4/8/2022»»Friday

Gambling Best Way To Make Money

4/8/2022

Select Casino Games with the Best Odds. First and foremost, you should know that not all casino. Win a Big Poker Tournament. Just about every poker player knows the winner of the WSOP main. Build a Gambling Bankroll. The first step to winning money in a Las Vegas casino is having a.

Admit it, after watching a good robbery movie (Ocean’s 11 anyone?), there’s a split second where you fantasize about pulling off something similar and walking away with millions.

As a society, we are fascinated with quick ways to make a lot of money. The riskier, the better. The entire “money heist” genre is a manifestation of that fascination. But, the reality of making money fast illegally is not as glamorous as portrayed in the movies.

Disclaimer:DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AT HOME PEOPLE. This entire article is for entertainment purposes only. In no way do we condone any of these activities. If you’re really in a situation where you are thinking of making money illegally, please seek legal help.

If you really need money quickly and legally, check out how to make $500 dollars fast. Also we have a guide with different options for those who really need money urgently.

For the sake of this article, let’s pretend that someone is holding a gun to your head: “You have one week to come up with $50,000 or I’ll be back *evil laugh*”

And for the sake of the article let’s pretend you don’t do the smart thing and go to the authorities or flee to another country…

You now have one week to make $50,000. Did I mention you’re also broke, have $0 in your bank account, no credit line, or anything of value to sell.

How would you do it?

Here are 15 different ways to make money fast illegally.

Contents

  • 1 15 Terrible and Illegal Ways on How Make Money Quick Illegally

15 Terrible and Illegal Ways on How Make Money Quick Illegally

1. Sell Pirated or Counterfeit Goods (Copyright Infringement)

Did you know that counterfeit goods account for nearly 10% of global trade – around $500 billion dollars every year?

With such a big pie, it wouldn’t be hard to cut yourself a little slice. When we think of selling counterfeit goods, we picture someone selling Louis Vuitton handbags on the street corner for $20. But, just like everything else, the majority of the counterfeit market has moved online. Even Amazon isn’t safe from counterfeit goods being sold on their marketplace.

If you were wanting to make money fast illegally, finding physical counterfeit goods to sell might not be easy. An easier way to profit from copyright infringement would be to resell digital products.

You’re probably getting flashbacks of the “You wouldn’t steal a car” commercials:

But selling pirated goods could be a lucrative business. These two brothers made over $50,000 selling downloads to pirated movies. Of course, they eventually got caught.

Pirated movies aren’t the only things that sell. Nearly every digital good can be downloaded and resold illegally. Anything from mobile apps, online courses, ebooks, to entire websites.

2. Rob a Bank

Ah, what a classic. Get yourself a partner and you could be the next Bonnie and Clyde.

But before you tell the bank teller to give you all their money, there are a few things you should know. Bank robbery is not a lucrative way to make money illegally. In fact, according to the FBI, the average bank robber made only $7,500 for every bank robbery in 2010.

Depending on what state you live in, the punishment for getting caught robbing a bank can be anywhere from a mandatory 3 years to life in prison. I can’t say that robbing a bank is a great way to make money…

3. Scam Unsuspecting Victims

Scammers are on a rise. You’ve probably noticed an increase of robocalls to your phone in the last few years. Or scam emails hitting your inbox promising you millions of dollars from an unknown wealthy relative that recently passed.

These scammers search for gullible victims, usually the elderly, and take as much easy money as they can.

Here are a few ways you can make money illegally as a scammer:

  • Sell fake tickets on Ebay or Craigslist. Pretend you have tickets to some desirable sporting event or concert. Of course, you don’t have them, but they don’t know that. You can always grab a picture of real tickets to the event online somewhere if they want proof. After you get paid, send them the fake tickets or don’t send them anything at all. Use Venmo to get paid as a friend so they can’t charge it back.
  • Phone scams that prey on emotions. This is a pretty common scam that works surprisingly well. The premise is that with the help of social media, you find some kids that are traveling abroad and call a distant relative of theirs posing as one of the kids. On the phone, you tell the relative that you’re traveling abroad and ran into some trouble (in the hospital, in jail, etc) and need some money wired. You’ll pay them back as soon you’re back in the country of course. The key to this is finding a relative that can’t recognize the kid’s voice and is gullible enough to wire money to some stranger without checking with the parents of the kid first. There are many variations of this scam floating about. It keeps happening because, well, it works.
  • Fake check scams. This is another pretty common scam that usually involves Craigslist. Tell someone that you want to buy their car or a big ticket item from craigslist. Next, tell them you’re in a foreign country (on vacation, or whatever) so it’s hard to send the money directly. But luckily, you have an acquaintance that owes you money living in the states. Tell them that you’ll have your friend send them a check for the money they owe you and they should cash the check but wire you the extra money left over. It can take a few days for the bank to realize that the check is fake and if they wire you the money before that, then there’s not much they can do. There are many variations of this going around too.

Need some inspiration? Check out fraud.org for a large list of illegal money-making scams people are executing on.

4. Prostitution

Touted as the oldest profession, prostitution is still a viable way to make money illegally – unless you live in Nevada, then it’s legal.

Because of the underground and illegal nature of the business, lots of the statistics around prostitution are just good guesses. For example, it’s estimated that there are 1-2 million prostitutes working in the United States but no one really knows.

How much money can you make as a prostitute?

That number depends on lots of factors – mostly marketing. How desirable your “services” are has a huge impact on how much you can charge. Anywhere from $40 – $5,000 is reasonable.

But remember, if you record the act, it’s no longer illegal… “art” is a beautiful thing.

5. Sell Drugs

Selling drugs is one of the most common ways to make quick money illegally.

Of course, it’s also a risky business. The more you make, the riskier it gets. You’ll not only attract the attention of law enforcement, but you might get heat from other local drug dealers or gangs. This is probably the most dangerous way as you not only risk jail, but also getting killed.

How much money can you make? Again, depends on how high up the food chain you are. Most street-level dealers barely break even if you consider the number of drugs they do themselves. Mid-level dealers can make more, upwards of a few grand a month. Or, you can become like the “King of Cocaine” himself. It’s estimated that Pablo Escobar had a personal income of close to $21.9 billion dollars a year…

6. Smuggle Drugs

Continuing on with the drug-related money-making activities, drug smugglers pop up in the news nearly on a weekly basis.

For good reason too, smuggling drugs from one location to another – usually state to state or country to country – is a profitable business.

The more drugs you smuggle at once, the more profitable the trip. But that also increases the risk of you getting caught and the severity of the punishment. The easiest way to get started smuggling drugs is to travel somewhere where the drug is legal, for example, you could drive to Colorado or California to buy some legal marijuana. Then smuggle the marijuana to other states and sell it for a profit. Of course, this isn’t risk-free. If you’re caught smuggling drugs into Singapore you’ll get killed as they have a death sentence.

7. Hold a Company Hostage (Ransomware)

Ransomware is a newer way to make money illegally.

The concept is to somehow get someone at a company to inadvertently install your ransomware. This virus will lock down all the files on the company’s network until you tell it to unlock the files. You now have the power to extort money from the company – especially if the company relies on the files your ransomware locked. Usually, you demand the ransom to be paid in bitcoin, so to make it less traceable.

The hardest parts of this scheme is getting your ransomware on the company’s computer and getting away with the ransom. You’d be surprised by how many companies and organizations will actually pay the ransom – you’ll have to get paid in a creative way such as bitcoin though to avoid detection!

Need inspiration? Here are a few good ransomware stories.

8. Commit Insurance Fraud

According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, insurance fraud costs nearly $80 billion dollars a year in false claims.

We here about false insurance claims all the time – from phony tainted-food claims to faked deaths to burnt down buildings. People are getting more and more creative with their insurance fraud schemes.

One of the most common insurance frauds is to pretend that a piece of expensive jewelry was stolen and then filing a claim.

But insurance fraud covers everything from purposefully setting your bankrupt business on fire to poisoning your child for a life insurance payout.

Insurance companies are getting better at spotting fraud, however – even employing AI to analyze patterns of claims. Getting caught committing insurance fraud will result in a hefty fine or even jail time depending on the severity of the case.

9. Count Cards

Counting cards is an interesting way to make money.

It’s technically not illegal to count cards (as long as you don’t use any external devices to help you), but casinos actively work to ban players they think are card counting.

Why? Well because it decreases their profit. For typical blackjack games, the house (casino) has a 1% advantage. Which means they’ll typically profit $1 for every $100 pot. If you’re a great card counter, you can decrease the house advantage by around 2.5%. Meaning you’ll profit around 1.5% on every pot.

If you’re playing at a table where the average bet is $100 and you can play 50 hands per hour, that means you’ll be profiting around $75 per hour. Not bad – especially if you don’t get banned.

Here’s a great video explaining card counting in depth:

Pay attention that actually you can earn 100 dollars fast and legally, so is it worth it? Maybe while you’re in isolation or quarantine, but it’s still lucrative despite the risks.

10. Credit Card Skimming

Has your credit or debit card ever incurred charges that you have no idea how they got there without ever losing your card?

Then you were a victim of credit card skimming.

How does it work?

Well, credit card skimming is a type of credit card theft that involves a small device that the thief would install on an ATM machine, vending machine, or really any type of device that allows credit or debit card transactions. If you use your card at one of these “infected” devices, the device will capture all the data from your card’s magnetic strip and send that data to the thief.

Probably the best way to execute this illegal way of making money is to get a job as a waiter or waitress. Once an unsuspecting victim wants to pay their bill, take their card and use the skimming device. You’ll even get an extra tip from the customer most of the time!

11. Become a Pimp

If the idea of selling your body is not really your thing, how about becoming an agent for a sex worker?

A pimp’s job can include advertising services, physical protection, and providing a location for the sex worker to engage with clients. You’ll basically be running a prostitution business and taking a cut from your workers.

Of course, since being a sex worker is illegal in most of the United States, being a pimp is also illegal.

According to Time, pimps can pull in anywhere between $5,000 to $32,000 per week. These guys (or gals) employed an average of five sex workers at a time.

Being a pimp is more profitable than being a sex worker in most cases.

12. Grow Drugs For Profit

If you’re not much of a salesman or just don’t like selling drugs, you can always grow the drugs instead.

Of course, only a few drugs can be grown such as marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms.

How much money you can make growing these drugs is dependent on many factors such as how much you’re growing, the state of the local drug market, and who you sell to.

Of course, growing marijuana is still illegal in most states, though more and more states are legalizing not only the consumption but also the cultivation of marijuana for personal use. This means that unless you certain permits from the state, you’re not allowed to grow your own marijuana with the purpose to distribute and sell for profit.

If you have a green thumb but don’t want to grow anything illegal, consider growing gourmet mushrooms for profit.

13. Embezzle Your Employer

If you hate your job and are strapped for cash, embezzling your employer is an option to make money fast illegally.

Typically, the easiest way to embezzle a company is to work in the billing department (go accountaints!). Having access to the books, you can pad the numbers and slowly funnel away money. How exactly to funnel the money to make it as discreet as possible will vary from company to company.

The key to not getting caught is to do it as slowly as possible. It’s easier to hide a few hundred dollars than a few thousand dollars. Though, depending on the size of the company there’s a good chance that that can go unnoticed as well.

White Collar Crime usually doesn’t have that long of a jail sentence and involves no physical harm.

Gambling

14. Steal and Sell People’s Identity

2020

Identity theft is so common that most people can name at least one person affected by identity theft.

But what if you want to profit from other people’s information?

The easiest way to make money illegally from personal information is to sell the person’s identifying information on the dark web. From there, people will do things like try to get access to bank accounts, commit tax fraud in the name of someone else, create fake documents with the information, and more crimes.

If you’re good with computers, you can try hacking into databases and get a huge amount of emails and passwords at once. Or if you’re less tech-inclined, you can always do it the old-fashioned way: dumpster diving. People will throw out mail, such as credit card signup offers or bills, that have plenty of identifying information.

15. Burgle Homes

Breaking and entering houses to steal stuff is another way to make money illegally.

Here are some interesting statistics on burglary. Despite the common notion, burglaries are more common during the day when the occupants are running errands or at work. There are roughly 2.5 million burglaries a year and only 13% of them are solved.

Interestingly enough, only 12% of the people caught for burglary attempts said that they planned it in advance. Most of them said it was an impulse decision. Who would have thought?

How much can you make? Hard to say since each house will have different items in it but it’s probably not much admittedly. But here’s one thing that can be said for sure: there’s a plenty of methods to make 300 dollars fast legally.

Alternatives to Making Money Fast Illegally

Again, we are not condoning any of these illegal money-making methods. There are plenty of ways to make money legally.

If you really need a large sum of money quickly, your best bet is to use a credit card or take out a personal loan to cover the expenses.

Here are some ways to make some extra money legally:

  1. Do online surveys: Sites like SurveyJunkie and Swagbucks will pay you to take online surveys. It’s not going to make you rich, but it will pad your wallet and allow you some extra spending money. Check out our article on the best paid survey sites.
  2. Cut out subscriptions you don’t use anymore: The easiest way to make money is to spend less. Subscriptions are taking over the business world. The problem is that many times we forget to cancel those subscriptions when we stop using them. Trim is a free tool that will automatically find all the subscriptions you pay for and let you unsubscribe from them with one click to save you money.

If you need more ideas on how to make money quickly, check out this post.

Why Would Someone Want to Make Money Illegally?

After reading this list, you’re probably wondering why anyone would want to make money illegally given the risk of jail time.

Well, for some people, it’s all they know. Their friends are criminals, their family members engage in criminal activities, and their communities are riddled with crime.

With others, it’s a crime of desperation. Their situation has gotten so out of control, that they believe their only option is to commit a crime to make ends meet.

Even other people do it for the thrill. Breaking the law and making money illegally is a dopamine rush that they’re addicted to. Just like sky-diving adrenaline junkies, for them, the risk is worth the reward.

Whatever the reason is, it’s not morally justifiable to break the law to make ends meet. There are plenty of ways to get by or make money legally.

Summary

As entertaining as this list was, making money illegally is not worth it. The risk is not worth the reward.

Don’t get yourself in a situation in which any of these methods sounds reasonable. And if you do get yourself in a terrible money situation, just remember, there’s always a legal way out.

For less than 5 minutes of your time, earn yourself a random stock (anything from Sprint to Apple) whose value is anywhere between $2.50 and $200. It is possible through an investing app called Robinhood.

Earn the sign-up bonus by signing to Robinhood now.

on

Gambling is taking a risk of losing something of value on an unpredictable outcome. When you gamble at either an online or land based casino both you and the casino take a risk in losing something of value. The risk is greater for you because the casino only offers games that provide a statistical advantage to the casino.

US Accepted Sites:

However, much statutory and some case law has been devoted to ensuring that casinos and players don’t cheat each other by subtly altering the conditions of gambling games without each other’s knowledge and permission. You can, though, change the terms of the game. The casino often provides a way for you to do this.

But should you take the offer?

There are two things you need to understand before you can start improving your chances of winning when you gamble. First, you can change the outcome of a gambling game. Second, you will almost always confuse yourself if you try to do the math. These two most common of gambling mistakes help the casinos earn tens of billions of dollars every year.

How You Change the Outcome in a Gambling Game

Many casino gambling games allow and even encourage players to change the stakes, the odds, and even the percentage chances of winning. Here are a few examples of how you can change the outcome of a gambling game (almost always for the worst).

Say you are playing a slot machine game and you win a prize on a spin. A special “Gamble” button lights up. You are now prompted to play a secondary game, maybe betting on the outcome of a virtual coin toss, using the prize you just won as the stake in your new bet. This is an exciting feature. It also means you are risking the loss of what you just won on a game with a better “edge” for the casino.

Most slot games have a theoretical return to player above 75%. Games developed after 2010 usually have better than a 90% theoretical return. The RTP is an estimate of how much money would be retained by a hypothetical player who spun the reels continually for a period of several years. It’s not a realistic estimate of how much money you will win, lose, or hold on to. It’s a statistical measurement used to gauge how friendly the game is to the gambler.

In a coin toss the theoretical return to player is 50% or 1 in 2. So let’s assume you just gambled $5 on a spin in the basic slot game and that you won $10. You have doubled your money. Now the “Gamble” light activates and you are invited to take your $10 and bet it on the outcome of a coin toss. And suppose the “Gamble” feature allows you to wager on the outcome of two concurrent coin tosses. Now you have a choice: bet on 1 coin toss for a chance to double your $10 to $20 or bet on 2 concurrent coin tosses for a chance to quadruple your money.

Your chances of winning the double concurrent coin toss are 25% or 1 in 4.

You would have a better chance to keep your $10 prize and just spin again on the basic game. By taking the “Gamble” challenge you improve the casino’s chances of winning your next bet. It’s like paying $5 for a quarter of pie at one restaurant and then paying another $10 for an eighth of a pie at a different restaurant. Are you really getting a better piece of pie at the second restaurant?

In the game of blackjack if the dealer offers you insurance most experts tell you not to take it. Why? Because you are betting that you will lose your basic wager. The chances of being correct (that the dealer has a blackjack) on your insurance bet are worse than the chances that you can beat the dealer’s hand (your original wager).

The bottom line here is that casinos will sometimes offer you ways to change your stakes and your chances of winning to their own benefit. If you want to win at gambling, don’t take the deal behind door number 2. Stick to your original game and be consistent. Let someone else win the goat.

How to Confuse Yourself at Any Gambling Game

There is a certain idea among gambling experts that comparing the “house edge” in various gambling games helps you to make informed choices. The edge is a theoretical return to the casino, the complementary percentage for the theoretical return to player. In other words, in every form of gambling, there is only a 100% allocation of money. Gambling does not generate new wealth; all gambling does is pool wealth between the bettors and redistribute that wealth between the bettors (and sometimes also a middle man).

In the 1-on-1 game of blackjack there are only 2 bettors in your game: you and the casino. The casino is willing to pay up to the full amount of your bet if you win. It’s an even money match up, and that is really what makes blackjack so profitable for a casino. They risk less per round than they do with, say, roulette or a slot game. But if you have been reading blackjack tutorials you should know by now that the house edge is lower in blackjack than in other games, and therefore you have the best chance of winning in blackjack.

In fact, the dealer has a better chance of coming out ahead because at a busy table the dealer is playing multiple hands at once by the most conservative of rules. In other words, the casino is taking less risk per round in blackjack than the players while at the same time multiplying its chances of winning.

Players make mistakes when playing blackjack. Blackjack dealers don’t have to make hard decisions. In fact, by always going last the dealer often doesn’t have to make any choices at all. The players make most of the decisions in blackjack. And yet blackjack remains profitable for the casinos. The casinos are profiting from player mistakes.

Players make several types of gambling mistakes. One of the most common mistakes is to confuse the probability of winning with the theoretical return to player. The probability of winning is limited to the next round of play. The theoretical return to player is an estimate of what all the players of a game will collectively receive over the life of a specific game (or an arbitrarily large number of rounds in the game).

The rule of thumb is that the more rounds played for a given game the more the actual results of that game will average out close to the theoretical return to player (or the house edge).

But what are the chances of your drawing a natural blackjack on the next deal? What are the chances that the dealer will not win against you on the next deal? These are probabilities that can be computed on the basis of how many cards are left in the shoe, less the cards that have already been played. Those probabilities change as more cards are played but they rarely if ever line up with the theoretical return to player.

The mistake players make is assuming that the house only has a 2.5% chance of winning the next round. The dealer’s chance of winning that next hand can be as high as 100% and as low as 0%. The house edge is always irrelevant with respect to any individual round played on any gambling game from keno to slots to blackjack to baccarat.

When you gamble, it’s nice to know how much money the house is expected to retain over the next 30 days but that won’t help you predict how much you win or lose in any of the next 10 rounds of play.

Expert gamblers like to calculate probabilities but probabilities do not predict the next round’s outcome. The roulette wheel always has a 1 in 37 or 1 in 38 chance of landing on any given number. The chance that the ball will land on number “7” 100 times in a row remains 1 in 37 or 1 in 38. That never changes (allowing for truly random spins, although the laws of physics mandate that the spins won’t be completely random).

On the other hand, what is the expected probability of a random spin of the roulette wheel producing “7” 100 times in a row? This is where you multiply your individual spin probability (1/3x) by itself the number of times in a row (100 in this case). The expected probability of the wheel hitting “7” 100 times in a row is 1.51296e-157 (a very, very small number). But that low probability has no bearing on the probability of the next spin.

This is the dichotomy of probability theory, where you are dealing with large sequences of independent events. The expected probability does not mean you cannot or will not see the unlikely outcome. In this hypothetical example, we are simply computing how many possible outcomes there are and assuming the chances of producing the same result 100 times in a row are equivalent to a certain percentage of those possible outcomes.

Unfortunately (even semi-) random events have a way of defying the probabilities. But if someone offers you 100-to-1 odds that a roulette wheel will land on “7” 100 times in a row, verify their ability to pay and take the wager. They lose as soon as a different result turns up before the 100TH spin.

The bottom line here is simple: don’t try to do the math like an expert. Random chance will always eventually prove the experts wrong.

What You Must Do to Improve Your Chances of Winning

Here are a few basic rules for improving your chances of winning when you gamble.

Best Way To Make Money Gambling

  1. Stop second-guessing yourself.

Every casino game offers you a fair chance of winning. The games, when played fairly and legally, pay prizes that correspond to the expected probabilities of given outcomes, although casinos will hold back a little bit extra in most games to ensure they make some money. Hence, in roulette, the most you can win is 36-to-1 instead of 37-to-1 or 38-to-1.

The odds are always stacked against you. But random chance favors the fool, as the old saying goes. You just cannot guarantee you are the fool upon whom random chance showers its favors.

  1. Take the least possible risk.

In a hypothetical game where you win 100 rounds out of 100 rounds, you will kick yourself if you only wager $5 on each round for the chance to win $5 instead of wagering $100 on each round for the chance to win $10,000 on each round.

In reality, positive thinking doesn’t work when you gamble. The more you assume you could win the more you are likely to lose when you do lose.

Gambling Best Way To Make Money

Risking less does mean you win less per round but that’s okay.

  1. Manage your money so that you play as many rounds as possible.

You are more likely to win back $100 in wagers if you divide them into twenty $5 wagers than if you divide them into five $20 wagers.

Instead of playing numbers games (which is second guessing yourself) or assuming you will win a certain number of times (which is taking more than the least possible risk) you should assume you are going to lose more rounds than you win. When you play slots or even a modest keno game (like a 5-pick) you can still come out ahead when you play more rounds with small wagers than fewer rounds with large wagers.

But how does playing conservatively work in blackjack, when the average prize is an even money bet? If you lose only 49% of the rounds in blackjack you lose. Okay, smart guy, you know you need to double down a few times. Instead of playing numbers games and assuming you can lose X number of hands and double down on Y hands, just accept that once in a while you’ll have to double down to improve your chances in blackjack.

When should you double down? The experts agree that if the dealer is showing a 5 or 6 and you have an ace and anything less than a 7.

You don’t need to double a lot as long as you can double enough to come out ahead.

  1. Don’t try to win big.

That’s the real fun in gambling, though, isn’t it? You want to win the jackpot, hit the long odds, and outwit the dealer at every hand.

Going for the big win is the worst possible way to gamble. You may not be playing all-or-nothing but you are playing too much.

Still, you can adjust the amount of your wagers upward if you are doing well. Just keep them proportionate to your bankroll.

  1. Use a consistent percentage ceiling in your wager to bankroll ratio.

Although it is prudent to limit your initial wagers to 5% of your original bankroll, at some point you may double or triple your money. Does it make sense to continue playing by the original 5% measure?

Most gamblers will feel confident enough to increase their wagers. But while it’s usually good advice to ignore all betting systems when you gamble (because each has its flaws), you can set a limit of “5% of your current bankroll down to half”, meaning you gamble with $5 bets until you lose half the money you came in with.

If you double your money then you can double your wagers as long as you don’t go above 5%.

Five percent is not a magic number. You can set the percentage at 1%, 5%, 15%, or even 20%. You should be consistent about not going above your percentage. You still have the flexibility of making larger wagers if you roll up your money.

  1. Divide Your Bankroll At Certain Split Points.

This technique works best in land-based casinos, especially when you can put your money into tickets that are easy to carry around. A split point is a multiple of your bankroll. Say you begin gambling with $200 and you roll that up to $400 at the craps table. Now take half your money and put $200 of it into a ticket.

You can continue playing craps with the remaining $200 or you can try another game. When you roll up your second $200 to $400 again you split the money into another ticket plus money to play with.

After you have 3 or 4 tickets you can rotate them. Never play a ticket all the way down. Leave at least a few dollars on it so you can leave the casino with some money (and a little dignity).

Sports Betting Best Way To Make Money

When you gamble online it makes some sense to shift money from the game balance back to your main account. As long as you have money in your game account you should be good. It helps you to stay focused on conservative betting if you take money out of the game when you get ahead of your original bankroll.

  1. Play with Casino Bonus Money Whenever Possible

Land-based casinos may not offer you signup bonuses but many online casinos do. Play conservatively with the casino bonus money to increase your chances of fulfilling your wagering requirement with just the bonus money. While that won’t always happen the longer you can delay putting your own money into the game the better the chances you’ll start winning.

You can try this strategy with the “no deposit” welcome bonuses some casinos offer but they do limit how much credit they extend to you. You have more bonus money to work with when you accept a deposit match bonus.

  1. Stick to the Basic Game.

Whether you play slots, craps, roulette, or blackjack the less complicated you make your game the less likely you’ll place dumb bets.

The casino is counting you to make dumb bets. You should count on the casino to be less than generous with its odds on the best most likely to pay off.

There are few progressive wagers that are worth the money. The more you throw into a round the harder it will be to recover from a loss.

In craps bet on Pass or Don’t Pass and play the odds but keep it simple.

In blackjack bide your time and don’t split every time you get a pair of cards of the same value. Should you really split two 5 cards when you’re showing 10 on the table? Should you split two tens? Two nines? You have three options: play the basic game, double down, or split. On some tables you may be able to surrender if you don’t like the dealer’s cards but look at the strength of your cards first and your options for splitting second.

  1. Assume the free games are more generous than the paid games.

When you have a chance to “try before you buy” at an online casino the free game just may be slightly more generous than the paid version. There are several reasons why this might happen. If you can check the theoretical return to player for a free game and the paid version, look for differences.

Does the free game run on a different server? The different server may be using a different random number generator, a different random seed number, or a different estimated percentage for the theoretical return to player. Variations in all these things can affect the randomness of the outcome of the game.

  1. Play low variance games.

Sad to say, but the less volatility there is in the prize to wager ratio of a game the more likely it will pay you prizes. Volatility is an important measure for a casino because it needs to know how much cash to keep on hand. But you need to know how long you may have to play a game before you win a nice prize. That is where the variance comes into play.

Think of variance as “how much any random outcome of a game varies from the average expected outcome”. There is a relationship between variance and volatility (in fact, some gambling writers use these terms interchangeably). The casino cares more about the volatility and the player cares more about the variance.

How do you judge variance? It comes down to how long you can play the game with your initial bankroll. A low variance game has a tendency to take less of your money.

Hence, as noted above, you can affect the variance of the game in a limited way by playing conservatively and ignoring the extra bets the house offers.

Conclusion

Think of gambling as an endurance race between the bettors. Whoever can go more rounds wins the most money, unless random chance steps in and hands a big win to the individual gambler. Then gambling is more about who has the most self-discipline. The casino is playing a numbers game and just has to be there with enough cash on hand to keep the games going. The player has to have the wisdom and the self-discipline to walk away with the cash.

Harvard Medical School published a trove of data about online gamblers that was collected from 2005 to 2007 by an online casino (Bwin). Researchers who studied the data concluded that about 11% of gamblers were likely to win and that winners were more likely to play less frequently. Subsequently, researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut compared that analysis to their own analysis of data from a Native American casino’s database. The second study found that about 13.5% of the land-based gamblers were winners.

The good news for most gamblers is that fewer than 5% of them contribute about 50% of the casino’s net revenue, and about 10% contribute 80% of the casino’s revenue, so most gamblers are not big losers. That means approximately 80% of gamblers share the burden of about 20% of the casino’s net revenue between themselves. Given that most people cannot lose enough money (for lack of wealth) to drop into the lower 10% (the Big Losers) changing how one gambles increases an individual’s chances of moving into the upper 10%.

Gamblers with little wealth to lose should still learn to make better choices. You cannot guarantee you will win but you can always cut your losses short or take fewer risks. Gambling is more fun when it is just entertainment. If your losses amount to no more than what you would spend on other types of entertainment such as concerts and travel, then have fun.

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