Gambling is the risk of losing something valuable due to an unpredictability of the outcome. When you gamble at a casino, whether online or in person, you and the casino both risk losing something of value. The risk is higher for you because the casino only offers games that give the casino a statistical advantage.
However, much statutory and case law has been devoted to ensuring that casinos and players do not defraud each other by subtly changing the conditions of gambling games without each other’s knowledge or permission. You can, however, alter the rules of the game. The casino usually has a way for you to do this.
Should You Accept the Offer?
Before you can start improving your chances of winning at gambling, you must first understand two concepts. To begin, you can alter the outcome of a gambling game.
Second, attempting to do the math will almost always lead to confusion. Every year, the casinos profit from the two most common gambling errors, which total tens of billions of dollars.
How to Influence the Outcome of a Gambling Game?
Many casino gambling games allow and even encourage players to adjust the stakes, odds, and even percentage chances of winning. Here are a few ways to influence the outcome of a gambling game (almost always for the worst).
Assume you’re playing a slot machine and you win a prize on a single spin. A special “Gamble” button appears. You are now prompted to play a secondary game, perhaps betting on the outcome of a virtual coin toss, with the prize you just won serving as the stake in your new wager. This is a fantastic feature. It also means that you keep what you win bonuses of your winnings on the line by playing a game with a higher “edge” for the casino.
Most slot games have a theoretical return to player of more than 75%. Games released after 2010 typically have a theoretical return greater than 90%.
The RTP is an estimate of how much money a hypothetical player would keep if they spun the reels continuously for several years. It is not a reasonable estimate of how much money you will win, lose, or keep. It is a statistical metric used to determine how friendly the game is to the gambler.
The theoretical return to player in a coin toss is 50%, or one in two. Assume you just wagered $5 on a spin of the basic slot machine and won $10. You have more than doubled your money. The “Gamble” light now illuminates, and you are invited to place your $10 bet on the outcome of a coin toss.
Assume the “Gamble” feature allows you to bet on the outcome of two coin tosses that are happening at the same time. You now have the option of betting on one coin toss for a chance to double your money or betting on two coin tosses at the same time for a chance to quadruple your money.
You have a 25% chance of winning the double concurrent coin toss, or 1 in 4. You’d have a better chance of keeping your $10 prize if you just played the basic game again. You increase the casino’s chances of winning your next bet by accepting the “Gamble” challenge.
It’s the equivalent of paying $5 for a quarter of a pie at one restaurant and then another $10 for an eighth of a pie at another. Is it true that you get a better slice of pie at the second restaurant?
If the dealer offers you insurance in the game of blackjack, most experts advise you not to take it. Why? Because you’re betting that you’ll lose your initial bet. The odds of being correct (that the dealer has a blackjack) on your insurance bet are lower than the odds of beating the dealer’s hand (your original wager).
The bottom line is that casinos will occasionally offer you ways to change your stakes and chances of winning to their advantage. Don’t take the deal behind door number 2 if you want to win at gambling. Maintain your original game and consistency. Allow someone else to get the goat.
Consider gambling to be an endurance race between bettors. Unless random chance intervenes and hands the individual gambler a large win, whoever can go the most rounds wins the most money.
Then it’s more about who has the most self-control. The casino is simply playing a numbers game and must be present with enough cash to keep the games going. To walk away with the money, the player must be wise and self-disciplined.
Harvard Medical School published a trove of data on online gamblers gathered by an online casino between 2005 and 2007. Researchers who examined the data came to the conclusion that approximately 11% of gamblers were likely to win, and that winners were more likely to play less frequently.
Following that, researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut compared that analysis to their own analysis of data from the database of an online casino. The second study discovered that approximately 13.5 percent of land-based gamblers won.
The good news for most gamblers is that less than 5% of them contribute approximately 50% of the casino’s net revenue, and approximately 10% contribute approximately 80% of the casino’s revenue, so most gamblers are not big losers.
That means that approximately 80% of gamblers share the burden of approximately 20% of the casino’s net revenue. Given that most people cannot lose enough money (due to a lack of wealth) to fall into the lower 10% (the Big Losers), changing one’s gambling style increases an individual’s chances of moving into the upper 10%.
Even if a gambler has little money to lose, he or she should learn to make better decisions. You cannot guarantee victory, but you can always limit your losses or take fewer risks.
Gambling is more enjoyable when it is purely for entertainment purposes. Have fun if your losses are less than what you would spend on other forms of entertainment such as concerts and travel.
