5 ms·

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 p

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)

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)