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The Best Slots Strategy When it comes to playing slot machines there are many different strategies that you can use to win. Your number one rule before putting any money into a slot machine whether it is online or in a casino should be not to gamble more than you can afford. The best way to win money at a casino is to play smart. Don't play $10 slot spins if you're on a $50 budget because you'll run out of money before you barely started. Instead play small $1 spins to.
Casino games are all based on random chance. Even the players at a poker table don’t know which cards will be played next and many a poker strategy entails folding before you get too deep into betting if you have a weak hand. That’s a great lesson to keep in mind when you think about any type of gambling strategy because the element of the unknown sooner or later renders all strategies moot.
Nonetheless most experienced players fall into comfort zones where they feel like they have some control over the outcomes of their games of chance. This tendency to trust in the zone is just another form of the Gambler’s Fallacy. If you really want to gamble then why not try a few strategies that fall outside of your comfort zone? There are some pretty interesting things you can do without sacrificing the statistical position you want to maintain in facing down the house edge.
In fact, there are even acknowledged ways of reducing the house advantage but they are few and far between. Gambling would be very boring and monotonous if everyone played the same games the same ways. So in the spirit of “no risk, no reward” here are a few strategies that will keep the pundits arguing for weeks and the players scratching their heads over what you are doing. You don’t have to give up anything other than a habitual style of play.
If you like these strategies enough to add them to your comfort zone you’ll find you can change things up when other players fall into a rut. Even if that doesn’t give you an advantage over the house you’ll at least be less likely to get bored.
1. Never Play Blackjack Again
Blackjack has earned a lot of respect among gamblers because, unlike most other casino games, you can bring some skill to the table. The pundits are most likely to tell you that the house edge in blackjack is pretty good, too. But there is one problem with standard blackjack: it’s not the most generous version of this game that you can play.
Although most people have learned to avoid single deck blackjack games that pay only 6:5 odds the majority of players are most comfortable in playing standard blackjack with 6 to 8 decks in the shoe because they like those 3:2 odds. But there is another way to enjoy this game with a slight advantage over the usual blackjack player.
If your casino offers Spanish 21 you should try it out. Although there are several rule differences between regular blackjack and Spanish 21 the most distinctive difference is that the Spanish 21 game is played without any 10 point cards. In other words, a Spanish 21 deck has 48 cards (all the face cards are left in) instead of 52 cards. By removing those 10 point cards the game reduces the chances of either player or dealer drawing a natural 21.
The downside to playing Spanish 21 is that the theoretical house edge is about 3% versus the 1% in standard blackjack. But cheer up! There are some unusual rewards in Spanish 21. Foremost among those player advantages is the fact that players always win 21 to 21. Even when the dealer has a blackjack you win if you also have a blackjack. Better yet, the house pays 3:2 on player blackjack instead of a push.
You can also split Aces a second time in Spanish 21. Okay, you may not be very likely to be dealt three or four Aces but in the rare event when this happens you can split again.
Why play Spanish 21 if the house edge is worse than in standard blackjack? There is really too much discussion of “the house edge” among gambling pundits. Technically the edge is only realized across a large number of bets, which means the house sometimes does better than you expect and sometimes worse. That volatility is a good thing because it means that sometimes players can win a lot of money.
Instead of comparing house edge statistics look at the flexibility and greater rewards you get when you play Spanish 21. It will break you out of your comfort zone but you’ll be happily surprised when you are paid better odds for some combinations that don’t pay well in regular blackjack.
You just may never want to play blackjack again.
2. Only Play in Tournaments
This strategy is fairly well known. Almost every basic strategy pundit tells you to only play in tournaments at some point in time. That is because if you just pay a flat fee up front but win the tournament the value of the prize could be substantially more than your buy in fee. Even slot game tournaments can be rewarding for the first, second, and third place players.
What makes tournament play really interesting is that you can plan ahead for the buy in. This almost reduces your gambling to a predictable wager. Of course, you may want to gamble more than the tournaments allow so limiting yourself to only playing tournaments may not be practical.
Joining tournaments allows you to gamble on two levels, and that additional risk may make the tournament experience more satisfying for you.
3. Play One on One with the Dealer Whenever Possible
Casinos don’t like it when you are the only player at the blackjack table. Part of the casino’s advantage is derived from the dealer playing against several customers at the same time. Whether you count cards or not, you will see less volatility in the distribution of the cards if you are the only player facing the dealer.
The pit boss may close other tables or send over some house players to fill up your table if you get a lucky break and can play the dealer by yourself. Don’t get upset when this happens.
Why does it matter how many players are at the table? Because your chances of getting those high value cards decline as more people draw from the shoe. When it’s just you and the dealer you have an even chance of drawing the cards you need. As more people join the table your chances drop radically.
The dealer doesn’t need to draw high value cards as often as the individual players do. That is because the dealer wins every time a player busts. Hence, if you play a conservative game in a one on one situation with a dealer you have a pretty good setup. But the house advantage will never fully vanish. Sometimes all you are going to get for a third card is a bust card and there is nothing you can do about that.
4. Play Two of Three Outside Bets at Once in Roulette
Gaming pundits like to pick on roulette and there are surely many good reasons to dissuade you from playing a game that is cleverly designed to emphasize high risk bets. Most of the betting options on the table are the single numbers and players tend to think in terms of betting only on single numbers when playing the inside.
Savvy players may play the lines in roulette but even when you bet on six numbers the house has a huge advantage over you, and the odds are terrible, too.
Your best chances of winning in conventional roulette strategy guides are to play the “safe” outside bets: black or red, odd or even. Pundits reluctantly agree you can also place bets in the 1/3 categories: 1st twelve, 2nd twelve, and 3rd twelve numbers. These 1/3 groups each pay 2 to 1 odds.
You can improve your chances of winning by playing 2 groups. You reduce the odds to even payoff when you do this but you get a better coverage with this kind of bet (24 numbers) versus the standard safe bets (18 numbers), which also pay even money.
So which way would you like to bet: win even money for betting on 18 numbers or win even money for betting on 24 numbers? Do the math. You may never bet black or even again.
5. Only Play Max Lines in Slot Games
The so-called “penny” slot games have been evolving since they first appeared. The game manufacturers have added more and more pay lines to these games and now they even add more screens to handle more pay lines. Early versions of these games allowed you to choose how many pay lines are active during spins. While this may have seemed like a generous gesture to the players who felt uncomfortable placing bets on 15, 20, or 25 pay lines the reality was that the theoretical return to player was brutally reduced to very low levels.
If you only play 1 out of 25 active pay lines you will almost never win. It’s not the same as playing a single pay line slot game. Players who try to conserve their money by playing fewer pay lines are in fact throwing it away. That is because the games are designed to pay the best percentage when all the pay lines are active.
The multi pay line games often provide better theoretical return to player percentages than the older single pay lines, too. If the pay table shows you an RTP better than 96% your game is approaching Spanish 21, roulette, and blackjack territory.
Slot games may not be your gambling game of choice but most people play them eventually. If you choose more recent slot games that have fixed pay lines (you cannot deactivate them) you can enjoy some quiet time spinning the reels without taking much more risk than if you were playing cards.
6. Play Keno Instead of Other Games
If you know anything about which casino games are recommended then you know keno is at the very bottom of the list along with all other lottery style games. So how can playing keno be a good strategy to recommend in place of other games? Well, as a regular gambling activity it’s still not recommended but most people when calculating just how bad keno is usually go after the large pick options and don’t look at the probabilities on the lower pick options. But there is another component to this “insane” strategy.
First, let’s take a look at the worst and best case scenarios. In a typical keno game you can usually select 2 numbers to 10 numbers. The rule of thumb is that the more numbers you pick the worse your chances of winning become, although the payoff odds improve. Who would not want to pick 10 numbers that are drawn in keno? Of course, that is the appeal behind keno and most players seem to go for the big win rather than the more achievable wins.
If you are going to play keno you had better do some number crunching and look at which pick options offer the best chances for winning. Now the probabilities can vary from casino to casino because there are a few variations on the game. For example, in one version of the game you may be able win something for getting two of the three numbers in a Pick 3 whereas in another version of the game you may not be able to get something for two out of three. The casino publishes a win table that explains the odds for you.
The best versions of the game pay at least a little bit for getting some of your numbers. The fewer numbers you are required to choose in order to get at least 2 winning combinations the better. Say, for example, you can play a Pick 5 and win for 5 numbers, 4 numbers, and 3 numbers. That’s a pretty good payback spread. It’s not great, most modern slot machine games offer better theoretical returns to player, but you’re in the realm of 70% to 75% RTP with this kind of option. If you can play a Pick 4 you might feel that’s a little less risky. In fact, in some versions of the game Pick 4 offers the second best theoretical return to player if it allows for three catches that pay prizes (4 numbers, 3 numbers, and 2 numbers).
So having selected your preferred Pick, why on Earth would you choose to play keno if the best theoretical return you can hope for is about 70% to 75%? That’s quite simple, really. You are going to stop gambling for a while. Take a break. Go eat something, or take in a show. One great thing about keno is that it is a slow round game. You only see a few drawings per hour at most and this is a way to gamble while you are not gambling. Keno is completely passive, even more so than playing a slot machine.
Among the numerous money management schemes that gaming pundits recommend to players is to slow down your rate of play. That’s impossible to do at a card table because the dealer has to keep the action going for the other players (and the pit boss is watching). And it’s not possible at the other table games for the same reason. It’s theoretically possible for you to slow down your slot play but that Spin button is sitting there right in front of you and frankly you will sit too long if you just play the slots all night.
So get up, walk around, lay down $10 on a few keno cards with Pick 4 or Pick 5 numbers, and then go relax. Get something to eat. Take care of business. You’re still gambling but not risking much and you have almost as good a chance of breaking even or winning a small amount of cash as if you played a few rounds of the slots. This is all for fun anyway, right?
7. Don’t Pass in Craps and Lay Odds
Craps is the most complicated game in the universe and it’s also considered one of the most player unfriendly table games if you try to use all the fancy bets. Just about every introduction to craps tells you that the best bets are the Pass and Don’t Pass line and that you should always Take The Odds if you bet Pass or Lay The Odds if you Don’t Pass.
These plays are simple, you almost don’t have to think about them, and everyone recommends them. But most players choose to bet Pass because they want to support the guy throwing the dice. Opinions vary on all this but in comparing the two options the biggest drawback to betting Don’t Pass is that you may lose on the Come Out roll.
Now you might be looking at how players win with Pass and Don’t Pass on the Come Out roll and thinking, “You win with 2 numbers either way. Why is Pass the better bet?” It’s because to win on the Come Out roll with a Pass bet you need a 7 or 11. There are eight ways the dice can fall to get one of those two numbers. To win with a Don’t Pass bet you need a 2 or 3 and there are only three ways to get one of those two numbers, so the shooter has a better chance of rolling 7 or 11 (and that is why in movies people are usually yelling, “Come on seven!”).
However, after you get past the Come Out roll Don’t Pass starts to look pretty sweet compared to the Pass bet. That is because after the shooter establishes his Point the Don’t Pass bettor wins about 2/3 of the time whereas the Pass bettor wins about 1/3 of the time. So you can make up the lost opportunity on the Come Out roll with Don’t Pass on the Point.
The Pass bettor Takes the Odds by placing additional chips on his first bet. The Don’t Pass bettor Lays the Odds by placing chips next to his first bet. This is not the same as playing the odds where you place another bet on the colorful dice representations in the Odds box. This is one of the reasons why craps confuses some players.
Taking Odds on a Pass bet pays better than Laying Odds on a Don’t Pass bet, but you’re more likely to win on the Don’t Pass bet. In fact, that advantage is exactly why the casino pays less money for Don’t Pass bets.
8. Use a 17 Second Delay between Spins
Slowing down slot game play is not easy but there is a mathematically valid reason to do it other than that you lose money at a slower rate. This is not a betting system that promises you will win more often. This is a system that increases the volatility of your play. It is based on the way random number generation algorithms work.
There are two things you should understand about random number generators, those complicated little chips that all modern slot machine games depend on to determine where the reels stop spinning. First is that we don’t yet have the science to produce a truly random number via a mathematical algorithm. Second, the numbers generated by these chips are drawn from huge pools of possible results which makes them more than random enough to be unpredictable in casino game play. That is why the chips are allowed and regulated in most if not all gaming jurisdictions around the world.
This insane strategy is designed for slot players who believe the random number generators fall into patterns. The likelihood of that happening is relatively small but because the random numbers are not truly random it is possible. What happens is that the generated numbers fall into what is termed a “local pattern”. This means that for a short run they do follow some sort of pattern. This is okay because you never see the random numbers or how they are used. That black box effect ensures that the slot game is honest. But let’s take a closer look at how this black box effect is achieved.
The random number generator is constantly producing new numbers. Each new number is placed in a part of the chip’s memory called a “register”. The number waits there for a fraction of a second and is then replaced by another number. Meanwhile the machine is running its game software. When you spin the reels one the game begins fetching random numbers from the RNG’s registers. In the United States a random number is required for each reel and those numbers are used to determine where the reels stop spinning. In other jurisdictions a single random number is used to determine the outcome of the game.
The idea behind the 17 second delay is that after the reels stop spinning and you are awarded your prize you count off 17 seconds. A watch is really good for this but a smart phone can do it, too. In a pinch if you just count slowly by saying (or thinking) “one thousand one, one thousand two, etc.” that will be good enough.
Waiting 17 seconds after each spin increases the chances that you move out of any local pattern in fewer spins. The local pattern might be randomly awarding you a lot of prizes or it might be handing you a lot of losing spins. You have no way of knowing if this rare phenomenon is occurring but if you feel like you’re stuck in a random number rut you can change up the game by pausing and taking your time in between spins. And as it so happens this insane strategy falls in line with most money management strategies, which suggest that you slow down your rate of play to conserve money.
But why pause for 17 seconds? Why not choose, say, 5 seconds? That’s a good question and the answer may seem a little lame to you. 17 is a prime number and in any algorithm that attempts to randomize activity it’s much easier if you base your computations on a prime. The larger the prime number the better. You could choose a prime like 53 seconds but most people will give up before that many seconds ticks away. In 17 seconds your slot game’s RNG could cycle through hundreds or thousands of new numbers.
Also, when you force yourself to stop and count to 17 in between spins of the reels you shake off some of the mental cobwebs that form from clicking on Spin repeatedly. This strategy helps you stay aware of the passing of time while you’re in a casino, and that is always to your advantage. In the long run you won’t see any better or worse chances of winning with the 17 second strategy but you’ll have more control over your actions and your money.
Conclusion
There are crazy gambling strategies, dumb gambling strategies, and crazy dumb or just plain stupid strategies. We want to shake things up a little bit without increasing our risk (or losses) by using alternative strategies. The usual gambling advice you find in books and blogs starts to look homogenous and boring after a while. If you are gambling for entertainment you will be more open to changing things up and trying a new approach. That helps to keep your gaming experience fresh and interesting.
And the up side of playing an insane strategy is that if you are not satisfied with the results you can switch back to gaming the way you are more comfortable playing. But do give these strategies a try. You just may fall in love with them simply because they are different from the usual tips and tidbits.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.A strategy is an approach to an activity that might help you achieve your goals. It’s good to know the difference between strategy and tactics when it comes to casino gambling. I’ve tried to keep that difference in mind while putting together this list of the 10 best casino gambling strategy tips ever.
If you’re new to casino gambling, don’t just show up at the casino and start putting down money. You’ll lose cash faster than you ever thought possible. You’ll also not understand what’s going on, which means you won’t even get to have a fair amount of fun in exchange for your money.
Your best bet as a new casino gambler is to study some information about how casino gambling works before you ever set foot in the casino.
This post is a good starting point.
1 – Understand Your Goals
You can’t have a strategy for anything until you understand what your goals are. For most casino gamblers (95+), the goal is to just have some light-hearted fun and maybe win a little money in the short term. You might like the excitement of competing for a huge jackpot, or you might enjoy the challenge of getting the best odds possible playing blackjack.
Understanding your goals starts with understanding your own personality. Are you a social gambler? Do you want to chat with other people while you’re gambling? Or are you an introvert who prefers to not be bothered during your gambling activities?
Will you be satisfied with a small win here and there? Or are you willing to risk lots of losing sessions if there’s a lot of upside?
Are you an adrenaline junkie? Do you prefer laid back, relaxing activities? Do you care whether your decisions matter to your odds?
Your choice of casino game will depend largely on these factors:
- Blackjack is a great game for people who want their decisions to matter. But you’re unlikely to win a huge jackpot while playing blackjack.
- Craps is a great game for sociable gamblers who get off on adrenaline. For my money, it’s the best game in the casino, even though it doesn’t have a skill element.
- Roulette is a great game for people who are looking for something more slow-paced and relaxed. It also requires no skill, and you only need to be sociable if you want to be.
- Slot machines are good for introverts who want to go after a big jackpot. The house edge for such games is high, though. And you’ll lose more money per hour on slot machines than any other casino game.
- Video poker has many of the advantages of slot machines, but these games include a skill element to go along with their much lower house edge.
2 – Learn How the House Edge Works
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve mentioned the expression “house edge” a couple of times now. If you want to make educated decisions as a casino gambler, you need to understand how the house edge works.
The house edge is a mathematical prediction of how much you’ll lose on average per bet. It’s expressed as a percentage. If a game has a 1% house edge, the odds are that you’ll eventually lose about $1 for every $100 bet you place on that game. If it has a 5% house edge, then you’re looking at an average $5 loss per $100 in action.
All casino games have a house edge. None of the bets offer you true even odds with the casino (with the exception of the odds bet in craps). This edge happens because of the discrepancy between your payoffs and the odds of winning.
Craps is a good example. A hard way bet on 8, for example, has 10 to 1 odds of winning. On average, you’ll lose 10 times for every time you win.
But the bet only pays off at 9 to 1 odds.
The difference is where the house edge comes from. And it’s usually easy to translate this into a percentage.
If you bet $100 on 11 rolls of the dice, you’d win that bet once for $900. You’d lose the other 10 times, for $1000 in losses. That’s a net loss of $1000 – $900, or $100.
You divided $100 by 11 to find out how much you lose on average per roll. That’s $9.09.
Since we assumed $100 for our bet sizes, this means the house edge is 9.09%.
That’s relatively high, by the way. Most bets on table games have a significantly lower house edge than that. Even roulette has a house edge of only 5.26%.
3 – Manage Your Casino Gambling Bankroll
Bankroll management is easier than it sounds. Some people act like it’s the end-all, be-all of casino gambling strategy. In a sense, that’s true, too. If you gamble with money you can’t afford to lose, you’re doomed.
So there’s your first rule of casino bankroll management—set aside money for gambling that you don’t need for any other purpose. Don’t use it for any other purpose, either. This is money set aside for your gambling hobby. It’s not there to pay for buffets or tickets to a show.
You should have separate budgets for those other entertainment interests, anyway.
Why is this important?
You want to take a disciplined approach to your gambling. This means having rules that you don’t break.
You should also make sure you have enough money to get a reasonable amount of action at the games you want to play. Here are some guidelines for how many bets you need of a certain size for a trip to the casino where you’re going to do a lot of gambling:
- Blackjack –700–800 units
- Craps – 100—200 units
- Roulette—10—20 units
Of course, you can change these guidelines based on what games you prefer to play. I think the high house edge at roulette means it should be an occasional indulgence, hence the small suggested bankroll. Craps, on the other hand, is always worth a shot because of the chance of getting on a hot streak.
And of course, smart gamblers should spend most of their time playing at the blackjack tables because the odds for the player are so much better with that game than any other.
4 – Quit While You’re Ahead
You’ll find plenty of money management advice about stop loss limits and win goals. You should always remember that these kinds of arbitrary stopping points in your gambling do nothing to improve your probability of winning.
In fact, with a game where the house has an edge over you, the appropriate sized bankroll is infinite.
But if you want to walk away a winner one in a while, you should set a win goal that signals you when it’s time to quit. Depending on the size of your bankroll, this win goal might be small.
I played video poker one night and wound up winning about $40 in 15 minutes. My win goal was to double that $40 at the roulette table, and I thought since it was “house money,” I’d just bet it on black. I won and walked away from the table. I was with my dad, and he seemed impressed.
He shouldn’t have been, though, for 2 reasons:
- That wasn’t the house’s money anymore. Once you win it, it’s your money. Gambling away all your winnings because you think the money doesn’t really belong to you is just foolish.
- I wagered that money on some of the worst odds in the casino. I’d have been far better off putting it on a hand of blackjack or even a roll of the dice at the craps table.
5 – Leave Your Superstitions Behind
“I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”
-Michael Scott, The Office
If people’s hunches had any bearing on how games of chance played out, the casinos would go out of business—especially with the large number of so-called psychics in business today. Understand that casino gambling is a game of math and random chance. Don’t be superstitious. Your lucky ballcap has no effect on the outcomes at the roulette wheel.
The probability of winning an even-money bet on a standard American roulette wheel is always the same. There are 38 possible outcomes, and 18 of them are winning outcomes. The probability that you’ll win that bet is 18/38, which is the same thing as 9/19, which is also the same thing as 47.37%.
That number doesn’t change based on what happened on the previous spin, your gut feeling, or whether you use your left or right hand to place the bet on the table.
Any superstition you have about luck or winning at gambling should be discarded in favor of reality immediately.
If you want to win at casino gambling, find a way to get a mathematical edge over the house.
6 – Avoid the Slot Machines
The worst games in any casino are the slot machines. They have a higher house edge than any other game. They also encourage you (in dramatic fashion) to place more bets per hour than any other game. Look at the expected hourly loss for an average slot machine player:
The house edge is probably 8%–although we don’t really know what the house edge. (This is the only game in the casino where you cannot calculate the house edge.)
The number of bets per hour for the average player is 600 spins per hour.
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Assume you’re betting $3/spin, and you’re putting $1800 per hour into action. If you expect to lose 8% of that, your expected hourly loss is $144.
Now let’s look at roulette, which has a house edge of 5.26%. The average number of bets you’ll place per hour at a roulette table is 100 or so, and that’s at a table that’s not busy. At a busy roulette table, you might be lucky to place 60 bets per hour.
If you’re betting $5 per spin, that’s $500 in action per hour. With a house edge of 5.26%, your expected hourly loss is only $26.30.
That’s a huge difference, and you might find that you enjoy roulette more than slot machines anyway.
Of course, the truly savvy gamblers will play blackjack and use perfect basic strategy while they do so. This reduces their house edge to just 1%. At a slow blackjack table, where you’re the only player, you’ll probably see 200 hands per hour. At $5 per hand, that’s $1000/hour in action. With a 1% house edge, you’re expected to lose $10/hour.
Finally, keep this in mind:
The house edge on slot machines might be higher than 8%. That’s just an example. Some games have a house edge of 12%, 16%, or 20%+.
Your expected hourly loss on those machines, respectively, is $216, $288, and $360.
7 – Develop Your Powers of Discernment
Some casino games offer better odds than others. Some casino games offer multiple bets, and usually, some of those bets are better than others. It’s your job as an intelligent gambler to be able to discern between good games and bad games, and to discern between good bets and bad bets.
American roulette has a house edge of 5.26%, but you can play European style roulette with a house edge of 2.70%–often at the same casino. You just need to be able to discern the difference between the 2 games.
Craps offers bets with a house edge as low as 1.41%, but it also offers bets with a house edge as high as 16.67%. You should know which bets offer reasonable or better odds and which bets offer outrageous odds.
Blackjack comes with multiple rules variations, but the biggest is the payout for a “natural.” The standard payout for a 2-card hand totaling 21 is 3 to 2. But some casinos offer a 6 to 5 payout on this hand.
And with their usual chutzpah, the casinos try to make this sound like a good deal. But if you place a $100 bet, the payout at a 3 to 2 game is $150, compared to a payout of $120 on the same bet at a 6 to 5 table.
This requires a little bit of study before visiting the casino, but frankly, it doesn’t require much.
8 – Ask for and Get the Comps You Deserve
Some people eschew the players club card. That’s a mistake. The players club card is the tool the casino uses to award you rebates and comps.
Of course, the most basic comps at most casinos is the free drink. You don’t need a players club for that.
But for all the other perks that gamblers get in exchange for their action, you need to be a member of the club. You also need to use your membership card when you’re playing.
These perks can include cash rebates, travel benefits, free hotel stays, free meals, and free show tickets.
Why do people turn down the players club card?
A lot of players are superstitious slot machine players who think that the game’s odds change when you insert the players club card.
That’s a fallacy for multiple reasons:
- The casino has no incentive to change the odds on their slots games. They WANT you to play more. Giving you comps is how they accomplish this goal.
- The casino knows that the best correlation to their profits is the time spent on their machines. If they can get you to spend more time on the machines trying to move up a notch on the players club hierarchy, they’re going to do it.
- The random number generator and the payouts are what determine the payback percentage and house edge for a slot machine. The players club card doesn’t do anything for you besides track how many bets you make and at what amounts. The 2 mechanisms are entirely separate.
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Most people can’t get an edge over the casino by taking advantage of the comps available. But some people (so-called “comp wizards”) do. Read Comp City by Max Rubin for an example of that kind of mindset.
9 – Learn Basic Strategy in Blackjack (And Maybe Learn to Count Cards, Too)
If you can play blackjack with perfect basic strategy, the house edge is between 0.5% and 1% at most casinos. If you just play your hunches or try to use your “card sense” to make decisions, the house edge is probably closer to 4% or 5%.
What’s basic strategy?
It’s the mathematically optimal play in every possible situation at the blackjack table. It factors in your total and the dealer’s face-up card to choose the decision that will have the highest expected value for the player. You can get a basic strategy chart in any casino gift shop.
NEVER deviate from basic strategy unless you’re counting cards and the results of that count indicate a change in strategy.
Which brings me to point #2 in this tip:
You can and should learn how to count cards in blackjack.
It’s easier than you think.
Counting cards has less to do with memorizing the deck than it does paying attention to the cards and adding 1 or subtracting 1 from a number in your head. As the big cards (the 10s and aces) get dealt, the probability of being dealt a blackjack goes down. As the small cards (the 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s) get dealt, the probability of being dealt a blackjack goes up.
Since a blackjack pays off at 3 to 2, you want to raise the size of your bets when your probability of getting that hand improves. You want to lower the size of your bets at other times.
To keep up with this ratio, all you do is add 1 to the count every time you see a small card and subtract 1 from the count every time you see a big card. A lot of hands will cancel each other out by having a small card and a large card in the same hand.
Then just raise your bet corresponding to how high the count is.
There’s a little more to it than this, but not much.
Becoming an expert blackjack player can lead to a lot of entertainment at the casino at a very low price. You might even be able to get an edge over the casino and become a long-term winner.
10 – Learn to Play Video Poker
Video poker is a FAR better game than slot machines, even though the games resemble each other a lot. You’ll need your discernment skills again, though, because not every video poker game offers the same odds.
If you learn how to spot the “full-pay” video poker games, you can get the house edge to less than 0.5% at video poker. Of course, you also must be able to choose the optimal holding and discarding decisions on each hand.
Best of all, you can use your slot machine club card to get rebates on the money you’re wagering.
Conclusion
Don’t go into the casino without a plan—especially if you’re a beginner to casino gambling. Instead, go in with a strategy.
This means having a bankroll along with a plan for managing that bankroll. It also means learning to choose the right games for your personality. Being able to choose the right bets at the right games to minimize your losses compared to the time you play is also a crucial skill.
Best Casino Techniques For Beginners
Your best bet in the casino is to learn how to play blackjack and/or video poker at an expert level. You can get the house edge well below 1% at either of those games. If you want to learn card counting, you can even get an edge over the casino.
And that’s a worthwhile goal for any casino gambling strategist.