Gambling takes many shapes and forms, sports betting, poker games with friends, illicit backrooms and traditional casinos. The advent of the internet birthed online gambling. Newer than these, it took gambling to new heights when crypto casinos were birthed.
Many people gamble for a living. There’s a clear distinction between so-called “compulsive gamblers” and so-called “professional gamblers”.
By and large - professional gamblers tend to avoid casinos. Unlike a poker game you play with your buddies over a few cold beers - where everyone buys in and the winnings are divided based on who wins - or sports betting where a careful choosing of the odds and a deep knowledge of the games themselves can provide an expert with an advantage - casinos are different.
There’s an old saying when it comes to gambling - the house always wins. But does it?
One answer is yes. Any casino reserves the right to - and does - implement their own “house edge”. The house edge can range wildly - but it’s usually between 1% and 5 %.
A house edge is a built in mathematical advantage that guarantees through the law of large numbers that over any prolonged period of time - having slightly better odds than the players will result in more money being lost than won. This takes the form of - on a 1% edge - a 50-50 bet paying out 1.98x the wager.
But the house can be beaten. At least - that was the opinion and experience of many I spoke to.
Covid 19 caused casinos around the world to shut down. Must have been an uptick in online gambling of monumental proportions.
SYSTEMS THAT FAIL - ALL OF THEM
Gambling at a profit - consistently and for long enough to have a real impact showing constant positive returns - is not a formula.
If you use a search engine to find gambling strategies you’ll generally be met with 3 examples.
The martingale. The martingale strategy has a lot of logic on the face of it. Simply bet 1 unit on a payout of 2x. Keep your bet on a win - and double your bet on a loss. For example - if you have 200$ - bet 5$- win - bet 5$.
Lose - bet 10$. Win - bet 5$.
This method can hold up for a while. But at its core is the gambler’s fallacy that previous results affect future ones. Time and time again - with any kind of a house edge - the martingale will fail.
The reverse martingale is another - a simple inversion where one doubles their bet on a win and returns to a base bet on a loss. It aims to capitalise on a winning streak - but much like the martingale it fails every time. These methods will top any google search every time. The basis of which is designed to conclude that no betting method can succeed in the long run.
Further down these lists you’ll find all kinds of formulas. The Paroli method was designed by a mathematician giving it perhaps more credence on the face of it. Yet despite it’s more careful approach it still is based entirely on the presumptuous fallacy that past bets affect future bets.
It will fail, but is a bit more resilient.
- Choose a base bet, and place units in that amount on an even-chance bet.
- On a win, double the base bet.
- On a loss, or after 3 consecutive wins, return to the base bet.
All of these systems are designed to recover losses strategically, or to capitalise on winning streaks. The reason they don't work is that recovering losses puts you in a position of betting larger amounts for smaller gains, and that winning streaks don't exist in a reality with the odds stacked against you.
How is crypto gambling different?
Most crypto gambling sites, the major ones at least, employ open source code which anyone can download and use the information provided after a bet has been placed that will confirm that the outcome of the bet was predetermined.
It works employing blockchain technology.
The way a bet is determined is as such - on every game there is a server hash, a seed and a nonce. You are free to change the hash and the seed on single player games at will. The nonce is the number of bets that have happened on that seed since it was changed.
The multipliers are quite a thing to behold as well.
***
Louis The Analytical
“Louis. Go ahead and name me as is. I have nothing to hide.”
We’d met online through a casino chat. We’d become friends and once I learnt that he had gambled for regular income for decades I asked him to interview and share how he’d not fallen into ruin as so many regular gamblers had. He’d been gambling in actual live casinos until covid closed that possibility. Crypto was where he’d turned.
A level headed and calculating individual - I immediately assumed that blackjack was his go-to and that his method was as simple as - or alternatively put - as complicated as - counting cards to tip the already very low edge that most 3-2 blackjack tables had over players.
“Yes, blackjack pays out the best odds and results most of the time. If I had plenty of cash in my wallet that's where I headed. While I didn't count cards I was good at prediction and playing progressive bets (3 wins add 50 percent to wager loss or push return to base bet). That's why I played 3 or 5 dollar tables. The max on those is 500 per hand. I've worked up to that several times and walked away with a few grand. My goal was always a grand or bust. My buy in was always 100. You can't even get a feel for a shoe without that much. I also watched other players before buying in. Some people just don't follow the rules and will kill a table full of 50 dollar wagers to make 3 bucks themselves. I also played straight blackjack. The pairs and side poker are sucker’s bets. They usually pay 9 to 1 and hit about 9 to 1. They're a distraction.“
I’d seen him play keno as well and wondered how that translated from live to online.
“As for keno I just like it. I have a knack for seeing patterns. I played penny keno. 8 numbers usually and played 1 penny with 1 dollar buy in. Approximately every 1000 to 1500 turns the numbers while random seem to generate in a similar pattern. I have several go to patterns I use but mostly cover as wide a space in as tight a pattern as possible. I took the local title as keno king for a while because I could usually generate a few hundred bucks a week playing a penny at a time and have hit all eight numbers on 2 occasions in 1 week. That pays 800 dollars on a penny.”
***
Mr T.
“Mr T.”
That was how he wanted to be named for this piece. T had been gambling crypto online for a while.
Unlike Louis, who had transitioned from physical casinos to crypto casinos, T was much younger, and had been living and breathing crypto for years.
I tried to get a detailed explanation from him on some of the games and methods . He was computer savvy and had studied the open source code of the site he mostly played on. Although he lost as often as he won, the difference lay in the size of the winnings compared to the size of the losses.
“You can’t just go in and expect to make profit each time. Especially at the beginning. The only real secret is to bet small and aim for large multipliers.”
Indeed this made a lot of sense. T’s game of choice was Keno. He showed me a series of wins from just one night. Where he made his money certainly had nothing to do with classic betting strategies. Not one of his bets he showed off was even half a dollar. Yet with patience, and learning to read patterns he showed multipliers ranging from x64 to x700.
“There’s only a certain number of combinations until eventually the numbers have to hit.”
He showed me a series of keno bets from one particularly good run. All of them were tiny bets that hit huge.
“Once again, multipliers, multipliers, multipliers.” He emphasised.
It’s clear just from their continued existence that casinos are a tough nut to crack. For those who manage, that’s part of the satisfaction.
On top of Mr T and Louis, I interviewed a third person who had turned pennies into thousands on multiple occasions. I asked him if he’d been gambling for a living.
“Lately, yeah.”
Auntrealityx was his pseudonym, and he was rather reluctant to go on the record with his secrets. Indeed it would stand to reason that someone who had “cracked the code” so to speak, would not want to detail it, because not everyone can win, or the casino has to change things up.
Through our many chats he showed me various graphs he had built, and I set out to study them.
The conversation with Auntrealityx became interesting and fascinating to the extent that I set out to try his methods, but before that, I asked Louis and Mr T to set out a game plan for me. I decided I would micro-wager based on their recommendations and see how much this could be taught. I also set up another interview with Auntrealityx, not quite yet ready to try his coveted and massively complex methods without more studitious learning.
In part 2 I’ll be detailing my game plans’ results, and delving into what does actually work.
Can you beat the casino? One answer is yes, another is no. Only a minority can. But luck can’t explain such consistently massive winnings, and that minority who win contains many who keep winning overall.
It is possible to make a living gambling. That much is clear.
Author’s note: Gambling is highly addictive and causes many people immense suffering. This article is an interest piece on the select few who find ways to beat the system, and in no way an endorsement of gambling. Should you choose to gamble, do so for fun, and do not play with more than you can afford to lose.
If you or a loved one has a problem with gambling visit https://www.begambleaware.org/
