5 ms·

The only casino game worth playing is poker. Everything else is a scam.

by halikular 5y ago

rileymat2 5y ago
Given the rake, it is also a loser unless you have a big advantage from skill.
- halikular 5y ago
  Yeah, but it tends to be lower in online casinos. And you clearly know the percentage.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  During the TV-fueled boom of no-limit hold’em and around Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP main event win, friends and I would travel every year to Vegas to play in the side games and satellites leading up to the WSOP. Staying in the (now gone) Imperial Palace for $25/night, it was relatively easy to beat the single-table satellites by enough to pay for the flights the first Friday and then grind out an overall profit on the rest of the days. That’s a special case of “big advantage in skill” in the sense that the WSOP/TV boom drew a bunch of players with way more aspiration than skill/experience and the games were easily beatable by players of typical home game winner level of skill as a result.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    The IP is only gone in spirit -- the building is still there, they just renovated it and jacked the price. But you can still get cheap gross rooms at Circus Circus!
- mfringel 5y ago
  The typical big-casino rake isn't that large. From memory (it has been 2 years since I've physically been in a poker room), the typical rake at a full 9-player table at the Encore (Everett, MA, USA) worked out to ~$12-15/hour per person. For a professional dealer, good chips, and a continuous flow of players, that seems like a pretty fair price to pay.
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    If all the players sit down with $1000 and play for 5 hours, the casino will have taken approx. 6% of the total bankroll. It's not about what is fair, it's whether you are actually skilled enough to beat the other players AND the rake over the long term. Most people can't.
mason55 5y ago
> scam Or just paying for entertainment. Craps pass line is under 1.5% per bet placed with even money odds if you’re backing up your bet. For a $15 pass line bet you’re paying the house $0.25 per bet. Even at 10 bets/hour it’s $2.50/hour for entertainment, which is super cheap. And toss in a couple free drinks and it comes out to be very cheap entertainment.
- halikular 5y ago
  That's a case for entertainment. In poker real money can be made, although hard. All other ways of making money in the casino has been cracked down on.
  - User23 5y ago
    The strip casinos don’t care about individual advantage play if you’re playing with black chips or less[1]. I’ve watched an older pit boss make fun of an obvious counter by calling the count out for him. Now if you’re wonging and doing other team stuff then sure expect to get cooled. Edit: the real key way to view it is that much like bartenders, casino staff are fundamentally providing recreation. The ones that are good at their jobs will provide a solid experience for a reasonable price. On the other hand anyone with a gambling addiction needs to stay away. A good rule of thumb is to treat your entire trip bankroll as entertainment budget that you’re willing to spend all of. [1] For all I know they might not even care if the counter’s base bet is melons, but my experience is limited to black chip range since losing won’t hurt and it’s enough to get the dopamine hit plus sign off on nice comps.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Poker isn't really a casino game though, as you're not playing against the house.
crehn 5y ago
Put a large sum on black in roulette. If you lose, place double on black. Repeat until you win once or end up bankrupt, then go home.
- paulcole 5y ago
  What you’re describing is a Martingale method. It also has the issue of running into a table’s max bet. Overall it’s one of the dumbest gambling “systems” out there — and that’s saying something.
  - bena 5y ago
    Also, red/black isn't 50/50. It's slightly under.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- agys 5y ago
  This “system” is addressed in the blog post (under: “New Strategy: we double the bet after each loss”).
- IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  It's the antithesis of gambling. If you bet $10 on black and win straight away, earning $10, and go home with $20, and stay home for the rest of your life and never walk into a casino again, then yes, you won. But you're not really a gambler. You're actually the opposite of a gambler, one that never enters a casino again. Of course you gambled $10, but the amount is meaningless. If instead you gambled a meaningful amount, say $50k, then indeed it'd be truly gambling something meaningful. But if you'd lose, you'd have to double it to $100k. If you lose that, $200k. It spirals out of control quickly if you're actually betting meaningful amounts. And the amounts must be meaningful. After all, if you bet $10, lose a few and eventually win and go home with $80, the strategy requires you to never gamble again. If you come back because $80 isn't meaningful, you're really just starting over at a meaningful amount, that could make you win enough to never make you come back. But at that point, you're talking about significant risks (e.g. betting $50k and losing 4 coin unfavourable (47% / 53%) tosses in a row, and you've lost a total of $750k and need to risk losing another $800k to walk away with a profit of just $50k, by flipping another unfavourable coin toss) If you were Jeff Bezos, of course you could bet a million and walk away with an eventual win before running out of money. But the amount of money isn't meaningful to Bezos. In the same way a kid with $40 of savings could bet $50 cents and walk away with 50 cents of profit by winning the 5th round. But that doesn't make any meaningful difference if it ends there. If the kid comes back to gamble, the strategy falls apart, as the house always wins in the end if people keep coming back. And that's precisely why the strategy doesn't actually work for anyone. To win any meaningful amount, you'd have to bet a meaningful amount. And to do that, is incredibly risky as there's a good chance you'll run into your limit before you win. And even if you win, that experience will likely pull you back in to try to repeat it, the gambler mindset eventually will lose. How quickly do you run into your own limit, and the limit of the casino? After all, the odds are against you. Technical note: your final game winnings are never more than the first game winnings. That's why the first bet must be meaningful. Say you bet $10 and lose, bet $20 and win, you made $10 profit. Say you lost the $20 too and bet $40, you again still made $10 as you made 80 - (10+20+40). Suppose you lost the $40 too, and the $80, and the $160, and the $320, and the $640, and now bet $1280 and win $2560... subtract 1280+640+320+160+80+40+20+10, and again, you only walked away with $10. In other words, to walk away with something meaningful like $10k, you may end up having to wager 1.2 million after 7 coin toss losses.

The only casino game worth playing is poker. Everything else is a scam.

rileymat2 5y ago

Given the rake, it is also a loser unless you have a big advantage from skill.

halikular 5y ago
Yeah, but it tends to be lower in online casinos. And you clearly know the percentage.
sokoloff 5y ago
During the TV-fueled boom of no-limit hold’em and around Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP main event win, friends and I would travel every year to Vegas to play in the side games and satellites leading up to the WSOP. Staying in the (now gone) Imperial Palace for $25/night, it was relatively easy to beat the single-table satellites by enough to pay for the flights the first Friday and then grind out an overall profit on the rest of the days. That’s a special case of “big advantage in skill” in the sense that the WSOP/TV boom drew a bunch of players with way more aspiration than skill/experience and the games were easily beatable by players of typical home game winner level of skill as a result.
- jedberg 5y ago
  The IP is only gone in spirit -- the building is still there, they just renovated it and jacked the price. But you can still get cheap gross rooms at Circus Circus!
mfringel 5y ago
The typical big-casino rake isn't that large. From memory (it has been 2 years since I've physically been in a poker room), the typical rake at a full 9-player table at the Encore (Everett, MA, USA) worked out to ~$12-15/hour per person. For a professional dealer, good chips, and a continuous flow of players, that seems like a pretty fair price to pay.
- listenallyall 5y ago
  If all the players sit down with $1000 and play for 5 hours, the casino will have taken approx. 6% of the total bankroll. It's not about what is fair, it's whether you are actually skilled enough to beat the other players AND the rake over the long term. Most people can't.

mason55 5y ago

> scam Or just paying for entertainment. Craps pass line is under 1.5% per bet placed with even money odds if you’re backing up your bet. For a $15 pass line bet you’re paying the house $0.25 per bet. Even at 10 bets/hour it’s $2.50/hour for entertainment, which is super cheap. And toss in a couple free drinks and it comes out to be very cheap entertainment.

halikular 5y ago
That's a case for entertainment. In poker real money can be made, although hard. All other ways of making money in the casino has been cracked down on.
- User23 5y ago
  The strip casinos don’t care about individual advantage play if you’re playing with black chips or less[1]. I’ve watched an older pit boss make fun of an obvious counter by calling the count out for him. Now if you’re wonging and doing other team stuff then sure expect to get cooled. Edit: the real key way to view it is that much like bartenders, casino staff are fundamentally providing recreation. The ones that are good at their jobs will provide a solid experience for a reasonable price. On the other hand anyone with a gambling addiction needs to stay away. A good rule of thumb is to treat your entire trip bankroll as entertainment budget that you’re willing to spend all of. [1] For all I know they might not even care if the counter’s base bet is melons, but my experience is limited to black chip range since losing won’t hurt and it’s enough to get the dopamine hit plus sign off on nice comps.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Poker isn't really a casino game though, as you're not playing against the house.

crehn 5y ago

Put a large sum on black in roulette. If you lose, place double on black. Repeat until you win once or end up bankrupt, then go home.

paulcole 5y ago
What you’re describing is a Martingale method. It also has the issue of running into a table’s max bet. Overall it’s one of the dumbest gambling “systems” out there — and that’s saying something.
- bena 5y ago
  Also, red/black isn't 50/50. It's slightly under.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
agys 5y ago
This “system” is addressed in the blog post (under: “New Strategy: we double the bet after each loss”).
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
It's the antithesis of gambling. If you bet $10 on black and win straight away, earning $10, and go home with $20, and stay home for the rest of your life and never walk into a casino again, then yes, you won. But you're not really a gambler. You're actually the opposite of a gambler, one that never enters a casino again. Of course you gambled $10, but the amount is meaningless. If instead you gambled a meaningful amount, say $50k, then indeed it'd be truly gambling something meaningful. But if you'd lose, you'd have to double it to $100k. If you lose that, $200k. It spirals out of control quickly if you're actually betting meaningful amounts. And the amounts must be meaningful. After all, if you bet $10, lose a few and eventually win and go home with $80, the strategy requires you to never gamble again. If you come back because $80 isn't meaningful, you're really just starting over at a meaningful amount, that could make you win enough to never make you come back. But at that point, you're talking about significant risks (e.g. betting $50k and losing 4 coin unfavourable (47% / 53%) tosses in a row, and you've lost a total of $750k and need to risk losing another $800k to walk away with a profit of just $50k, by flipping another unfavourable coin toss) If you were Jeff Bezos, of course you could bet a million and walk away with an eventual win before running out of money. But the amount of money isn't meaningful to Bezos. In the same way a kid with $40 of savings could bet $50 cents and walk away with 50 cents of profit by winning the 5th round. But that doesn't make any meaningful difference if it ends there. If the kid comes back to gamble, the strategy falls apart, as the house always wins in the end if people keep coming back. And that's precisely why the strategy doesn't actually work for anyone. To win any meaningful amount, you'd have to bet a meaningful amount. And to do that, is incredibly risky as there's a good chance you'll run into your limit before you win. And even if you win, that experience will likely pull you back in to try to repeat it, the gambler mindset eventually will lose. How quickly do you run into your own limit, and the limit of the casino? After all, the odds are against you. Technical note: your final game winnings are never more than the first game winnings. That's why the first bet must be meaningful. Say you bet $10 and lose, bet $20 and win, you made $10 profit. Say you lost the $20 too and bet $40, you again still made $10 as you made 80 - (10+20+40). Suppose you lost the $40 too, and the $80, and the $160, and the $320, and the $640, and now bet $1280 and win $2560... subtract 1280+640+320+160+80+40+20+10, and again, you only walked away with $10. In other words, to walk away with something meaningful like $10k, you may end up having to wager 1.2 million after 7 coin toss losses.