{"id":120016,"date":"2019-09-03T09:28:18","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T16:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=120016"},"modified":"2019-09-03T09:28:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T16:28:18","slug":"a-scholarship-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/a-scholarship-offer\/","title":{"rendered":"A Scholarship Offer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In last week\u2019s column, I reprinted a seven-year-old article I wrote about Edward Thorp saying that gambling is a tax on ignorance, which I would amend to being a tax on the ignorant and the lazy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after I wrote that, John Chang (former long-time manager of the MIT blackjack team) appeared on <\/span>GWAE<\/span><\/i> and commented that while he agreed that gambling is a tax on the ignorant and the lazy, it also provides a scholarship for the smart and hard-working!<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly the way I look at gambling, although I accept the words \u201cignorant\u201d and \u201clazy\u201d as being relative terms and not absolute.<\/span><\/p>\n

Simply put, beating a casino is difficult. You need to have some moxie. And even then, you need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to succeed. But that was largely what last week\u2019s article was about. Today let\u2019s talk more about what I mean by a \u201cscholarship.\u201d How do you get it? How do you keep it?<\/span><\/p>\n

What I mean by scholarship is that if you do it right, the casinos pay you to come in and play intelligently. They do not do this on purpose. Their goal is not to support professional players. But that\u2019s the way it works out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Casinos do compete with each other and they do offer promotions to attract players. Some of these promotions are beatable. Some of the games are beatable. Play those!<\/span><\/p>\n

Casino marketing people are not always savvy about doing the math on all promotions. This is a simplified generalization and not always true, but marketing types tend to be creative right-brained people while the ones who can figure out the math for promotions (for casino employees AND players) are left-brained people. When the promotions are developed by the right-brained marketing people, that is the time for you to play!<\/span><\/p>\n

Casinos basically recycle money from the losing players and give it to the winning players, while keeping a small percentage to cover their own expenses and profit. If the casinos have enough losing players, they can afford to have a few winning players.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why knowing this is important is that if you want to win, you have to treat the losing players with respect! They pay for your golden goose! If you go around insulting them because they are playing 8\/5 Jacks or Better when there\u2019s 9\/6 Jacks or Better a few aisles over, you\u2019re jeopardizing your scholarship!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Yes, I know that my teaching others to identify good machines and play well hurts the players who already know how to play, and wish to keep the \u201csecrets\u201d to themselves. Whether anybody likes it or not, this is one of my chosen missions in life and I plan to continue on that mission indefinitely.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The casino needs to make its profit somewhere. If nobody played the bad games, they would find it wasn\u2019t profitable to offer the good games. If losing players got insulted when they came to the casino, that would take a lot of their pleasure away. It\u2019s already an expensive activity for these players. If it isn\u2019t fun, many will stop donating to your scholarship fund.<\/span><\/p>\n

One key to keeping your scholarship is to not keep rubbing it into the casino\u2019s face. There are players who keep playing until the casino kicks them out. For players who are comfortable being on the road all the time and always going to new places, that might be an okay procedure. But for those who want the golden goose to keep paying and paying, this is not a good plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This means that if you get significantly ahead, stay away for a while. If you win more than one drawing in a short period of time, don\u2019t enter any more for a few months. This also means, if you\u2019re a winning player, don\u2019t be loud and obnoxious or otherwise a pain in the ass to the casino. They will put up with unpleasant behavior if you\u2019re a loser. But if you\u2019re a winner, this gives them one more reason to kick you out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Video poker players have an additional edge over other types of advantage gamblers in that we lose most of the time! Royal flushes are relatively rare. The time between royal flushes will usually consist of negative scores. A video poker player who wins every day is largely unknown — unless something fishy is going on. That lets casinos believe that your royal flushes are mainly luck and you\u2019ll give it all back. And it lets losing players have their memory of that one night in 2016 when they hit two royal flushes. These players will return over and over trying to catch magic in a bottle again.<\/span><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In last week\u2019s column, I reprinted a seven-year-old article I wrote about Edward Thorp saying that gambling is a tax on ignorance, which I would amend to being a tax on the ignorant and the lazy. Soon after I wrote that, John Chang (former long-time manager of the MIT blackjack team) appeared on GWAE and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2,3],"tags":[1952,428,196],"yoast_head":"\nA Scholarship Offer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today let\u2019s talk more about what I mean by a \u201cscholarship.\u201d How do you get it? 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