Gambling for Winners
Your Hard-Headed, No B.S. Guide to Gaming Opportunities With a Long-Term, Mathematical, Positive Expectation
by
Richard Stooker
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"It can be argued that man's instinct to gamble is the only reason he is still not a monkey up in the trees." -- Mario Puzo, Inside Las Vegas
"If you ain't just a little scared when you enter a casino, you are either very rich or you haven't studied the games enough." --- VP Pappy
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Table of Contents
Chapter One -- You, the Winning Gambler
Chapter Two -- Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Gamble
Chapter Three -- The Most Important Question of All to Ask Yourself Before You Gamble
Chapter Four -- The Bell Curve
Chapter Five -- Anything Can Happen in the Short Run -- And the Long Run Can Be Very Long
Chapter Six -- Gambling "Streaks* Are Not Real Streaks
Chapter Seven -- Gambler's Fallacy
Chapter Eight -- Psychic Gambling
Chapter Nine -- What is Really Random?
Chapter Ten -- The Opportunity Costs of Gambling
Chapter Eleven -- Can You Really Afford to Gamble?
Chapter Twelve -- The Winning Gambler's Bankroll
Chapter Thirteen -- Whose Bankroll is Bigger?.
Chapter Fourteen -- It's Your Money
Chapter Fifteen -- Keep Businesslike Records
Chapter Sixteen -- Betting Systems
Chapter Seventeen -- Should You Quit When You're Ahead?
Chapter Eighteen -- Complaining About Comps
Chapter Nineteen -- Make Good Bets
Chapter Twenty-One -- Blackjack -- Part 1
Chapter Twenty-Two -- Blackjack -- Part 2.
Chapter Twenty-Three -- Video Poker
Chapter Twenty-Five -- Baccarat
Chapter Twenty-Six -- Roulette
Chapter Twenty-Eight -- Horse Races
Chapter Twenty-Nine -- Sports Betting
Chapter Thirty-One -- Tournaments
Chapter Thirty-Two -- Online Gambling
Chapter Thirty-Three -- Summary
You, the Winning Gambler
"It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck." --- Joseph Conrad
What can this book do for you?
Over the years I've read a number of books on gambling, some good but many irritating.
I've written this book to give everyday people a hard headed, realistic viewpoint on how to win at gambling.
Winning can mean different things to different people.
Part of gambling to win is deciding what winning means to you. For some people, it's spending a few fun Saturday nights a month in a local casino without hitting up the ATM machine.
One of the kinds of gambling books that irk me are the ones that have "win" or "winning" in the title, but all they tell you is advice that's good but basic, like which games and bets have a low casino edge.
Risk money only on the best bets, avoid the bad bets yeah, yeah, yeah.
Folks, let me clue you in. Low casino edges are better than high casino edges, without a doubt. But a losing game or bet is still a losing game or bet. No matter how small it is, a negative expectation is negative -- it means that in the long run you will lose money.
So most of those books on "winning" just tell you how to "lose less."
I hope you're looking for more than that.
To win money gambling in the long term, you must have a positive expectation, or advantage.
If you don't know how to play a game, this is not the book for you. I have not filled up pages with diagrams of the boards. Get one of the basic books first, then come back to this one.
It irks me when gambling authors tell you that you're a winner if you add comps in.
It irks me to read the advice to play only with money you can afford to lose. If you can afford to lose any money, you don't need to gamble.
It also irks me to read that casinos are the "enemy." Only Ian Anderson in BURNING THE TABLES IN LAS VEGAS really addresses this. Casinos are our friends, not our enemies. If not for casinos, we would not have the opportunity to win money from them.
True, casinos look upon advantage gamblers as their enemy, but that is their problem. It is yours to the extent that you have to disguise what you are doing, but that is good mental exercise for you.
The truth is, gamblers who successfully win money from the casinos are essentially gaining at the expense of the losing suckers, just as is the casino. Because if the sheep did not flock to the casino to be shorn of their cash, the casinos would close and winning gamblers would have to find another source of income.
If making a living as a gambler were easy, it'd be impossible -- because the casinos would all go out of business.
It also irks me that so many gambling writers talk about money management only in terms of professional gamblers and tourists to Vegas or Atlantic City. Then they don't inform you that if you travel to Vegas or Atlantic City to gamble, you are already behind before you start, by the amount of your traveling expenses.
Some of the fuzzy headed advice you read from gambling writers published by New York publishing companies is bad enough. If you really start researching gambling, you'll see a thousand offers from people who want to take a lot more of your money for ridiculous but "infallible" systems.
I hope to educate you enough so you can see through the scams.
That alone can save you a lot of money.
Although gambling has long been looked down on by proper society, and there is a lot bad about it, there are good things too
Read THE NEW MARKET WIZARDS by Jack Schwager. This is a widely hailed book of top financial traders interviewed by Schwager.
One of them is Blair Hull, who used to be a member of Ken Uston's blackjack team. His description of playing blackjack in the 70s is fascinating. What is even more valuable, is understanding that he used the knowledge he gained through that experience of how to manage risk to become the top -- and extremely wealthy -- trader that he is.
Another trader interviewed by Schwager, Vic Sperandeo, used to play poker.
So did David Caplan. He is a prominent options teacher/trader/author.
Bill Gates played a lot of poker in college. Wonder if you could use some of his knowledge of people and probability?
Although most people don't like to think this way, probability governs our lives
Are there any absolute certainties in life? Some people claim death and taxes, but I know many welfare recipients who have never paid taxes, plan to keep it that way, and probably will.
I can't say for sure I know people who will never die, but medicine and technology is advancing so much that it is possible.
We can't predict the future. So what we must do is make trade offs of risk
If we get out of bed in the morning, we risk a number of dangers that could hurt us, such as falling down when we stand up. But the benefits of getting out of bed -- or the penalties of not doing so -- outweigh the slight risk involved.
Learning to think as weather announcers talk -- "Today there's a 65% chance of rain." -- is important, because that's how reality is.
We can't know anything for certain until it is happening, and then it's too late to enjoy the benefit of knowing it was coming. So when you hear that forecast it's a good idea to take your umbrella with you and on the 35% of days that the rain does not come, then you just carry that unneeded umbrella.
Or, if you dislike carrying an unused umbrellas, you can make the choice to get wet 65% of the time.
Our financial lives are tied to managing risk far more than most people want to understand. You must learn to understand the relative risks of stocks, bonds, etc.
The risk of ignorance is growing daily. FUTURE WEALTH, a fascinating book by Stanley Davis and Christopher Meyer looks at the future of risk management. Did you know that, already, people have bought options on David Bowie's career?
How long before your broker offers you a mutual fund on the future of other pop artists or sports stars?
Gambling is a good place to start. I don't think it's the best place to stay. Edward Thorp, the man who invented card counting, who discovered a way to beat baccarat in the 60s (it's now unavailable, because of him), and who figured out how to use a computer to beat roulette -- now plays the stock market.
He says it's just a much bigger casino.
To get started, let's see what we need to know.
Before we can find the answers, we first must decide on the questions!
The Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Gamble
"Gambling itself will only end when human nature has changed completely." -- Harold S Smith Sr
There are 7 questions you must always ask and get answers to before you gamble.
If you've ever taken a journalism class you know that every reporter must answer 6 questions early in every news story.
They are known as the 5 Ws and H.
Who?
What?
Where?
Why?
When?
How?
Since our subject is gambling, I'm adding a 7th important question:
How much?
I won't mention "who" much, since the answer is obvious. Who is you!
So you must start thinking about who you are. Obviously I can't answer that for you. Every one of you is different and therefore what this book does for you will differ.
I don't know who you are but I am sure of a lot of people you are not.
You are NOT: Nick the Greek, Ken Uston or any other famous gambler.
I am going to assume that you have a serious interest in gambling but are not yet an expert.
So, let's move on to the most important question of all.
The Most Important Question to Ask Yourself Before You Start Gambling
"Remember this: The House doesn't beat the player, it just gives him the opportunity to beat himself." -- Nick the Greek
It's not the best place to gamble. It's not the odds.
It's not how to play the games most intelligently.
It's not even how much money you can afford to lose.
All those things are important and making poor judgments on them will vitally affect you results.
However, none of them are the MOST important thing to know before you start to gamble.
It's WHY you are gambling
WHY you gamble determines everything else, the where, how, and the how much.
If you gamble without knowing why, you should stop. Right here, right now, and don't start again until you know.
I guarantee you that if you don't know why you're gambling, your reasons are deeply rooted, irrational and self-destructive.
I recently participated in an academic study of gambling that attempted to correlate problem gambling with psychological problems. I have no idea what the final results will be but the trend of the questions was clear.
Problem gamblers use the thrill and adrenaline rush to mask their real problems. If you gamble to forget your problems, because you're angry or upset or emotionally driven to take stupid risks, you have problems neither I nor this book can help you with.
You need professional help.
This book assumes you the reader are an intelligent human being
You are imperfect but capable of rational thought, capable of evaluating information, making decisions based on facts and changing behavior when necessary to accomplish your goals.
We all make mistakes but we can and should learn from them. This book is the product of a lot of mistakes I've made. I hope I help you avoid them.
Are there good reasons to gamble? Of course!
This is not a knee-jerk, moralistic self-righteous anti-gambling tract.
To my thinking there are three perfectly valid reasons to gamble:
1. Money
In my opinion this is the best one. Your knee-jerk reaction is probably to agree with me but chances are that is not how you currently behave.
It is patently obvious that most people who gamble are not doing so for the money.
If they really were gambling for the money, they'd stop -- because they're losing more than they win.
2. Fun
The self-righteous moralistic puritanical types hate this one, but it's totally legitimate. If you enjoy gambling, it needs no other justification. Pleasure is its own reward and we'd all be better off if certain people devoted their lives to enjoying pleasure instead of trying to pass laws to control the behavior of other people under the guise of protecting them from themselves.
So, take that walk in the park when you want, go to a baseball game, eat that chocolate sundae and visit a casino for the thrills.
And don't apologize to anybody.
3. Sociality
You're not big on gambling yourself but you have friends who are. You've been invited to a birthday party, a work promotion party or a class reunion and everybody else is looking forward to taking the party to a local casino.
This is increasingly common in St. Louis since casinos became legal.
You're not a knowledgeable gambler but you're not anti-gambling. You want to just go and get along with people. You don't want to be a wet blanket but you don't want to lose a lot of money either.
I won't mention this reason much during the rest of the book, for the simple reason that such casual "gamblers" aren't reading this book. They go when the social occasion calls for it, hopefully bet no more than they can afford to lose, and then go home.
The rest of you, decide which category you fall into.
And please don't tell me, "both."
If you answer both, you're playing for the fun and you're just hoping you'll win just as when you were a child you hoped Santa Claus would bring you lots of presents. Only the casinos aren't good ol' St. Nick.
Guess what? If you keep gambling, you will NOT win. It's that simple. You won't.
Yes, tomorrow night you might double your roll. I'm happy for you, but you're still not gambling for money.
A person who gambles for money may have fun doing so, but they must be extremely tough minded and realistic, and limit themselves to only a very small number of possible gambling bets.
If money is truly your motivation, gambling is work just like your job.
How much do you like your job?
If you gamble for money, you are allowed to enjoy gambling in a casino. You are not allowed to put any emotional weight on that pleasure.
You might enjoy your job, but would you go report to work every morning if they stopped paying you?
I didn't think so :)
If you are a for-fun gambler, you should make another basic decision.
You are allowed to be concerned about your money while still gambling for fun.
There are more intelligent (that is, money conserving) ways to gamble and less intelligent ways to gamble. Gambling for fun doesn't mean you have to be totally reckless with your hard earned dollars.
People who are reckless gamblers (and you see a lot of them in casinos) likely aren't reading this anyway.
They don't care -- no matter how poor they are, they have money to burn having fun.
But isn't it more fun to conserve your money? To make your money last throughout an evening instead of running out after half an hour? To sometimes take home more money than you went with?
Long term, fun gamblers lose money.
But you can learn ways to get the most entertainment value for your gambling bucks.
This book is written for money-motivated gamblers, but intelligent-fun-motivated can benefit from it as well.
Now that you've answered the most important question, it's time to go on to some lesser but still important questions.
You don't have to be a mathematician to understand this book, but you must have a basic understanding of odds and probability to hope to gamble intelligently, whether for fun or money.
You must particularly understand one foundation tool for measuring luck.
The Bell Curve
"My advice to the unborn is, don't be born with a gambling instinct unless you have a good sense of probabilities." --- Jack Dreyfus
Here's where we start to get technical. If you choose not to understand this chapter, don't ever quit your day job.
The standard way of displaying the possible range of events than can happen in any probability situation, such as a casino game, is called the bell curve.
It's called that because that's what it looks like. It's a bell-shaped curve.
Take a quality which can be measured across a wide range of values. Measure it in a large sample of people and the results will look like a bell curve.
Take I.Q. for example.
By definition, 100 is the average measured intelligence of any particular age group
That means that in a large group of people, 100 is the single most common I.Q.
By looking at the bell curve chart you can see that it agrees with what we intuitively know as obvious.
Most people are close to average intelligence. That should come as no surprise. That is why "average" is average.
Some people are a little over average, some a little below average, but about 2/3s of everybody falls into that area.
A smaller but still substantial number of people are significantly either higher or lower than average.
This too fits in with experience. We all know people who are noticeably smarter or noticeably more stupid than average, yet not extremely so.
At the very tail ends of the curve, we find a small percentage of -- on the right -- geniuses; and -- on the left -- morons.
However, it is important to understand that for the bell curve to apply, the number of events measured must be large enough to be random. Without a large sample size, the results will be skewed, or biased.
For example, if you were to measure the I.Q.s of the top rocket scientists in the world, the results would NOT fit into the standard bell curve. They would form a rough bell curve of their own, but all results would fall far to the right of the general population. Nobody becomes a top rocket scientist without having a far above average intelligence.
The same thing in reverse would happen if we were to measure the residents of a long term care facility for the mentally retarded. Obviously those people are far below average, or they would not be there.
So what does this have to do with your gambling?
The results of all gambling games fall into a bell curve.
The importance of this is that you must understand that over the long run of your play, the results will range over all the possibilities charted by the bell curve.
You must understand that so you can control both yourself and the results.
OK, let's address gambling.
Instead of measuring I.Q., let's you and a friend flip coins. Heads you win, tails you lose. You each bet $1 against each other. Fair coin.
Since you're getting a fair payoff of $1, or even odds, your long run expectation is $0, so we'll put that in the middle.
The right side is how much you've won over $0, the left side how much you are below $0.
If you and your friend kept flipping coins for a long time, your results would center around 0 but at times you'd be ahead as much as $10-$20, at times behind by the same amount.
And if you tell a statistician exactly how many times you were going to flip, they could even tell you how often you'd be ahead and by how much.
The statistician can do that by applying a tool to the bell curve called the standard deviation.
I won't try to describe the standard deviation. I mention it because if you read other gambling writers or posts online, you see them mention the standard deviation. It basically measures how far from the middle line you are.
It's the stock answer for when someone complains that although they played a game "right" or counted cards in blackjack, they still lost. They'll be told, "Hey, it's the standard deviation. You can't win every time."
They are referring to the bell curve and how it ranges across both negative and positive values.
This is also called variance.
The longer you gamble, the more your results will range across the entire bell curve for that game
Expect it. Bet on it.
Now, how does this apply to casino gambling, which is different than flipping coins?
Casino gambling is different in one VERY important aspect -- in a casino, the long range expectation is NEVER 0!
For almost all games and bets in a casino, long range expectation is NEGATIVE.
For a few select situations, it is SLIGHTLY positive. Here's the deal.
The shape and size of the bell curve remain the same. They can't be changed for an honest game. The dice and the cards and the roulette ball and wheel don't know or care how much the casino pays you off when you win. They fall as they fall whether the casinos pays you less than "fairly," at fair odds, or more than fairly. (That never happens except in occasional promotions, when the casino's marketing department is better at writing headlines than calculating odds.)
And yes, one thing about this is that you lose at gambling when you win, not when you "lose."
Because when you win, the casino pays you off at less than fair odds.
Otherwise, the center line of the bell curve would be precisely at 0, and the casinos would make no money. After paying their expenses (utility bills, interest and salaries), they'd lose money and would soon go out of business.
What we must do if we choose to keep playing is use the bell curve to understand our casino results and long term expectation.
We must shift the midpoint of the curve until it is above the expectation percentage for that game.
So if we graph the results of all roulette bets, we shift the curve to the left until the very top of the bell curve is above the -5.26% point.
Now, notice something interesting. Since the roulette ball will still land on all numbers and colors and your winning and losing bets will still vary, the total area and shape of the curve remain the same.
However, because the curve has been shifted to the left, to -5.26%, the area representing below 0 earnings is now much larger than the area representing above 0.
By the way, above 0 is where we want to be. :)
So, although you will sometimes be in the above 0 space, you will spend more time in the below 0 space.
If you want to play for fun but conserve your money, you want to find games where the negative expectation is low. You will still lose long term, but you will have more time than somebody who quickly blows their money on bets where the odds are heavily against them.
If you want to gamble for money, you must play in a game where the results on the right (above $0) exceed the results on the left (below $0) side.
The more you understand that the more you play, the more your short term results will range from very bad to very good, the better you can mentally and emotionally prepare yourself
When you win a lot, remember that not all your sessions will make you so much money. Don't splurge. Don't change your lifestyle (unless you win a lotto jackpot).
Pay bills you owe and keep the rest to pay the bills when you suffer the inevitable losses.
When you do lose, don't lose your cool. Don't make bad plays.
Stick with your winning game plan or just take a break until you have your composure back.
Remember, on any given night at the casino, you can wind up in any area of your bell curve.
That leads to an important principle.
When you gamble for money, you plan on the long run. Because, in the short run, anything and everything can and will happen.
Recommended Resources for Understanding Probability
ELEMENTARY PROBABILITY by Edward Thorp
THE MATHEMATICS OF GAMBLING by Edward Thorp
THE THEORY OF GAMBLING AND STATISTICAL LOGIC by Richard Epstein
GETTING THE BEST OF IT by David Sklansky
GAMBLING THEORY AND OTHER TOPICS by Mason Malmuth
Anything Can and Does Happen in the Short Run -- And the Long
Run Can Be Very Long
"The surest way to double your money is to fold once and put it in your pocket." --- K Hubbard
The title about says it all. It's important to understand.
If you don't know this, you may buy a betting system based on its short- run success.
When you're tempted to buy a gambling system based on testimonials, remember that although they may be true, they are short term results. By now, that testimonial writer might be even more broke than you.
(Starting December 1, 2009 the United States Federal Trade Commission's new rules for testimonials went into effect which outlaw such testimonials -- but don't count on that stopping the scammers.)
If you don't understand this you might stop playing your valid method just as its about to work for you, due to a short term negative fluctuation that you allow to discourage you.
It can be frustrating to watch drunks high-fiving each other after making stupid blackjack plays but still winning.
Remember also -- every time you play is part of ONE long run, no matter how often or for how long your play is interrupted.
You can stop the long run only by quitting gambling for the rest of your life
Most people would be better off if they did just that, but of course few will.
Another thing to remember about the long run and the short run is the expectation.
When you play a negative expectation game, the longer you play, the more you lose
In the short run, anything can and will happen. You will win some sessions.
When you play a negative expectation game, the best way to reduce your risk to the absolute minimum is to take all the money you will ever play on this game for your entire life, and bet it all at once.
If you win, cash in your winnings and walk away. You are a winner.
If you lose, walk away. You are still a winner just for playing with such intelligence and discipline.
The next time you feel an urge to play the slots, do it. Pull out
a quarter, resolve that that is your lifetime slots bet. Drop it in, pull the handle and hope for the best.
Whatever happens, walk away.
When you play a positive expectation game, the longer you play, the more you will win
That's the only way to win money over the long run.
What is the "long run" for casinos?
Great question, and it points out a very important reason for the vast difference in bottom-line results between you and the casino.
The casino's "short run" is maybe 10 minutes. That's because the casino is backing a large number of bets at the same time. Hundreds of people are feeding quarters into slot machines. Others are playing video poker. Crowds are standing around the craps tables, the blackjack tables, the Caribbean Stud tables and all the rest.
At every given moment except during the slowest periods, the casino
is covering more money in bets in five minutes than you can put down in a year. Since almost all these bets are at a positive expectation (for the casino!), that's why casinos are big money makers. Yes, in any given five minutes they lose a lot of bets, but they win even more. They are filling in the bell curve all at once.
Actually, what happens in the short run is usually known in gambling circle as "streaks."
Or "choppy" play.
Can't we win when we know one from the other?
Gambling Streaks Are Not *Real* Streaks
"The rulers of the country generally believed that betting eliminates strikes. Men had to work in order to gamble." --- Michael Ondaatje, Running the Family
Huh?
Streaks are not streaks? What on earth can THAT mean?
I decided to address this directly in a separate chapter because so many gamblers make a simple but not intuitively obvious error in logic that costs them a lot of money.
You're playing roulette, betting Red. Black has come up the last 10 times.
You decide to bet on Red again, because you know that the odds of Red instead of Black coming up 11 times in a row are one out of 2048. (Ignoring the unpleasant Green 0 and 00 slots and the untidy fractions they would force me to use.)
Wrong.
Yes, Red may come up. Yes, the odds of Black coming up 11 times in a row are one out of 2048.
But for this next spin of the wheel, the true odds of Red instead of Black winning are still just one out of two minus 5.26% for the two Green slots.
So don't bet the farm on Red.
First, each roll of the roulette ball is a totally independent event. The ball and the wheel do not care that Black has won for the past 10 spins. There is no causal connection between the past 10 spins and the current ones.
But aren't the odds against Black winning eleven times in a row one out of 2048? Yes, unless I just made an error with my calculator.
So why do I insist that the odds of the eleventh spin are still one out of two?
Because each individual spin is an independent event.
You can't tie the odds together like that, retroactively
You already know Black has won 10 times in a row. That's in the past. The odds for the eleventh spin don't change no matter what happened before it.
You would use the one out of 2048 odds only if you were to bet on the next -- future -- eleven spins in a row. Each spin's odds of Black winning is one out of two, and so the one out of 2048 figure comes from multiplying all eleven together:
1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2 X 1/2= 1/2048
However, if the first 10 spins have already been spun, the results should NOT be expressed as probabilities, because they are now certainties. You already KNOW they were all Black.
So the one out of 2048 odds are not involved, not when you're looking backward in time. Not when you're betting on just one spin of the wheel.
Doesn't that make sense? When the spins have all been spun and the results of each have all happened to be Black, the math looks like this:
1 X 1 X 1 X 1 X 1 X 1 X 1 X 1 X 1 X 1 X 1/2= 1/2
I've taken pains to make this so clear to you that you are wondering why I'm over explaining the obvious. It's because you need to know this so well that it remains obvious to you even when you're in the heat of a game and you see a long series of one kind of bet win and it becomes natural to start wondering when the other side is going to win.
It becomes very tempting to bet too heavily that the other side is going to win, because you think it's somehow become a sure thing.
If it's so obvious that the odds for each independent events does not change no matter what happened prior to that independent event, why does almost everybody seated around a mini-bac table waste their time recording the results of the shoe and bet based on the past wins and losses of Player and Banker?
If it's so obvious, why have so many people spent so much money on betting systems?
If it's so obvious, why do so many otherwise intelligent, informed and experienced gambling writers say that gambling is a matter of "streaks" or "trends?"
A lot of gambling writers talk about streaks.
I don't like that terminology. To me the word "streak" implies a real connection from one end of the streak to the other.
Lightning strikes in "streaks" because it is a form of focused energy. It is obeying natural laws of physics.
A "streak" of paint on a wall was put them by one stroke of the same brush.
But the separate results of baccarat, roulette, and craps have no such causal connection.
Look at it this way -- every gambling game has only so many events that can happen.
Like flipping coins -- unless the coin falls against something, it always comes up Heads or Tails. That's it, there are no other possibilities.
Say you're flipping coins and you wish to preserve the results for posterity. So you write H, H, H, H, H, H and on and on on a piece of paper.
This "streak" is an illusion -- it's assuming meaning and significance that is not present. You wrote those six Hs in a row because Heads came up six times running, but you could have written the Hs like this:
H
H H H H
H
This is just as accurate a picture of the results. We've just been trained since preschool to write left to right in straight lines. It is neater and is superior from a design and usability standpoint.
However, reading actual causality into that convention of linear transcription is a logical error. Just because you write "H, H, H, H, H H" in a straight line does not mean that the earlier Hs somehow caused the later ones, or that a T is waiting just behind the curtain to make its entrance.
Any significance you see in past results is an illusion (always assuming a fair game, of course!)
I cannot stress this point too much because many people want to sell you systems based on them.
There are no streaks. There are only independent results happening one after the other.
That's so important I'm going to repeat it --
There are no streaks. Gambling is about independent results happening one after the other.
Many times, those results will be the same for irregular periods of time. Many times, they won't be the same, the results will alternate at irregular periods of time.
I know this sounds obvious, but remember that as results occur there are only two possibilities.
Either they are the same, in which case you have a tendency to call them "streaks" even though there is no cause and effect relationship between them.
Or they are not the same, and you call the results "choppy."
Yet there is still no causal relationships.
Don't understand this, and you will fall prey to the dreaded Gambler's Fallacy, or to books and software advocating systems that are variations on it.
Gambler's Fallacy
"In any bet there is a fool and a thief." --- Old gambling saying
You're at the roulette wheel. The last ten spins have all come up Red numbers. The croupier's about to start the ball again. Should you bet Black? After all, the chances of Red coming up eleven times in a row is one out of 2048. Black is due, right?
If you believe that is logical, you should forget gambling for money. Gamble for fun but leave your credit and ATM cards at home.
The belief that a gambling event is more likely to happen due to a long run of prior outcomes is responsible for more rich system sellers, more profitable casinos and more lost fortunes than any other form of gambling ignorance.
Every gambling event is an "independent trial." Roulette wheels and balls don't have memories. Neither do dice. Neither do decks of cards.
(Dealing out particular cards does eliminate those cards from being dealt out of the same deck in later hands, and this will affect the rest of play with that deck, so in a sense the cards within a deck or shoe do have memories. However, after a good shuffle, a deck or shoe of cards is a new event. This will be covered later in the chapters on blackjack.)
In the long run, the results of the roulette wheel's spin will approach the true odds. But ten is NOT the long run. Try thousands of spins.
There are many betting systems which take advantage of gamblers who fall for what's called Gambler's Fallacy. That is, the belief that gambling events will even out. Or that they can take advantage of the tendency of events to return to the mean.
If the systems don't tell you to bet the opposite of the "trend," they're telling you to bet *with* the "trend."
Although these two concepts seem to be opposite, they are actually at root the same. Both "systems" presuppose -- erroneously -- that there is somehow a connection between the outcome of past events and the next roll or spin or shoe of cards.
If they understand that past results do not influence future results, they say you should follow the probability wave or some other such pseudo-scientific nonsense.
The only trouble is, there is no connection. The odds for each single event do not change no matter what happened before. Red comes up 18 out of 38 spins of a roulette wheel, Black comes up 18 out of 38 spins and the Green 0 and 00 come up 1 out of 38 spins each (both Red and Black lose). That is just as true whether Red has come up the past ten spins, or Red and Black have alternated for the past fifty spins.
If the craps shooter has rolled ten 7s in a row, should you bet the next roll is not a 7? No, the odds of the next roll being a 7 are still 6 out of 36, same as all the rolls before.
There is another huge flaw in betting systems that you must understand.
For instance, there are baccarat systems being sold on the Internet that claim to teach you how to win by utilizing "patterns."
You must understand that baccarat patterns are an illusion created by how we write down results. Our minds are marvelous pattern-making systems.
This is basically a good thing. Scientists use the pattern-making powers of their minds to discover and understand the true patterns governing the universe. Novelists can organize their experiences, what they've read and felt and learned, other people they know and other aspects of their lives into magnificent works of fiction.
Any of you who have ever tried out a psychedelic substance such as LSD know that your brain can project marvelous pictures and full movies out of the swirls in abstract wallpaper.
This is fine entertainment if you choose to do that. Unfortunately, some people project patterns onto past results and instead of simply accepting it as a fun aspect of their minds, convince themselves the patterns are "real" and bet money on them.
Remember, the results of most gambling are limited.
You flip a coin. Heads. That's one result.
Flip it again. Heads.
Et voila! A pattern. We've got a heads streak going, right? But what is the alternative? Tails.
If heads comes up after heads, you're on a streak.
If tails comes up after heads, you've got a choppy pattern. Sounds significant, right? But what's the alternative. Nothing! The reality is, given a fair coin, there is no causal link between any flip and therefore no true pattern.
The words "streak" and, especially, "pattern" imply that there is an underlying cause creating all the results. There can be a true streak or pattern only when there the flips have something in common causing the results.
But each flip is random. The odds don't change.
What if we could somehow mentally control the outcome?
Psychic Gambling
"Your life doesn't go with it." --- Nick the Greek, explaining to a surprised party host why he was drinking and dancing after losing a small fortune in a craps game
Can you win at gambling through ESP?
Gambling experts will uniformly tell you no. That is only for idiots.
They have a lot of evidence on their side. Anybody who sees long term gambling results knows they are random.
If anybody can win at gambling through some form of ESP, where are they?
If I could, I sure wouldn't advertise it to anyone, so the seeming lack of winners using ESP does not constitute lack of proof.
Sure, lots of losing gamblers are superstitious. But no advocate of ESP ever claimed that it could cure deliberate stupidity. If you play stupidly, you're going to lose money.
Do any smart professional gamblers deliberately use ESP? Who knows? It does seem to me that ESP would more likely favor people who know how to put all factors of play in their favor.
Jose Silva, the founder of a world famous method for teaching mind power concepts using brain waves, once won a Mexican lottery by dreaming the numbers
However, before you rush to emulate him, know this:
He had been studying psychology and many other subjects for years without finding what he wanted, and was getting so discouraged he was planning to quit his research.
He did dream the numbers in an intense dream of bright light, but did not know what they meant.
It wasn't until a friend suggested the next evening, while on a trip across the Mexican border to buy his wife something, that the numbers were lottery numbers, that Silva considered this.
(At that time there were no legal lotteries in the US.)
He did find the numbers he dreamed on a lottery ticket for sale in a little shop where he bought his wife some rubbing alcohol, and so he bought it and won!
He did not intend to win the lottery. He did take the win as a sign he was meant to continue with his research!
I've read that one of the few people who have won an American state lotto jackpot two times claims his "technique" was to pray.
Down on your knees!
John Scarne pointed out in one of his books that if thoughts could influence the fall of dice, that the casinos would be out of business, since dice tables are surrounded by people all praying and shouting for the number to come up.
He made the interesting point that casinos were still in business.
Of course, he wrote that a long time ago. Since then, at least one casino did go out of business because one of its craps tables got really hot. The shooter did not roll a 7 for a long time, and the players won so much it really did break the bank.
ESP? I doubt it, but I don't know.
Silva and many other teachers in this area claim that you can only use these powers for the good of other people.
That does include doing well for yourself, but not at the expense of other people. They therefore claim you cannot use such powers to take money from casinos.
This is a debatable subject. In MONEY FREEDOM Patricia Remele relates how when she was first raising her prosperity consciousness, she was approached for a donation from a group raising money to finance efforts to promote freedom in the then still existing Soviet Union.
She pledged that if she made a lot of money, she would give half of it to this group.
A few weeks later she got a strong feeling to visit her broker and buy $10,000 worth of put options on the S&P 500.
For those of you who don't gamble with options, this meant that she was placing a $10,000 bet that the stock market would fall in value before her put options expired.
She says that she barely knew what put options were, but she had such a strong feeling to do this, that she trusted her intuition and did it.
This was in Fall, 1987. She made a killing when the stock market crashed on October 19, 1987. $400,000.
The point in me mentioning this story is that she used a form of ESP to make a lot of money
However, she most certainly did make it at the expense of other people -- that $400,000 came from some of the many people who lost their shirts during that crash. They took the risk voluntarily, so it's not like she did anything I would consider wrong (other S&P put owners made a lot of money without making promises to support worthy causes), but she did win a win/lose game. Which left behind some losers.
Now, she was not responsible for the crash. She didn't deliberately cause it to raise money for freedom in the Soviet Union. She was apparently led to take advantage of the opportunity. The stock market was going to crash with her or without her.
Lottery winners are not taking money out of other people's money, but winning by Divine Intervention does negatively impact other people. The money Jose Silva won would have been won by someone else if he had not dreamed that number and been lead to the very ticket.
The jackpots won by the person who prayed to win the lotto were therefore not won by someone else.
(All lotto money is won by somebody eventually.)
Can this power be consciously applied? I don't know. In her book, Remele does not say she then started a new career as an options trader. Jose Silva did not go on to become a professional lottery winner. On the other hand, if you win the lotto jackpot twice, as the man who prayed to win did, you don't need to win anymore. Maybe even he thinks 3 lotto jackpots is a lot to ask of God.
I know there are people in casinos right now, in Las Vegas and everywhere else, practicing ESP as they play.
We live in a universe that is stranger than we know, and I'm not going to rule ESP out of the picture. However, it seems that the only people who gamble successfully via ESP do so because money is not their main goal, just a means to other, usually spiritual or charitable ends.
Me, I'll take the money, and something more reliable than ESP.
If the payoff on the odds are almost all against us, and we probably can't depend on God, are there ways to somehow take advantage of gambling games? Are they really as random as claimed?
What causes the final results of those independent events to occur?
What is Really Random?
"My son, someday a man with a pack of new cards will come up to you and offer to bet you that he cannot make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt apple cider in your ear.
"My son, whatever you do, do not bet this man. Because as sure as the sun rises in the east, you will wind up with an earful of cider." -- Damon Runyon
The word "random" is used constantly in writing about gambling and probability.
What is it exactly? That's easy, you say?
It's when any of the possible results of an action can happen, for no reason.
Flip a coin. Will it land on heads or tails? That's random, right? I don't think so.
Whether a given coin flip lands as heads or tail is caused by very specific things
The force with which you flip it.
The angle your thumbnail applies to it on the flip. Whether it starts out with heads or tails up.
Possibly things such as air pressure, temperature and relative humidity.
The exactly speed and direction and angle with which you move your hand to catch the falling quarter.
In short, a coin flip is not random at all. The result is the end product of whole slew of events, major and minor.
Shoot dice in a craps game. Is the result random?
Of course not. The dice end up as they do as a result of the very precise way you throw it. The starting position. The exact amount of force you apply. The angle. The spin given by your fingertips. The ambient air pressure. The precise angle at which they hit the foam rubber pyramids. Their exact shape.
The position of cards in a card game are a very precise result of: the preshuffled order of the deck or decks. The exact way they are shuffled. The exact pressure of the dealer's fingertips, or the shuffling machine etc.
In fact, it's debatable whether anything that happens in the universe above the quantum/atomic level truly happens at random. Everything is a result of a huge combination of causes.
What we call random, really is just uncontrollable and unpredictable.
You can't control every tiny factor affecting the flip of a coin, or the throw of craps dice or the shuffle of cards.
Events are random not because anything can happen "just because" -- they are random because they cannot be controlled or predicted.
So what?
Many people claim to have an advantage in certain ways in certain gambling games.
Lots of people dismiss these claims as nonsense because the results of these games are "random." Since nothing is really random, this actually gives us hope.
Maybe there are fair ways to control or predict results which the average gambler does not know about.
We must still use common sense, but we should not limit our thinking to how the casinos want us to think, because then we are certain losers.
If you understand that every effect is the result of causes, that empowers you to look for the cause/s. If you can control the cause/s, you can control the result.
You must consider this in regard to certain claims made regarding some "advantage" gambling techniques.
If the result of a throw of craps dice is not random, can it be controlled? Some people say so.
Before we go into a casino, though, we should learn how the hard headed gambler views that most important subject, money.
Money -- both our personal finances and betting while gambling -- is the subject of our next section.
And first we must learn an elementary principle that's a foundation of microeconomics but which I've never seen explained by gambling writers.
The highest costs of gambling can be the *invisible* opportunity costs.
Opportunity Costs of Gambling
"A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned." --- Paul Newman, The Color of Money
This chapter addresses a concept I do not recall ever reading about in any gambling book.
Yet it's extremely important to you whenever you make a decision regarding your money. This is especially true regarding gambling.
This is a tool that is used daily by economists, but how many people -- especially gambling writers -- are trained economists?
I'm not a trained economist either, but I know of the concept and understand it. It's not difficult.
In fact, this important but little written about tool is one of the things we learned about in kindergarten
We just were not trained to consciously think of it in all areas of our lives, although it does apply to all areas, time and money especially.
It goes like this.
You have a piece of cake.
You want to eat that piece of cake. Mmm, sure must taste good!
You also want to save that piece of cake so you can eat it later.
Problem -- how can you eat your cake and have it too?
Answer: You can't -- right?
An essential piece of the bad news of life we learned in kindergarten
What we didn't learn was to understand that when we eat a piece of cake we not only are giving up the right to eat it in the future, we are also giving up, for that same period of time:
1. Eating another, possibly bigger, piece of cake
2. Eating a piece of pie
3. Cookies
4. Steak
5. Spending that same time swimming or playing baseball or working a video game
and the list goes on.
We live in a finite world bounded by 3 dimensions of space and time.
Whatever we do, we are NOT doing everything else we could be doing instead. Usually we don't pay much attention. We see that piece of cake and grab it and enjoy it without thinking about all the cake, pie, candy, and cookies in the world which we are NOT eating.
That's fine for eating cake, but when we are discussing more important issues of our lives, we must carefully weigh the alternatives.
Should you major in pre-Med or Accounting? OK, some people take double majors, but at some point in college they must aim for a specific area, or at least complementary double majors.
Should you accept that programming job with General Motors or that new media developer job with Dotcomstartup.com? You can't have a full-time career with both.
Should you marry Tom, Dick or Harry? You can't marry all three, not legally, not now in America.
How does this apply to casino gambling?
Your money and time are both valuable
Let's take fun gambling first.
The Saturday night you spend gambling in a casino is a Saturday night you are NOT:
Watching a new movie
Listening to a concert
Shopping at the mall
Playing video games at home with your kids
Drinking in a bar with your friends
Picking up a stranger. (OK, that can happen in a casino, but in that case, while you are gambling, it's not a game run by the casino.)
Bowling
Watching TV at home
Dancing
Singing karaoke
Reading a book
Exploring the Internet
Get the idea? It could be that by not going to the casino you would have just as much fun but spend a lot less money.
OK, shopping at the mall and picking up a stranger could cost you more than you'd lose in the casino. The other activities cost less.
Yes, the other activities have no profit potential. Gambling, on a short term basis, does. You might win. But remember, the more you play those negative expectation games, the more you will lose. Tonight you may quit $50 ahead. But after a year of Saturday nights at the casino, you will be much farther behind.
OK, now how about you serious Bart Maverick pro gambler wannabes?