5 Gambling Activities Winning Gamblers Avoid

Winning and losing gamblers don’t do things the same ways. Most gamblers do things the way losing gamblers do them. And they do the same things every time they gamble.

On the other hand, winning gamblers avoid doing most of the same things that losing gamblers do. Instead, the winning gamblers have figured out ways to do a few things differently that give them a chance to win.

Here are 5 gambling activities that winning gamblers have learned to avoid. If you simply avoid these 5 things your gambling results are going to improve.

1 – Traditional Lottery Games

I completely understand why so many people play the lottery. Most lottery games only cost 1 or 2 dollars to play, and often you can win millions. The problem is that the odds are so high against you that almost every lottery player goes their entire life without ever hitting anything more than a small win.

Winning gamblers know at least a little bit about odds and probabilities. And no matter how big the potential payoff is, if there’s not a realistic chance to win the big pay off there’s no need to play. In fact, it’s costly to play.

How many times do you have to make a wager that has a 1 in 300,000,000 million chance of winning to win? The answer is that you only have to make it 1 time if you overcome all of the odds and get lucky and win.

But how many times do you have to make the same wager to have a decent chance to win? If you make the wager 150,000,000 times you still only have a 50% chance to win.

Are you willing to risk $150 million for a 50% chance to win $20 million, or even $100 million? The numbers simply don’t make sense, and that’s why winning gamblers don’t play the lottery.

2 – Most Slots Games

I avoid playing slot machines most of the time. But there are a few instances where winning players take a shot at the slots. First I’m going to explain why slot machines aren’t usually played by winning gamblers, and then I’m going to cover a few situations where you might play the slots anyway.

Slot machines are programmed with something called a payback percentage. Most of the time this percentage is only known by the manufacturer and the casino, but some information is available for some machines.

The payback percentage dictates how much the machine pays back to slots players and the difference between this percentage and how much the players risk is the profit for the casino.

Here’s an example of how payback percentage works: You’re playing a slot machine with a payback percentage of 93%. You play 750 spins at $2.50 each. This is a total of $1,875. On average, the slot machine is going to pay you back $1,743.75 on the 750 spins. This leaves a profit of $131.25 for the casino.

And the important thing to understand here is that most slots players take 750 spins in less than 2 hours. So your losses can stack up quickly.

A 93% payback percentage isn’t even the worst payback percentage you’re going to deal with when you play slots. Some machines are worse. Of course, some slot machines have a higher payback percentage also, but the best ones are usually only 96 to 98%.

Slot machines consistently win for the casino and take from gamblers.


The only time you should consider playing a slot machine is when a progressive jackpot climbs high enough that it makes the payback percentage close to 100%, or over 100%. As a progressive jackpot goes up it also makes the payback percentage go up.

3 – American Roulette

Before getting far into this section, you need to understand that all roulette games are poor choices. Winning gamblers almost never play roulette of any kind. But when they do put down a wager at a roulette table, they never do it on an American roulette wheel.

It’s easy to tell the difference between an American roulette wheel and a European or French wheel. American wheels have 38 spaces and the other wheels only have 37. All of the wheels have spaces for 0 to 36, but the American wheel has a space for 00.

The difference of 1 additional number on the wheel might not seem like much, but it almost doubles the edge the casino has on every wager.

I’ve discussed odds on this page but haven’t looked at the casino edge. Winning gamblers understand and use the casino edge. And roulette is a perfect example of using the casino edge.

The casino edge is a percentage that represents how much the casino makes on average of the money wagered on a game. The house edge of 5.26% for American roulette shows that the casino makes 5.26% of all of the money wagered on the wheel.

If gamblers make wagers totaling $213,123 over the course of the night, the casino makes $11,210.27. This is an average number, because some nights it’s going to be a little smaller and other nights a little larger.

When you compare this to roulette wheels that only have 37 spaces you can see why winning gamblers never play American roulette. The house edge of 37 space wheels is 2.7%.

The expected profit for the casino using the same numbers as above on a 37 space wheel is $5,754.32.

Neither of these outcomes is good for gamblers, but it clearly shows why you should never play on a roulette wheel with more than 37 spaces.

4 – Keno Games

In the first section you learned why winning gamblers don’t play the lottery. The numbers are so bad that it’s almost impossible to make a profit unless you defy all of the odds and get lucky. The reason why I mention this again in this section is because the odds are almost as bad when you play keno as they are when you play the lottery, and the pay outs are much worse.

The truth is that the odds aren’t quite as bad for most keno games as they are for the lottery, but they’re still terrible. The house edge on keno games is usually over 25%. To put this in perspective, the house edge for a decent blackjack game is somewhere around .5%. That’s 50 times higher for keno than blackjack.

When you play the lottery the top prize can be tens or hundreds of millions, but the top prize for keno is usually $100,000 or less. Some games only have a top win of $10,000.

When you combine the terrible odds with the much lower top prize amount, keno is clearly no better than the lottery.

5 – Poor Video Poker Pay Tables

Video poker is a game that some winning players use. But it’s also a game that many losing players use. How can both things be true?

The answer is all about the game choice and the pay tables. A few video poker games with the right pay tables have a very low house edge. The main choices are Deuces Wild and Jacks or Better, but there are a few others that aren’t bad. But even these games are available with bad pay tables.

The main difference between winning players and losing one’s is that the winning players know which video poker games they can play and which pay tables to use. Losing players just play whatever video poker machine they find.

Being a winning gambler requires knowledge and discipline. Losing gamblers don’t learn the knowledge they need to know and they don’t have the discipline to only play games that give them a realistic chance to win.

If you’re going to play video poker you have to know exactly which games and pay tables you can use and refuse to play on any other machines.

Conclusion

This list of 5 gambling activities to avoid if you want to be a winning gambler is simple to follow. Most lottery games have such a low pay back percentage that they should never be played. The same is true for most slot machine games.

American roulette is much worse than European roulette, so you need to avoid it. Keno games are close to the lottery when it comes to pay back percentage, so winning players never try their hand at keno.

While there are a few video poker games and pay tables that are worth playing, most of them take your money as fast as slot machines.