You’ll hear people say that having fun at gambling is more important than winning at gambling. This might be true for some casino gamblers, but it’s not true for serious advantage gamblers.
For the serious advantage gamblers out there, I offer some real-life examples of how you can win and have fun gambling at casinos at the same time.
1- Birds of a Feather
If you hang out in a barbershop long enough, you’ll eventually get a haircut. You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Birds of a feather flock together.
These are all ideas related to your peer group and how they affect you success or failure.
And these ideas apply to gambling just as well as they apply to any other area of life – business or personal.
So, if you want to win more often at gambling, find a peer group that’s interested in the same thing. Join the MIT Blackjack Team, if they’ll have you. Find someone who also wants to learn how to win at gambling and become study partners.
When I was getting serious about playing real money Texas hold’em, I found a buddy from my college days who was playing seriously. He had marked up his copies of various poker books, and we exchanged commentary on how we played various hands consistently.
I can remember the first time he and I went shopping to spend some of our gambling winnings.
2- An Example of a Profitable Blackjack Promotion
I read about a blackjack player who found a deal through a travel agent where he could get $1000 worth of chips for $900. He also got a free hotel room and $20 toward meals. The travel agent’s fee for putting this Vegas package together was $15, so this represented at least $85 in value before you included the value of the room and the meals.
Of course, the casino wouldn’t let you just have chips that could immediately get cashed in for real money. They would let you place bets with those chips, and they’d pay your winning with real chips. The trick was to play until you lost all your promotional chips and had nothing left but cashable chips.
Since you’re looking at $1000 in action, that’s an expected loss of $10, which means that the promotion was worth about $75 in profit.
Of course, this assumes you’re playing with perfect basic casino strategy.
It also doesn’t account for luck.
Obviously, you could have a lousy weekend at the tables even if you played every hand perfectly.
It doesn’t matter, though. The math tells us that if you keep putting yourself in positive expectation situations, you’ll eventually come out of the experiences with a profit.
And, of course, if you’re counting cards, that promotion just got even more valuable.
3- Coupon Books That Give Specials Once per Day
Some Vegas hotels give away coupon books with coupons for free chips, but they limit your use of these coupons to once per day. For example, you might find a coupon that allows you to buy $15 in chips for $10, or $20 in chips for $15.
The fine print might make it clear that you can only use such a coupon once per day at a casino.
But Here’s a Trick I Read About in a Book:
You can use such coupons multiple times per day if you’re using them with multiple dealers. Most dealers are at a table for 30 to 60 minutes, tops, so you get plenty of opportunities to go back and use these coupons repeatedly. You just need to stack up a collection of them.
This kind of extra value can add up fast.
Be careful that the pit bosses aren’t watching you too carefully, though.
It might even make sense to switch tables and pits from time to time, too.
4- It Never Hurts to Have Friends
You never know when your kindness to an employee or another gambler in a casino might pay off for you. I read another story about a gambler who befriended the lady who was in charge of giving away the coupon books. He gave her a couple of vouchers for the buffet.
She was happy just to get the free meal, and she was probably impressed by that gambler’s kindness.
She responded in kind, by giving extra copies of the coupon books for that casino to the gambler that she’d befriended.
Think about this, too – if you want a free meal, you’re more likely to get that meal if the dealer and pit boss at the table like you. Yeah, they don’t give these out just because they like you – they have to be convinced that you’re gambling, too.
But having a good relationship with them can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, so to speak.
5- Online Gambling Promotions Used to Be Really Good, Too
I have a friend who used to take advantage of casino signup bonuses to make money. He would sign up at the casino, deposit the minimum amount, get the bonus, then play just enough to be allowed to cash out.
Here’s How That Might Work:
Casino might offer a $200 bonus on a $100 deposit but require you to wager that money 10 times before cashing out. This means you start with a bankroll of $300, but you must wager $3000 before cashing out.
My buddy would play basic strategy blackjack with a house edge of 0.5%, which means that his expected loss on $3000 was just $15.
He deposits $100. He gets $200 free. He loses $15 gambling on blackjack.
His projected profit is $185.
Of course, gambling is random and a game of luck, so it’s entirely possible he’d do better or worse than that.
But he told me that he did this at a dozen casinos in a row and won enough money to buy a jukebox.
Of course, this was 15 years ago, and the wagering requirements are tougher than they were then. You’re more likely to have to wager your bankroll 45 times before cashing out instead of 10 times, and most casinos don’t count wagers on blackjack toward the rollover requirement.
6- Teaching Someone Else How to Gamble Can Improve Your Skills
I never really mastered basic strategy until I taught my ex-wife how to play blackjack. I went through every possible total with her, hard and soft, and explained what the basic strategy for that situation was in every situation.
I also explained to her why the basic strategy decision in each of those situations was the correct decision.
I also taught an ex-girlfriend of mine how to play Texas hold’em on a drive to the casino. I was covering her buy-in, so I had to communicate a workable strategy for her that would keep her in the game long enough for me to play.
She knew the ranking of the poker hands, and she had a rough idea of how to play Texas hold’em. The only thing she lacked was a knowledge of starting hands.
To keep it simple, I told her to only play pairs or suited connectors preflop. I told her she could also play AK or AQ. With any pair of jacks or higher, she was supposed to bet, raise, or re-raise. She was also supposed to bet or re-raise preflop with AK or AQ. With any other hand, she was supposed to call a bet and fold if there was a raise.
Her strategy on the flop was to either bet and raise or fold depending on whether she had at least top pair or an overpair.
This is far from the optimal strategy for Texas hold’em, but it was tight enough that she was able to play all day with me without going broke.
7- Serious Gamblers Know About Scouts and Scouting
Serious casino gamblers are the ones who play blackjack and video poker with an edge over the casino.
But it’s not enough to be skilled enough to beat these games. You must also be able to find games where the conditions are good enough for you to get an edge.
No card counter can get an edge at blackjack at a table where the deck gets shuffled after every hand.
No video poker player can get an edge at a video poker game with a lousy pay table.
And casinos are changing the conditions of their games all the time.
So, how do you know where to gamble if you’re serious?
You find someone to scout out game conditions for you. In many cases, this is as simple as visiting some message boards in the gambling niche. You can subscribe to some for-pay newsletters that provide scouting reports, too.
Conclusion
You CAN win money at gambling through sheer, dumb luck.
Or you can get a strategy that works. This can involve only playing games where you can edge or taking advantage of promotional offers.
In many cases, it involves both.
Michael Stevens
Michael Stevens has been researching and writing topics involving the gambling industry for well over a decade now and is considered an expert on all things casino and sports betting. Michael has been writing for GamblingSites.org since early 2016. …
