6 ms·

Take 20x the min bet (e.g., $200 to a $10 table) to a craps table, bet the pass line, get free drinks, and cheer like crazy for the shooter. This is a relative

by csa 9y ago

Take 20x the min bet (e.g., $200 to a $10 table) to a craps table, bet the pass line, get free drinks, and cheer like crazy for the shooter. This is a relatively low variance and no skill way to have fun at a casino. The craps table are usually where the fun people are. A few general comments: - Your expected value on a $10 bet is -$0.15. You get maybe 25-30 bets an hour at a full table. It's a very cheap game to play. - Tables are active at different times in different casinos. Evenings are often the best time. Weekends can be good, but sometimes more crowded and/or higher minimums. - Stakes can matter in some casinos. The difference of clientele at a $5 min table and a $10 min table can be noticeable. Casinos with a wider range of min bets will also have wider range of atmospheres. Pick your poison. - Remember that you are responsible for your bet and collecting your winnings (i.e., pulling it in). Dealers sometimes make mistakes, and sometimes people grab the wrong bet (intentionally or unintentionally). This is usually not an issue, just stay on top of it at a busy table. - Bring some $1 or $5 chips to tip the dealers and the cocktail waitresses. Good tipping usually gets you better service.

balabaster 9y ago
I know there are loads of people that do find enjoyment in Casinos. So I know my perspective isn't the only one by a long shot. A friend of mine used to be a professional gambler. He stuck to the poker tables... I guess he must've played medium stakes. He did pretty well because you're playing against the other players, so even though the house wins overall, if you're a decent poker player, you can walk away with more than you started every night, and he did and the house still wins. The odds work far more favourably when you're betting against other players rather than the house. He started off without much money in the bank, but he was pretty quickly pulling in enough to cover his rent, bills and never seemed to want for much. It always seemed to me if the game itself could've held my attention longer than 15 minutes, it would've been a pretty easy way to augment my income. The truth is though, after 15 minutes I'm bored with that.
- csa 9y ago
  Yeah. Poker can definitely be +ev. However, as you mentioned, +ev poker is often not terribly interesting (depends on the game and the stakes). My reply was mainly just to point out that some casinos do have fun areas that are accessible with a relatively small budget with small expected losses in the long term.
- technofiend 9y ago
  That's the great thing about poker; you don't have to be better than the house's odds which are fixed against you anyway: you only have to be better than the other players. I used to regularly fund trips to Vegas playing small stakes tournaments against people who had watched one too many WSOP events on TV. Then I'd lose or barely place in the money playing medium stakes tournaments with all the locals and the grinders. It is possible to find your level and profit from playing those slightly below it. But after a while it's indistinguishable from a 9-5 job, so you really have to love it.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    it's really hard to win st poker, the take is high enough to make 95% of players bet losers.
    - technofiend 9y ago
      I did mention playing tournament poker where the entry costs are fixed although escalating blinds can force you to adopt different strategies based on your M. I agree live is different but even then house take can vary greatly.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        The rake on live poker tournaments is terrible, probably worse than cash games. The great thing about tourneys is that anyone can win one and think they are great at poker. My mid-high stakes cash games were always helped immensely by tourney donkeys.
        technofiend 9y ago
        Live tournaments? That's a contradiction in terms. I don't know what you mean.
        sanswork 9y ago
        Live tournament means tournaments played in person at an actual table across from actual people as oppose to online tournament played over the internet.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The odds work far more favourably when you're betting against other players rather than the house. Not in general, but skill matters more in a game where the house skims off the top (so the players collectively are guaranteed to lose the amount the house has decided it requires independently of the gains or losses of individual players), and there is an element of skill influencing the gains and losses between the players. This only makes the odds more favorable, though, for a player of above average skill for the players they play against; it makes them worse for players of below average skill, since, after the fixed house take, it still a zero-sum game.
- drewmol 9y ago
  I've played plenty of poker to supplement my income in the past. There is quite a difference in gambling against other players vs against the house. Casinos are not in the business of losing money, so they control odds of the game and their gambles to ensure expected gains long term. They take a rake(small portion of the pots) from player vs player table games, essentially charging a fee for the service of providing a table and dealer. Poker is considered a game of skill to most, (you are making gambles, but can control the odds of yourself and other players by deciding upon wager amounts). This is why you see lots of professional poker players, but not slots players. That said, I found long term play both boring and depressing.
  - downandout 9y ago
    To be fair, there are some professional slot players, and many more professional video poker players. In this [1] podcast episode of Gambling With an Edge, they interview a guy that has been beating slots professionally for 22 years. One of the hosts of the show is a celebrated professional video poker player, and the other is a professional table games player. There are as many ways to beat casinos as there are games on their floors. [1] http://slot-machine-resource.com/podcasts/liston2.mp3 http://slot-machine-resource.com/podcasts/liston2.mp3
    - oillio 9y ago
      This is absolutely false. For credentials, I have worked for several years in the industry testing slot machine software. One of the things we test for is ensuring the game always pays out at the correct payback rate, which is always skewed so that the house wins. In most jurisdictions, the laws are written such that it is illegal to have a slot machine that pays back in the players favor over time (doing this would reduce the governments taxes). In a sufficiently large population, over a finite period of time, there can be a small set of people that look like they are winners. This is called survivorship bias. Given enough time, these people will eventually lose. However, anyone saying they know how to win on slot machines is probably just lying. The house always wins in the end. The only way to win as a player is to cheat.
- laumars 9y ago
  > if you're a decent poker player, you can walk away with more than you started every night, This is a huge exaggeration from what my poker playing friends have told me. One notable individual being a professional poker player of several years and who has wins in national tournaments as well. So he really knows his game. We've often talked about the odds of winning and how sustainable it is as an income. The figure he gives me is around 20% - that is you can only expect to cash in around 20% of the competitions you enter. Which means you can often go months without seeing a return. However it's not just him I've seen give that figure, other players I've spoken to have echoed a similar statement.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Cash games are completely different than tournaments though.
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      Cash players still have downswings. Big, ugly, edge of the bell curve downswings. "I worked 60 hours this week and lost five grand" downswings. Downswings where you start to wonder if you're actually any good at poker. That's the hard part of professional poker. It isn't the maths, it isn't the game theory, it isn't the table selection, it's the psychological resilience. You have to keep making very precise, very aggressive decisions even when everything is going to shit. You have to go all-in on the 51/49 coin flip, even when you've lost the last six coin flips. It all evens out in the long run, but the long run can be distressingly long.
      - mod 9y ago
        > "I worked 60 hours this week and lost five grand" downswings. That's nowhere near the worst downswing that even most midstakes cash game players have had. > the long run can be distressingly long. Especially in live cash games. It can go six months. It can make actually-winning players believe they aren't, and drive them out of the game. Poker swings were the most emotional time of my life--I played HUSNGs for a few years professionally and had very mild downswings, all things considered. I once lost 14 games in a row against one of the top-10 worst players I'd ever played with. I'm quite certain my winrate was about 70% against this player (exceedingly high for HUSNGs, almost the theoretical edge)
technofiend 9y ago
The post above me is good advice. Despite the temptation and the fact that it is slightly more in your favor, resist the urge to "wrong" bet which is actively betting against the player with the dice. People who play these games can be superstitious and don't appreciate your favoring the odds over their luck by betting against them.
- csa 9y ago
  Absolutely correct. It's only a fraction of a penny in your favor for a $10 bet, but it will kill the mood at a table in no time. That said, this superstition can be used to your advantage. One night there was a really negative and obnoxious drunk dude at the other end of the table. Every time he was the shooter, my buddy and I bet don't. He left the second time we did this. ;-)
  - cardiffspaceman 9y ago
    I tend to play don't, I experience ribbing as a result and it becomes part of the atmosphere of the table. I think you minimize the mathematical difference too far, isn't it around .3% or .5%? I switch sides when the shooter is the player standing next to me, out of courtesy. Also playing this way gives you more to pay attention to, if you choose to lay odds. In the movies they depict roulette table players as having a camaraderie, but I never saw that at roulette and I always see it at dice.
    - csa 9y ago
      I believe it is 1.41% house advantage for pass and 1.36% for don't pass -- 0.05% difference. On a $10 bet that's a half cent difference. Anyway, I've bet don't for a few trips for most/all of the trip just to see what happened. These were on weekends when the tables were going to be full no matter what. I agree that it made for some fun banter, and we sometimes go back to it for fun, but we mostly bet pass now and get stupid silly with our cheering.
davidcbc 9y ago
Craps really is the best game. It is nice to play a game where everyone is on the same team (generally). There is a nice camaraderie that goes along with playing craps. Another key to go along with this is don't go to the casino to win money. Go to the casino to spent $X over the course of Y hours to have fun. If you walk away with extra money, that's just a bonus.
- eric_h 9y ago
  > don't go to the casino to win money couldn't agree with this more - gambling is about the ride and the "free" drinks you get while you're playing - never bring more money than you can afford to lose. Craps is all about the whole table having fun playing against the house, and it's great fun when everyone is "winning". If you walk into a casino with the goal of winning money (without a team and an exploit of some sort that actually gives you an edge over the house), you're doing it wrong. Even if you do have an exploit and a team, don't count on keeping your winnings (see Phil Ivey and his baccarat scheme).
rsync 9y ago
"This is a relatively low variance and no skill way to have fun at a casino. The craps table are usually where the fun people are." I'll see your low variance casino fun and raise you an old defcon story: http://phrack.org/issues/54/1.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/54/1.html#article Not for the faint of heart.

by csa 9y ago

balabaster 9y ago

I know there are loads of people that do find enjoyment in Casinos. So I know my perspective isn't the only one by a long shot. A friend of mine used to be a professional gambler. He stuck to the poker tables... I guess he must've played medium stakes. He did pretty well because you're playing against the other players, so even though the house wins overall, if you're a decent poker player, you can walk away with more than you started every night, and he did and the house still wins. The odds work far more favourably when you're betting against other players rather than the house. He started off without much money in the bank, but he was pretty quickly pulling in enough to cover his rent, bills and never seemed to want for much. It always seemed to me if the game itself could've held my attention longer than 15 minutes, it would've been a pretty easy way to augment my income. The truth is though, after 15 minutes I'm bored with that.

csa 9y ago
Yeah. Poker can definitely be +ev. However, as you mentioned, +ev poker is often not terribly interesting (depends on the game and the stakes). My reply was mainly just to point out that some casinos do have fun areas that are accessible with a relatively small budget with small expected losses in the long term.
technofiend 9y ago
That's the great thing about poker; you don't have to be better than the house's odds which are fixed against you anyway: you only have to be better than the other players. I used to regularly fund trips to Vegas playing small stakes tournaments against people who had watched one too many WSOP events on TV. Then I'd lose or barely place in the money playing medium stakes tournaments with all the locals and the grinders. It is possible to find your level and profit from playing those slightly below it. But after a while it's indistinguishable from a 9-5 job, so you really have to love it.
- valuearb 9y ago
  it's really hard to win st poker, the take is high enough to make 95% of players bet losers.
  - technofiend 9y ago
    I did mention playing tournament poker where the entry costs are fixed although escalating blinds can force you to adopt different strategies based on your M. I agree live is different but even then house take can vary greatly.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      The rake on live poker tournaments is terrible, probably worse than cash games. The great thing about tourneys is that anyone can win one and think they are great at poker. My mid-high stakes cash games were always helped immensely by tourney donkeys.
      - technofiend 9y ago
        Live tournaments? That's a contradiction in terms. I don't know what you mean.
        sanswork 9y ago
        Live tournament means tournaments played in person at an actual table across from actual people as oppose to online tournament played over the internet.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> The odds work far more favourably when you're betting against other players rather than the house. Not in general, but skill matters more in a game where the house skims off the top (so the players collectively are guaranteed to lose the amount the house has decided it requires independently of the gains or losses of individual players), and there is an element of skill influencing the gains and losses between the players. This only makes the odds more favorable, though, for a player of above average skill for the players they play against; it makes them worse for players of below average skill, since, after the fixed house take, it still a zero-sum game.
drewmol 9y ago
I've played plenty of poker to supplement my income in the past. There is quite a difference in gambling against other players vs against the house. Casinos are not in the business of losing money, so they control odds of the game and their gambles to ensure expected gains long term. They take a rake(small portion of the pots) from player vs player table games, essentially charging a fee for the service of providing a table and dealer. Poker is considered a game of skill to most, (you are making gambles, but can control the odds of yourself and other players by deciding upon wager amounts). This is why you see lots of professional poker players, but not slots players. That said, I found long term play both boring and depressing.
- downandout 9y ago
  To be fair, there are some professional slot players, and many more professional video poker players. In this [1] podcast episode of Gambling With an Edge, they interview a guy that has been beating slots professionally for 22 years. One of the hosts of the show is a celebrated professional video poker player, and the other is a professional table games player. There are as many ways to beat casinos as there are games on their floors. [1] http://slot-machine-resource.com/podcasts/liston2.mp3 http://slot-machine-resource.com/podcasts/liston2.mp3
  - oillio 9y ago
    This is absolutely false. For credentials, I have worked for several years in the industry testing slot machine software. One of the things we test for is ensuring the game always pays out at the correct payback rate, which is always skewed so that the house wins. In most jurisdictions, the laws are written such that it is illegal to have a slot machine that pays back in the players favor over time (doing this would reduce the governments taxes). In a sufficiently large population, over a finite period of time, there can be a small set of people that look like they are winners. This is called survivorship bias. Given enough time, these people will eventually lose. However, anyone saying they know how to win on slot machines is probably just lying. The house always wins in the end. The only way to win as a player is to cheat.
laumars 9y ago
> if you're a decent poker player, you can walk away with more than you started every night, This is a huge exaggeration from what my poker playing friends have told me. One notable individual being a professional poker player of several years and who has wins in national tournaments as well. So he really knows his game. We've often talked about the odds of winning and how sustainable it is as an income. The figure he gives me is around 20% - that is you can only expect to cash in around 20% of the competitions you enter. Which means you can often go months without seeing a return. However it's not just him I've seen give that figure, other players I've spoken to have echoed a similar statement.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Cash games are completely different than tournaments though.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    Cash players still have downswings. Big, ugly, edge of the bell curve downswings. "I worked 60 hours this week and lost five grand" downswings. Downswings where you start to wonder if you're actually any good at poker. That's the hard part of professional poker. It isn't the maths, it isn't the game theory, it isn't the table selection, it's the psychological resilience. You have to keep making very precise, very aggressive decisions even when everything is going to shit. You have to go all-in on the 51/49 coin flip, even when you've lost the last six coin flips. It all evens out in the long run, but the long run can be distressingly long.
    - mod 9y ago
      > "I worked 60 hours this week and lost five grand" downswings. That's nowhere near the worst downswing that even most midstakes cash game players have had. > the long run can be distressingly long. Especially in live cash games. It can go six months. It can make actually-winning players believe they aren't, and drive them out of the game. Poker swings were the most emotional time of my life--I played HUSNGs for a few years professionally and had very mild downswings, all things considered. I once lost 14 games in a row against one of the top-10 worst players I'd ever played with. I'm quite certain my winrate was about 70% against this player (exceedingly high for HUSNGs, almost the theoretical edge)

technofiend 9y ago

The post above me is good advice. Despite the temptation and the fact that it is slightly more in your favor, resist the urge to "wrong" bet which is actively betting against the player with the dice. People who play these games can be superstitious and don't appreciate your favoring the odds over their luck by betting against them.

csa 9y ago
Absolutely correct. It's only a fraction of a penny in your favor for a $10 bet, but it will kill the mood at a table in no time. That said, this superstition can be used to your advantage. One night there was a really negative and obnoxious drunk dude at the other end of the table. Every time he was the shooter, my buddy and I bet don't. He left the second time we did this. ;-)
- cardiffspaceman 9y ago
  I tend to play don't, I experience ribbing as a result and it becomes part of the atmosphere of the table. I think you minimize the mathematical difference too far, isn't it around .3% or .5%? I switch sides when the shooter is the player standing next to me, out of courtesy. Also playing this way gives you more to pay attention to, if you choose to lay odds. In the movies they depict roulette table players as having a camaraderie, but I never saw that at roulette and I always see it at dice.
  - csa 9y ago
    I believe it is 1.41% house advantage for pass and 1.36% for don't pass -- 0.05% difference. On a $10 bet that's a half cent difference. Anyway, I've bet don't for a few trips for most/all of the trip just to see what happened. These were on weekends when the tables were going to be full no matter what. I agree that it made for some fun banter, and we sometimes go back to it for fun, but we mostly bet pass now and get stupid silly with our cheering.

davidcbc 9y ago

Craps really is the best game. It is nice to play a game where everyone is on the same team (generally). There is a nice camaraderie that goes along with playing craps. Another key to go along with this is don't go to the casino to win money. Go to the casino to spent $X over the course of Y hours to have fun. If you walk away with extra money, that's just a bonus.

eric_h 9y ago
> don't go to the casino to win money couldn't agree with this more - gambling is about the ride and the "free" drinks you get while you're playing - never bring more money than you can afford to lose. Craps is all about the whole table having fun playing against the house, and it's great fun when everyone is "winning". If you walk into a casino with the goal of winning money (without a team and an exploit of some sort that actually gives you an edge over the house), you're doing it wrong. Even if you do have an exploit and a team, don't count on keeping your winnings (see Phil Ivey and his baccarat scheme).

rsync 9y ago

"This is a relatively low variance and no skill way to have fun at a casino. The craps table are usually where the fun people are." I'll see your low variance casino fun and raise you an old defcon story: http://phrack.org/issues/54/1.html#article http://phrack.org/issues/54/1.html#article Not for the faint of heart.