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Casino and Gambling Stories
Enjoy – and feel free to send me your own short casino, Blackjack and gambling stories – maybe I’ll post some of them here for others to read! Send your story or question to me by email (your address will be kept confidential and never traded, sold or given away).
My email is info @ winningblackjack.ca (just remember to remove the spaces before and after the @ symbol)...
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Atlantic City - Playing Poker With Real People and Cards
I can’t stand video poker, internet poker, simulated poker games, etc. But playing poker in a casino at a table against other humans is great. It is the only casino gambling game besides Blackjack that can be beat by a skilled player with discipline.
The first time I played poker in a casino was great fun. It was Seven Card Stud in Atlantic City in 1993. Just a small limit game (I think it was a $2-$4 game). I bought in for $200 and a couple hands into it I’m holding an 8 in my hand (and something else) and looking at another 8 face up in front of me. The next card to come up is meaningless, and then another 8, and finally the last 8 is dealt face up in front of me. I’ve got 3-of-a-kind for everyone to see with the fourth tucked safely down.
It’s my turn to call a $4 bet, raise or fold and I instinctively push ALL of my chips towards the centre of the table, with everyone just staring at me with big wide-open eyes. I wonder what they were thinking.
The dealer says, “You can’t do that – the maximum bet is 4 dollars. You’ve been watching too much TV!” So I take my chips back and raise to $8. Now the table is talking – they don’t know if I’m bluffing with this crazy act or if I really am new to this! Most of them are smart and fold, but 3 of them stayed in just to see. They could obviously beat 3-of-a-kind, but not 4.
I learned my lesson that day – I could have easily made an extra $50 or more on that hand if I played it properly. It was funny though – and if you don’t think so, then I guess you had to be there!
Las Vegas - Let’s Play Dice
I can’t stand slot machines or any other simulated casino gambling game. Table games with real people and real cards or dice are much more interesting and provide for a more realistic gaming experience. When you understand the odds on various bets and utilize smart money management, games such as Craps can provide you with up to and sometimes more than a 49% chance of winning. According to the math and probability these games cannot be beaten (you will always have less than a 50% chance of winning on any bet at any time). If you play smart you can secure a healthy profit when winning - set a stop-loss or a stop-win and walk away with YOUR MONEY! Playing the Pass Line at Craps with maximum odds gives the casino less than a 1% advantage.
In November of 2005, on a 5 day trip to Las Vegas with my wife (let’s call her “she”), we were losing at just about everything we touched the first 4 days. Just about the only thing turning a modest profit was betting on Hockey games at the Sports book. She said she would try to play some Poker and Craps with me, and in exchange I would play a few slot machines. I even entered a short slot tournament. Long story short, she never played anything expect the lousy slots. Those things should be banned!
On the last day, I decided the only way we had a chance was if I wore my lucky flaming cards and dice shirt! We started with the free slot pull at the Riviera (“why not get a free coffee mug and a deck of cards?”). So, I hit the 777 and couldn’t come back the next day to claim my “free pull on every slot machine...” so they gave me $500 and away we went. The Hockey games were still coming in and "she" even hit 4-of-a-kind on video poker.
Off to the Excalibur 90 minutes before we had to head to the airport, I decide I’m just about done gambling – I’ve had enough, but I’ll buy in for $100 at the Craps table and play until it’s done or doubled. It’s a $10 table with 3x, 4x, 5x odds. I lose the first $10 bet, and then win the next with odds. Then lose. Then the dice were passed to me.
I am betting conservatively and making pass after pass, betting the Come to get a couple more numbers on the board, and even throwing a few “sucker bets” into the centre. About 20 minutes into my roll, everyone is having fun and making lots of money. I keep making sucker bets (Hardways and Yo) and making sure to announce that some of it was for the dealers. I would have made much more money than I did if I pressed my pass line bets more and stayed away from the side bets. It was turning into “Yo and Hard 8 for 25 and 5 each”…
The pit bosses are getting nervous because several people at the table were betting big and accumulating quite a stack. All together, they changed dealers about 5 or 6 times during my roll (well OVER 45 minutes by the end of it). After about 40 minutes, I said that I had a plane to catch soon. Someone said, “We’ll drive you, keep shooting!” They were probably only half joking.
I ended my roll up well over $1000 (too bad I bet conservatively)! My last bet after taking a very nice and shiny single $1000 chip was just pushing a huge stack of $5 red chips into the Don’t Pass, thinking the table was sure to go cold instantly.
The lesson here is to bet with the streak! This table was hot – at least I pocketed the $1000.
Beating the System – Sports Betting Run By the Lottery People
I can’t stand the lottery company sports betting racket. When the lottery companies first introduced sports betting in the mid-nineties, they didn’t have all of the extra betting options that are now available (over-under, etc.). It was straight-forward – bet on the home team to win, visiting team to win, or you could bet on a tie. As is usually the case, you would need to bet on a minimum of 3 games and get them ALL right to win anything. The odds for each game are multiplied by each other to give you the overall odds. For example, the three teams (or bets) you pick have odds of 1.6, 3.5 and 2.2 (multiplied together to give you a total of 12.32 to 1 if you picked all 3 games).
The odds were realistic back then – the “long shots” would regularly be at 5 to 1 or higher. The first year that this was available, I figured out that by picking teams to win (home or visitor) with high odds (for example 4, 5 and 6 as the highest for each), that a profit could usually be made by betting on all possible combinations for 3 games. I didn’t bet on the tie, so if any game tied it would be a loss for me. The long shots were winning regularly this year and the lottery people were losing a lot of money. If the example above came in, it would be at 120 to 1 (4x5x6).
So, I just made sure to buy 8 tickets when the odds were high enough – it didn’t really matter who was playing or what the outcome was. It wasn’t possible to lose every bet unless a game ended in a tie, and assuming at least one “long shot” won, there was good profit to be made.
I selected my tickets this way (H = Home team to win, V = Visiting team to win):
1. H H H
2. H H V
3. H V H
4. V V V
5. V V H
6. V H V
7. H V V
8. V H H
Of course, when the lottery people figured out that regular people actually had a chance of winning, they started lowering the overall odds and introducing new bets.
There was one day in particular that I remember quite well. There were 3 games that night with very high odds and I had a feeling that all of the “long shots” had a great chance of winning. They did win. All of them! The total odds worked out to 302 to 1. Earlier that day, I was all ready to make my $10 bets on each of the 8 combinations. I was traveling that day and missed the cutoff by several minutes – no tickets for me!
The lesson here is to think everything through, know your options and do not hesitate when it is time to act!
Beating the Carnival – the Old Money Wheel
I can’t stand “carnival games”, which includes all of the crazy games with ridiculous odds against (such as Sic-bo and Chuck-a-luck), Keno, etc.
Some of you probably remember the “good old days”. High-tech has given us some incredibly great gadgets and some fun things, but casino gambling used to be much more enjoyable. Less bells and music and video screens.
The old money wheel games were almost as impossible to beat 20 years ago as they are today. ALMOST. There was a particular wheel that caught my attention at an exhibition that included a “casino” ($0.50 to $2.00 Blackjack, money wheel, etc.) and when I counted the number of spots for each bet and calculated the approximate odds for various combinations, I found something interesting. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th highest odds bets all together totaled close to what the two lowest odds (2 to 1 and 1 to 1) would return.
I decided to bet each of these (20 to 1; 10 to 1; and 5 to 1) each spin. It worked just fine. The true odds of collecting something were about 4 to 1 against, meaning I was collecting a winning bet on about 1 out of every 4 spins or better.
At $1 per bet, the cost is $3 per spin. Collecting on the 5 to 1 bet returns $6, for a net profit of $3 on this spin, with $3 lost on the spins that returned nothing. But that’s not where the profit is – the profit came from the spins where the 20 to 1 (returning $21) and the 10 to 1 (returning $11) were hitting. This more than compensates for the $3 losing spins and small profit 5 to 1 spins.
Not a huge money-maker, but it was fun while it lasted. Unfortunately, by the next year all of the wheels had been modified.
There is no real lesson here, other than “stay away from casino games that you have VERY little chance of winning”.
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