

Video Poker

Playing video poker is harder to beat than most of the other games on this list. But, with a combination of good pay tables, proper strategy, and comps, players are able to play with a long-term edge.

Sports Betting

The way sportsbooks make money is by charging a small fee on losing bets.

If you can figure out ways to place bets without this fee, or win more bets than you lose, you can become a long-term winner betting on sports.

Track Betting

Track betting includes horse and dog racing. The way most tracks make money is by putting all the bets in a pool, taking a percentage off the top, and paying back the rest of the money based on how much is bet on each horse or dog. This creates an opportunity for smart handicappers to make a profit, because you’re basically competing against other bettors like when you play poker.

Daily Fantasy Sports

Daily fantasy sports is fairly new in the gambling area, but the way it works is, you pick a team of players who earn points for their results in a game or contest for the day. If your players get more points than your opponents, you win your bet. This works like poker, with the house taking a small fee so you can make a profit when you’re better than your opponents.

Esports Betting

Esports betting works just like regular sports betting, except you’re betting on popular video game players and teams. This is even newer than daily fantasy sports betting, so be careful if you start in this industry. Any time a new betting option is available, there’s a chance of a few bumps in the road.

Gambling Activities You Can’t Beat

Basically, any gambling activity that isn’t listed in the last section can’t be beat under normal circumstances. In a few specific circumstances, a few of the games listed below can be beat, but most of these involve cheating. I never recommend cheating, because when you do, there’s a good chance you’re going to end up in jail.

Here’s a list of gambling activities that generally can’t be beat.

• Slots
• Roulette
• Baccarat
• Craps
• Three-Card Poker
• Caribbean Stud Poker
• Let It Ride
• Mississippi Stud Poker
• Bingo
• Keno
• Lottery
• Pai Gow Poker
• Pai Gow Tiles

Get Paid to Gamble

When you learn which games can be beat and the strategies and techniques needed to beat them, you can make money while you gamble. This can seem like a dream come true, but as you’re going to learn in the next section, being a winning gambler tends to suck the fun out of gambling.

The important thing you need to learn from this section is that most casinos have programs in place offering rewards to gamblers to keep them gambling and coming back for more. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing one of the games that can be beat or one that can’t, you should always sign up for the club offered by the house and any promotions they have.

Some online casinos don’t have a player’s club, but many do, and most land-based casinos offer one. When you receive rewards or comps as they’re often called, it can help offset your losses or increase your wins.

Gamble for Fun or Profit

Once you figure out how to be a winning gambler, it often becomes more like a job than a fun activity. While it’s fun to win, when you know you can beat a game, it often becomes a grind.

I’m a strong advocate for learning how to be a winning gambler. But if you enjoy gambling and use it as a form of entertainment and can gamble within your means, I just want to warn you about learning how to beat the casinos. Many gamblers find they lose the enjoyment of gambling once they start winning on a consistent basis.

One way to keep some of the excitement is to keep gambling part time instead of trying to gamble for a living. Even if you’re good enough to make as much profit gambling as you do working a regular job, there are some benefits to working a regular job and gambling on the side.

Most people reading this aren’t going to believe that gambling for a living can’t be fun and exciting. You might have to learn this for yourself, but don’t burn any bridges before you’re sure it’s what you want to do.

Conclusion

This ultimate gambling guide gives you a clear path to get started. The best way to start is to learn everything covered in the first section about gambling math and the house edge, then continue to the next section.

Once you know everything about gambling math and the games you can beat, you’re ready to become a prosperous gambler. The only thing standing in your way is inactivity. Follow the steps laid out in this article and you’re well on your way to becoming a winning gambler.

No one is perfect and we all make mistakes, but learning from mistakes is essential. Repeating mistakes you should already have learned from is a red flag.

Sooner or later, in every field of endeavor, overconfidence becomes a problem. No matter how good you are at your job, someone will eventually outdo you.

As a gambler, and this is true for anyone who takes intentional risk, it’s crucial to believe in the inevitability of your success. Otherwise, why are you gambling with real money in the first place?

It’s true that as long as a gambler believes there’s a chance of winning, then the game is worth playing. But when the player begins feeling so overconfident that he neglects basic strategy, he undermines his own success.

Here are a few examples of how overconfidence leads expert gamblers to make easily avoidable mistakes.

1 – Check the Rules Before You Start Playing

When you’ve played the table games so many times that you know the rules by heart, you stop looking at the posted table rules. Those players might even think they don’t need any pointers or gambling tips.

This isn’t disastrous, but I’ve known more than a few gamblers who were caught by surprise when they learned things weren’t as they expected.

Not often enough to keep us checking. I’m not going to play conspiracy theorist and say the casinos were hoping for this. It was an easy mistake to make and a few people were caught off guard.

On the other hand, some keno players assume that all the video keno games are the same. That’s not true. Their rules are decided by their manufacturers, you must remember this important casino tip. The casinos might even request special games.

And taking your video keno experience to another variation of the game is risky, too. The probabilities and payout odds can change from state to state, casino to casino, style of game, etc.

I’ve even heard some older slot game players complain that their favorite games stopped paying as well. The casinos may not like changing the percentages on the slot games, but they do have that option. I’m sure it’s happened. although not as often as some players believe.

If a game publishes an estimated return to player, check it every time. While knowing the RTP doesn’t guarantee you anything, you can adjust your expectations if need be.

By the same token, if you consider yourself an expert in blackjack or poker because you’ve been playing for a few years, the live casino experience is a different card game. Even if the rules are the same, it offers a different experience.

2 – Don’t Overlook the Terms and Conditions

I used to follow several online gambling forums closely. They offered to intervene with online casinos if players complained about not being paid or, worse, losing their accounts.

Sometimes, an online casino is labeled as “rogue” because they don’t work to resolve player difficulties. But in my experience, sometimes the players who reported these casinos just weren’t reading the terms and conditions carefully.

Casinos may be faulted for making these agreements complicated and hard to find.

When I was more active in online gaming, I was frustrated that casinos didn’t just combine these documents. Once I figured it was standard, I checked every site for a second document. I know for a fact that a lot of players don’t do practice this gambling tip, even though they’re experienced gamblers.

As long as you don’t violate the rules and the casino pays you on time, you can live blissfully in your ignorance. But it’s all on you if you neglect to learn the terms and conditions of the casino or bonus that you use.

3 – Keep Track of Wins and Losses

This is more of a problem for me when I’m gambling with my wife. One of us will lose when the other is winning. We hand money back and forth.

Sooner or later, we’ll realize that we’ve blown through our bankroll. If we’re lucky, we both win at the same time, but you can’t count on that.

Budgeting is a vital casino tip if you don’t want to start dipping into your savings account and credit cards. Know how much you have to play with at all times!

Even online gaming can be problematic if you don’t transfer your entire account balance to a game. I’ve seen a few players admit they didn’t realize they had drained their full balances by transferring too much money to their active game balances.

There are several popular methods for tracking your money. One that I’ve tried a few times is putting all my money into separate tickets or chip stacks early in the evening. I only play blackjack games with my blackjack budget. And when that’s gone, I don’t borrow from the slot game budget.

If I get ahead early on, I’ll siphon off some of my winnings into a reserve fund. I decide later if I want to gamble with that money or leave the casino with it.

4 – Don’t Assume You’re Good Enough or Better Than Everyone Else

This isn’t much of a problem at blackjack tables, except when some opinionated drunk starts criticizing other players. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen too often.

I have a few friends who play poker and they tell me that overconfidence can be a big factor in both online and land-based games. One friend even told me the best poker players use less experienced players’ overconfidence against them.

Overconfidence is also a factor to think about in sports betting.

The bookies aren’t just setting odds on the basis of their opinions. They take the balance of wagers on both sides of their prop bets into consideration. The bookies want to earn a commission and the players want to win bets.

When you start making your own book, you need to create reasonable offers. If you overextend yourself because you think you’ve got a sucker on the line, you’re asking for trouble.

5 – Evaluate Playing on Margin or Credit

I’ve faced this situation before. It was a combination of not being ready to call it quits at the casino and also being out of cash.

There was a credit card in my wallet that was fully paid off, and it was far too easy to borrow a thousand dollars. While it worked out okay for me, this may not be your ideal scenario.

But it may not seem too bad for a player who is being staked or sponsored by someone else. As long as they win overall, their sponsors stay in the game.

The idea of investing in a gambling career takes some people back, but it’s definitely becoming a big business. And how is it any different than investing in a startup or a well-established corporation?

Investors buy shares of stock even as it drops into the penny stock range. Until someone stops buying the stock, it will always be a risky investment rather than a sure loss. The corporation might dig its way out of a hole just as a player may start winning again.

If you’re confident in your skills and your abilities, playing on someone else’s credit may just be a helpful gambling tip for you.

6 – Never Neglect Personal Finances or Life Expenses

Every gambler should pay attention to their personal finances. Most people gamble occasionally for entertainment and are playing on a tight budget.

It’s the regular players who risk putting themselves into bad financial situations.

When you start borrowing from your household budget, it’s probably time to take a break. Put your personal finances into order, build up your budget again through bankroll management, and wait for a better day.

The casinos aren’t going anywhere!

Conclusion

I can think of a few dumb mistakes I’ve made where I really should have known better. I can’t undo them now, but the lesson to learn from makes future mistakes easily avoidable. Never allow your overconfidence to make decisions for you.

As soon as you let that feeling of being unstoppable make your decisions, you’re back to making an avoidable mistake. Only make rational and reasonable choices when you’re gambling, and that goes for your gameplay and your bankroll management.

Land-based casinos come in all shapes and sizes, and the public definitely has a stereotypical image of the industry. But not every casino looks like the big Strip casinos you see in movies.

That image is cultivated, and it contributes to the flood of emotions that some problem gamblers feel. For everyone else, the glamour and the noise of the crowd heighten our excitement, too.

Even on a slow night, a large, popular casino gives the appearance of being ready to stage a ball or celebration. It’s an ongoing party, 24/7. Most people enjoy the rush of walking through the doors, hearing the ring of the slot machines, and the excited crowds standing around the craps tables.

But there’s so much more to the modern casino experience than the cultivated sights and sounds. Visitors expect to be pampered, treated like royalty, and have all their basic needs fulfilled.

So, why do local players enjoy going to the small casinos? The industry is large enough to have something for everyone. I’ve visited many casinos, large and small, in winter and summer, in northern and southern climes.

Although I have my own ideas about why people love land-based casinos, I looked around to see what others say. Here are the 4 most popular reasons people love going to the casinos either when they travel or when they get off work.

1 – Everybody Knows Your Name

Many people who play at their local (smaller) casinos say they enjoy being greeted by name by the staff. They also mention how polite and professional casino staff are when they’re regulars.

This is a necessary skill for anyone who works in a public place, but some companies enforce the standard better than others. The casino industry in general has earned a reputation for hiring polite, discreet staff.

On the other side of the coin, many casino workers complain about certain types of customers who are rude. Casino employees may be required to endure a little nastiness every week. Hence, they appreciate polite and thoughtful customers (not to mention tips).

Good customers aren’t just people who contribute to the company’s profits. They also treat employees with respect and don’t create problems. Staff members will remember you kindly for your good behavior.

Hence, local land-based casinos have an advantage over tourist destinations because workers can get to know the regulars and establish good rapport with them. I’m sure this is one of the main reasons why smaller casinos can do well even in crowded markets.

2 – The Food Is Good

Sure, I’ve eaten sandwiches at a few roadside land-based casinos that felt and tasted like they were days old. But maybe I just picked the worst times to eat. I can definitely think of a few bad meals I’ve had from pretty much every restaurant where I’ve been a regular customer for years.

I’ve been invited to lunch a few times by friends and co-workers who drove the extra few minutes down the road to a nearby Native American casino. The buffet was excellent and far better than what you’d find at regular restaurants in town.

Casinos know that if you enjoy the experience, you’re more likely to come back. The buffet isn’t just a loss leader, it’s also advertising. You have to walk past all the casino games to get to the food, and that’s purposeful at most casinos.

3 – Most People Feel Safe in Casinos

Although crime can happen anywhere, the security available at land-based casinos reassure most people.

If you’re in a strange town and want some entertainment, a local casino is usually a great place to spend a few hours. They’ll do what they must to keep their customers safe and happy.

Whether you’re truly any safer at a casino than other venues isn’t the point. If people feel safer there, they’ll enjoy going back more often. It’s simple psychology.

When thrill-seekers seek out danger, most of them do it in a controlled environment. They don’t really want to stroll through a violent crime-infested neighborhood with wads of cash in their hands.

A few years ago, I worked with a woman who spent a lot of time at a nearby casino. I asked her if she won much and she said she broke even most of the time.

So, why did she keep going back? Because the part of town where she lived didn’t have much to offer in the way of affordable entertainment.

It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, but it was surrounded by bars and cheap motels. She didn’t feel safe in those areas when night fell.

4 – The Climate-Controlled Environment Is Unparalleled

When I was a kid, we spent a lot of hot summer days at the local cinema. While I still enjoy watching a good movie in the theater, it’s not the same experience for me. The last time I was a regular movie-goer was when I was in college.

As the weather heated up, I found myself spending more spare time in cinemas and shopping malls. The air conditioning made the days pass comfortably.

A few winters ago, my wife and I were bored at home. There was snow everywhere in our town, and it was a risky drive to go very far even though the snowplows were working.

So, we drove over to a nearby casino. We parked in a decked garage, so the snow didn’t cover our car. Then, we strolled inside where our heavy coats were immediately too warm.

I can’t get a room at a shopping mall, and most movies last about two hours if even that long. The casino offers a full evening of distraction, good food, and comfort.

The night we went, we thought the place would be deserted. We were lucky to find a covered parking space. It turned out a lot of other people had the same idea. Luckily, our local casino offers plenty of room, so we were able to head to our favorite section and play slot machine games.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that we love to hang out at places that make us feel safe and create an enjoyable experience.

The rush of playing games in a casino comes and goes. That’s the danger of spending too much time in a gaming venue. But I’d say the euphoria and excitement gamblers feel are no different from what sports fans enjoy on a long weekend.

There’s no shame in admitting you enjoy the crowd, the lights, the noise, and the gaming. We love going to land-based casinos because they can be a lot of fun.