Winning Gambling Strategies: How to Give Yourself a Fighting Chance at the Casino
248
Winning Gambling Strategies: How to Give Yourself a Fighting Chance at the Casino
248eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468539707 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 02/08/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 248 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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WINNING GAMBLING STRATEGIES
How to Give Yourself a Fighting Chance at the CasinoBy Philip Nehrt
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Philip NehrtAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-3972-1
Chapter One
Gambling Guidelines
Rules of thumb that will save you or sink you.
The main, the only, goal of the casino is to create the proper environment to remove as much of your money from your wallet or purse, and put it into their coffers. Everything in the casino is carefully designed to do this. Reread this—Everything in the casino is carefully designed to take money from you, and move it to their coffers. If you think the casino is nice for doing something, think again. They are doing it to take your money. Free drinks? Not free at all. To take your money. EVERYTHING, without exception, is designed to take your money. You have to choose to do all out battle against the casino—and why else are you reading this? To fight the casino, and their considerable ammunition against you, you need to try to adhere to the following rules of thumb:
• If you can't walk into the casino with $500 in checks (chips) in your hand or pocket for 30 minutes and then leave the casino without having played a single dollar, this is not an avocation for you. Find or create within yourself the discipline to not play if things are not just right for you. If you cannot walk away, RUN! You may have a problem quitting, and you cannot win if you have a problem quitting. • Discipline. I will repeat this. Discipline. That's it. Discipline in everything you do, from strategy, to when to start playing, to when to stop playing. If you do not follow ... whatever you decide you should do at a given game, you may lose. Whatever strategy you decide to follow, if you do not follow it, you may lose. If you do not leave the table after you have lost a pre-specified amount or won back down to a guaranteed amount (see money management), then you will always leave the casino a loser. • Always know your game. Know the process, the rules, the terminology, and especially the odds. • Play the bets that have the lowest casino odds against you. Craps has some great bets and some terrible bets. Stick with the good ones only. Baccarat has the tie bet, over 14% against you. Stick with the Player or the Banker, avoid the tie. • You need to have the attitude that you are in that casino to remove money from it. As long as the casino convinces you that they are your friend, that they are spending all of their money to entertain you, you will lose. Does everyone go into a casino to win money? No. Absolutely not. Listen to what people say. How many times have you heard (or said) any of the following? * "I'm just here to have fun." (just how fun is it to lose $500? Are they smiling as they do it?) * "This is money I can afford to lose." * "It's just like a dinner and show out on the town. I am paying for an evening's entertainment." Now, really. With attitudes like this, it is no wonder that casinos take people's money. Think back on casino ads you may have seen. They show the fun time, the entertainment, the meals. I remember a very specific ad, since I was waiting to see the game action, that had absolutely no games shown. Not even slots. And these were not ads for the huge Vegas casinos where you really can go for an evening and only see the tables 4 or 5 times. These ads were for a little riverboat casino that had a 2 screen movie theater, a "chachka" store, a bar and a buffet restaurant. Not even a hotel attached. Basically the ONLY thing there was gambling. But they wanted to give the impression that the reason you would be going there was strictly to have fun and be entertained.
Your attitude MUST be "I am here to do battle against the casino. My discipline and knowledge are my weapons, and my money is a valuable commodity that I will use to take their money." • Don't be in such a hurry to give the casino a shot at your money. Relax. Walk around as if you own the joint. Check out all of the tables first. Watch the players. Chart the tables that look interesting or promising. Walk some more. The more you can do this, the more relaxed and focused you will be when you select the proper table. If you are traveling in from out of town, go to your room, unpack, take a shower, hit the pool or the gym or the sauna, take a walk for a while. Relax, unwind. Do anything other than head straight for the tables. If this is a more local casino, a day trip, even with limited time there, relax. Grab a cup of coffee in the cafeteria, or at least wander and chart, do some people watching. Walk the floor, get comfortable with the attitude of the dealers, and collect your thoughts and confidence. • Remember—anything that the casino offers is good for it, bad for you. Anything that they do has been carefully researched to help give them the edge. * Checks (chips) instead of money—it is much easier for most people to lay down a couple of green checks, which have no intrinsic value, rather than a $50 bill. A $50 bill is a utility payment, a phone bill, a dinner out with the significant other. Two greenies are just plastic. Keep in mind that checks are money—your money. They are not playthings, worthless hunks of plastic. They are your meals, your bills, your hard-earned paycheck. * Restaurants, rest rooms, cashier booths, all next to the action. Notice that there are never enough cashier booths open, there is always a line. Those at the end of the line are (the casino hopes) likely to see and hear the action and decide not to continue waiting in line, but rather go back to where the action is. Impulsive play is good for the casino, bad for you. Don't play impulsively—play with discipline. * Sitting at the roulette table. If you sit, depending on the casino, you often need to play every roll, especially if the casino is busy. Now there's a way to ensure that you lose all of your money. Continuous play is good for the casino, bad for you. If you need to, stand back from the table, holding your chips in your hand, and pick and choose your bets. The only difficulty is if more than one person is doing that, and, say, in Roulette, the dealer is concerned about being able to tell the bets apart (if two are betting with $5 red chips, for instance). Often, you can tell the dealer you are playing only outside or only inside bets, and that will be sufficient to allay their concerns. However, try it first. Sit and only bet when you want to bet, and see what they say. * Table minimums jacked way up high. Notice, if you have a chance, when minimums are changed. When things start getting busy. Weekdays minimums will be at $3 or $5, sometimes lower depending on the state or the casino. Evenings and weekends they often move to $10 as the lowest you can find, with many tables at the $15 or $25 range. Why? More people. More people with more money. More people who get caught up in the excitement of the crowds, and are eager to play the games, and tell themselves that the higher minimums are okay, as long as they get to play. Higher minimums are better for the casino, worse for you. * No windows, no clocks—helps you lose track of time and spend more of your money. Wear a watch, keep track of the time. Take a break every so often to freshen up, shake yourself out of a casino zombie state you may find yourself in after too much gaming. * Free drinks—breaks discipline, helps you to not worry so much about your losses, and makes you not think as clearly about strategies, saving money, leaving when you should, etc. Don't drink, or, rather, save your drinking to when you can toast your winnings at the end of the day. * "Comps" (complimentaries)—food, show tickets, room, airfare ... even the "free drinks", all are comps, and you should not worry about getting any of them. For the average player, if you ask for comps, do so after your playing session. Get comps for your play, do not play to get comps. Do not, repeat, do not play to get comps. Simply play at whatever level you feel comfortable, and accept whatever comps you get as an added profit. If you have a comp in mind, and you raise the level of your play to try to impress the casino that you should get the comp, you will lose far more than what the comp is worth. The casino will always attempt to keep you playing after you ask for the comp, in hopes that you will lose some more to them. If you play at a high enough level anyway, and play for long periods anyway, ask for comps. Do not play to get comps. Take whatever comps you might get given the level of play at which you are comfortable. Don't push it, or you'll lose it. A different view on comps is for the well disciplined gambler only. The idea is that you will be aiming for comps as part of your winnings, but not changing your betting style one iota to get them. Right off the bat, tell the pit boss how you will be betting, and for how long, and ask what comps you can expect to get in return. If you don't like what you hear, walk. There are other casinos. Make sure that it is rated on all of your money on the table, not just your initial bets. Make sure that if you are betting $60 on 6 and 8, $20 Pass line and taking $100 odds, that the entire $240 is being considered for the comps (bets and odds), and not just the $140 bets. If you like what you hear, than bet exactly the way you normally do. When you are finished, wrap up your comps with the pit boss. You will probably not be able to demand many comps for $5 or $10 betting, but if you are there for the gambling, and plan to spend 4 hours a day gambling at the $25 level or above, you can usually expect nice comps in return, even full room, meals and beverages. If you would normally spend $150 a day on these, over a 4 day long weekend of gambling, you have just added $600 to your profit, and that is exactly how you need to think of it if you are specifically asking for comps for your normal level of play. Likewise, by using a method such as the Doey-Don't (check out the systems section), you can have much more money on the table (good for comps) with little at risk. * Lights and coin noise at slots—"Everyone's a winner!" is the impression they are giving, but in reality very few slots players come out ahead. Ignore the noise around you. Focus on you winning, not them winning. Remember. Given probabilities, someone is always winning somewhere; even at your table, there will be people winning and people losing. Do not worry about someone else winning. Good for them. Focus on you winning. Good for you. * Speed the game up when the players are losing, slow the table down when the players are winning. Fast games benefit the casino—the more bets that happen, the more the odds work in favor of the casino. If a pit boss, boxman or stickman is trying to speed a cold game along, slow it down. Give everyone a chance to catch their breath and re-think their bets (what the casino does not want). When the dice are yours, slow down the play. Set the dice slowly, play with them, rub the table with them. Accidentally bounce a die off the table and call "Same dice". * Whatever the casino is doing to fight for your money, fight them back!
• Always start with a sufficient bankroll. If you play to have $10 in play at any given time, a reasonable bankroll would be $200-$400. This will keep you from playing with "scared money", where you are constantly worried that you are coming to the bottom of your pocket, your loss limit. It will also allow for the fluctuation in play of a set of bad rolls knocking you out right off the bat. • Before you even walk into the casino, determine the game that you are going to play. Once you have determined that, determine the strategy you are going you use. If you do not do this, you will flounder in the variety of games and strategies, and not know how to proceed—and you will lose. Limit yourself to the games you know very well, and use the strategies you have studied and practiced. • While standing at a table, do not change strategies. If a given strategy is not working at the table you are working, leave! Re-think the strategies you want to use, and then move to another table. If you continue to change strategies, chasing a possible strategy, you will lose. You will not allow a trend to develop. At the very least, when a strategy ceases to work, stop betting, continue charting, and wait until you determine a solid trend again. • Don't start off your gambling day by gambling. Huh? Very simple. Regardless of the game that you are playing, you cannot just step up to a table or a slot machine, as soon as you walk in, and start playing. This is one of the hardest desires to circumvent. After several hours in a plane, or even an hour in the car thinking of all of the money you will be walking home with, you just want to step up and start winning. If you want to walk home with a profit, consider the casino a battlefield, not an adult game land. When you walk in, you must get a lay of the land. This is called "Charting" the tables. For slots, read that section specifically. For any other game, spend 10-15 minutes walking the casino, looking at all of the tables that you are planning on playing for one that is trending toward whatever system you are planning on using. Even if not specifically "charting", you are relaxing and getting into the right mindset to be disciplined and to win. Spend this time to relax, to get a feel for the dealers you like, and those you wouldn't want to play with. • Don't play when tired, hurried, bored or any other time that the casino wants you to play. This is an interesting one. If you fly to the casino, you have just spent hours getting there. You want to start betting immediately. So does the casino. When you have been at the tables for a few hours, you are tired and will make wrong decisions, but you have been drawn into the mood, and want to continue to play. So does the casino. If you are standing in line, waiting for a meal, a show, waiting to cash out, you get bored, and the action at a table will attract you and make you want to play some more. That is exactly what the casino is hoping. Don't do what the casino wants you to do. • Remember, your checks (casino chips) are your cash, they just don't look like it. One way the casino uses to remove you from your bankroll is to make it seem as if you are not playing with money, just with worthless colored chips. Don't be fooled. A quote I have elsewhere in the book reads "The guy who invented gambling was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius." Think about that. • Avoid drinking. If you must (or want to), keep within your limits. Any drinking, and your self-control, your logical thinking begins to be reduced. You will start betting outside of your selected system, start making stupid decisions and choices, and not leave the table when you should (winning or losing). (Continues...)
Excerpted from WINNING GAMBLING STRATEGIES by Philip Nehrt Copyright © 2012 by Philip Nehrt. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Overview....................1Gambling Guidelines....................8
Rules of Thumb (Short Version of above)....................21
A Day at the Casino....................23
The Most Important Behaviors to Follow....................29
Strategies vs. Systems....................48
The Game is Craps....................52
The Game is Roulette....................117
The Game is Baccarat....................138
The Game is Blackjack / 21....................145
The Game is Slots....................165
The Game is ... well ... just about anything!....................178
Appendix I: Layouts for Printing and Copying....................188
Appendix II: Cheat Sheets—The Boiled Down Strategy Descriptions....................193
Appendix III: Books and Systems on the Suggested List....................212
Appendix IV: Current Gambling Websites on the Internet....................223
Sevens at the Table....................231