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[BojTrek]

I went to the Harrah's Casino in Joliet, IL on Friday night with my buddy...

I took $500 off the credit card because I didn't have cash...

Anyways, I lost that $500 in under an hour playing $25 blackjack. I told my buddy I would be right back...

I went and took another $500 off the credit card and went to the $100 high-limits table and dropped it down to $200.

I proceeded to go on a huge run, with my remaining $200, and I won $2400 which is over a 1000% increase.

I didn't want to leave and wanted to win BIG, so I end up losing the money I won and was back down to $200. WHY DIDN'T I WALK AWAY?

My buddy walks in and asks how I am doing... I said "I am a fucking idiot and just lost $2000 and I am about to lose my last $200."

Jeff walks around the high-limits tables and I go on another massive run and turn $200 into $2200... he walks back and says "how the fuck did that happen?"

He says "walk", because not bragging, I have luck out of my ass when playing blackjack... I always win big... I just never stop or become satisfied with winning a few hundred or thousand... it is my achilles heal, I never walk away when I am up if no one is around.

 

[Aruarian Reflection]

... and?

Runs are common in blackjack.

 

[iapetus]

I Turned $200 Into $2000 Twice... 1000% Increase

No you didn't. You turned $1000 into $2000 once. And would probably have turned it into $0 if not for your friend.

 

[Deku Tree]

No you didn't. You turned $1000 into $2000 once. And would probably have turned it into $0 if not for your friend.

exactly

 

[Suranga3]

Don't gamble. Wasting your life doing that shit.

 

[swander]

Don't gamble. Wasting your life doing that shit.

don't gamble, PLAY POKER

 

[Desperado]

tilt

 

[milanbaros]

Poker is the only game worth your time and money.

 

[DarienA]

... and?

Runs are common in blackjack.

Bingo. It's fairly easy to win in Blackjack as long as you aren't a complete idiot. Hell most dealers and other players at the table will offer advice, most of the time.

 

[cvkpaladin]

I don't know if Poker is the only game worth your time and money. I love playing craps and most of the time I come out ahead. Just never ahead by a lot. :lol

 

[DarienA]

I don't know if Poker is the only game worth your time and money. I love playing craps and most of the time I come out ahead. Just never ahead by a lot. :lol

The missus plays craps she said it's fairly easy to come out ahead, especially if you happen to find a table with hi rollers who are on a run... you can just piggyback on to them...

 

[BojTrek]

I gamble once or twice a year... I will take out about $1000 for a local casino and when in Vegas I normally go with $3000 on 3-day trips. And Vegas trips are once every two years!

So I don't gamble often...

I don't waste my life gambling... I make a nice amount of money working during the year and can afford to lose $4000 for an entire year.

I still pay for the house, the cars, the bills, and the wife doesn't mind a night out to gamble and have fun with the friends on a Vegas trip.

Lucky... YES!

Stupid... YES! But I was saved by a buddy...

Credit card bills paid off and no debt on any credit card... YES!

 

[Atari2600]

Make sure you post here when your gambling problem causes you to ruin your credit. Taking money off a credit card to gamble=a gambling problem. The inevitable denial that you're going to post after this=a gambling problem. Saved by a buddy=a gambling problem. Get some help, or take a break until you've got cash to blow or something.

I could be wrong - I don't really know you; but taking money off a credit card to gamble seems crazy. Plus your willingness to keep going and lose it, and thinking you turned $200 into $2000 grand...it all seems like bad stuff.

Ah well. Good luck either way!

 

[BojTrek]

Replying = Damn, I have a gambling problem.

Listen, I took the cash off the credit card because were supposed to be going this Friday (which is pay day)... so I would have had cash.

If I didn't win, I would have sent the $1000 this Friday when I was paid.

Oh by the way, each $500 withdrawl cost $3.50 at the ATM... plus my credit card charged me $15.10 per each withdrawl... so the $1000 cost me $37.20

 

[Atari2600]

Regardless. Congrats on taking some house money home with ya. It feels good.

 

[Scrow]

Regardless. Congrats on taking some house money home with ya. It feels good.

house money? no, poor losing suckers money.

 

[Zaptruder]

The missus plays craps she said it's fairly easy to come out ahead, especially if you happen to find a table with hi rollers who are on a run... you can just piggyback on to them...

There is no coming out ahead.

It's easy to come out ahead if you play one or two games. The chances are pretty high, ~50%...

but on the flipside, 50% of the people are suckers.

and moreover, the longer you play, the bigger of a sucker you'll become.

There is no strategy to house games; as long as you play by a simple set of rules; hold at 16, or some such, the strategy won't work any better or any worse then elaborate strategies.

Because about half of the people with elaborate strategies will fail and the other half will come out ahead. Actually less than half, and that's how the casino wins...

Casual people go in, play their casual games, has a few wins, come away happy. They tell their friends, they go in and might win might lose.

The casino 'plays' thousands of games a day, and the law of averages, along with the house rules guarantees them earnings.

So in the end...

There is no trick, no rule to casino gambling; with one exception. Go in expecting to pay for a nights worth of entertainment. If you make money, then bonus. But if you hit your limit, then walk away. Do this enough times, and the only thing you'll have gained will have been many nights with the thrill of losing your money.

 

[iapetus]

There is no trick, no rule to casino gambling; with one exception.

Two exceptions. In some extremely dubious casinos you can come out ahead by placing small bets against large bets made by other players.

Then again, at casinos that dubious, you may not leave with all your limbs.

 

[King Jippo]

Turn $800 into just over $14,000 and then I'll be impressed.

 

[Zaptruder]

Two exceptions. In some extremely dubious casinos you can come out ahead by placing small bets against large bets made by other players.

Then again, at casinos that dubious, you may not leave with all your limbs.

shush you. That's not the casino gambling I'm talking about. And the stakes in that kinda casino would be your life as well.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

something like 75% of people at one point or the other are up. The probelm is people never quit during that point.

 

[McLesterolBeast]

There's nothing more amusing than listening to a layman discuss his "strategy" for how to beat the house. Every idiot has a theory, whether it be a martingale or some other convoluted scheme that'll pzwn the laws of probability.

Poker is a game that can be easily beaten for that exact reason. Every idiot who plays thinks they're brilliant and is willing to put their money where their mouth is. Of all my friends who play, only one is competent - and ironically he's the one with the biggest gambling problem. The others are all convinced that they're winning players despite the flow of cash suggesting otherwise. I'm sure that some of them have averaged a win within our group on account of the fact that they need only be better than some of the other ATMesque players.
Even good players won't be averaging large gains though - certainly not through a casino with the substantial rakes that they take (and the tips, which you feel obligated to). An exceptional player will average at MOST 3-4 big bets an hour at limit hold em for live games, supposing the competition is extremely weak. In no limit, it's definitely possible to beat a table for upwards of 15 big blinds an hour but there's a higher level of "competency" required - or should i say, incompetency on the part of your opponents. Of course everyone has stories of completely slaughtering a table where you can quadruple your buy in; but that's not at all representative of what's going to pan out in the mysterious "long run".

 

[snaildog]

Heh, I remember I thought of the Martingale system and then was pissed off that some guy already named it after himself. Apparantly they have maximum bids to stop people using it.

 

[McLesterolBeast]

That's not why they have maximum bets.

 

[Rorschach]

Thought this was going to be about some pyramid scheme.

 

[Raw64life]

I always win when I go to a casino. Then again, I never play anything but poker.

 

[iapetus]

Apparantly they have maximum bids to stop people using it.

I thought the fact that you require an infinite amount of money to start out with to make it work would be a better incentive to stop using it.

 

[DDayton]

"Winning" at casinos is silly (excluding MIT-style card counting, but that's out of the realm of most of our skills and abilities). If you want to gamble, get some buddies and play poker.

 

[Maxwell House]

Replying = Damn, I have a gambling problem.

Listen, I took the cash off the credit card because were supposed to be going this Friday (which is pay day)... so I would have had cash.

If I didn't win, I would have sent the $1000 this Friday when I was paid.

Oh by the way, each $500 withdrawl cost $3.50 at the ATM... plus my credit card charged me $15.10 per each withdrawl... so the $1000 cost me $37.20

Living paycheck to paycheck and gambling with money you don't even have is the path to financial success. You are on your way!!!

 

[Dilbert]

There is some SERIOUSLY sketchy math in this thread. "1000%?" Go back to school...sheesh.

That's not why they have maximum bets.

Why do they have maximum bets, then?

 

[Zaptruder]

There is some SERIOUSLY sketchy math in this thread. "1000%?" Go back to school...sheesh.


Why do they have maximum bets, then?

In order stop a few random high paying wins from busting their balls.

 

[Dilbert]

In order stop a few random high paying wins from busting their balls.

That's a good point. The books I've read have always characterized that rule as an upper limit for bet doubling systems, though. If you didn't have that rule, a sufficiently large bankroll would almost guarantee a win under most circumstances.

 

[McLesterolBeast]

Why do they have maximum bets, then?

At the lower limit tables it's just for convenience and to section off the tables. That isn't an actual "maximum" though; that's just partitioning off the dregs from the high rollers.

Casinos put a maximum on their high roller sections (or they hypothetically would) because they can't cover the variance with any certainty past a given threshhold. If someone was to bet a half billion, say, they wouldn't have the cash flow to support a loss and they _could_ go bankrupt. On average, the bet would be worthwhile to the casino - but when you deal with exceptionally large bets, you won't always be dealing with the "long run". If you knew the total available working capital, the variance of blackjack and the size of the bet, you could create a confidence interval that would tell them how certain they could be that they would or wouldnt go bust. As the size of the bet decreases, the size of the working capital increases or the variance decreases, they could be progressively more certain that they wouldnt go bankrupt.

Obviously they won't be getting half billion dollar bets on blackjack. In fact, i doubt that most casinos have ever run into a situation where they've had to consider the ramifications of a bet that was just too big. It's a hypothetical maximum that a firm run by "rational" CEO's would give consideration to. The table maximums, like i said, are mostly superficial. Often they dont have higher tables because they simply don't have enough patrons who are willing to play to make it worth while. Believe me - most casinos would be MORE than happy to welcome the highest of rollers. They hire (and pay extremely good money to) people to search far and wide in order to win them over.

 

[Maleficent]

I gamble once or twice a year... I will take out about $1000 for a local casino and when in Vegas I normally go with $3000 on 3-day trips. And Vegas trips are once every two years!

So I don't gamble often...

I don't waste my life gambling... I make a nice amount of money working during the year and can afford to lose $4000 for an entire year.

I still pay for the house, the cars, the bills, and the wife doesn't mind a night out to gamble and have fun with the friends on a Vegas trip.

Lucky... YES!

Stupid... YES! But I was saved by a buddy...

Credit card bills paid off and no debt on any credit card... YES!

Your doing so well in life, making a nice amount of money, but yet you have no money in the bank and have to use your credit card to gamble. Yea your doing OK.

 

[iapetus]

That's a good point. The books I've read have always characterized that rule as an upper limit for bet doubling systems, though. If you didn't have that rule, a sufficiently large bankroll would almost guarantee a win under most circumstances.

Only a small win, however, and the odds still favour the house in the long term.

 

[BojTrek]

Living paycheck to paycheck and gambling with money you don't even have is the path to financial success. You are on your way!!!

From above posts, I was supposed to be going to the casino tomorrow... which is payday... so I would have had $1000 (cash not credit card) to take out for goofy gambling if necessary... and still pay my bills... I don't live paycheck to paycheck...

Your doing so well in life, making a nice amount of money, but yet you have no money in the bank and have to use your credit card to gamble. Yea your doing OK.

I had $200 in my checking account and $60 in my wallet, I knew I wanted to bet with more money than that. So that is why I took it off the credit card. Plus, why take money out of our joint savings account... the wife and I don't touch that for frivolous spending. It is meant for retirement and kids college.

As I listed above, the cash would have been there if it was this week.

I am not going to post what I make a year... but monthly we have $1500 mortgage, $1500 extra we send to the home equity line, $800 in car payments, $400 in utilities (approx.) and still put $1500 in savings... so we are going OK. Food, diapers, and basic weekly spending...

We have friends that live check to check and cannot even save... they have higher mortgage than us too... so thanks for the cocky responses... PEACE!

 

[Maleficent]

From above posts, I was supposed to be going to the casino tomorrow... which is payday... so I would have had $1000 (cash not credit card) to take out for goofy gambling if necessary... and still pay my bills... I don't live paycheck to paycheck...




I had $200 in my checking account and $60 in my wallet, I knew I wanted to bet with more money than that. So that is why I took it off the credit card. Plus, why take money out of our joint savings account... the wife and I don't touch that for frivolous spending. It is meant for retirement and kids college.

As I listed above, the cash would have been there if it was this week.

I am not going to post what I make a year... but monthly we have $1500 mortgage, $1500 extra we send to the home equity line, $800 in car payments, $400 in utilities (approx.) and still put $1500 in savings... so we are going OK. Food, diapers, and basic weekly spending...

We have friends that live check to check and cannot even save... they have higher mortgage than us too... so thanks for the cocky responses... PEACE!

Its cool man. I'm just breaken balls.

But you got to say if your luck went south where does that $1038 come from to pay back to the credit card co.

We all have are vices. I know the older I get and the more money I make the higher the $ amount that I consider no big deal.

Back on topic. Damn I wish we had casino's in Ohio.

 

[BojTrek]

I know, I know... that is why I love this forum, I can take it and dish it out...

PEACE!

Now get me to Vegas cuz I am HOT!