Casinos make money because a house edge has been designed for each game.
There are often two methods to get that edge.
The Casino Can Win More Decisions for How Do Casinos make money
The first method is that the casino can win more bets. For example, in craps, the pass line and come bets have a house advantage of 1.41% because the house wins 251 bets while the player wins 244.
Alternately, the casino may give you a game of blackjack in which, on average, the house wins 48 decisions, the casino wins 44, and about 8 decisions result in a push (tie).
The house has a 0.5% edge because the casino offers special hands (such as splitting pairs, doubling down, and paying more on a winning blackjack than just one-to-one) in an effort to keep the game relatively close.
The Casino Can Short-Change Payoffs
An additional method is for the casino to underpay for a wager. In American roulette, a winning combination of two numbers should pay 37-1. However, the house only pays 35-1. This happens once every 38 spins. Success! The house has just established a 5.26% advantage.
How do casinos make money? As you can see, the player is behind the eight-ball due to such manipulations of the betting results. The player cannot become a long-term (or possibly short- or medium-term) winner even with ideal methods. It appears that the gambler cannot outwit the casino.
Slot machines are slightly different from other gaming machines in that they win more often and do not always return the full amount of money that the player deposits.
How Can You Beat the Casino?
You see, some players are still able to win in spite of the manipulation by the casinos. They can defeat the house, indeed.
The first method is incredibly easy. The players retire today or tonight, adding themselves to an extremely exclusive group of swift quitters who can now confidently claim to be long-term victors.
Pai Gow Poker
When you play as the bank, you might sometimes acquire a tiny itsy-bitsy edge over other players at the table by placing excessive bets. You can play the bank enough times in certain games to virtually eliminate the house edge.
Advantage Play Slot Machines
Try not to become too enthused by these. They might no longer be around. When my excellent buddy Jerry “Stickman” performed the computer analysis on them, magic happened! We gained some revenue from them. Sometimes you may acquire a fair advantage over the house using what were called banking machines.
Advantage-Play Video Poker
These days, it’s not common to find many of these machines across the nation as it once was. There are still some, but in order to play them, you must be aware of the precise tactics. Perhaps the masters and gurus of video poker know where they are. I don’t really have authority over them right now.
Card Counting at Blackjack
While only a small portion of players have actually tried it, the majority of casino patrons are aware of this strategy. A subset of these players have developed into proficient gamers, while others have reached a higher level of skill and expertise in determining when they own the advantage over the casino and how to capitalize on those advantages.
These players are like world champion eaters coming to your Sunday buffet to eat the restaurant out of house and home; obviously, the casinos do not support them. If you prove to the casinos what you are capable of, you won’t be at the top of the comping list!
A Final Thought
There are a few long-term winners at the casinos make money—not many, but enough to serve as role models for the rest of us gamers, showing that it is possible to overcome the virtually impossible odds at the casinos!
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