Two Ways to Win

CINDY: There are two ways to beat the casinos.

ABBY: Only two?

CINDY: Only two.

ABBY: Okay show me.

CINDY: You play your normal game and good luck is in your corner tonight. You win and win some more and at the end of your session, be it a long session or a relatively short session, you are ahead. You gather up your chips and head for the cage. You have had good luck tonight – even though you made some really, really dumb bets at craps. But Lady Luck smiled at you and you even won many of those dumb bets. Yes, many. Dumb luck is all you need to win.

ABBY: I get it. Dumb luck wins no matter what.

CINDY: Exactly. Dumb luck can make great strategies look awful.

ABBY: Okay, what’s the second way to win?

CINDY: You play the strongest possible strategies at your game. You might not be able to get an edge over the house but strong strategies will keep you close to winning.

ABBY: Are you going to try to sell me something?

CINDY: No, we do already know these strong strategies. You can find them in books, videos, and the like. You always play basic strategy at blackjack (and count cards is you can learn to). Basic strategy keeps the casino edge around one-half percent. That is a potential loss of a mere 50 cents per $100 wagered. A person can overcome that.

ABBY: A little bit of luck.

CINDY: And you have some great bets at craps too. Not many but still, you have ways to keep the edge really low. Somewhere between a tenth of a percent, one percent, and the like. Just play the pass-line bet and use the odds bet when you have a number. Make your odds bet more than the line bet too. There is no edge on the odds bet. That will get the edge to dip under one percent.

ABBY: And a little bit of luck can get you the wins? I see that. So why don’t players look for a little bit of luck?

CINDY: That I do not know. At craps, the players will throw out the worst bets. As if their money isn’t worth money to them. You just have to add up the house edges on those bets to see that they will need a lot of luck – a lot of luck – to beat those bad bets.

ABBY: People will double down on a win at blackjack even though the house edge stays the same. You count cards? Great, you can beat the house edge. You don’t count cards? You are doomed to lose that 50 cents. Just about all blackjack players are doomed to lose their money. They must therefore control their betting.

CINDY: I can go on. But blackjack and craps only need a little bit of luck to beat them. That little is the key to the game.

This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net.