You should always go into an online kasyno session with a monetary limit that you are willing to spend. This amount should be limited to how much you can afford to lose. Do not start out with an amount that should you lose, it would leave you in a financial problem.
A negative sign denotes the underdog of the match, and indicates how much money a bettor must wager to win $100. Fractional odds These are given in fraction form, and consists of the following: The amount your wager can yield (numerator) / the amount you bet (denominator) If you win, you receive your original wager back, as well as your. Gambling Losses May Be Deducted Up to the Amount of Your Winnings Fortunately, although you must list all your winnings on your tax return, you don't have to pay tax on the full amount. You are allowed to list your annual gambling losses as an itemized deduction on Schedule A of your tax return. If you are using a strategy that incurs that level of losses and you are unable to see that your money management is effectively negative then step back and re-think your staking levels.
The gambling industry around the world is huge, but the biggest market is the United States, where gamblers lost a staggering $119 billion in 2013:
[The Economist]
That's a crazy amount of money; more money than Bill Gates has (with $72 billion) or Warren Buffett (with $58 billion), and only $11 billion less than the two men put together.
What intrigues me is the question of why so many people gamble. After all, everyone knows that the odds are stacked against gamblers, whether they're betting on slot machines, horse racing, football, roulette, bingo, or lotteries. Even the games where it is possible for a highly skilled player to consistently make money — blackjack and poker — are big losers for the vast majority of players. And why do some players — problem gamblers, around 1.8 percent of the population — end up losing vast amounts of money, going into debt, and sometimes even losing their families and homes?
Different individuals gamble for a mixture of different reasons. The reasons are subtly different for each individual, but are usually a mixture of the following:
1. Escapism, entertainment, and boredom: The places that people go to gamble — like casinos, hotels, card rooms, bookmakers, and even online gaming websites — offer an escape from everyday life, and the opportunity to do something different, usually with a possibility of hitting a large payday. The vast majority of people who play the lottery don't win, but they all get the opportunity to dream about what they would do if they did win. In this sense, gambling can be seen as a form of entertainment, and those multi-billion dollar losses are the cost of being entertained, just as people pay to watch sports, listen to music, or play computer games.
2. Social activity: Gambling is a deep rooted part of American culture — 80 percent of Americans gamble at least once per year. Gambling with friends and family — whether that's in a casino in Vegas, or a card game at home, or making football or basketball bets among work colleagues — is widespread.
3. Excitement and thrill: The sense of anticipation and risk creates an adrenaline rush and the payoff releases a surge of dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with the feeling of pleasure, and even elation. When you receive a hug from a loved one, dopamine levels rise; when you engage in sex, dopamine levels spike; when you win a bet, they shoot up as well.
4. Self-esteem: Casinos roll out the red carpet and dish out complimentary drinks, free stays in suites, shopping vouchers, and other gifts for big-time gamblers. That can be a huge self-esteem boost. So too can giving away winnings to friends or family, tipping service staff large amounts, or making gifts to charity.
5. Self-delusion and the Dunning-Kruger Effect: Some gamblers believe they are lucky or special and will beat the odds and win, unlike the vast majority of gamblers. While this is true in the long run for a very tiny minority of sharp, mathematical gamblers in certain games like poker and blackjack — just as it is possible for a tiny minority of investors to beat the stock market — it is untrue for the overwhelming majority of players. Inexperienced gamblers (and investors) may fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger Effect — the tendency for unskilled individuals to overrate their skill and ability, and underrate the difficulty of the task at hand. They may also create narrative fallacies and rationalizations to justify their belief that they can beat the odds and win.
So that covers the behavior of many casual gamblers, but for problem bettors, the issue is often addiction. The primary addiction, however, may not always be to the rush of winning — some research suggests that gamblers get the biggest kick from coming close to winning, and then losing. And some gamblers may be addicted to the aforementioned escapism or self-esteem highs.
The global gambling industry forecasts that betting losses will continue to rise. And they're probably right. After all, it's been common knowledge for a very long time that most people lose at gambling in the long run. That's what keeps casinos in business. And yet, people keep keeping them in business.
With a title like 'how to increase your gambling profits this month,' a blog post needs to be aimed at professional gamblers. If you're a recreational gambler, you're probably not going to have any profits from gambling if you spend all month gambling.
I do have one technique for increasing your gambling profits as a recreational gambler, though. I'll lead with it in #1, but after that, the rest of the tips are aimed at people who are at least advantage gamblers, if not professional gamblers.
Here are 10 of the easiest techniques for making money gambling over the next 30 days:
1- Be Bold and Quit Early
If you're a strictly recreational gambler, you probably don't pay much attention to the house edge or the math behind the games you're playing. That's for the best, but it makes it harder to profit during any kind of time frame.
On the other hand, even professional gamblers have months where they lose money. A friend of mine played poker online professionally during the poker boom. He told me that he made 5-figure profits 5 months out of 6, but twice a year, he'd have a losing month with a 5-figure loss.
If you assume that the 5-figure was the lowest possible ($10,000 per month), he was still making $100,000 a year.
If a professional gambler making $100,000 a year can have a losing month, then a recreational gambler losing $100,000 a year can have a winning month.
Here's how to make that happen more often:
Making bigger bets is called 'boldness.' It increases your probability of making a certain profit, even if that probability is still low.
Here's an easy-to-understand example:
You have $500 to gamble with this month, so you decide to set a win goal of $500.
You go to the casino and bet all $500 on black at the roulette table. You win, quit, and go home a $500 winner for the month.
Some gamblers would prefer to place 100 bets of $5 apiece at the roulette table.
The probability that they'll double their money with that strategy is awful.
In fact, the difference between someone making a couple of $250 bets and doubling their money is enormous, too.
Winning a single even-money bet at the roulette table has a 47.37% probability.
Winning 2 of those bets in a row has a 47.37% X 47.37% = 22.42% probability of happening.
The reason is 2-fold:
- The more bets you place, the closer you get to the long run. When you're gambling, the probability is theoretical in the short run. But as you get closer to the long run—a large number of trials—your actual results start to look more like the expected results. Roulette is a negative expectation game, so the more bets you make, the closer you're likely to get to the negative expectation.
- You have more possible outcomes total in this scenario, even though the probabilities of each change. When you place a single bet, you have 2 possible outcomes—you double your money, or you lose your money. When you place 2 bets, you have 4 possible outcomes—you can win both bets and double your money, or you can lose both bets and lose everything, or you can lose the 1st bet and win the 2nd bet, or you can win the 1st bet and lose the 2nd Only one of those outcomes doubles your money.
If you're a recreational gambler wanting to book a profit this month, try placing a small number of large bets until you hit your win goal.
2- Get in More Hours Gambling
If you're a professional gambler, you have an hourly average win rate. This amounts to your edge multiplied by the number of bets you make per hour multiplied by the average size of each bet.
In any equation with 3 factors, (A X B X C = D), you can increase the size of D by increasing any of those 3 factors.
The obviously easiest way to increase the size of your profit this month gambling—if you have an edge—is to spend more time gambling.
But this ONLY works if you have an edge.
Even then, it's not a sure thing.
Expected return is a long-term phenomenon. An hour here or there, or even 10 hours a month, can see wild swings—especially if your specialty is a game with a lot of volatility.
In fact, you can be a recreational gambler and spend more time at the tables than usual and make more money this month.
That's called 'getting lucky.'
If I had a technique for getting lucky, we'd all be set, wouldn't we?
Instead, all I can offer are probabilities.
If you want to increase the probability of increasing the size of your monthly win, you can do so by getting in more hours gambling.
Do you usually spend 20 hours a week at the poker table?
You'll make more money this month by spending 25 hours a week at the table—assuming your stamina holds up and you don't start making mistakes because you're spending more time playing.
3- Find a Way to Increase Your Edge
If that equation I quoted treats A as the number of hours you're playing, then let's consider your mathematical edge B. You can increase your edge and get a bigger monthly profit, too.
How do you do that, though?
It depends on what kind of gambling you do.
If you're a poker player, this might mean finding a softer game. It might mean tightening up your starting hand requirements. It might mean getting a better read on your opponents.
If you're a blackjack player, this might mean finding a game with better rules. It might mean negotiating a better set of options with the casino. It might even mean adding another advantage technique to your repertoire (like the card counter who adds hole carding to his bag of tricks.)
If you're a sports bettor, this might mean finding a book that takes a lower vig. It might mean finding an individual to bet with who doesn't charge a vig at all. It might mean investing in some form of powerful handicapping software that I don't even know about.
It doesn't matter what kind of advantage gambling you do; there's always a way to do it better and squeeze more profits out of it.
Find out what those are and act on them, and you'll increase your gambling profits this month.
4- Increase the Size of Your Average Bet
With a title like 'how to increase your gambling profits this month,' a blog post needs to be aimed at professional gamblers. If you're a recreational gambler, you're probably not going to have any profits from gambling if you spend all month gambling.
I do have one technique for increasing your gambling profits as a recreational gambler, though. I'll lead with it in #1, but after that, the rest of the tips are aimed at people who are at least advantage gamblers, if not professional gamblers.
Here are 10 of the easiest techniques for making money gambling over the next 30 days:
1- Be Bold and Quit Early
If you're a strictly recreational gambler, you probably don't pay much attention to the house edge or the math behind the games you're playing. That's for the best, but it makes it harder to profit during any kind of time frame.
On the other hand, even professional gamblers have months where they lose money. A friend of mine played poker online professionally during the poker boom. He told me that he made 5-figure profits 5 months out of 6, but twice a year, he'd have a losing month with a 5-figure loss.
If you assume that the 5-figure was the lowest possible ($10,000 per month), he was still making $100,000 a year.
If a professional gambler making $100,000 a year can have a losing month, then a recreational gambler losing $100,000 a year can have a winning month.
Here's how to make that happen more often:
Making bigger bets is called 'boldness.' It increases your probability of making a certain profit, even if that probability is still low.
Here's an easy-to-understand example:
You have $500 to gamble with this month, so you decide to set a win goal of $500.
You go to the casino and bet all $500 on black at the roulette table. You win, quit, and go home a $500 winner for the month.
Some gamblers would prefer to place 100 bets of $5 apiece at the roulette table.
The probability that they'll double their money with that strategy is awful.
In fact, the difference between someone making a couple of $250 bets and doubling their money is enormous, too.
Winning a single even-money bet at the roulette table has a 47.37% probability.
Winning 2 of those bets in a row has a 47.37% X 47.37% = 22.42% probability of happening.
The reason is 2-fold:
- The more bets you place, the closer you get to the long run. When you're gambling, the probability is theoretical in the short run. But as you get closer to the long run—a large number of trials—your actual results start to look more like the expected results. Roulette is a negative expectation game, so the more bets you make, the closer you're likely to get to the negative expectation.
- You have more possible outcomes total in this scenario, even though the probabilities of each change. When you place a single bet, you have 2 possible outcomes—you double your money, or you lose your money. When you place 2 bets, you have 4 possible outcomes—you can win both bets and double your money, or you can lose both bets and lose everything, or you can lose the 1st bet and win the 2nd bet, or you can win the 1st bet and lose the 2nd Only one of those outcomes doubles your money.
If you're a recreational gambler wanting to book a profit this month, try placing a small number of large bets until you hit your win goal.
2- Get in More Hours Gambling
If you're a professional gambler, you have an hourly average win rate. This amounts to your edge multiplied by the number of bets you make per hour multiplied by the average size of each bet.
In any equation with 3 factors, (A X B X C = D), you can increase the size of D by increasing any of those 3 factors.
The obviously easiest way to increase the size of your profit this month gambling—if you have an edge—is to spend more time gambling.
But this ONLY works if you have an edge.
Even then, it's not a sure thing.
Expected return is a long-term phenomenon. An hour here or there, or even 10 hours a month, can see wild swings—especially if your specialty is a game with a lot of volatility.
In fact, you can be a recreational gambler and spend more time at the tables than usual and make more money this month.
That's called 'getting lucky.'
If I had a technique for getting lucky, we'd all be set, wouldn't we?
Instead, all I can offer are probabilities.
If you want to increase the probability of increasing the size of your monthly win, you can do so by getting in more hours gambling.
Do you usually spend 20 hours a week at the poker table?
You'll make more money this month by spending 25 hours a week at the table—assuming your stamina holds up and you don't start making mistakes because you're spending more time playing.
3- Find a Way to Increase Your Edge
If that equation I quoted treats A as the number of hours you're playing, then let's consider your mathematical edge B. You can increase your edge and get a bigger monthly profit, too.
How do you do that, though?
It depends on what kind of gambling you do.
If you're a poker player, this might mean finding a softer game. It might mean tightening up your starting hand requirements. It might mean getting a better read on your opponents.
If you're a blackjack player, this might mean finding a game with better rules. It might mean negotiating a better set of options with the casino. It might even mean adding another advantage technique to your repertoire (like the card counter who adds hole carding to his bag of tricks.)
If you're a sports bettor, this might mean finding a book that takes a lower vig. It might mean finding an individual to bet with who doesn't charge a vig at all. It might mean investing in some form of powerful handicapping software that I don't even know about.
It doesn't matter what kind of advantage gambling you do; there's always a way to do it better and squeeze more profits out of it.
Find out what those are and act on them, and you'll increase your gambling profits this month.
4- Increase the Size of Your Average Bet
Most advantage gamblers and professional gamblers use sound bankroll management to ensure that they don't go broke because of variance in the short run. For example, a card counter at the blackjack table might not risk more than 1% of his bankroll per hand. A poker player might never buy in for more than 5% of his bankroll at the poker table. A sports bettor might never bet more than 2% of his bankroll on a single game.
This kind of bankroll management is a sound strategy if you're gambling with an edge. It prevents you from going broke in the short run because of a run of bad luck.
But it also limits the amount of your profits.
If A is the number of hours you gamble, and B is the size of your edge, then C is the size of your average bet. If you increase the size of your average bet, your expected return goes up.
This can backfire.
What To Do When You Lost Gambling
You can have a streak of bad luck and go broke.
If you're willing to increase your risk, though, you can double the size of your average bet and probably increase the size of your profits this month.
I have a friend who has won a couple of World Series of Poker bracelets. We were discussing bankroll management one time on the phone, and he told me, 'Hey, man. There's nothing wrong with ‘taking a shot.''
That's what you're doing when you're risking more money on a tournament buy-in than you 'should.'
You're taking a shot.
Regardless of what bankroll management experts tell you, there are always ways to get a new bankroll going.
5- Gamble with Someone Else's Money
Profit when gambling is a function of how much money you risk versus how much money you stand to gain. The other factor is the probability of winning versus losing.
If you can reduce the amount of your own money that you're risking, you can play for higher stakes. You usually must sacrifice some of your profit to do this, but it changes the entire equation in your favor.
One of the ways to do this is to start a campaign on a site like YouStake. This site resembles other crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, but instead of funding some business venture, you're buying a piece of a poker player's action.
But you could also be the poker player in the scenario.
When you do this, you sell a percentage of your winnings in exchange for a portion of the buy-in.
Here's an example of how this might work:
Norm McDonald recently got crowdfunding for 60% of his buy-in for a $3400 tournament. This means he's putting up 40% of the money himself, or $1360. This leaves $2040 in buy-in opportunity for his backers.
It's also customary for a player to use a markup. This is his reward for being the player. Norm's markup is 1.5.
So suppose you want to buy 10% of Norm's winnings. 10% of the buy-in for the event is $340, but with a 1.5 markup, you'd have to pay $510 for that.
If Norm wins $100,000 in this event, you'd get 10% of those winnings, or $10,000.
If he loses, you're out the cost of your share of the buy-in, just like Norm and all his other investors.
Anyone can find someone to pay for their action, but by doing so, you're reducing your amount of risk. You're also enabling yourself to play for higher stakes without the correspondingly higher probability of going broke.
6- Negotiate a Better Deal with the Casino
Negotiating better situations with the casino isn't something that just anyone can do by walking in off the street and saying that's what they want.
But if you're a high roller, you can negotiate all kinds of concessions from the casino.
Don Johnson is a notorious blackjack player who won millions from Atlantic City casinos. He bets $100,00 per hand playing blackjack.
And he's not a card counter, either.
It's customary for casinos to offer high rollers 10% of their losses back in the form of rebates.
Johnson was able to negotiate 20% back.
This means that for every dollar he wagered, he was really only risking 80 cents.
In the long run, if you reduce the amount you're risking versus the amount you stand to win, if you're gambling with an edge, you'll come out ahead in the long run.
7- Find a Softer Poker Game
Your expected profits in poker come from one thing:
The difference between your skill level and the skill levels of your opponents.
If you can find a poker game where your skills are far better than your opponents, everything else being equal, you can earn more money per hour playing.
How do you find weaker opponents?
One place to look is in neighborhood poker games. This isn't true across the board, but many times you'll find more fish at the neighborhood home game than you will in the casino poker rooms. You might find more sharks, too, but you'll be competing with the other sharks for the guppies' money.
The other advantage to playing in many home games is that they don't take a rake. In a casino cardroom, the poker room takes a 5% cut from every pot. This is the rake, and it eats into your profits. In fact, you can be a significantly above average poker player and still come out breaking even or even losing just because of the effect of the rake.
Another place to find the softer competition is on the internet. As with home poker games, this isn't a guarantee. Finding soft poker competition is a matter of shopping around, always. But you can find players online who will make far worse mistakes than some of the players you'll find in live poker rooms.
If you're only interested in playing poker live in casino cardrooms, you can still look for weaker competition. Often you can find them playing different games from what you're used to. If you specialize in limit holdem, maybe it's time to try no limit. If you never play Omaha 8, perhaps it's time to try that game.
There are no hard and fast rules about whether the weaker players are. You just have to be willing to try different cardrooms, other venues, and various games to see where the most significant profits are to be had.
But this shopping around is almost always worth it in the long run.
8- Bet with Someone Who Isn't Charging Vig
Remember how I said that one of the advantages to playing in home poker games was the lack of a rake?
Sportsbooks have their equivalent of a rake, too—it's called 'vigorish' or 'vig.'
At most sportsbooks, they have a point spread bet where the underdog gets to add points to his score to determine who wins the bet. This point spread is meant to give you a roughly 50% probability of winning that bet.
But these same sportsbooks make you risk money in a ratio of $110 to $100. If you lose, then you're out $110. If you win, you get $100 in winnings.
How Much Money Have You Lost Gambling Reddit
It isn't hard to see how breaking even requires a winning percentage greater than 50% in that scenario. To profit requires a winning percentage even higher than that.
With a winning percentage of 54%, you can show a profit, but the books are good at setting those point spreads. You have to be exceptional at spotting opportunities to pull it off.
Some books charge more vig than others. It's not unusual to find online books that want you to risk $120 to win $100.
But you can also find discount books which only need you to risk $105 to win $100.
The best scenario is to find an individual willing to take your action without charging you a vig at all. If your buddy at the local bar is willing to accept a straight-up bet against the spread for $1000, you're going to come out way ahead. You're only risking $1000 to win $1000 instead of $1100 or more.
Over the course of a month, this can result in a considerable change in your gambling profits.
In fact, it can turn what would have been a losing month into a winning month.
9- Take Better Care of Yourself
I sometimes get irritated at advice like 'take better care of yourself.' If I'm reading a blog post about improving my gambling profits, I don't need a lecture about how I should eat right and exercise. I don't want you to tell me to get more sleep.
But the truth is, this is one of the easiest things to control in your gambling career, and it can have a significant effect on your bottom line at the end of the month. If you don't get enough rest, you'll make poor decisions. Missing out on 4 hours of sleep has been shown to have the same effect on your ability to drive as being intoxicated.
If you wouldn't gamble drunk, why would you gamble when you're sleep-deprived.
When you take better care of your health, you have more self-control. You're able to make better decisions.
And in the world of advantage gambling, making better decisions is the difference between a hugely profitable month and a marginally profitable month. It can even make the difference between a winning month and a losing month.
10- Quit Drinking and/or Doing Drugs
Drinking and drug use seem to go with gambling like peanut butter goes with jelly. (Or like Jack Daniels goes with Hydrocodone, but I digress.)
That's a bad thing if you're serious about profits, though.
For one thing, an alcohol or drug habit is expensive. It does you little good to make more profits gambling if you're just going to waste those profits on drugs and alcohol.
For another thing, drugs and alcohol impair your judgment. If you're an advantage gambler, your judgment is one of the main things that make you profitable.
Impaired judgment isn't the only drawback. Lack of self-control and lack of motivation are advantage gambler killers. You can't achieve your goals without self-discipline.
Drinking alcohol and using drugs are anathema to the profitable gambler.
Conclusion
Anyone can improve their probability of making bigger profits from gambling over the next month. You just need to take some simple steps like the ones I've outlined in this post. None of these things will guarantee you a profit, though—gambling is an activity where the outcomes are determined by random chance.
For most gamblers, a one-month period still constitutes the short run. If you read enough of my blog posts, you'll understand that probability is a long-term phenomenon, and any predictions based on probability are more or less useless in the short run.
What techniques do you use to increase your gambling profits over time?
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