casino player a more
dangerous hombre for the casinos to deal with. If
knowledge is power in the real world, than knowledge
is money in the glitz and glamor of the casinos.
The smarter you are, which is to say, the smarter
you play, the more money you’ll win or, more
correctly, the less money you’ll lose for the
same number of thrills. But to get smart at casino
gambling, we must edit some of our dumb casino strategies.
Dumb Gambling Strategy
#1: “I prefer not to carry too much cash
with me. If I do lose the money I brought with me
to the casino, I’ll just take an advance on
my credit card.”
Edit: No, no, no! Credit
card cash advances come with outrageously usurious
fees. Smart players who don’t like to bring
too much cash to the casinos with them would do
well to look into getting a credit line at the casinos
of their choice. A casino credit line comes with
no interest and anywhere from one to six weeks to
pay off your debt.
Dumb Gambling Strategy
#2: “I like to make the bets that give
me the greatest return for the least investment.
That’s why I play progressive slot machines;
I always make the proposition bets in craps and
pay the extra dollar to be eligible for the jackpots
at Let It Ride, Caribbean Stud and Progressive Blackjack.”
Edit: The illusion
that you are making a “little investment”
when you play the slots in an attempt to win big
money is just that -- an illusion. Most slot players
most nights that play those progressives will end
up losing their money. The progressive slots come
with house edges of up to 20 percent (depending
on where in the country you play them). That means
the house is going to keep 20 percent of all the
money you put in the machine in the long run. How
much do you think an “average” slot player
can put in a machine in four hours of play? A dollar
player, playing three coins per spin, can put over
$8,000 in a slot machine. Now, multiply that over
many, many visits and extract that 20 percent and
does anyone seriously think he is making a “little
investment” for a big payout in the long run?
If our $8,000 player goes to a casino a dozen times
in a year (that’s only one one-day visit per
month), he is really wagering $96,000. The 20 percent
casino cut makes his expectation a loss of $19,200.
Small investment? If you’re Bill Gates maybe.
Our proposition bettor
in craps is playing against edges of between 5 percent
and 17 percent on the totality of the money he puts
into action on these bets -- which can, as in the
slot example above, be enormous.
And what about that
teeny, tiny little one-dollar side bet at those
other table games? They all have between 60 and
90 decisions per hour. That means you are betting
$60 to $90 per hour, $240 to $360 per four-hours
(a normal evening of play). Most side bets have
house edges coming in around 25 percent. Do the
math and what do we see -- big losses over time
on these seemingly innocuous bets.
So, edit these bets
out of your gambling repertoire!
Dumb Gambling Strategy
#3: “I base all my blackjack decisions
on my own experiences and my own reasoning powers.
I never hit my 12 against a dealer 2 or 3 and I
never hit my 16 against a dealer 7. Why? Because
when a dealer has a 7 up, there is only one card
that can help him and that’s a 10, all the
others make him have to hit a stiff hand.”
Edit: Experience is
a good teacher in life but it is not the perfect
teacher in gambling. Because blackjack has millions
of possible combinations of cards (that’s right,
millions of combinations exist in a 52-card deck),
your individual experiences are the equivalent of
looking at an elephant through a microscope. You’ll
note the texture of the skin in the given nano-inch
you’re looking at and you might notice a few
other things, but you will not see the totality
of the huge beast. You can’t. You are using
a microscope! That is what happens in blackjack
when we base our hitting, standing, doubling and
splitting strategies on our experiences. The computer,
which can do the necessary combinations enough times
to give us the right decisions to make, tells us
to make certain decisions such as hitting 12 against
a dealer 2 or 3 and to hit your 16 against a dealer
7. To do anything else is just dumb.
Dumb Gambling Strategy
#4: “All gambling is just pure luck. If
your luck is running good, you’ll win; if your
luck is running bad, you’ll lose. I just gauge
my luck when I go and then decide what and how to
bet.”
Edit: This might sound like intelligent advice but,
upon examination, it is dumb. You will always have
more luck in the long run at games where the casino
has a small house edge than at games where the casino
has a large house edge. That is a fact. Gambling
is really just math in action for most players.
What we take for luck -- the swings in our fortunes
as we win or lose bets -- are just fluctuations
and they tell us very little about the long-run
prospects that we face. You put some money in a
slot machine and win on the very first spin. Does
that indicate that you will win consistently on
this machine for years and years to come? No. You
might lose the next 15 spins after a win because
the hit frequency of a machine is usually around
15 percent (1 in 6). Don’t rely only on luck
or think that because you have had a good run that
you can now play bad games, make bad bets and your
good run will continue. Although it is possible
to have incredibly good runs at even bad games,
or by making bad bets, we’d bet against those
outrageously favorable lucky streaks happening with
any frequency. Why? Because they aren’t in
the math.
Obviously, this article
does not exhaust the various editing that should
be done in our playing and thinking strategies.
In truth, every day our web page contains “editing”
advice for the gambler. Incorporate those edits
into your play and you’ll be one tough casino
customer.
Visit Websites Of The Scoblete Network
www.goldentouchpoker.com
www.goldentouchcraps.com
www.goldentouchblackjack.com
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www.gscobe.blogspot.com
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