Yes, there are some gambling secrets that can help you beat the casino. In the nine years I worked at Leelanau Sands Casino near Suttons Bay, Michigan, I saw so many optimistic plans and ideas. Some of them even worked. Here are some examples.
Card Counting Secrets
Card counting is a technique for beating the house on the blackjack table. If the deck is “rich” enough in face cards (10, j, q, k), then there is a slight tilt in the player’s favor. It has been proven statistically. The idea then is to monitor the cards as they run out, and place more bets when there are many face cards left in the deck. If you bet low on the edge in the house, and when you do, you can make money in the long run.
It’s a simple explanation, and you need to study a good calculation book (and practice) to make this work. Your play needs to be precise to really get the edge. A gentleman I dealt with over the years sat at the table for hours, almost always making a minimum bet of $2. I watched as he moved the chips from one hand to the other, his way of tracking the “plus or minus count”. Then, when the shoe (five-deck of cards) got rich enough in face cards, he would suddenly be betting on two hands at $20 each.
I’m pretty sure he made money, but not much. Depending on how well you do this, and how many decks are used, you can only get a 1.5% edge over the casino overall. If you average $8 per hand between your minimum bet and other bets, and the dealer deals 75 hands per hour, you will earn about $9 per hour. This assumes that you can tolerate days and hours of concentration, alternating losing and winning. Betting higher certainly increases that hourly rate, along with the risk of big losing days.
Roulette Secrets
For years I watched people foolishly write down the numbers on the roulette wheel. I say stupidly because his theories were mostly nonsense. Most casinos will always welcome these players and hand them pen and paper as well.
There was one player, however, who was really scientific about it. After “charting” for 5,000 spins, he found a bias in the wheel. This means that he easily wrote down every number that came during that time.
Once they identified the bias, they placed thousands of bets on just one or two numbers. When a number comes up (the ball lands in that pocket), it pays 35 to 1. In this case, one of the numbers, due to manufacturing flaws or whatever, was the average coming out 1 in 27 spins instead of 1. 38 spins (there are 38 numbers on most American wheels).
This man bet a spin $10, and he made a profit of $90 for every 27 spins of the wheel in the long run (a $350 win minus 26 $10 each loss). When I rode the wheel, I was often doing over 50 spins per hour, so if you can do the math you can see he was doing well. The ups and downs are dramatic though, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. I saw this player lose $700 a few nights, but he later admitted that he had made a profit of over $80,000 before the casino turned the wheel.
Promotional Gambling Secrets
Learn to understand obstacles. Casinos often give an edge for various promotional reasons. If you know the circumstances are in your favor, you can take advantage of these promotions. For example, a person placed thousands of bets on the “money wheel”, which is usually the worst bet in the house. However, in this case, the casino was selling $20 in tokens for $10, with no buying limit. The person played the tokens one at a time as needed, then repeatedly redeemed the actual chips with which he was paid, and bought another $20 for $10. When the odds are in your favor, it’s investing, not gambling, and this may be the most important of these gambling mysteries.