How To Make Your Month’s Salary Gambling

There is an article in Better Than Your Boyfriend about Tynan’s online gambling history. He played with a 70% edge over the house on video poker using a system he didn’t reveal, of course. A 70% gambling edge is a fucking hell of an edge and I drooled at the idea of that. But I have no system like that.

A few years ago I did play with a system and made roughly a month and a half’s worth of my old salary over the course of six weeks. What I did is I’d walk in to the casino with a specified amount, say $100. My goal for that day is to make a little less than what I carried. If I brought in $100, I’d set a target of a $60 win.

As soon as I walked into the casino, I’d look at the tables and the notes the regular players wrote down. I checked for specific things:

(1) I’d check if any particular bet had won at least 7 out of the last 10 turns (I’ll bet on that)
(2) I’d check if any particular bet had won at least 4 out of the last 5 turns (I’ll bet on that)
(3) I’d check if any particular player has a retarded amount of chips (I’ll bet wherever the player bets)

To complete the system, I’d only check the bets where:

(4) You only win equal or a little less than the amount you bet (I avoided big payoff bets since the chances to win are slim)

As soon as I found one that met the criteria, I’d bet the equivalent of my target win ($60) on it. If I win, I cash out and leave. If I lose, I bet the remaining money, trying to win the target amount with as few bets as possible.

My rationale was this:
(1) I believe in luck, especially beginner’s luck. If a table or player is lucky, I’m willing to ride that wave at least once
(2) The house will always have a statistical advantage over you so the less you play, the less the statistics will catch up with you (thus I leave as soon as I win)

This means, I only stayed in the casino for around 1 hour, and around 5 to 10 minutes actually playing. The rest of the time was spent going around, looking for my bets.

Doing this, I made the equivalent of almost 2 months of my month’s salary in 5 weeks. Some nights, I’d win. Other nights, I’d lose. But at the end of each week, after I inventoried, I always made good money. I was planning to never work a day job again and just go to the casino 1 hour a night. What a fucking way to make a living that would have been!

The moral for me here was: Know when you’ve won. Most players I’ve interacted with in that time were just greedy as fuck and played out their winnings until they’ve lost it. Set a criteria for when you’ve won and run away with you have.

On my sixth week of playing, I lost five nights in a row. That was tough. I did not even complete the next two days because I was shocked as fuck. I have resolved to play that system until it got me a new car and the blow of the losses were hard. I decided to scrap that (since the statistics seem to be catching up with me) and take my win. I planned to return a few weeks later but I didn’t.

I wish I had taken all the money I made and continued playing nightly until I either became rich or lost all the winnings. To be honest, that chapter is not closed and I’ve been setting aside money planning to play for at least a month again.

The moral for me here was: Know when you’ve won. And honestly, I haven’t because the goal was the car. To be continued, most definitely.