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Casino Play

An overview of a Las Vegas casinos slot machines and game tables.

Regardless of how well you play a casino game, the house always has an edge — otherwise, it wouldn't be in business. However, with sensible wagering and money-management strategies, you can cut that house advantage to around 2 percent — or even less.

1. When you head for the casino, take along a gambling stake equal to about 40 times your usual minimum bet for each day of your stay. You can't play wisely or comfortably with anything less. Divide your stake into two parts, but not less than $100 per gambling session, which is the bare minimum for survival at a $5 table. (If you go mid-week, most casinos have $3 or even $2 tables, meaning you can live with a smaller stake.)
2. When you're losing, don't borrow from the next session's stake. If you go through your entire amount, walk away from the table — and the casino. You can gamble another time. If you're losing, or barely holding your own, set a time limit for the session - say, 30 minutes — and quit if nothing happens in the period.
3. If your budget is limited, work harder to preserve your stake. When you lose half, stop playing.
4. If you're winning, secure your original stake as soon as you double your money. Take the chips off the table and put them in your pocket — and don't remove them until you're ready to cash out. You'll then be playing with the casino's money.
5. Continue removing money each time you hit another plateau. — say $50 in winnings — so that you always have only $100 to $150 on the table (assuming you started with $100). If your luck turns, quit when you've lost 50 percent of the money. Most people find it difficult to quit while they're winning — and it is hard. However, you should try it at least once — it just might get to be habit-forming!

Consider your tolerance for risk or aversion to risk in sizing your bankroll and deciding on your bet size. For serious gamblers with an aversion to risk, decide on the level of risk you wish to take and then sizing your bankroll accordingly. Aggressive gamblers will use 100 and some even less depending on the funds at hand and the table betting limits to contend with. The fewer units you break your bankroll into, the higher your risk of losing your bankroll on a bad luck run, so give this decision some serious consideration before your casino visit.

The point to remember in knowing when to increase and decrease your bet size, is don't let your emotions get in the way of making an intelligent wager; i.e., don't chase any losses or bet up too heavily on a winning streak. This latter point is especially important if you're a craps player. I have seen players "pressing up" their bets on a "hot shooter" only to leave most of their winnings on the table when the shooter sevens out. It is very important to bet with a carefully thought-out plan in the heat of battle. Especially less experienced gamblers, only increase your bet on winning activity and use a progression based on successive even money bets.

The numbers are "betting units" and you are making bets that pay off at one-to-one, i.e. blackjack, craps pass line, and roulette outside numbers (red, black, odd, even, high, low). In each case, increase your bet to the next unit level in the series on each win. On a loss, revert to a one-unit bet and start over. For example, if your betting unit is $5:

Conservative Progression:	1	1	2	2	3	3	4	4	5	5	6	6
	$5	$5	$10	$10	$15	$15	$20	$20	$25	$25	$30	$30

Aggressive Progression:	1	1	2	2	2	4	4	4	8	8	8
	$5	$5	$10	$10	$10	$20	$20	$20	$40	$40	$40

The most common progression systems are either "up as you lose" systems or the exact opposite, "up as you win" progressions. They have one thing in common - they don't work in the long run. Study these progressions and you will come to appreciate their value in not only accumulating profits on a winning streak, but also protecting these profits. Any system that relies on a betting progression to beat a negative expectation game will fail.

Roulette And Keno — Forget about these games if you want to be a consistent winner. There's really no way to improve your style of play since the outcome of each spin or draw is pure luck — and, even if you could figure out a way to play better, the odds of these two are still the worst of all games in the house. (In roulette, for example, the best odds are on single numbers — 35 to 1 — still well below the true wheel odds of 38 to 1.)

All roulette bets—single numbers, combos, black or red, etc.—yield the house an identical 5.26% edge. Sucks for you. (If you don’t like it, try Monte Carlo: European wheels have only one zero instead of two, halving the house edge.) The one exception to the 5.26% edge rule is the five number combo 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3, which gives the house a 7.29% edge. A famous sucker bet.

Slot Machines — More people play the slots than all other casino gambling games combined — which is unfortunate because the one-armed bandits also tend to offer fairly bad odds (especially in places where state laws mandate lower payouts in order to produce more tax revenues). The typical slot machine in Las Vegas or Reno offers a payoff of 92 to 98 percent, meaning the machine pays out $920 to $980 in jackpots for every $1000 bet. However, there are also some better deals, particularly in a few of the "off-strip" casinos in Vegas, where some machines offer 100 percent paybacks, or even more! To find these "money machines," look for a row of slots with lots of activity — a deserted area in a busy casino means players have left for machines where the payback is better. Casinos also sometimes boost the payout ratio on machines at the ends of long rows, or near casino entrances. They want these machines to pay off loudly to attract passersby into the gaming area and toward the remote machines, which usually don't pay as well.

Actually, all slot machines go through cycles — paying part of the time and going cold at others. During a pay cycle, the machine can pump out far more than put in — and stay hot for a hundred pulls or more. Unfortunately, cold cycles can last just as long — and empty your wallet.

Watch before you play. If you see a $1 machine gulp $100 or more (even with a few small payouts), and the player walks away empty, give it a try. It may be time for its pay cycle (For a 25-cent machine, look for a rapid loss of $20 to $30.)

If you walk up to a machine "blind," feel the coins after your first payoff. Warm coins have been sitting inside a while, indicating a pay cycle may be due. If coins are cool, try another machine. Ask a change clerk to recommend a hot slot. Casinos don't mind, and you are likely to get a good tip. If so, tip the clerk back — 10 percent off that machine.

Try machines near gaming tables. They sometimes pay better since they're used to lure spouses whose mates are playing blackjack or craps. Machines in less conspicuous spots have less advertising potential and, thus, pay fewer jackpots. Look for three-reel machines with a cherry in the middle. This can be a sign that a pay cycle is coming.

Single-line dollar slots have the best odds. You get more jackpots with multiple-line slots, but the payoffs are smaller. Play the maximum number of coins on each wager. "Progressive" slots with jackpots growing to $1 million usually only pay off when the jackpot is within a programmed range. Unfortunately, it's not easy to discover just what that range is. New machines are programmed to pay generously for the first couple of days in order to draw more business later. If you see one being uncrated and set up, grab it.

Look for machines with guaranteed high payoffs (e.g., "97.4% Payout!”). Also, popular machines and higher-denomination machines (e.g., $5 slots) are often set to pay out slightly better, since they cover their costs more easily. Slots in general; the house edge can be 20% or more and is based on the whim of the casino. Keep the change.

Craps — The house advantage is around 1.40 percent to 1.41 percent on "pass," "come," "don't pass," and "don't come" bets. For better odds, lay "odds" bets after the shooter has established a point. This the only "pure" play in the casino — meaning you get paid off at exactly the same odds you have of rolling the designated number. The only way to make big money at craps is to capitalize on a "hot" roll (craps is basically a "hot" and "cold" game). What you want to catch is a series when a shooter establishes a "point" (4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10) and then throws the dice a dozen or more times before making the point or rolling a 7. That way you make lots of money on the "come" bets, or bets placed directly on the numbers. When the dice are running hot, you should also "press" your bets — increasing them in size as the run keeps progressing and you keep winning. The dice will often stay hot for 25 or 30 minutes, with three or four different shooters — and then go completely cold. If three consecutive shooters "crap out" on only two or three rolls, it's time to move on — the table has turned cold.

Back up one of these even-money bets (The Pass and Don’t Pass lines. Not at the same time, Einstein.) by "taking odds” (ask dealer for details) and you drop the house edge to less than 1%. bad bets: Stay away from the "field” (which yields a house edge from 2.8 to 5.5 percent), "big 6” and "big 8” (9%), and especially the hard ways (9%–11%).

Archeologists discovered several pairs of modern-looking dice in an ancient Egyptian tomb. The sandstone cubes, which now reside in a Chicago museum, are “loaded” —weighted to favor twos and fives. Larceny, it seems, is as old as the Great Pyramids.

Thousands of years later, hustlers continue to rely on this time-tested subterfuge, duping gamblers, who generally assume that they are playing with legitimate dice, known as square dice, perfects, or levels. To beat the odds, cheats utilize percentage dice, which include passers—designed to favor the combinations four, six, eight, and ten —and missouts—engineered to produce more sevens. Loading, known as inside work, is one way to create these devices. The loads vary, ranging from a light percentage to heavily weighted first flop dice, which frequently show the desired combinations.

Though effective, loaded dice present substantial drawbacks: Burned or cut open by embittered losers, they leave behind telltale metallic loads. Swindlers have longed for undetectable means of loading dice. “In gaffed dice,” the gambling expert Frank Garcia observes, “this is important for the continued good health and facial appearance of the hustler.”

So sharps have kept developing new, insidious means to alter the weight of dice to affect their outcome. Rigged dice called floaters rely on empty spaces within a die to throw off its weight, the light side of the die being more likely to tumble to the top. Floaters can be burned without leaving any residue, though as their name suggests, they float when dropped in water. Eventually gambling supply houses began offering dice weighted with so-called cabalistic loads, which could be cut, burned, or dropped in water without detection.

In the late nineteenth century loaded dice became more sophisticated with the advent of tappers and electric dice. Tappers contain a drop of mercury and oil in a tiny dumbbellshaped cavity extending outward from the center of the die. Initially a tapper is evenly weighted. Yet, by tapping the dice before throwing them, the cheat shifts the mercury away from the center, effectively loading the dice. After the throw a tap in the opposite direction moves the mercury back to the center, restoring the cubes to perfect balance. Though ingenious, tappers proved unreliable, and gamblers grew suspicious of the tapping.

Electric dice feature iron disks embedded beneath selected facets. An electromagnet concealed within the craps table allows for selective control of the outcome; by activating the electromagnet, the operator can produce a desired combination. Playercheats also use electric dice. A confederate, posing as a spectator, wears a powerful magnet beneath his clothing and assists the hustler in rolling a welcome combination by pressing the magnet against the game table. This produces a near-certain result, but the setup is expensive, requires elaborate preparation, and leaves concrete evidence of fraud.

Modern cheats have found great success with simpler, cheaper methods of gaffing dice. Abandoning inside work, hustlers now alter the external attributes of the dice, a craft known as outside work. Some attack the shape of dice. By shaving between five- and forty-thousandths of an inch from one facet, cheats create dice dubbed bricks or flats. Bricks work because shaving one facet reduces the surface area of the four adjacent sides, as well as the chance that the die will come to rest on one of those sides. Thus a brick is more likely to land on the shaved facet or the opposite side. Dice crafted with convex facets, called bevels, tend to roll onto a flat side. Conversely, concave surfaces create a slight vacuum that adheres to a smooth playing surface, the principle underlying so-called suction dice. Edge workers fashion trip dice by rounding certain edges, causing the cube to roll until it hits a sharp edge.

Other cheats utilize surface qualities to rewrite the laws of probability. Capped dice feature facets coated with a substance more elastic than the rest of the die, causing it to bounce off the capped sides. Selective polishing, known as slick work, increases the likelihood that the tumbling die will slide to a stop on the slippery side. Even applying the spots with a heavy zinc paint gives the cheat a small advantage.

Subtlety is important to the dice cheat. By cutting his percentage, he reduces the chances of detection. And, in the long run, even a modest advantage will suffice. “Sharps have been known to lose in spite of the favorable percentage, but those instances are merely the well-known exceptions that prove the rule,” the gambling authority John Scarne once observed. “If the dice roll long enough, the man who knows what numbers are favored is going to finish with a fatter bankroll than when he started.”

Video Poker — There's' a big debate still going on over whether success at video poker — quickly becoming one of the most popular "machine" gambling games — is dependent on finding a hot machine or whether strategy can help improve your odds of winning. Until a firm resolution of that conflict is reached, the best I can do is recommend some additional reading. John Patrick's Video Poker: The Complete Guide to Playing and Winning, currently recognized as the foremost authority on the game. The book explains how the machines' work, outlines his theories on winning and details some strategies he has developed.

Coinless Casino Machine This Coinless Casino Game is not a toy, this is the real thing. Authentic, high-quality professional casino machine has been completely reconditioned for the recreational market. It's permanently set for free-play, eliminating the need for coins or tokens. Featuring incredible lighting and sound effects, this machine involves skill as well as luck. Each spinning wheel can be stopped at the touch of a button. Better timing equals a bigger jackpot! Japanese-made machine has been in service for only 2 years. Casino game uses standard household current. Styles will vary, our choice, please. 90 lbs. About 33" x 21" x 14". Skill play coinless machines are for personal recreational use only. They are not available to ship to New Jersey and New Mexico and any applicable local laws should be reviewed before purchasing.

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