Best Way To Win Money At A Casino
The wagering requirement Best Way To Win At Casino is the minimum number of times you have to bet your bonus amount to be able to cash Best Way To Win At Casino out winnings from it. For instance, you may get a $25 no deposit bonus with a 30x wagering requirement. Most people play at online casinos to win money, but did you know you can earn it, too? With over 200 slots to choose from and lots of variety, Cafe Casino has the best slots games on the web. Many Cafe Casino slots games have bonus features that create extra ways to accumulate cash. The best way to improve your chances to win at slots is to ask the right questions and look for the right numbers. There are no simple hacks, slots tips or tricks to winning on slot machines. If you’re hoping to walk away with a really huge win, progressive jackpot slots are your best option. Every so often, a few lucky players walk away with life-changing sums of money, with many.
Learning how to win money in a Las Vegas casino isn’t the hardest thing in the world to do. People win money in Vegas casinos every day, in fact.
Looking to visit an online casino instead? Check out one of the sites above!
But the odds are against you.
That’s why the casinos are still in business and make so much money. They’ve designed the games and payouts so that you can’t win in the long run. They even have a word for the mathematical disadvantage the games offer you—it’s called “the house edge.”
The good news is that the house edge is a long-term phenomenon. Anyone can win money gambling in the short term. In fact, if they couldn’t, the casinos would go out of business because no one would play there.
Some gamblers do a better job of winning money at Vegas casinos than others, though. This post looks at what they do differently so that you can do it, too.
1- Build a Gambling Bankroll
The first step to winning money in a Las Vegas casino is having a gambling bankroll. This is money that you’ve set aside for the purpose of gambling with. It should be money you don’t need for other purposes.
The reason you need a gambling bankroll is because you can’t win money without first risking money. That’s how gambling works. And if you don’t set aside money for this purpose, you’re liable to bet money you can’t afford to lose just to get into and/or stay in action.
How big a bankroll do you need?
If your goal is to stay in action forever at a negative expectation game, you need an infinitely large bankroll. Luckily, that’s not the goal for most thinking people.
You should base the size of your bankroll on your goals. Which games do you want to play? How much are you planning to bet at that game? How much time do you want to spend gambling?
If you want to play blackjack for $100/hand, you need more than $200 to get in any time at the table. Lose 2 bets in a row, and you’re out of action almost immediately. That’s no fun. Most people want to spend more than 5 minutes at the gambling table.
With a blackjack bankroll of $200, though, you might be able to play for an hour or 2 at the $5 tables.
Frank Scoblete offers interesting bankroll management advice for gamblers who play casino games. These are usually based on what it takes to make a quick win. Some of his money management techniques are misleading, as they don’t increase your probability of winning. But his bankroll management advice can help you avoid going broke before getting your fill of fun at the table.
Scoblete suggests having a bankroll of 1000 units for a casino visit, and dividing it up as follows:
- 800 units for blackjack
- 130 units for craps
- 10 units for roulette
- 10 units for baccarat
- 40 units for poker
- 1 unit for video poker
- 9 units for sports betting
According to Scoblete, this works out to this much gambling on your gaming activities:
- 4 hours a day for blackjack
- 2 hours a day for craps
- 1 hour for all the other games
Obviously, you can see that blackjack and craps are far and away his recommended games. In this respect, at least, Scoblete is on the money. These are probably the best 2 casino games you can play, especially if you can avoid the sucker bets at the craps table.
More about those in the next section…
2- Stay Away from the Sucker Bets
Some casino games offer nothing but sucker bets.
But what’s that mean?
A sucker bet is a bet that only suckers make because the house edge is so much higher than it needs to be. An example of a sucker bet is the game of keno, which usually has a house edge of 15% or higher. (And I’m being generous with that number—most keno games have a house edge of 25% or more, making it marginally better than the lottery, but not by much.)
Some gamblers think American roulette is a sucker bet because of its house edge of 5.26%. If you’re playing in a casino that offers both American roulette and European roulette (which has a house edge of 2.70% or 1.35% depending on the rules), American roulette is certainly a sucker bet. But if American roulette is the only option available, and if you really enjoy the game, it’s not really a sucker bet.
Other casino games, though, have multiple betting options. Some of them have a low house edge, while others have a ridiculously high edge. Craps is the best example of this kind of game. The basic bet in craps is the pass line bet, which has a house edge of 1.41%.
But the proposition bets at the craps table have house edge figures well in excess of 10%. You’d have to be a sucker to place a bet at a table that will result in 7X or 8X the losses in the same time.
How do you know which games and which bets are the sucker bets?
Just spend some time researching the house edge for various games. Baccarat, blackjack, craps, and video poker traditionally offer the best odds. Slot machines and keno are on the other end of the spectrum, offering the worst odds in the casino.
Most of the other games are somewhere in between.
Of course, unless you’re an advantage player (like a card counter), all casino games have a negative expectation. This means if you play long enough, you’ll eventually lose all your money. From the perspective of an advantage gambler, who only bets when he has an edge, all these casino games offer sucker bets.
But for the recreational gambler, your goal should be to get maximum game fun for the least amount of money. Your goal should also be to walk away a winner if you can.
Your best chance of doing so is to stick with the games with the best odds.
Poker games are another thing, entirely. That’s a game of skill, and I encourage you to learn to play poker and play it well. Since you’re competing with other poker players for their money, you don’t have to worry about a house edge. You just need to be more skilled than most of the other players at the table.
Sports betting is another thing, too. The bookmakers set up the odds so that they’re going to make a profit, so it’s hard to get an edge, but they’re not perfect. If you’re better at picking winners than they are, you can get an edge over the books, too. In fact, if you’re really good at handicapping, your best chance of leaving the casino with a lot of money is by putting money into action in the sports book.
3- Stick with a Strategy for the Game You’re Playing
Most games have no strategy other than avoiding the worst bets at the table. Some games require you to make decisions about how to play your hand, though. The latter are the games with the best odds.
No matter which kind of game you play, you should go into it with a strategy and stick with that strategy. Ignore your hunches and psychic insights about what’s going to happen next. Just make the best possible bets you can.
Roulette is a game with a simple strategy. Most casinos in Las Vegas offer what’s called “American” roulette. Every bet on that roulette game but one offers a house edge of 5.26%.
There’s one exception:
The 5-number bet has a house edge of 7.89%. Since that’s significantly more than all the other bets at the table, the best strategy is to never make that bet.
You can then decide how you want to bet on the other roulette numbers based on your tolerance for risk and your desire for a big payout. If you like frequent small wins, stick with the even-money bets. The probability of winning those bets is close to 50% (47.37%), but you only win even money.
On the other hand, if you don’t mind losing for a while, you can place a single number bet. That pays off at 35 to 1, but the probability of winning that bet is only 1/38, or 2.63%.
You can also place a plethora of bets with payouts and probabilities between those 2 options.
With a game like blackjack, though, the house edge varies based on how well you play your hands. In blackjack, there’s a mathematically correct move to make in every possible situation. This is called “basic strategy.”
A player using basic strategy in blackjack only faces a house edge of 0.5% to 1%. If you ignore basic strategy and just play your hunches, you’re probably giving the house an extra 3% to 4%.
That’s a huge difference. If you’re going to play blackjack, you should at least learn a simplified version of basic strategy to keep the house edge as low as possible
Also, even if you use perfect basic strategy in blackjack, the house still has an edge. Play long enough, and you’ll lose all your money.
But when you reduce the house edge as much as possible, you increase the probability of walking away from a Las Vegas casino as a winner.
You can find detailed articles about every casino game you can imagine on this site. Those articles all cover the appropriate strategies to use for these games.
4- Quit While You’re Ahead
No one can win money in a Las Vegas casino if they continue to play. Since the casino games have an edge, you’re likelier to lose than win, and every bet you make brings you that much closer to the long run. The Law of Large Numbers suggests that the more trials you get involved in, the closer your actual results will mirror the mathematically expected results.
This means that if you hit a big win early in your casino visit, it’s a good idea to set aside at least some of those winnings rather than gambling them all. I once won $6000 on a slot machine on my 6th spin of the reels. I immediately cashed out and set $3000 aside to make sure I could go home with a profit. (My bankroll for the entire trip was $1000, so I still had about $4000 to play with for the rest of my stay in Vegas.)
You’ll find some writers talking about money management and the importance of setting win goals and loss limits. An example of a win goal is someone with a $1000 bankroll who decides he’ll quit once he’s ahead by $200. That’s a win goal of 20%.
A stop loss limit, on the other hand, is an amount of money you’re willing to lose before quitting. With a $1000 bankroll and a 20% stop loss limit, a gambler would quit when his bankroll got down to $800.
Here’s the thing about win goals, stop loss limits, and money management:
None of these techniques change the house edge. No matter when you walk away from the tables, unless you walk away permanently, the house edge will eventually come into play in your casino game hobby.
Yes, you should quit when you get ahead.
Or at least set aside enough winnings that you can go home a winner.
Just realize that this concept doesn’t increase your chances of winning money in a Las Vegas casino in the long run. It just makes sure that you sometimes go home a winner. You’ll go home a loser more often, but not as often if you occasionally quit while you’re ahead.
5- Don’t Be Afraid to Go Big or Go Home
The last time I visited the Winstar, I had a small bankroll of just $200.
But I also had a plan.
I was going to bet $100 on odd. We chose that because my traveling companions and I decide that we were all odd people, so that might be lucky for us. (I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the odds of winning were 47.37% regardless of whether we bet on odd or even.)
That was half my total bankroll for the trip on a single bet. I wanted to go big or go home. I was going to use the other $100 to bet on craps, actually, but I was just going to stick with the $5 bets.
But it was a Saturday night at the Winstar, and they only recently started offering real roulette and real craps. Prior to this change, they generated results using playing cards instead of wheels and dice.
As a result, the tables were so crowded I couldn’t get anywhere near them. I wound up playing Lightning Sevens and The Big Lebowski slot machines, instead.
I still broke even for the night, but that was all luck.
Still, there’s much to be said for making one big bet instead of making lots of small bets. I’ve written about something called “maximum boldness” in gambling before. The idea is that making a single big bet on a negative expectation game offers you a better probability of doubling your money than making any combination of multiple, smaller bets.
This is because of the Law of Large Numbers, which I think I’ve already mentioned.
Here’s the easiest way to understand it, though:
You goal is to make $1000 on a single bet in roulette. You choose black (or any other even number.) You have 2 possible outcomes:
- You could win $1000.
- You could lose $1000.
Possibility #2 is more likely, but those are still the only 2 possibilities.
Now suppose you make 2 bets of $500 each. Here are the possible outcomes:
- You could win both bets, for a $1000 profit.
- You could win bet #1 and lose bet #2, which results in you breaking even.
- You could win bet #2 and lose bet #1, which also results in you breaking even.
- You could lose both bets, for a $1000 loss.
The likelihood of these events varies, but you’re more likely to lose both bets than you are to win both bets. That’s obvious. But you also have 2 other possibilities which are also pretty likely.
And obviously, the more bets you make, the more possibilities are out there. Suppose you make 4 bets of $250 each:
- You could win all 4, doubling your money.
- You could win 3 and lose 1, which would result in a profit.
- You could win 1 and lose 3, which would result in a loss.
- You could win 2 bets and lose 2 bets, which could happen in multiple ways, and you’d break even.
- You could lose all 4 bets.
The reason casinos make money is because they’re in it for the long run.
Wanna beat the casinos?
Decide to get happy with wins in the short run.
6- Spend Some Time Doing Other Things in Las Vegas, Too
It’s hard to win money on any kind of gambling if you’re tired or bored. Gambling is supposed to be fun. If you’re gambling compulsively to the point where you’re uninterested in any other activity, you’re in trouble.
Luckily, in Las Vegas, you can find lots of things to do. Heck, just walking around Downtown or the Las Vegas Strip can be loads of fun. There are free shows right on The Strip, too—the water fountains at the Bellagio and the pirate show at the Mirage cost you nothing. You can even go see circus acts at Circus Circus.
Spend some of your entertainment money on other forms of entertainment. Think about hitting a couple of the cool museums in town. Whether you like organized crime or nuclear experiments, Las Vegas has a museum to help educate you about it.
And you won’t find a better selection of shows anywhere on the planet.
The number and variety of bars and nightclubs is staggering. So is the number of restaurants.
Don’t just gamble.
Enjoy some of what else Vegas has to offer.
7- Learn How to Play Poker, Please
If I could convince you of one thing, it’s this:
If you want to win money in a Las Vegas casino, stay away from the “casino games” entirely and play poker.
Not all Vegas casinos have cardrooms, but find one that does. Learn how to play poker and learn how to play the game well.
The skill element is what sets poker apart from the other games. The casinos take a 5% cut of every pot, which means you can’t just sit down and break even.
But it takes less study and effort than you might think to become a break-even poker player. With a little effort, you can make a long-term profit at the Texas holdem tables.
90% of poker players don’t profit, but that means 10% of the players do. That’s a bigger percentage of Vegas winners than you’ll find playing slot machines, I promise you.
Conclusion
Anyone can come home after winning some money in Las Vegas. People do it every day. It’s easier to pull off if you stick with the games offering better bets.
Of course, learning the right strategies for the games you’re playing helps, too. Being able to distinguish between good and bad bets is one critical skill. But in games like blackjack and video poker, you must be able to make the decisions offering the best expected value, too.
Finally, if you really want to win money in Las Vegas casinos in the long run, become a solid poker player.
Want to Earn Some Extra Money?
- Survey Junkie: Earn up to $50 per survey with one of the highest-paying survey sites on the web. Join Survey Junkie Now
- Swagbucks: Make money watching videos, taking surveys, shopping online and more. Join Swagbucks Now & Get a $5 Bonus
- Mistplay: Earn free cash by playing games online with friends from your mobile phone. Join Mistplay Now For a 50 Unit Bonus
- MobileXpression: Earn free money (passive income) just by leaving an app installed on your phone. Join MobileXpression Now & Get a Free Gift Card in One Week
During my years as a blackjack and roulette dealer I watched a lot of people lose a lot of money. I also saw a few players win money — I’ll get to that in a moment.
Oddly, most of my coworkers loved to gamble. You would think they’d know better, since all of their wages (and all those pretty buildings) are paid from gambling losses.
I didn’t (and still don’t) share their gambling habits. On the other hand, it can be fun to hang out in a casino, especially if they have free drinks.
So I understand why people might budget a little bit of money to lose at the slot machines or table games.
Of course it would be even more fun if you could do better than limit your losses, right? It would be great if you could make money at casinos.
Well, you can! And 44 states have casinos!
Here are ten ways to make money at casinos, along with some ways to save money by going to a casino, and — in case you need to satisfy your inner gambler — a way to risk a little money to win big.
1. Become a Card Counter
Regular blackjack gives the “house” (the casino) an edge of about 0.5% to 3.0% depending on the rules and how well you play. However, at times the game is in your favor as a player.
Specifically, you have an advantage when the remaining cards include more aces and face cards than normal.
To know when this situation has developed you can track the cards using a simple plus-or-minus count, and then bet more when the count is right.
You can learn card counting in a few hours, but to be proficient while playing at a busy blackjack table takes many more hours of practice.
Keep in mind that casinos can ask you to leave, even though card counting isn’t illegal. Where I worked management tolerated small-time card counters.
They probably figured that having a few winners encouraged the less-disciplined players to keep trying. The edge from good card counting is only 0.5% to 1.0%.
So, for example, if you play at a table with a $5 minimum and alternate your bets between $5 and $50 (when the count is right), and there are 50 hands dealt per hour, you might bet a total of $700 per hour, for an expected profit of just $7 per hour (with a 1% edge).
Clearly, to make some serious money you have to be good and bet more.
By the way, having the odds in your favor doesn’t eliminate the ups and downs. I can tell you from experience that even the house, with a larger statistical edge, loses on some days.
So with bets of, say, $25 to $100, you may do well in the long run, but you have to stomach nights when you lose thousands of dollars.
Still, if you do it right, you’ll be ahead in the long run, so you’re working, or investing, not gambling.
2. Try Credit Hustling
Credit hustling is simply looking for leftover credits on slot machines. Players often forget and leave without cashing out.
On slow nights when I had no players at my blackjack tables, I used to watch credit hustlers checking the machines, and they sometimes found credits.
A Daily Mail article on people who live in the tunnels under Las Vegas reports on one couple that survives by doing this.
They once found more than $900 in a single machine, although finding a dollar or two is the norm.
While not illegal (if the credit have been truly forgotten and abandoned), casinos don’t care for credit hustlers, so you’ll normally try to keep a low profile.
3. Join A Players Club
Almost every casino has some sort of “players club” you can join for free.
Apart from earning points as you play, which can be redeemed for freebies of all sorts, you also usually get some rewards up front for signing up.
For example, many casinos offer “match play” money. That might be $5 coupons or chips, for example, but you have to bet $5 of your own along with each one.
You can lose, but when you win $10 for betting $5 of your own money the odds are with you even at the worst games.
If you round up enough of these deals you can be pretty sure you’ll make a profit playing just long enough to use up your match play.
Casinos may offer a free meal or other goodies for joining the club too, which at least saves you some money.
4. Take Advantage Of Promotions
The casino where I worked handed out out $10 in free play to everyone who walked in the door (for a while anyhow).
Some couples came every day to get $20, playing perhaps 50 cents each in the slot machines before leaving with the rest of the money.
When my wife and I lived in Florida we went to a casino where they gave us each $5 in free slot machine play, and a free dinner, and free wine.
The catch was we had to play at least 100 times, but at nickel machines with a 12% house edge the expected loss is only 60 cents (100 x 5 cents x 12%), so, by playing slowly, we left ahead (and full) every single time we went.
Watch for any promotions at casinos near you, and see if there is some way to turn a profit from them.
5. Become A Good Poker Player
When you play against the casino, the house has the edge, but when you play against other players, you can have the edge if you’re good.
There are plenty of online tutorials on how to win at casino poker, but keep in mind that the house takes a cut of every pot, so you have to be significantly better than the other players to come out ahead.
As someone who has won money at poker (and chess) without much skill, I can tell you that the key is to play against weaker players.
Going against stronger competitors might help you prove something, but if you want to make money, look for tables with weak players.
6. Play In Slot Tournaments
Slot tournaments usually involve playing to see who does best in a set time, using machines set up with fake credits.
These events encourage fast play and are meant to get people into the casino, where they might gamble their own money before and after the competition.
Googling “free slot tournaments vegas” turns up (at the moment) a couple options, including one tournament that cost nothing and has prizes of up to $500 in slot play (you may have to play it through a machine, and then you keep whatever you’ve won).
Even tournaments with an entry fee can be money makers, because the prize pool often significantly exceeds the total of the entry fees.
In other words, if you’re good, and you play in a dozen tournaments, you’ll probably win more than what you spent on entry fees.
7. Play A Biased Roulette Wheel
There are 38 pockets on an American-style roulette wheel, and a “straight-up” bet pays 35-to-1 when you win (plus you keep the bet). You can see that this is a losing proposition.
But what if, instead of each number coming up randomly 1-in-38 spins, some numbers came up more often than they should?
It happens.
When I ran a roulette table one of my customers made a profit of $80,000 over the course of 16 months or so. I met him at a coffee shop after I quit, to get the whole story. Here’s the short version:
He wrote down the winning numbers for 5,000 spins (it took weeks). The number 2 was winning an average of 1-in-28 spins.
He bet $5 repeatedly on that number. On average, he lost $135 for every 28 spins (27 losses), but won $175 (35-to-1 payout) when the number 2 came up, for a net profit of $40 per 27 spins.
There are various possible reasons for a bias, ranging from a sticky pocket (temporary) to manufacturing imperfections (a more durable bias).
The good news is you don’t need to know why a certain number comes up more often to take advantage. You just need to verify that it’s a true bias (which takes thousands of spins).
I’ll let others teach you more about biased roulette wheels, but I’ll warn you that it’s tedious work to find one, and even with an edge you’ll have losing nights (my customer sometimes lost over $700 in a night, even though he was far ahead in the long run).
8. Identify A Roulette Dealer Signature
Some dealers may habitually (unconsciously) repeat certain patterns when they spin the wheel and the roulette ball, which makes the winning pocket more predictable.
My experience? On a slow night with no players a pit boss and I each chose a number and alternated spinning the wheel and dropping the ball, betting a dollar for each win
I came out $14 ahead in couple hours, meaning I spun my number 14 times more than he spun his.
So I strongly believe dealer signature is possible, and even gambling expert Frank Scoblete agrees, but how often it happens in real play, and whether you can take advantage of it… well, who knows? But here’s what you might look for…
Note the number passing by at the moment the dealer releases the ball, and note the winning number. After doing this many times (with the same dealer) look for a pattern.
For example, a dealer might be so consistent (in the speed of the wheel and the ball) that the ball lands in a certain “section” of the wheel (in relation to the release point) more often than it should.
If it lands in a section that covers a third of the wheel, but lands there half of the time, you have a signature.
Now it gets trickier. If the target section is, say, the 13 numbers starting 4 pockets to the left of the release number, you have to identify the release number and quickly place bets on as many numbers as possible in the target section, before betting is closed.
Could it work? If not casinos wouldn’t be so quick to change balls, change dealers, and move roulette wheels when it looks like people are winning. Where I worked they did all three often.
Good luck!
9. Use Casinos For Business Networking
I heard a lot of conversations at my tables. Sometimes they resulted in players getting new clients or developing new business relationships.
And I learned about how to make money from scrap metal from one such conversation.
It’s common for players to talk to other players at a blackjack or roulette table, which makes a casino a great place to network and find new ways to make money.
And watching how players handle those stacks of chips in front of them can tell you a little about whether you want to do business with them or not.
10. Get A Casino Job
In 1994 I was making $14 per hour dealing blackjack and roulette. A BLS inflation calculator tells me that’s the equivalent of $24 per hour in today’s dollars.
And, in fact, a friend who still works at that casino says she makes over $20 per hour.
Dealing table games is just one of the many positions you might find at a casino near you. One of my coworkers started as a surveillance officer with no experience, and used the knowledge and experience gained to later build a successful business selling surveillance equipment.
Other positions include slot machine tech, bartender, waiter, cage worker (handling the money), and pit boss.
Also, working in a casino usually means you’re forbidden from gambling there, which might be a good thing for some readers.
Save Money By Taking Advantage Of Casino Freebies
Some casinos have free events at which they put out snacks or even full meals. Other casinos offer inexpensive meals at their restaurants. Watch for these deals as a way to save money on a night out.
Even the free drinks offered by many casinos can make for a cheap night out if you know what you’re doing.
For example, my wife and I play 5-cent slot machines, set the speed to “slow” (keno machines usually have three settings), and, by the time we have lost a couple dollars we’ve had a few drinks and some fun.
Turn $60 Into $600 By Betting The Right Way
Maybe you like to gamble, and you’re smart enough to limit your losses. But how you play still matters.
For example, with a $60 bankroll, if you bet $5 per hand at a blackjack table you can often play all night, but you’ll never be very far ahead at any point.
That’s great if you want to sit there and enjoy the free drinks.
But to win big you need to make bigger bets at some point. For example, if you’re $20 ahead, bet $10 per hand, and if you get further ahead, bet $20 or $40 per hand. To summarize:
Bet the table minimum when you lose, and bet more and more when you’re winning.
Most of the time you’ll lose your $60 faster this way (because you’ll often those big bets), but it gives you a chance to win big from time to time.
I saw many people turn $60 into $600 over the years, and not one player did it by always betting the table minimum.
You have to “press your luck” to win big. Just be sure to bring a limited amount of money, so your losses are not a big deal.
Final Thoughts
You may like to gamble, and if you limit your losses, it’s affordable entertainment. Even better, if you time your casino visits to coincide with promotional events you might get some free food and drinks.
And finally, if you’re willing to do the necessary work, you can even make money in a casino, and without really gambling.
If you know other ways to make money in a casino, share your ideas below … and keep on frugaling!