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The GameMaster's Secrets
Guerrilla Gambling

If you've subscribed to any gambling magazine, sooner or later you'll get offers in the mail for gambling 'systems' or 'reports' that claim you can earn a living at the casinos. You've seen them: "Earn $500 a day with the 'XYZ' craps method." Or, "Learn the secrets of the pros" and other hype like that. I hope you know that they are useless, because if they really worked the person who's selling it would be following his or her own advice and would be in the casinos making $500 a day. There is no legal way to overcome the edge casinos have in most games for very long, so while it's a very appealing idea, earning a living at the craps table just isn't going to happen. But there are situations where a knowledgeable, disciplined, well-financed player can make $$$ on a somewhat consistent basis and I'll share a few of them with you for free, without all the hype.

This article is the result of a conversation a friend and I had recently. She is very smart, doesn't gamble on a regular basis, but understands the basics, has just received a small inheritance and is 'between' jobs. Knowing what I do, she was interested in how she could make some 'extra' $$$; nothing big, but she has the time........ I told her she was crazy and that she should take her inheritance and invest it in something that makes a lot more sense, like a nice mutual fund or bank C.D.

"Oh, I can always do that", she replied. "What I need is some adventure right now. Look, I'll be going back to work soon so if I blow a few thousand trying this, how's that different than if I go on a trip somewhere?"

I explained, "At least on a trip you'll relax, maybe see something new, maybe meet someone nice and won't have to deal with the aggravation, the noise, the smoke and the mind-numbing dullness of the casinos."

She replied, "That's how you view it, because you've been doing it for so long. Besides, you're always saying that learning to count cards and all the other stuff you teach are skills that will last a lifetime and it's 'an investment in yourself', so I want to invest in me and I'm worth a couple of thousand."

This is not a woman to be denied, so I started her on my Blackjack course while I began to lay out a 'battle' plan. Certainly Blackjack would be involved, but there are other opportunities in the casino and I had to see how everything fit together. Since my friend wanted to just make any kind of profit from the whole thing and was willing to risk $2000, I set the weekly goal at $400. Getting a 20% return on your $$$ each week is a very impressive feat; not too many mutual funds offer that, but the risks are much, much higher trying to do it in the casinos. However, we could trade time for some of the risk. In other words, she has the time to burn and, since she chose not to use it in a more productive way, she could devote a lot of time towards making her $400 a week. It might turn out that she makes 5 bucks an hour (if she's successful at all!), but as she said, "It's an adventure." My friend figures that she has 8 weeks before she has to return to the 'real world'. Okay, I'm up for adventure, so let's figure out what she can do.

Blackjack

The typical game around here is 6-decks, double on any first two cards, double after split and the dealer hits A-6, so the 'house has an edge of about .6% 'off the top' and they deal out 4.5 of the 6 decks, though there are some games that are better. With a $2000 bankroll, she could use a betting spread from $5-40 which will yield an expectation of about $4.50 per 100 hands and a 'risk of ruin' (losing the entire $2000) probability of 35%. Ouch! That's a big risk for such a relatively small return and to make $400 a week, she'll have to play 80-90 hours. Now if you've played any Blackjack at all, you know that the $$$ don't come in like clockwork. She could easily lose $500 her first week (basically a 50-50 chance) and would have to cut her bet spread to keep with good money management principles. But, it's option # 1: Play Blackjack with a 1-8 bet spread for 80+ hours per week.

Video Poker

We have some pretty good quarter Video Poker here, but the best game is All American, which has a 100.7% return for perfect play. Combined with a .25% slot club cash rebate, which we can up to .3%, since she'll be able to take advantage of 'double point day' and other promos, her long-term return should be about 1% of all the $$$ she runs through the machines. At a rate of 500 hands per hour (All American has a very intricate strategy, so it plays slower than most other games), my friend will be betting $625 an hour and 1 % of that is $6.25. The risk of ruin is VERY high here, though. There's about a 30% chance that she'll lose her entire $2000 at All American. But if that doesn't happen, with 10 weeks' play at 60 hours per week she'll crank out about 300,000 hands of poker and, while that's too few hands to guarantee that her long-term edge will assert itself, she'll hopefully come close. The swings in her bankroll will be like a roller coaster because she could easily lose $1000 in one or two days' play (16 hours play at $625/hour bet equals $10,000 in total bets and a $1000 loss implies a 90% return in that time. Believe me, it can happen.) But, she might also hit a Royal and that pays $1000, so it'll make up for a couple of bad days, real quick. And, in 300,000 hands of play, she'll hit several Royals, since the expectation is to get 6 of those elusive rascals. So, let's sum up here: 300,000 hands of V.P. at $1.25/hand is $375,000 in total bets. At an overall edge - including a .3% slot club - of 1%, that's an expectation of $3750 or $375 per week. Not quite at our goal of $400/week, but she could play a few extra hours to get there. So we now have Option #2: Play quarter All American Video Poker for 60+ hours per week.

Other Games

There are some other Video Poker machines in this area which my friend might play, but we don't have full-pay Deuces Wild, for instance and most of what's available are short-pay progressives, but some may make sense at certain times. For example, there are quite a few 8/5 Jacks games with progressive Royals, but those are only worth playing when the Royal is at $2400 or more. I'll give her a list of machines to check and minimums to look for before she begins to play. The biggest problem with a variety of machines is that most require a different strategy and that can get confusing. I always recommend that a player learn no more than 2 games, so I'll teach her the All American strategy and the Jacks or Better strategy with variations for the large progressives.

You'll notice that craps, roulette, baccarat and other games like that haven't played a part in my planning and they never will. Each game that has a built-in casino edge cannot be beaten for very long, so we're sticking with 'positive expectation' games here. Table poker, like 7-card stud and hold 'em can provide some good income, but my friend has no experience at those games, so they were not considered. It'll seen awfully weird for me to talk about slot machines at this point, but there are some which can offer a reasonably predictable return at times. These are the 'banking' games and I wrote about them in a different GameMaster's Secrets column under the title "Beatable Slots". You can check that column for the details, but suffice it to say that there are more and more of these machines available to the informed player and these will serve as 'targets of opportunity' for my friend. Played wisely and with great discipline, these machines can produce $100-200 a week in income. To achieve that, however, she'll need to visit a lot of casinos and check a lot of machines to find 'beatable' plays. But, from my own experience, the dollar versions of these machines can pop out a quick $20-30 profit in 5 or 10 minutes' play. Realistically, she probably won't find more than 2 or 3 such plays per day, and there will be the occasional loss, so $100 a week is a good goal. The nice thing is that she can go to a casino in order to play Blackjack, run a 'check' on the slots, then play BJ and run another check on the slots before she leaves, so all her time won't be spent looking for good slots. Other (very small) benefits of beatable slot play are that it is good 'cover' for a card-counter and there are a few random $$$ to be made from the slot club points that will result. That leaves us with option #3: Play beatable slots whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Tournaments

This is not a big area for tournament play, but they can provide some good winnings, albeit on a less-than-consistent basis, simply because luck plays such an important part. Yes, skill does count in a Blackjack, video poker or craps tournament, but these are of such short duration that luck is much, much more important. Besides, there were none scheduled, other than a weekly slot tournament hosted by one of the casinos and that is completely based on luck. But with an entry fee of $20 and a top prize of $500, it's a low-risk play, and I added it to the list. So that is option # 4: Casino tournaments.

I showed this plan to my friend and she was politely unimpressed.

"Adventure, GameMaster" she exclaimed, "I'm looking for adventure! This reads like the actuarial tables of an insurance company."

I replied, "Darlin', that's how it REALLY is; people think full-time gambling is glamorous and it isn't. Sure, it can be fun and it's interesting and maybe even thrilling at times, but mostly it's as dull as dishwater."

"Look", she said, "I don't care if I blow the two grand, but if I do, I want it to be as much fun as possible. If I wanted a 5-minute thrill, I'd just play Blackjack at $250 a hand and that would be that. But I've got the time and some real risk capital, so can't you turn this up a notch or two?"

I Turn a Normal, Healthy, Attractive, Smart Woman Into A Street Fighter

Now I realize that those of you who are experienced card-counters are busting at the seams wondering why I didn't mention the most powerful, low-risk, consistent way of beating the game: back-counting or 'Wonging'. All that's true, but it's not easy. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with back-counting, it's a technique where the counter stands behind a table, tracks the cards and doesn't place a bet until the deck is in the counter's favor. This technique was made famous by Stanford Wong, the nom de guerre of a man who has written many definitive books on the game of Blackjack, so it's sometimes called 'Wonging.") Back to my thoughts on this. Wonging, as I said, isn't easy; not because the technique is difficult to master, it's just counting. But the casinos are aware that people do this and the 'art' of it comes out in the camouflage. When I back-count, I stand behind a table that is full and act like I'm just waiting for a seat. But, I'm not counting that table; I'm counting the one next to it that hopefully has fewer players! To do that in a natural way isn't easy, but it's very effective and it surprises anyone who's thinking I might sit down at the table behind which I'm standing when I walk away at sit at another. (There's another secret here and I'll reveal it in time.)

When back-counting, any bets that may be placed are done so only when the counter has an edge, so the bankroll fluctuations inherent in Blackjack are muted somewhat and the risk of ruin is greatly reduced. In fact, if the first bet ($5) is placed when the true count is 2 and the counter walks away should the count fall below a true of 1, the same 1-8 spread can be played with about a 10% 'ruin' factor and the average income per 100 hands played goes up to about $8.50; almost double that of the 'play-all' strategy. If you're still with me on this, it's easy to see that a back-counter won't play the same number of hands per hour as a 'play-all' counter. That's because there will be a lot of time wasted counting down shoes that never get into the positive return area. So this technique takes a lot of patience, but we can make some adjustments to make the time more lucrative. Because this technique will have my friend betting only when she has an advantage, she can bet bigger amounts and still assume a risk of ruin in the 30-35% range. What if she uses a $20 'unit' instead of a $5 unit and just bets either $20 (at a true count of 2) and $40 above that? Remember that the primary indication of a card-counter is the varying of bets, so there will be very little of that with this plan. My friend will look much more like a typical gambler because gamblers often 'parlay' their bets. The big question of course is: How much can she make this way? In a game with the rules I mentioned above and where the dealer shuffles after 5 of the 6 decks have been played, her average bet will be $33 and the average advantage she'll have is about 1.7 %, so she can expect to make $.55 per hand. If she can play 20 hands per hour, the return should be $11.00 per hour. The main problem will be getting the 20 hands per hour and sticking with the plan (not to mention finding the 85% penetration). I've done this many times and the temptation is to stay at a table once the shuffle card comes out, because the dealer's been breaking like crazy or you're tired or some other lame reason. But street fighters don't stay. They have blood in their eye and they only go into casinos for the $$$. (At least that's the speech I plan to give her.) But by hitting and running, she can make her $400 a week by playing about 750-800 hands which will represent about 40 or so hours of play. Then, all the other play is 'extra' and it can be used to fill in time or as a diversion when when back-counting gets boring or when the casino's too crowded.

So now we have a plan:

1. Play Blackjack by back-counting and entering the game when the true count is at 2; bet $20 per hand at that level and go to $40 per hand at a true count of 3 or more. Try to play 800 hands per week.

2. Exploit beatable slots whenever the opportunity presents itself.

3. Play quarter All American video poker any time, but particularly when there are bonuses offered on the slot club points.

4. Take advantage of all casino promotions, whenever possible. (She said she was going to skip the free hot dogs.)

5. Try a slot tournament or two.

My friend is beginning this 'adventure' on Sunday, August 1, 1999 and has promised to keep careful records of how she does. She hopes to spend 50-60 hours a week in the casinos and likes the goal of $400 per week in winnings. I'll let you know how she does.

See you here next time.