Winning Gambling Strategies: How to Give Yourself a Fighting Chance at the Casino

By Philip Nehrt

Dedicated research on other systems and personal experimentation has turned a handful of notes into a comprehensive collection of potentially winning strategies. First and foremost, it is important to understanding that there is no winning system that can beat the mathematical odds that the casino has against a player. However, this book teaches you strategies to follow while in the casino, giving you a large amount of information to help you walk out a winner. These tips can benefit players of all experience levels. You will learn to think how the casino thinks, and avoid the traps they set for every player. Inside you will find the general rules for each of the main games, tips on how to approach a table, what to say to the dealers, how to handle your money, and especially a broad range of specific strategies, or systems for each of the games covered. This book makes the game and strategy information easy to understand and follow, as well as fun and enjoyable to read, with a bit of irreverant humor sprinkled throughout.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468539707

Philip Nehrt

Mr. Nehrt has been interested in gambling for over 20 years but does not make his living from gambling. Computer consulting is what he does for his livelihood, focusing on Quality Assurance practices in software development. The discipline it takes to develop applications and discover software “bugs” has come in very handy, lending a critical and logical approach to researching gambling systems. Before risking money on the table, he takes great care in decomposing a system into its mathematical components, writing programs to try the system on a virtual table thousands of times to determine its strengths and weaknesses, seeing if it is worth trying, or just total garbage (as many systems are).

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© 2012 by Philip Nehrt. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 01/31/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3972-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3971-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3970-7 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012900509

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Overview

Gambling Guidelines

Rules of Thumb (Short Version of above)

A Day at the Casino

The Most Important Behaviors to Follow

Strategies vs. Systems

The Game is Craps

The Game is Roulette

The Game is Baccarat

The Game is Blackjack / 21

The Game is Slots

The Game is… well…

just about anything!

Appendix I: Layouts for Printing and Copying

Appendix II: Cheat Sheets—The Boiled Down Strategy Descriptions

Appendix III: Books and Systems on the Suggested List

Appendix IV: Current Gambling Websites on the Internet

Sevens at the Table

To my parents who brought me into this world and got me ready for it, to my children who continue to keep me thinking young, and especially to my wife who makes every day worth living.

Foreword 

This is a book of gambling concepts, rules, ideas, systems and strategies to help you be a more frequent winner in the casino.

There are many systems that you can purchase that give you one or two strategies, and they virtually all guarantee that by following their strategies you will win fortunes.

Life, math and casino gambling just doesn’t work this way. Think about it. If there were even a single system that guaranteed winning, two things would happen almost at once. Gamblers would find out about it, then casinos would change the game to ensure that it was no longer a viable winning solution. Even a perfect system would not work for long.

It happened once in the game of blackjack a couple of decades ago. Edward O. Thorpe wrote a book on counting cards at the table ("Beat the Dealer"). It only took off a few percentage points from the casinos’ edge, enough to barely give the player the advantage, if every card was counted and every hand was played perfectly. You also had to basically bet almost nothing when the deck was against you, and bet huge when the deck was on your side, a sure signal to the casino that a card counter was in their midst. However, he won money. He quit his job and won money. Finally he went back to work because of all of the hassle he received from the casinos for winning.

Casinos were terrified. They thought that they were months from going bankrupt. They changed the rules, excluded card counters, did everything they could do to change the odds back to their favor. After a short while, they stopped worrying.

They realized several things. They realized that most people that played blackjack never read the book. They realized that most people are lazy and among those that read the book, very few followed the teachings. They realized that of those that followed it, very few could play the game perfectly enough to push the odds to their favor. And they realized that even if the odds were slightly in their favor, the players did not have the bankroll to see them through the inevitable roller coaster of the normal ups and downs of the game.

That is where we stand with this book. There are no gambling systems or secrets in here that will win you fortunes, because there are no such things. And, like Beat the Dealer, this book will not help you by only reading it. It will do you no good if you are lazy, and just want to go to the casino for a good time. You must put the time into learning everything you can in this book, at least about playing in a casino in general, and about the game you are interested in, and then have the discipline to use this information whenever you visit a casino. Neither will this guarantee you from losses. What it can to is improve your chances of winning.

When a gambler picks up a pack of cards or a pair of dice he feels as if he as reduced an unmanageable world to a finite, visible and comprehensible size.

Annabel Davis-Goff

The Literary Companion to Gambling

Overview 

Disclaimer

Let me start with a disclaimer: Gambling involves a risk. Gambling is dangerous to the bank account. The author accepts no responsibility or liability for any loss or losses incurred by any person or persons using any of the systems, strategies, information or ideas contained in this book.

Gambling, by its very nature, places money (your money) at risk. Any time you begin a gambling session, you must realize that, even with all of the knowledge about gambling in the world, you may lose. Think of your gambling day as a single flip of the coin. Regardless of your knowledge, skill and discipline, you just might lose all of your money when your money’s on the heads and that coin shows tails.

You must not gamble with money that you otherwise need to pay the bills, buy food, anything. Money that you use for gambling needs to be money that if you lose, will not affect your lifestyle, or even make you worry that something will have to go unpaid. If you are worried about losing the money, you are playing with what is called scared money and you will almost certainly lose, because you will not be thinking clearly about how you should be managing the losses. Your gambling bankroll needs to be totally separate from any of your other moneys that you use for day to day living. Keep it totally separate, physically as well as psychologically.

Very importantly, if you have any problems with controlling your gambling impulses, do not gamble. Period. If you need to, seek help with Gamblers Anonymous or other professional supervision. Reading this book will not guarantee you money at the casino. If followed, the information herein should help your chances of walking away with a profit. But you will, on occasion, lose. Hopefully you will learn enough from these pages to lessen the chances of a loss, and to lessen the amount that you lose before you walk away from the tables, accepting the loss graciously as part of gambling.

Introduction

I have tried to make this book both informative and interesting to both the novice gambler and the experienced one. If you are a professional and make your living gambling, it might be entertaining, but you probably won’t learn anything you don’t already know. If you have never or only rarely gamble, this beginning portion, although written in an easy to read fashion, might be a bit confusing as it uses casino terminology. That is okay and as intended, as I want you to understand that, as one of the key strategies goes, you need to learn the games and the casino world; terminology, rules, customs, etc., or you will feel confused and not be able to play as well as you should. As you read more, and as you start your tentative forays into the casino world to start putting these strategies into practice, it all will make more and more sense, and feel more and more comfortable.

As an experienced gambler, I hope you are both entertained by the familiar world described here, as well as being able to pick up some good strategies and systems to put into practice.

This Book and Gambling

Gambling. Exciting, romantic and fun, in movies at least. The good guys are always good at whatever game they play, and the women flock around them. They always make it look so easy. And it is! Beyond a shadow of a doubt, gambling is about the simplest thing there is to do with your money. You don’t need any secret skills or special training, studies or advanced degrees. Anyone can step up to a table, toss their money down, and wait for the decision. The tough part is winning. Actually, that’s not quite true either. Winning is easy as well, and you can do it much of the time. The tough part is winning more frequently than expected, and walking away with your winnings, enough to offset your losses that will inevitably occur. The tough part is keeping your losses to a minimum, while allowing your wins to go as high as they can, not limiting them.

The idea of this book is to boil down a portion of the huge amount of literature in the gambling world to its bare basics, to present the basic ideas, systems and strategies in a brief format. In fact, in looking over the format, I decided that, as compressed as it was, it was not compressed enough. I shrunk it to even a smaller level, the base system cheat sheets as Appendix II. After reading and re-reading this book, becoming very familiar with the concepts, and with the games themselves, you should be able to only take a copy of the 4 or 5 pages of systems for a game with you on a trip to the casino, rather than this entire bulky book, and still be able to remind yourself of different systems to play on a game.

Will any of these systems make you rich? No. Perhaps, if you carefully follow the appropriate system at the appropriate time, and use a money management strategy in order to preserve your bankroll and take advantage of potential trends, you will be able to regularly walk away from the Casino with a profit.

Read the above paragraph carefully. There are at least 6 major ideas in there that you need to pay attention to, and several more that I will address in the rest of the book that will help you on the casino floor. These are:

1.    Will any of these systems make you rich? Is there such a thing as a truly winning system? This, believe it or not, is a question in itself bantered about in books and especially on the Internet from many savvy individuals. One of my good friends is a math major (and a craps lover), and is absolutely convinced that there is no such thing as a winning system. Odds are odds. Randomness is randomness. There is no such thing as pattern or trends. There is no possibility of determining the next roll from the previous ones.

2.    No. Perhaps, if you carefully follow the appropriate system —keyword is appropriate

3.    at the appropriate time, how do you gauge this?

4.    and use the money management strategies in order to preserve your bankroll—Even among long time players, the term Money Management ruffles feathers

5.    and take advantage of potential trends,—Oh Ohhhh… Trends. See the section where I expand on all of this, but the concept of trends just KILLS some people.

6.    you will be able to more frequently walk away from the Casino with a profit, and isn’t this the ONLY object of going there?

At the end of this section I will list what I consider the most important concepts in successfully beating the casino. There is a lot to it, and it does not just consider odds of the game. If you are going to be successful at the casino, you need to know your enemy, and it is not a simple, single attack you are defending against or launching, but a defense against multiple directions, and an attack against several opponents.

Although I would like to assume that everyone reading this has a working knowledge of the games they are interested in, the whole reason for writing this is that I know they don’t. This is not a secret. In fact, it is what the casino industry counts on to make a living. Look at it this way. There are numerous individuals that make their living—literally—make their living—gambling. Think about it. They win enough every year, every month, every week to eat well, pay the bills and send their kids through school. A lot of people? No. Very few. However… follow me here… they do so not because the odds say that some people will win enough to do so and that they happen to be those people, but rather that they have decided that this is what they want to do for a living, and have figured out how to do so consistently.

I repeat myself. Although I would like to assume that everyone reading this has a working knowledge of the games they are interested in, the whole reason for writing this is that I know they don’t. This is a very sad fact. This is the reason Casinos are rich and most players are losers. I cannot stress this enough, though you will see I try.

Even if they know the one game they have played, they may not know any other. Much more important, they do not know the tricks to success outside of the game itself, and they may not understand the effects that the tricks of the trade that the Casino applies has on them. I will separate the basic rules from the systems as much as possible, so if you know the game, you can skip over that section. However, note: Even if you have played the game before, if you do not know the odds cold, you do not know the game. If you do not have other basic charting and money management concepts in mind, you will have a hard time finding a winning table. If you do not have the discipline to leave when you should, you will lose. This is not up for discussion. This is why the casino is profitable. Think about it. I stated before that there is a small, select group of individuals that wins, consistently. Imagine if everyone followed the practices of this select group. They win some days, and lose others, but they have learned how to win with enough consistency to earn a living. Imagine if everyone could do so. The casinos would go out of business. Why are they in business? Because (and I am totally guessing here) 99.99% of the people that walk through the casino doors do not know enough, and are not disciplined enough to follow the basic tenets that would allow them to win. I am being generous here. This 99.99% means that one in ten thousand people that walk through the doors of a casino will consistently walk out a winner. The actual number may be much smaller, given how many millions of people gamble recreationally each year. However, even if one in ten thousand people win a reasonable amount regularly, a casino can become very rich. What does it take to consistently walk out a winner? Read carefully, and you may be able to do just that.

If you want to have a lot of fun at the casino, totally enjoy yourself, and not worry about money that you win or lose, then you don’t really need to continue reading, unless you want to get to know the basics of the games. Anyone can throw money away. If you are indeed out for a good time, then you will probably not win anything, and will convince yourself that it is fine—that you had fun during the evening while you lost money. That is fine. That is fine, as long as that is what you intend to do—lose money and have fun doing it. Be very clear on this. 90% of people who go into a casino have this in mind; have fun, lose money. Entertainment costs; this is entertainment, so it is okay that it is costing me. This has got to be the most expensive entertainment known to the common man. If you have a meal for $100, you choke on paying a tip of $20 for good service. If you pass a needy person on the streets, you shrink from them, not wanting to drop a handful of change in their cup, much less a $1 or $5 bill. However, on the Roulette table there is no hesitation to drop a quarter ($25) on the Black, or a nickel ($5) on the Craps hardway 8. You walk away from a table down $250 and that was the luck of the draw today, but would you take a $5 bill and set it on fire with a lighter? I hope that after reading this you want to be among the .01% of the population that walks into a casino not only desiring to walk away with a profit, but confident and knowledgeable enough to do so.

If you desire to win, you will be reining in your emotions, playing very boring strategies, watching others win lots of money sometimes, while you are grinding it out. However, spend some time to watch these people longer. You will find that many if not most of them will continue to play in the same aggressive or random fashion, and lose everything they have won, and then some.

These guidelines have been put together to help you walk away from the casino with more money in you pocket. Maybe not a lot, but a consistent small amount, at least. And this is important. Many people want to go to the casino with $100, and walk out with $5,000. Does this ever happen? Absolutely. Often? Almost never! If you reach too far, you will usually fall.

It is sometimes very frustrating to play a system and stick with it. Why? Because it is boring. You see missed opportunities. Let’s say I am playing a basic 6 & 8 craps strategy. Shooter comes out, you put $12 on the 6 and the 8, the shooter hit’s a 6, then an 8, so you take it all down, with a hefty $28 profit in 90 seconds. You are set, according to your strategy. The shooter proceeds to shoot for 5 more minutes, hitting 4 more 6’s and 2 more 8’s. You are kicking yourself, looking at the $72 you didn’t make. So you put $18 on the 6 and on the 8 to catch the hot roller. Out 7, line away! All of the sudden you took yourself from a bored $28 ahead to an $8 loss. Why? Because you made a decision outside of your strategy. If you want to change your strategy, take a break. A 6 & 8, down after 2 wins is a very specific, conservative strategy to take advantage of the reasonable chance of the 6 and 8 coming up before the 7. If you do not want to be a conservative bettor, then choose the appropriate strategy for yourself first, and follow it.

Another ideal example of handling the boring part of gambling is in charting the tables. Charting a table is the process of looking for a table that is trending strongly in a direction which you can take advantage of. It involves writing down each roll of the dice or spin of the wheel, and details about the roll itself (decision, field, hardway, natural, etc.), and even about the shooter (in Craps). When you do this right, 50%-75% of your gambling session will be spent walking around looking for a table that is trending the way you want to bet, or at least until you recognize that the table is trending in a fashion you might be able to take advantage of. Then you will step up and bet several times, then walk, win or lose. Impatience is your worst enemy here. You are sure that enough of a trend for red on the roulette table has shown itself, so you place the bet on red, and lose. Quick, bet on the black since that must be the trend. Red hits. Stop! What is your determination of the trend? Red! Patience! If you are playing Follow the Trend, then play what you have determined the trend to be. No decisions. Play the trend until you determine that the table has changed, then leave, or at least take a break and rethink your strategy.

Remember this: The house doesn’t beat the player. It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself.

Nicholas Dandalos (Nick the Greek)

Get in; get up; get out.

The creed of the professional player.

Gambling Guidelines 

Rules of thumb that will save you or sink you.

The main, the only, goal of the casino is to create the proper environment to remove as much of your money from your wallet or purse, and put it into their coffers. Everything in the casino is carefully designed to do this. Reread this—Everything in the casino is carefully designed to take money from you, and move it to their coffers. If you think the casino is nice for doing something, think again. They are doing it to take your money. Free drinks? Not free at all. To take your money. EVERYTHING, without exception, is designed to take your money. You have to choose to do all out battle against the casino—and why else are you reading this? To fight the casino, and their considerable ammunition against you, you need to try to adhere to the following rules of thumb:

• If you can’t walk into the casino with $500 in checks (chips) in your hand or pocket for 30 minutes and then leave the casino without having played a single dollar, this is not an avocation for you. Find or create within yourself the discipline to not play if things are not just right for you. If you cannot walk away, RUN! You may have a problem quitting, and you cannot win if you have a problem quitting.

• Discipline. I will repeat this. Discipline. That’s it. Discipline in everything you do, from strategy, to when to start playing, to when to stop playing. If you do not follow… whatever you decide you should do at a given game, you may lose. Whatever strategy you decide to follow, if you do not follow it, you may lose. If you do not leave the table after you have lost a pre-specified amount or won back down to a guaranteed amount (see money management), then you will always leave the casino a loser.

• Always know your game. Know the process, the rules, the terminology, and especially the odds.

• Play the bets that have the lowest casino odds against you. Craps has some great bets and some terrible bets. Stick with the good ones only. Baccarat has the tie bet, over 14% against you. Stick with the Player or the Banker, avoid the tie.

• You need to have the attitude that you are in that casino to remove money from it. As long as the casino convinces you that they are your friend, that they are spending all of their money to entertain you, you will lose. Does everyone go into a casino to win money? No. Absolutely not. Listen to what people say. How many times have you heard (or said) any of the following?

• I’m just here to have fun. (just how fun is it to lose $500? Are they smiling as they do it?)

• This is money I can afford to lose.

• It’s just like a dinner and show out on the town. I am paying for an evening’s entertainment.

Now, really. With attitudes like this, it is no wonder that casinos take people’s money. Think back on casino ads you may have seen. They show the fun time, the entertainment, the meals. I remember a very specific ad,