GamingTips

A lot of people get very confused when gambling, when, for instance, they hear that a specific game or machine has a certain payout, and they don’t get it.  Here’s a couple of reasons that happens.

First, payouts and holds are averages, they are not the guaranteed outcome in any one session.  Just like it is possible for you to win despite the house advantage, it is possible for the house to win more than expected.

Second, holds and payouts are based on perfect strategic play.  If you are not playing perfect strategy, you can expect the hold to be higher.  Even slight variations can have large effects on the odds.

Finally, the hold is not the percentage of money brought to a table that a casino keeps.  It is based off of the amount of money gambled.   This may seem like a small difference, but it adds up.  Let’s use an easy example.

If your are playing a $1 slot, and you start with $10, with a hold of say 10% (just to make it easy), you think the casino should only win  $10, leaving you with ninety.  But, let’s say you pull the lever with your first dollar, and you win $2.  You now have already played $1, and have $12 on the machine.  By the time you have gone through the money you have, you will actually have played $13, not $10.  If you continue to go up and down (as you usually do) it is quite possible that you will have played twice as much, or more, as what you brought to the table.  The hold is based 0ff of the total amount played, not the original bankroll of the player.

So, when looking at payouts and holds, players need to take into account natural, random variation; their skill level; and the true meaning of the payout and hold.

There is a myth, particularly among newer gamblers that casinos and their employees don’t want you to win, or don’t want experienced players, with more understanding of the games, playing.

For the staff, this is stupid right off the bat.  The staff make the majority of their income off of tips.  People are more likely to tip on the casino floor if they are winning.  Moreover, losers tend to be less pleasant to be around than winners, often taking out their frustration on a dealer, a cocktail server, or the food server in the next restaurant they eat in.

As far as the casino goes, this may be a little bit of a surprise, but they don’t mind you winning either.  First of all, a lot of people who gamble will go up for a short period of time, only to lose their winnings right back.  Even those players smart enough to walk away with their money do this without realizing it.  Somebody who wins a few hundred dollars their first time playing craps is a lot more likely to come back and play it again, possibly with a bigger bankroll than the first time.

Second, casinos work on mathematical rules.  Even if every player plays every game perfectly (with the exception that card counters are excluded from blackjack), the casino will, in the long run, win.  The more people are playing, the more predictable and certain this reality is.  And gamblers, especially new, inexperienced gamblers, are attracted to tables where people are yelling, screaming, and cheering, and where they see people with a lot of money.  Walk into any casino when they have two dice tables open, and one will always be full, the other almost empty.  Inexperienced gamblers, and superstitious experienced ones, believe in streaks and luck.  A “hot” table is a money magnet.  So by keeping you around and in a good mood, the casino draws more money onto the casino floor and onto that table, and has an opportunity to make its money back.

Remember, mathematically speaking, the house always wins.  And remember that the law of averages states that the more “random” samples you use, the closer to your statistically respected outcome the average gets.  You, as a winning player, are one of the casino’s strongest marketing tools.

Finally, know that casino executives don’t “sweat the money,” or at least the good ones don’t.  There are days when casinos lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Other days, however, they silently bring in millions.

So don’t buy into the myth that casinos or their employees don’t like winning gamblers.  It’s simply not true, assuming that you are playing the game fairly.

A word of warning for inexperienced machine gamblers.  Often, people looking to just kill some time look for the lowest denomination machines to play.  They’ll go for the pennies or the nickels, thinking that they’ll spend less money over more time.

Well, when you take into account my last post, that’s not always true, especially with the penny slots.  Yes, the minimum bet may be one cent, but the max bet is often 10 or 20, and you can play up to 25 or 50 lines.  So, let’s go with the worst case scenario.  You bet 20 cents each on 50 lines.  You just bet $10.  Meanwhile, most quarter machines are either 3 coin (slot) or 5 coin (poker) max bets, and are often single line or single play machines.

So make sure you don’t automatically go for the lower denomination machine.  Look at what the max bet is, and then you’ll know which machine is actually the cheapest machine for you.

A mistake that a lot of novice gamblers make when playing slots or video poker is playing the minimum bet.  For instance, if they want to play 25 cents a hand, or 25 cents a pull, they look for a quarter machine.  This is almost always a mistake, and here’s why.

A huge part of the “helpful” odds of machine-based games is bonuses and progressives.  And both bonuses and progressives usually require a max bet.  Although it is a rare occurance, people do get the three jackpots on slot machines and the royal flush in video poker.  When that finally happens to you, do you want the moment to be dampened by the knowledge that had you played two more credits, you would have won $1000, or even $12000?  Probably not.

This does not mean you have to spend a lot of money.  It just means you need to look for a different denomination machine, or with today’s technology, even just change the settings on the machine you are at.  Usually, each denomination’s max bet is pretty close to the next denomination up.  For instance, quarters and nickels often have five coin max bets.  That means that in order to take advantage of bonuses and progressive jackpots, you need to play $1.25 or 25 cents respectively.