Gambling for Winners: Your Hard-Headed, No B.S. Guide to Gaming Opportunities With a Long-Term, Mathematical, Positive Expectation

By Ward Wilson

This book is for you only if you gamble to make money.

If your idea of "fun" and "entertainment" includes giving away your hard-earned money to casinos, I can't help you.

If you enjoy sitting in a mindless, bright lights/dinging trance while you drop quarters down a slot, this book is not for you.

If you think casinos are built and run by stupid people, you better stay out of them.

If you think you can beat a blackjack dealer by wild-assed guessing, think again.

If you play poker just because it's now so popular . . . you don't need my book.

If you believe you can just happen to be "lucky" enough to beat the odds, you live in a fantasy world and you'd hate this book for destroying your illusions.

But if you're hard-headed, serious, willing to work, and tired of the mainstream gambling books that simply teach you how to lose less rather than win . . .

If you understand casinos don't stay in business by giving out more money than they take in . . .

This is an extensive examination of the most popular forms of gambling. If you can find any positive expectation bets, and how.

Some of the material is controversial. Some of it is unique.

It's not for beginners. If you don't already know how to play blackjack or craps, buy and read the basic books first. This one assumes you know and understand the rules of play.

If you have emotional or psychological issues around money -- my strong advice is, don't gamble. 

If you want to believe casinos are playgrounds built for your amusement, this is not the book for you. I use statistical concepts and common sense to strip away the bright lights and glamor to reveal the mathematical realities of gambling.

For the most part, it's not pretty. Not if you want to make money instead of lose it.

But there are opportunities there for people willing to work hard and understand the obstacles so they can surmount them. 

If you're still an emotional child needing the adrenaline rush and excitement of "winning" money, this is not for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Health & Wealth Press
• Release date: Aug 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516388257

Book preview

Chapter 1

You, the Winning Gambler

It can be argued that man’s instinct to gamble is the only reason he is still not a monkey up in the trees. —Mario Puzo, Inside Las Vegas

If you ain’t just a little scared when you enter a casino, you are either very rich or you haven’t studied the games enough. — VP Pappy

It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck. — Joseph Conrad

What can this book do for you?

Over the years I’ve read a number of books on gambling, some good but many irritating.

I’ve written this book to give everyday people a hard headed, realistic viewpoint on how to win at gambling.

Winning can mean different things to different people.

Part of gambling to win is deciding what winning means to you. For some people, it’s spending a few fun Saturday nights a month in a local casino without hitting up the ATM machine.

One of the kinds of gambling books that irk me are the ones that have win or winning in the title, but all they tell you is advice that’s good, but basic, like which games and bets have a low casino edge.

Risk money only on the best bets, avoid the bad bets yeah, yeah, yeah.

Folks, let me clue you in. Low casino edges are better than high casino edges, without a doubt. But a losing game or bet is still a losing game or bet. No matter how small it is, a negative expectation is negative—it means that in the long run you will lose money.

So most of those books on winning just tell you how to lose less.

I hope you’re looking for more than that.

To win money gambling in the long term, you must have a positive expectation, or advantage.

If you don’t know how to play a game, this is not the book for you. I have not filled up pages with diagrams of the boards. Get one of the basic books first, then come back to this one.

It irks me when gambling authors tell you that you’re a winner if you add comps in.

It irks me to read the advice to play only with money you can afford to lose. If you can afford to lose any money, you don’t need to gamble.

It also irks me to read that casinos are the enemy. Only Ian Anderson in BURNING THE TABLES IN LAS VEGAS really addresses this. Casinos are our friends, not our enemies. If not for casinos, we would not have the opportunity to win money from them.

True, casinos look upon advantage gamblers as their enemy, but that is their problem. It is yours to the extent that you have to disguise what you are doing, but that is good mental exercise for you.

The truth is, gamblers who successfully win money from the casinos are essentially gaining at the expense of the losing suckers, just as is the casino. Because if the sheep did not flock to the casino to be shorn of their cash, the casinos would close and winning gamblers would have to find another source of income.

If making a living as a gambler were easy, it’d be impossible—because the casinos would all go out of business.

It also irks me that so many gambling writers talk about money management only in terms of professional gamblers and tourists to Vegas or Atlantic City. Then they don’t inform you that if you travel to Vegas or Atlantic City to gamble, you are already behind before you start, by the amount of your traveling expenses.

Some of the fuzzy headed advice you read from gambling writers published by New York publishing companies is bad enough. If you really start researching gambling, you’ll see a thousand offers from people who want to take a lot more of your money for ridiculous but infallible systems.

I hope to educate you enough so you can see through the scams.

That alone can save you a lot of money.

Although gambling has long been looked down on by proper society, and there is a lot bad about it, there are good things too.

Read THE NEW MARKET WIZARDS by Jack Schwager. This is a widely hailed book of top financial traders interviewed by Schwager.

One of them is Blair Hull, who used to be a member of Ken Uston’s blackjack team. His description of playing blackjack in the 70s is fascinating. What is even more valuable, is understanding that he used the knowledge he gained through that experience of how to manage risk to become the top—and extremely wealthy—trader that he is.

Another trader interviewed by Schwager, Vic Sperandeo, used to play poker.

So did David Caplan. He is a prominent options teacher/trader/author.

Bill Gates played a lot of poker in college. Wonder if you could use some of his knowledge of people and probability?

Although most people don’t like to think this way, probability governs our lives.

Are there any absolute certainties in life? Some people claim death and taxes, but I know many welfare recipients who have never paid taxes, plan to keep it that way, and probably will.

I can’t say for sure I know people who will never die, but medicine and technology is advancing so much that it is possible.

We can’t predict the future. So what we must do is make trade-offs of risk.

If we get out of bed in the morning, we risk a number of dangers that could hurt us, such as falling down when we stand up. But the benefits of getting out of bed—or the penalties of not doing so—outweigh the slight risk involved.

Learning to think as weather announcers talk—Today there’s a 65% chance of rain.—is important, because that’s how reality is.

We can’t know anything for certain until it is happening, and then it’s too late to enjoy the benefit of knowing it was coming. So when you hear that forecast it’s a good idea to take your umbrella with you and on the 35% of days that the rain does not come, then you just carry that unneeded umbrella.

Or, if you dislike carrying an unused umbrellas, you can make the choice to get wet 65% of the time.

Our financial lives are tied to managing risk far more than most people want to understand. You must learn to understand the relative risks of stocks, bonds, etc.

The risk of ignorance is growing daily. FUTURE WEALTH, a fascinating book by Stanley Davis and Christopher Meyer looks at the future of risk management. Did you know that, already, people have bought options on David Bowie’s career?

How long before your broker offers you a mutual fund on the future of other pop artists or sports stars?

Gambling is a good place to start. I don’t think it’s the best place to stay. Edward Thorp, the man who invented card counting, who discovered a way to beat baccarat in the 60s (it’s now unavailable, because of him), and who figured out how to use a computer to beat roulette—now plays the stock market.

He says it’s just a much bigger casino.

To get started, let’s see what we need to know.

Before we can find the answers, we first must decide on the questions!

Chapter 2

The Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Gamble

Gambling itself will only end when human nature has changed completely.—Harold S Smith Sr

There are 7 questions you must always ask and get answers to before you gamble.

If you’ve ever taken a journalism class you know that every reporter must answer 6 questions early in every news story.

They are known as the 5 Ws and H.

Who?

What?

Where?

Why?

When?

How?

Since our subject is gambling, I’m adding a 7th important question:

How much?

I won’t mention who much, since the answer is obvious. Who is you!

So you must start thinking about who you are. Obviously I can’t answer that for you. Every one of you is different and therefore what this book does for you will differ.

I don’t know who you are but I am sure of a lot of people you are not.

You are NOT: Nick the Greek, Ken Uston, or any other famous gambler.

I am going to assume that you have a serious interest in gambling but are not yet an expert.

So, let’s move on to the most important question of all.

Chapter 3

The Most Important Question to Ask Yourself Before You Start Gambling

Remember this: The House doesn’t beat the player, it just gives him the opportunity to beat himself.— Nick the Greek

It’s not the best place to gamble. It’s not the odds.

It’s not how to play the games most intelligently.

It’s not even how much money you can afford to lose.

All those things are important and making poor judgments on them will vitally affect you results.

However, none of them are the MOST important thing to know before you start to gamble.

It’s WHY you are gambling.

WHY you gamble determines everything else, the where, how, and the how much.

If you gamble without knowing why, you should stop. Right here, right now, and don’t start again until you know.

I guarantee you if you don’t know why you’re gambling, your reasons are deeply rooted, irrational and self-destructive.

I recently participated in an academic study of gambling that attempted to correlate problem gambling with psychological problems. I have no idea what the final results will be but the trend of the questions was clear.

Problem gamblers use the thrill and adrenaline rush to mask their real problems. If you gamble to forget your problems, because you’re angry or upset or emotionally driven to take stupid risks, you have problems neither I nor this book can help you with.

You need professional help.

This book assumes you the reader are an intelligent human being.

You are imperfect but capable of rational thought, capable of evaluating information, making decisions based on facts and changing behavior when necessary to accomplish your goals.

We all make mistakes but we can and should learn from them. This book is the product of a lot of mistakes I’ve made. I hope I help you avoid them.

Are there good reasons to gamble? Of course!

This is not a knee-jerk, moralistic self-righteous anti-gambling tract.

To my thinking there are three perfectly valid reasons to gamble:

Money

In my opinion this is the best one. Your knee-jerk reaction is probably to agree with me but chances are that is not how you currently behave.

It is patently obvious that most people who gamble are not doing so for the money.

If they really were gambling for the money, they’d stop—because they’re losing more than they win.

Fun

The self-righteous moralistic puritanical types hate this one, but it’s totally legitimate. If you enjoy gambling, it needs no other justification. Pleasure is its own reward and we’d all be better off if certain people devoted their lives to enjoying pleasure instead of trying to pass laws to control the behavior of other people under the guise of protecting them from themselves.

So, take that walk in the park when you want, go to a baseball game, eat that chocolate sundae and visit a casino for the thrills.

And don’t apologize to anybody.

Sociality

You’re not big on gambling yourself but you have friends who are. You’ve been invited to a birthday party, a work promotion party or a class reunion, and everybody else is looking forward to taking the party to a local casino.

This is increasingly common in St. Louis since casinos became legal.

You’re not a knowledgeable gambler but you’re not anti-gambling. You want to just go and get along with people. You don’t want to be a wet blanket but you don’t want to lose a lot of money either.

I won’t mention this reason much during the rest of the book, for the simple reason that such casual gamblers aren’t reading this book. They go when the social occasion calls for it, hopefully bet no more than they can afford to lose, and then go home.

The rest of you, decide which category you fall into.

And please don’t tell me, both.

If you answer both, you’re playing for the fun and you’re just hoping you’ll win, just as when you were a child you hoped Santa Claus would bring you lots of presents. Only the casinos aren’t good ol’ St. Nick.

Guess what? If you keep gambling, you will NOT win. It’s that simple. You won’t.

Yes, tomorrow night you might double your roll. I’m happy for you, but you’re still not gambling for money.

A person who gambles for money may have fun doing so, but they must be extremely tough minded and realistic, and limit themselves to only a very small number of possible gambling bets.

If money is truly your motivation, gambling is work just like your job.

How much do you like your job?

If you gamble for money, you are allowed to enjoy gambling in a casino. You are not allowed to put any emotional weight on that pleasure.

You might enjoy your job, but would you go report to work every morning if they stopped paying you?

I didn’t think so :)

If you are a for-fun gambler, you should make another basic decision.

You are allowed to be concerned about your money while still gambling for fun.

There are more intelligent (that is, money-conserving) ways to gamble and less intelligent ways to gamble. Gambling for fun doesn’t mean you have to be totally reckless with your hard earned dollars.

People who are reckless gamblers (and you see a lot of them in casinos) likely aren’t reading this anyway.

They don’t care—no matter how poor they are, they have money to burn having fun.

But isn’t it more fun to conserve your money? To make your money last throughout an evening instead of running out after half an hour? To sometimes take home more money than you went with?

Long term, fun gamblers lose money.

But you can learn ways to get the most entertainment value for your gambling bucks.

This book is written for money-motivated gamblers, but intelligent-fun-motivated can benefit from it as well.

Now that you’ve answered the most important question, it’s time to go on to some lesser but still important questions.

You don’t have to be a mathematician to understand this book, but you must have a basic understanding of odds and probability to hope to gamble intelligently, whether for fun or money.

You must particularly understand one foundation tool for measuring luck.

Chapter 4

The Bell Curve

My advice to the unborn is, don’t be born with a gambling instinct unless you have a good sense of probabilities.—Jack Dreyfus

Here’s where we start to get technical. If you choose not to understand this chapter, don’t ever quit your day job.

The standard way of displaying the possible range of events than can happen in any probability situation, such as a casino game, is called the bell curve.

It’s called that because that’s what it looks like. It’s a bell-shaped curve.

Take a quality which can be measured across a wide range of values. Measure it in a large sample of people and the results will look like a bell curve.

Take I.Q. for example.

By definition, 100 is the average measured intelligence of any particular age