My confession, and where I am now...

[jstrike]

I'm only going to pop in here and pop off just this once...

THANK YOU for weighing in here with some good sense.

OP needs to do what he knows is in his best interest, and not give into temptation. Gambling's ENTERTAINMENT -- it's a way to spend money and have a good time -- and when it pays out, you get yourself a nice prime rib and tickets to the Cirque du Soleil and a comp for a place a hot tub so you can bring your girlfriend next time, and spend your time playing with her all night, instead of playing all night with a blackjack dealer named Stanley from Lake Havasu.

Most important is the great advice that the only way to make money is to work. And yeah, working to open a casino counts, too (thanks, Mousey). But gambling's not a way to make money. Ever. Everevereverever. I'm not sure how much more strongly a casino owner can say this.

Look, WLB -- and I don't mean offense by this -- but I'm not an industry shill and if I was, I'd probably tell ya your system's perfect and come play with us. Truth is I wouldn't want you playing with us, even if you're worth $62k/year, because I don't want to host players whose quality of life hinges on whether they win or lose. Then, when they lose, I'm gonna feel like a jerk. I may own a casino, but I'm not gonna sugar-coat it: You have a higher chance of losing than winning, at my place or anywhere else. And I've spotted a certain kind of high-risk attitude toward play. The most dangerous thing is for players not to know that they're on the short end of the odds. Then, every string of wins the casino must be "learning your behavior" which just proves in their heads that the losses must be a conspiracy. I can watch a player winning $120 on one blackjack table, and watch another guy lose $12 at the exact same time, and the guy who lost $12 will complain it was rigged, and the guy who won is wondering when it's gonna "get him". IT is not a smart thing. It's random.

But mostly, I've seen another pattern that's a lot more common, of players who play very carefully, slowly and conservatively, and win. And win. And win......... for days sometimes. And I'm sitting there watching it thinkin, "cash out, buddy... this is it". But sure enough, come one night about 4am they're back and they're drunk, and they start playing stupid, forgetting their system, betting wild, not even playing basic strategy. And they blow it all. In my experience, that's 95% of the losses I see, and it happens to almost everybody sometime. Happens to me too, when I'm staying in Vegas. There's always that one night you go downstairs and wipe yourself out betting on horses in Hong Kong or some other equally stupid thing. Then you try to make it up on a roulette table while you're checking out of the hotel. Good luck, right? This is the nature of the beast.

If you like to gamble, and I do, then you've gotta see it as a way of spending your money. Not a way of making it. When I come back from Vegas, all I'm thinking is, how'm I gonna work harder from now on?

 

[Repro]

OP needs to do what he knows is in his best interest, and not give into temptation. Gambling's ENTERTAINMENT -- it's a way to spend money and have a good time -- and when it pays out, you get yourself a nice prime rib and tickets to the Cirque du Soleil and a comp for a place a hot tub so you can bring your girlfriend next time, and spend your time playing with her all night, instead of playing all night with a blackjack dealer named Stanley from Lake Havasu.

 

[Nifty29]

WLB, if you're going to accuse jstrike of being a shill or having ulterior motives, you should at least do some research.

I think you'll find he's anything but, even just based on his replies in this thread.

I know one thing for sure.....I would listen to him well before taking notes from someone who thinks that casinos "watch" your play and adjust the cards to defeat your "style" . Talk about tin hat stuff.

 

[jod5413]

Mousey, this has to be one of the best posts I have ever read here at Casinomeister!! If we still had the post of the fortnight (or whatever it was called), you would win hands down. If there was a post of the year for gamblers, this post of yours would be it.

Damn fine post. Thank You.

I'm only going to pop in here and pop off just this once... because threads like this both break my heart and anger me to the point of sputtering at the same time.

It amazes me that people will search through newspapers for a deal on new hedge trimmer (save $10!) or toothpaste (2 for $4!!)... or will wait to buy that monitor they need because they will put them on sale later, but won't get online and research* and read with comprehension about gambling and odds and what's a good game and what's a bad game and how to lower the house edge (by only .005% maybe), before blowing their hard earned money at a casino.

They won't learn basic strategy for things like BJ and VP, won't study the mathmatics and game play of table poker, will blow hundreds/thousands of dollars on slots and roulette and scratchers and lotteries... and expect to make money.

We are in extremely dangerous waters here folks where fairy tales rule.

Wake up call! You want to make money in the gambling business? Open your own casino, but DON'T GAMBLE.



*research -- diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, applications, etc.: recent research in medicine.


Bryan has links for some good informational books in the meistermall. Click on either link (depending on your location), look to the left for Casinomeister Books. There's a lot of good books in there.

Old URL

Old URL

Don't have money to buy books? Find titles/authors you want to read and visit your local library. Here in the USA, most libraries, even if they don't have what you want, can borrow it from another library long enough for you to read it.

 

[zeledrith]

Gambling is entertainment, I have come to live with it. Be prepared to lose the money you gamble or don't even start.

There is only one way to "win", get lucky, hit a multi-million dollar progressive and quit gambling immediately.

Or like previously mentioned, bonus abuse, which is very difficult now and not worth the time to be honest.


How incredibly slow can you be to not realize that casinos will win every single time?

1) You know betting systems are advertised EVERYWHERE

2) You can see casinos are still running after decades of betting systems being readily available.

3) You see the casinos laughing to the bank


Not only that, you see people comparing roulette and blackjack to the lottery now.

I would like to see the day you bet exactly $20 a day at blackjack and suddenly win $100k.

Fact: I used to buy $20 a week on the lottery for 5 years without a single hit.

I'm sure someone else in the world has gotten luckier than me and won the money I lost

Apples and Oranges, very different.


If you are rather convinced that betting systems magically might work for you.

Transfer $1000 into my bank and I will find every betting system on the internet with their scam websites and collate all the data for you.

Plenty to choose from I'm sure!

At least I get a cut of the money and can donate it to some charity.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Unfortunately, the stupid excuses that come from online casinos perpetuate the myth that systems DO work.

Take Westland Bowl for example. Heroes casino would NOT pay him because they claimed he had cheated by "using a system" to beat the RNG. He eventually got paid by the software provider.

Many casinos are scared of bots, as they believe they can be programmed with a guaranteed winning strategy. A long running dispute between a player who won loads from a casino allegedly using a bot was featured here, with the casino going so far as to threaten to take the player to court for fraud because their bot beat the randomness of the software. A huge jackpot win on VP was not paid to this player because the casino said the 20K deposit came from an earlier withdrawal that they later discovered was generated from using a bot. Bot use was never proved, and the player said they used a betting strategy, but NOT via a bot.

Casinos will also ban players who win too much. Purple Lounge were banning players entirely because they had won too much, not merely banning them from bonuses.

Operators give the clear impression that they believe systems DO work, so are actively looking for them and employing counter measures.


This is NOT how a "perfect customer" would be treated.

The fact that operators act like this lends credibilty to those who promote "systems", who make THEIR money from SELLING their systems, rather than using them. Someone who REALLY had an unbeatable system would NEVER want to allow the information to spread widely. They would either keep it to themselves, at least until they had milked it for all it was worth and been banned from everywhere it worked, and then sell it to a select few at a VERY high price, some of which will be for "exclusivity" rather than the system itself.


Micrgaming have treated systems with the contempt they deserve, programming an "autoplay" bot into many of the games so that players can lose faster. Oddly enough though, even Microgaming seem to be losing confidence in systems not working, as they have REMOVED this autoplay bot from all the Video Poker games at every casino. (A rather ineffective move because "autohold" is still strategy driven, thus an "autoclicker" will replace the lost "autoplay").