|
My casino gambling education began in 1990, when I first visited Las Vegas. Our son was driving along the Strip and, just before making a left turn onto Fremont Street, he announced, "Prepare to be blinded." And blinded we were, from the very first hotel all the way down to Union Plaza's thousand lights at the end of the street.
The excitement made my heart pound and I laughed out loud. I could not wait to park so I could drink in all the thrills of Las Vegas.
I've often said that I want to see the world before I leave this earth, and my husband and I have traveled extensively. However, nothing I had seen before could have prepared me for the splendor and nonstop action of Las Vegas. It was pulsating, seductive. I couldn't imagine going to sleep.
I just wanted to experience more of everything the city had to offer.
At Fitzgerald's I had my first slot machine experience. It was at a 25¢ machine that took up to five coins. I played two quarters and hit the jackpot - $250. Not bad for a beginner. I would have won $1,000 if I had played just three more coins. That was my first gambling lesson--Play maximum coins.
The roulette tables were like magnets, drawing me closer. To this day, I cannot pass those glittering, spinning wheels without stopping to check out the action. At a quarter roulette table, I noticed a man tossing a chip in the air before every spin. Wherever the chip landed, that was his bet for the spin. I thought, "You call that a system?" I wondered how many people really know what they are doing when they gamble.
Next, I wandered by the blackjack table where players sat intensely over their cards. Now, I was familiar with basic blackjack, but I did not know all the rules. So I made a mental note to brush up on the game and give it a shot another time.
I knew nothing about craps and baccarat. Video poker looked too complicated, so I played slots only. Later, I found out that slots is the game most Vegas gamblers play.
That first night of touring a Vegas casino touched off my curiosity. After that, I wanted to learn more about the full range of gambling options that casinos offer.
Recognizing that I was uneducated about gambling, I decided to go home, start reading and begin practicing. I knew I would come back to Las Vegas, and I wanted to have even more fun the next time. I wanted to get educated. And I did just that!
According to one statistic, there are more than eighty million gamblers, but that less than 2 percent are knowledgeable about percentages, rules and basic techniques for playing casino games. Few of them know the best and worst bets in the casino.
When I read that statistic, I was amazed and I asked myself, “Why do so many people who are normally informed consumers throw away their hard-earned money on something they know so little about?”
These are the same people who clip coupons, comparison shop and read consumer news reports just to save a few dollars and make informed product selections in their day-to-day lives. Yet they lose bundles at casinos simply because they do not take the time to do the most basic research.
As I studied casino games and learned about the enormous edge that the house has over the player in many casino bets, I determined to guide other casino gamblers ‘out of the woods’.
That determination led me to write books and present seminars to educate casino gamblers, so that they could make more intelligent and profitable gambling decisions. Gambling can be a great way to spend one’s vacation, but it need not be a mental holiday! There’s more enjoyment involved in gambling when one understands the games.
I decided to dedicate a number of Web sites to improving gamblers’ understanding of casino games. In the past, I have been Editor of three online newsletters: The Slots Report, Bingo Showcase and Casino Travel Showcase. Currently, I am Editor of Casino Players Ezine, an online newsletter. My goal was and is to increase the percentage of gamblers who understand basic odds and casino strategy.
To that end, this book concerns itself only with casino games and bets where the house edge is no greater than 3 percent. I have deliberately avoided discussing inferior games and bets where the house edge is higher than this; if gamblers can avoid such bets, they will have profited immediately from this book.
Working with only the best bets in the house, this book clarifies the principles for reducing the house edge as much as possible, and it guides the reader in developing solid gambling strategies for the ten best casino games. It should be stated here that when the house edge is referred to, it has been calculated against optimal player strategy. The further you deviate from this, the greater the house’s edge. The goal of this book is thus to teach the reader the pleasure and profitability of playing as close to optimally as possible.
As with any educational book for beginners, what’s most important are the facts, and the facts explained clearly. I expect that readers of how-to-gambling books will want to learn only those essentials—just the facts ma’am—that will prepare them for the jungle out there or, in this case, for any casino. So I have tried to make this an easy, enjoyable read, and to keep the math, charts and percentages to a minimum.
I have taken great pleasure in walking into a casino and knowing something about all of the major games. Know what the best games are and how to play them allows one the envious advantage of moving confidently from one game to another. This book encourages both an intelligent and a diversified approach to all that the casino offers. When you master the best games and use the lowest-cost strategies to play, you can enjoy your stay in any gaming location anywhere in the world.
And casinos are to be found the world over. For that reason, I’ve included a section on domestic and foreign casinos. I encourage my readers to expand their horizons beyond Las Vegas to include Atlantic City, Mississippi, Connecticut’s Foxwoods, Canada and international locations.
If you are confident in your gambling skills, combining travel with a little action can lead to a great and even profitable travel experience.
Wherever they are, casinos normally “hold all the cards,” so to speak with high odds stacked against gamblers winning. There are ways, discussed in this book, to restack those odds in your favor. With short-term play, for example, the law of averages does not have time to kick in, and knowledgeable players who minimize the house edge while maximizing their odds have a great opportunity to walk away winners.
You don’t have to be brainy or rich to take up the casino challenge in a fair fight. That’s the beauty of the low-cost strategies you will discover in this book. The biggest differences among casino gamblers are not a matter of gender or age but of levels of “casino know-how.”
Here’s one constant you can bet on: The intelligent, educated, prepared player will fare better than the uneducated gambler, and deservedly so!
This book is structured as a guided tour of the casino, visiting the ten best games one after another, and explaining the best basic strategies for playing each. Imagine that with each chapter we move to the next game, the next area of the casino. Summaries of the principal strategies and tips for each of these major casino games are gathered in the appendix at the end of this book.
In addition to discussing the games themselves, the book offers advice and information about such subjects as Wager Management, Comps, Internet Gambling, Casino Security and the Do’s and Don’ts of Gambling. Because a lot of the terminology used in and about casinos may be unfamiliar to beginning gamblers—often it sounds like a foreign language!—the book contains sections on gambling lingo.
However, before getting to the colorful languages of the games, and to the games themselves, let me begin with the basics of gambling, what I call the Four D’s of better playing: Development, Dexterity, Discipline and Diversification.
Reader, enjoy!
Free Preview of book at easycasinogambling.com
|
