How To Win In A Casino: Best Tips & Tricks to Improve Your Chances

How To Win Casinos: Best Useful Tips. Photo KnowInsiders

Twinkling lights, a surreal atmosphere, and a chance to win some money—gambling in a casino can be really fun! There are a few things you can do to help yourself have a more successful casino trip and hopefully leave with more money than you came with.

For example, setting a budget for yourself, leaving while you’re ahead, and carefully choosing which games to play are all things that can bolster your winnings.

Identify the clumsiest dealers

Zender estimates there are fewer than 100 professional blackjack card counters in the world. If you happen to be one of them, you might nab a 1.5 percent advantage. So save your energy, Zender advises; instead keep an eye out for the sloppy blackjack dealer who will accidentally flash the face-down card.

Zender once made a living exploiting this, keeping a notebook of 35 weak dealers from 16 different casinos. The strategy is called “card holing,” and it can give you a 6 to 9 percent edge over the house. (That’s like standing in front of an ATM that spits out twenties!) The best part? “It’s totally legal,” Zender says. “They may throw me out of the casino, but they’re not going to arrest me.”

Keep your eyes on the prize

Lately, casinos have sexed up their table games with bikini-clad dealers and resident pole dancers. These places are called Party Pits, and on the surface, they look like Vegas being Vegas—booze, sin, skin. But look closer. While all those twirling legs keep you distracted, you’ll probably fail to notice that the casino trimmed the payouts at these tables from 3/2 to 6/5.

Meaning that a $100 bet wins only $120, compared to the traditional $150. This essentially doubles the house’s edge.

Find The Best Games

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This is subjective; who’s to say which games are better than others?

What we mean is to choose games that have a lower house edge. Examples of games with a low house edge include blackjack, baccarat, poker, sports betting and video poker.

What if you don’t like those games?

That’s okay, too. Just find the best version of the game you like to play. For example, choose French roulette over American or European roulette.

Find The Best Machine

This s like the last tip, but for slots players.

The best slot machines to play are the simplest machines. The ones that don’t stand out with the flashing lights and huge signs.

Here’s how the WizardOfOdds.com explains it:

The simpler the game, the better the odds. The fancy games with big signs and video screens tend to not pay as well as the simple games. However, slot players always tell me the fancy games are more fun.

The big games are more fun. So, you’ll have to decide what you want more. Is it fun, or an advantage over the casino?

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Why Do They Think Some Days Are Much Better for Gambling? This belief is based on the idea that casinos change the payout rate of games on certain days and times. So gamblers, for example, think that slot machines pay more often after 6.00 PM on Fridays because at this time, the casino starts to fill up, and slot machines start to pay a little more often to encourage players to spend money. The number of players is very few between 10 AM and 6 PM, so the games pay less. The general belief among gamblers is that 6 PM - 10 PM on Fridays is the ideal time to gamble. People like to gamble before the weekend, and this time frame is ideal to encourage them. After 10 PM, people start to leave the casino gradually, so the games also start to pay less. Although this is the general belief, there are many other ideas too, such as: Some gamblers think that you can play every day of the week, but it is better to play between 3 PM and 7 PM. According to some players, the weekend is when casinos are most crowded, and games pay more on Saturday and Sunday. Some are of the opinion that games pay more until the evening hours on Mondays, as the first day of the week, the casino is almost empty, and games start paying more to encourage a small number of players.

Learn Advanced Strategy

For some games, you can learn more advanced strategy. For example, counting cards is advanced strategy for blackjack.

When you learn how to count cards properly, you can shift the house edge to where you’ll have a 1-2% edge over the casino.

This isn’t illegal, but the casino doesn’t like it. They may kick you out for it, so you use this at your own risk.

Avoid House Games

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Another way to increase your chances in the casino is not to play their games at all. Skip the slots, keno, video poker, blackjack, and so on.

What you can play instead is poker. There’s not really a house edge here, though you do have to pay rake (fees) to play.

The only edge here is what you have or don’t have against another player. However, the good news is that anyone can learn how to play (better).

You can also learn how to bet sports profitably. The sportsbook does have an edge, but it’s possible to overcome it. Just do a little research online and in forums for advanced betting strategies.

Tip! The exception to this tip is blackjack if you’re willing to learn how to count cards.

Certain Days and Hours Can Be Really Advantageous for Gambling There are two situations where certain days and times are better suited for gambling: If you want the casino to be idle and peaceful, play between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. This is the time when casinos are emptiest, and you can easily find seats at all games and tables. Some people don't like to play in a crowd. Casinos are very crowded after 5 pm on weekdays and on weekends, so if you want to play in a quiet and calm environment, choose morning hours. This is especially true for slot players: During the rush hours, it is almost impossible to find an empty slot machine in casinos. Professional gamblers using tactics that casinos do not welcome should play after 5 PM on weekdays and on weekends in order not to attract attention. Counting cards while playing blackjack, for example, is not illegal, but no casino would want this to happen. Therefore, they stop serving players they suspect of card counting and take them out of the casino. As can be guessed, if there are few players in the casino, a gambler who counts cards will get a lot of attention because he will win more than average. But if the casino is crowded, it doesn't get that much attention and can play for a longer period of time. Therefore, if you are going to use a system or tactic, you should choose the time frame when the casinos are most crowded.

Go big or go broke

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“The average slot machine is probably two, three times more costly to players than the table games,” says Zender. Avoid them. If you insist on cranking a handle, focus on slots that cost $5 or more and play the max bet. On penny slots, the odds are jacked up in the house’s favor by 15 to 20 percent. You might as well toss those coins in a fountain. Don’t forget to make a wish.

Play One-On-One Against The Dealer

Try to play heads-up against the dealer. When you add other players to the mix, they change the probabilities for you because of the cards they’re dealt and how they play their hands.

When it’s easier to play your hand, you’re more likely to make the right play and reduce the casino’s edge.

Don’t Chase Losses

Usually when people chase losses, they’re “tilting.” This is a poker term for playing emotionally instead of logically.

Follow this tip, and you’ll improve your chances, because you’ve already lost your money to begin with, and chasing losses often leads to you losing even more.

Practice makes perfect

If there’s an exception to the adage that the house always wins, it’s in video poker. Typically, the house has only a 0.46 percent advantage (while some versions lean in the gambler’s favor). The pay table is posted right on the machine, and the payoff is high. The catch? To cash out, you need to play at an expert level. Casinos make profits on video poker because most players simply aren’t skilled enough. So study up.

Take Your Time

This is a great tip for slots players.

One thing we see players do when they win is that they’ll hit the spin/play button so that their winnings hit their account instantly. This enables them to get back to playing as fast as possible.

However, if you just let the machine add the money to your balance at its own pace, you can sit there for a minute or two, and all the while you’re not spending any money.

This helps to stretch your bankroll and time spent playing.

You might also find that you get your fix much sooner and that you’re ready to cash out early

This is one of the easiest ways to spend less money, which – in theory – should mean that you’re not spending it on a machine, and thus not losing it to the casino.

Which, in a roundabout way, improves your chances in the casino.

That’s it for game related tips. These tips alone can increase your chances in the casino.

We’re not done, though. Let’s look at how you can apply some strategy to these games to improve your chances even more.

Find The Best Rules

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You can take two identical games – say, blackjack – and have different rules.

One game might use 2 decks. Other games might use 6.

Sometimes you might be able to split aces. Other times you can’t.

Some casinos will let you double down on any two cards. Other casinos won’t.

And so on.

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Each rule will impact the casino’s edge on the game. We recommend you become strategic in the games you choose to play. This means learning what the different rules casinos use are, and how they impact the game’s odds.

Find The Best Payouts

All casinos offer the same games. However, one thing that makes them different are the payouts the casinos offer if/when you win.

This can have a significant impact on the house edge.

An easy example is blackjack. Some casinos pay 3:2 for natural blackjacks, while other casinos pay 6:5 or worse. This alone can more than double the casino’s edge.

This applies to other games, too. Caribbean stud, 3-card poker, and casino hold’em are all games where you can expect the payouts to fluctuate from one casino to the next.

You can improve your chances of winning by finding the casinos that offer the best payouts.

Find A Two-Seater

Walk around a Las Vegas casino nowadays and you’ll find a handful of slot machines that have bench seating. You can usually seat two people at these machines, and sometimes even three.

How does this increase your chances of winning? Well, it’s not because two heads are better than one.

The reason why this works is because with two people on the same machine, you’re spending half the amount of money you would had you two been playing on two different machines.

(This assumes you don’t increase how much you’re spending because you’re sharing a machine.)

This may not change the house edge at all, but what it does do is decrease how much you’re spending. In our eyes, saving money is just as good as winning it.

Buy your own drinks

The truth is, nothing is free—and that includes the free booze. Each casino has something they call a “player reinvestment” fund. It predicts the amount of money you’ll lose and then returns a cut of that in the form of comps, which, to the casual floor visitor, means watery well cocktails. The worse your odds, the better your chances of landing a free drink. Cheers!

Don’t Do for Casino Beginners

STRING THEORY

When all slots were three-reel games with coin slots, cheaters worked a scam in which they tied affixed a string to a coin.

Slot Tips: String Theory, Do Not Try This

They’d drop the coin into the slot, trip the mechanism that gave them credit to play, then use the string to pull the coin back out.

One woman in Nevada was caught using a coin on a brightly colored piece of yarn, easy to spot from a distance. Others were less obvious, but those who were caught were prosecuted.

Manufacturers designed more secure coin acceptance devices to make this cheat impossible. Today, most slots accept only paper currency or tickets and no longer have slot heads.

SLUG IT OUT

Fake coins, or slugs, were a problem for casinos as long as slot machines accepted coins.

Some were no more than a rounded piece of metal, with no design. Others were more elaborate, and counterfeiters in the eastern U.S. stamped slot tokens that looked much like those used in New Jersey.

As long the metal and manufacturing costs were a lot less than the value of a real slot coin, there was incentive for cheaters.

Coin recognition software grew progressively more sophisticated to combat the problem.

MAGNETIC FORCE

Some slot machines in the 1960s and ‘70s were vulnerable to ordinary magnets.

Cheaters could use the magnets to make the reels float freely instead of stopping on a spin. The scam artists would remove the magnet only when the reels had aligned in a winning combination.

More sophisticated were top-bottom devices, used into the 1980s. The top was a metal rod that was bent on one end, and the bottom a strand of wire.

The wire would be inserted in the coin slot to hit a metal contact, and then the top would be jammed in the coin slot. The combination completed a circuit that would activate a coin dispenser and send free coins pouring into the slot tray.

Protection had to be built into the games to shield vital parts from magnets and to make it impossible to hit contacts and create an electrical circuit.

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