There is actually no sure fire way to win at a casino. Even if you're managing to tip the house advantage in your favor such as by tracking the "count" of the cards and their flow in a game like blackjack, this usually can't go on forever as once the casino suspects that you are counting cards, they will give you the boot.
In my case, I wasn't formally banned from blackjack, but rather, handicapped. I had been clocking them consistently for a several years, but for relatively small sums. Then on one trip when I was alternating between winning big at the BJ tables and having sex with this wildly busty brunette whom I had flown in from Orange County to stay with me (the girl I was seeing at the time), they stepped in to put a stop to things. I'd been alternating between table min ($25.) and table max (at that time, $2500.) at this downtown Vegas casino, and winning all of my big bets, including quite a number of $5000. double downs, and losing only the small ones.
"They don't like me," I'd joke to my girlfriend over dinner, "they just look at me like - this guy's got thirty large of ours." (Which grew to around sixty five large when they finally put the whip down.)
When it happened, their Director of Table games stepped in to have a sort of EYEBALL with me, a chat. "We've been watching you? How are you winning so consistently."
I took a stab at a defense. "Well, I'm not counting cards," even though, actually, I was!
"We know you're not," he said, to my surprise. "So," he added finally "how are you doing it?"
I didn't say anything.
"Just going on a hunch, huh?"
In any case, the party was over. The House declared that from that point on, I was limited - handicapped - to betting no more than three times my prior bet on the next bet. Meaning, that if I bet $25. on my next bet I couldn't bet any more than $75.
"No more twenty five twenty five hundred, no more of that!" he declared.
I thought for a moment. "Well then, how am I supposed to win?"
"Exactly."
And that was it. I was effectively banned, although I did walk ahead about forty-five thousand (I had dumped twenty of the sixty five I had won at that casino, in four hands of $5000. each, at a different casino, but - that's another story). I stayed another night on a comp, went home, and actually, didn't return to any casinos at all for a while, and when I did, I took up a new game, Baccarat, where, for whatever reason, I ended up winning far more than I had ever won at Blackjack.
But Baccarat, as all the "pros" will tell you, is a game of chance - it has an inherently negative (about one percent) house advantage, and there is no way to win at it. And yet, I do. How?
In Baccarat, there are good shoes, and then there are bad shoes.
Here's an example of a good shoe:
Attachment 22
A good shoe, is defined as one with a discernible pattern - that repeats. Early on in this shoe, the pattern was what is known as the "chop" bank/player/bank/player etc. Just follow it, there was but one deviation from this pattern in 8 hands. Even better, after this chop pattern subsided, were STREAKS, where bank and player ran for a while, and then switched over. In one case the bank ran twelve times in a row! The rule is to press into all runs, or rather, to at least press anytime a pattern or streak runs more than three times. This shoe was a guaranteed winner for anyone with his wits around him.
The other way to win, is to get up and leave after a good shoe, and to quit or lower your bet substantially whenever a bad shoe presents itself - a bad shoe being one with no discernible pattern. This sort of "hit and run" gambling actually does work, and if everyone who gambled got up and left as soon as he was ahead, the casinos would all go dark in a very short time.
Of course naysayers will scoff at such tactics. "Hit and run? How does that change the house advantage?" They will tell you that over time, the amount of winning versus losing will even out and the only loss will be attributed to the house advantage, which, as noted, in Baccarat's case, is 1%. In other words, pass a million dollars (the amount of money bet is called your "handle") over the betting circle, and you'll lose $10,000. - guaranteed. This fails to take into account though that in reality, the house advantage has very little to do with how much money typical gamblers win or lose at Baccarat.
Big Baccarat players routinely hit the casino for multi million dollar wins. Happens every week in the big casinos. This is by no means a common occurrence at other casino games like blackjack or craps, a big win at these tables might be a couple hundred thousand dollars, rarely will someone come in and take the casino for millions at any game other than Baccarat. But there are also routine multi million dollar losses at Baccarat, where high rollers lose their entire credit lines in a relatively short period of time. This is because in Baccarat, almost no players bet the same bet ("flat betting") or anywhere near the same bet, on each hand. They jump their bets around massively, between as little as a hundred dollars to as much as twenty thousand if a regular limit player, as much as a quarter million, if a high limit player. Most Baccarat players sit at the table intending to either win big, or lose it all trying. At the end of each session, the final result has nothing to do with the house advantage, and if the game were truly fifty fifty, with no house advantage, the end result at almost all sessions would be the same for most players - win big, lose it all, or walk away even (which is what some players will do quite frequently too, be down, end up even, and just leave). Session results that reflect a 1% loss almost never happen, and since they almost never happen on a session by session basis, they cannot happen when extrapolated over time, either.
What most "gamblers" (using this term loosely in that most commentators on gambling sit at home and rarely play, especially not at any high levels) fail to understand is that a game like Baccarat, while ostensibly as random as say the roll of the dice, or a coin toss, or spin of the roulette wheel, isn't exactly the same sort of truly independent event. What happens in one coin toss has nothing to do with what happens in the next, but also, each coin toss is truly independent of the other - there is no set pattern of results. In Baccarat on the other hand, once the cards are set in the shoe, the results are fixed, if a given shoe has a thirty bank run in it, that run will remain and will happen no matter what other hands are played before or after the run. So a Baccarat shoe may be likened to coming up to a slot machine that is set to pay, a lot, or pay frequently - or not. Sticking around once you've chanced upon that slot machine that will keep paying, is all that is required to collect, and collect big.
Most anyone will agree that there are good Baccarat shoes, and bad ones. Here is another good one:
Attachment 23
in this shoe, the pattern is "player runs only one" - this pattern was broken only a few times in the entire shoe. All that was needed in this shoe was to bet the bank, and bet it big, after each player win, and keep up with that bet, pressing it, into each bank run. Why, this should be clear to a child. I myself won big on this shoe, and I was barely betting. $26.5K ahead for this shoe.
Attachment 24
Ohhhh yeah!
The point being, that when presented with a good shoe, a good player should be able to realize it, quickly, win big in that shoe, and then leave afterwards ("hit and run"). When presented with a bad shoe, he should be able to lower his bet, or leave because it should become quickly apparent that things are not happening. This outcome - good shoe, or bad shoe - is set once the cards are shuffled and set in the shoe. Discerning a good shoe, a good situation, from a bad one, comes with time and experience in Baccarat, but again gets back to that Baccarat, while random in the sense of there is no real way to predict the result of the next hand, does present itself as a series of events that will either present higher odds, or lower odds, of winning.
Getting back to the slot machine analogy, walking up to a good Baccarat shoe is like starting to play a slot machine that has been set to pay off more frequently, versus one that has been set to pay off less frequently. The luck of walking up to the right Baccarat shoe, might be just luck, but where the skill comes in, is in pressing your bet and taking advantage of such shoes.
As one of my compadres who routinely bets $5000. per hand at Baccarat when appropriate puts it, "Let me tell you something about This game. When given the chance, you have to bet big." And of course what he meant was, when given the chance to play a good shoe, with a discernible pattern.
