Nov 10, 2019 Mentioned by several Casino sites as one of the best online, free games to play this year, Extra Chilli is a real-money Slots that you can play with free spins at VideoSlots Casino and still win. How To Win Big At Casino Hundreds of the very best games, unmatched on mobile and the juiciest bonuses around – pocket fruity casino is perfect for your casino sweet tooth. Since the game favors the bank everyone was happy. As to which no defense of tribal sovereign immunity would be available.
Sometime in the distant future, maybe the year 3225 or so, when historians are studying ancient Western society (or what will be ancient Western society by the time), they will marvel at one particular human enterprise perhaps more than any other: the epic, money-sucking efficiency of casinos.
The way casinos have turned the act of separating us from our money into such a marvel of precision and ingenuity is every bit as awe-inspiring as the Egyptian pyramids.
“I could give you a guaranteed method to go into a casino and come out with a small fortune: go in there with a large one,” laughs Sal Piacente, a former casino dealer and security staffer who now runs UniverSal Game Protection Development, a company that trains casino staff members. He and other casino insiders know that casinos exist to not only take our money, but to keep as much of theirs as possible — both by offering games that are tilted in the house’s favor and by having air-tight security measures designed to catch thieves and cheaters.
So Yahoo Travel talked to Sal and other casino experts with decades of experience in the industry to get some dirty little secrets of casinos. Not only are these secrets juicy — knowing them might help you keep a little bit more of your money during your next casino trip. But probably just a little bit.
1. Some games are way more of a ripoff than others — even by casino standards.
(iStock)
It’s common knowledge that just about every game you’ll find in a casino is tilted in the house’s favor. But Sal says some games are worse than others. “A lot of these games are designed so that the player can’t win,” says Sal. “That’s why the players have to realize they need to stay away from certain games.”
The top of his list: so-called 'carnival games,” which are table games other than the traditional casino fare such as blackjack, craps, and baccarat. “Three-card poker, Let it Ride, Caribbean Stud — all these games have high house advantages where the casino has a strong edge,” Sal says. “People like these games because of the bigger payouts: They get paid 9-to-1, 8-to-1, 250-to-1. But you’re going to lose a lot more than you’re going to win in those games.”
Sal has particular disdain for Double Exposure Blackjack, which he considers a particular ripoff, thanks to strict rules on when you can double down and the fact that if you tie with the dealer without a blackjack, the dealer wins. “That’s over a 9 percent house advantage,” Sal says. “The dealer should be wearing a [robber’s] mask when he deals that game!”
2. Some games are “good” games — or at least better.
(iStock)
“There are games tourists can play that they have better chances at,” says Derk Boss, a licensed Nevada private investigator and casino security surveillance expert. For one, he points to traditional blackjack. “You can reduce the house advantages by being a skilled player or studying the game,” he says. He also likes video poker. “That’s a game where there are strategies you can study,” he says. “It doesn’t guarantee you’re going to win, but it gives you a much better chance. It’s going to reduce the house advantage and put things a little bit more in your favor.”
3. Everything you see is designed to keep you in the casino.
A couple of gamblers drinking a glass of champagne (iStock)
Anyone who’s spent time in a casino knows they are designed to make sure you’ll lose track of the time (and of the money you’re probably losing). That means no windows and no clocks. “Two in the morning is the exact same thing as two in the afternoon,” says Sal. Some casinos have gone to desperate, and sexy, measures to keep you there and gambling. “They have stripper poles, they have party pits,” Sal says. “You go to Vegas right now, it looks like a gentlemen’s club. You see girls dancing on the poles. It keeps the guys at the table.”
And don’t be fooled by the “free” food and drink offers you might get. Those have the same purpose. “I love when people say, ‘Sal, they gave me a $20 buffet for free!’” Sal says, laughing. “You sat at a blackjack table, you lost $200 and they gave you a $20 buffet.” That’s what you all a good return on investment.
4. Security is probably watching you… for your entire stay.
Security camera (iStock)
If you’re in a casino, you can assume you’re being watched. “Casinos are very well-covered with surveillance cameras,” says Derk. “Once someone arrives at our property, if we needed to put together their movements over their entire stay, we could easily do so. We would be able to track their movements on the property just about wherever they went — except for like the bathroom and into their hotel room.”
Casinos generally use surveillance to look out for criminals who prey on tourists and the cheaters. And, yes, Derk says they can actually zoom in on your cards if they wanted to. So somewhere in the casino, in a locked, high-tech room, a security guard you’ll never see might be telling you to “hit.”
5. And if you win big, they’re definitely watching you.
(iStock)
You can bet on it: if you hit a big jackpot, or get on a major hot streak, security has its eyes on you. “When someone is winning a lot of money, they’re always going to get checked by us,” Derk says. “They’re not going to know it, of course. Say a guy wins $100,000 on a blackjack game. I just want to make sure that it’s legal, that he didn’t cheat, that he didn’t count cards or something like that.”
Derk says in that instance, security will do a player evaluation: They will review his/her play on video for signs of cheating or card counting. Then they’ll check out the player. “We have a database of bad guys that are out there and what kind of scams they pull, so we’re gonna check for that,” Derk says.
Slot winners get the same scrutiny. “Say someone wins $500,000 on a slot machine jackpot,” says Derk. “We’re going to review it but we’re just going to make sure everything’s okay — that they didn’t open the machine or do something to it.”
But don’t worry: Security isn’t out to harass winners. “As long as it’s legitimate, we’re okay and we move on,” Derk says. “We want people to win money or else they won’t play.”
6. If you’re cheating, security can tell — they know all the signs.
Gambling and cheating. Ace of hearts from the sleeve (iStock)
Poker players know all about “tells,” behaviors that give away a certain action or intention. Card counters and cheaters have tells, too, and security is on the lookout for all of them. “We look for cheating tells,” says Derk. “Those are just behaviors that, when you’re trained to spot them, they stand out a little bit.” While Derk didn’t want to give away too many of these tells, he did spill a few of them:
--Two guys sitting close together — Derk says two guys playing blackjack at the same table rarely sit close together, especially when there are empty seats. “Most guys just don’t sit like that,” he says. “Women will, most guys will not.” Derk says when you do see that, it’s a potential sign that the pair may be secretly switching cards. “They’re trying to make one strong hand — which, believe me, happens,” he says. “They sit close together and have their arms folded after they’re handed their cards. We suspect that [indicates] they’re switching cards, so that’ll get our attention.”
--Strange or extreme money management — Say someone is betting $100 for three or four hands, then from out of nowhere, bets $10,000. “That to us is an indicator that maybe they’re receiving information,” says Derk. “Maybe they can see the hole card, maybe they’re card counting, maybe they’re tracking a clump of cards. They’re waiting for a certain condition to arrive in the game, so they’re going to play minimally until that change happens and once that happens they’ll hit.” Derk says that’s a major red flag.
--“Rubber-necking” — A dead giveaway of a slot machine saboteur. “If somebody is cheating a slot machine, invariably, they’ll sit at it and they don’t really have to look at the machine because they know what they’re going to cause it to do,” says Derk. “So they’re usually looking around, from one side to the other, looking for security. That’s what we call 'rubber-necking.’ That’s a big tell for us because [normal] slot players don’t do that — they play their machine and they don’t want to be bothered. So if you look around like that, that’s going to get out attention and we’ll stop to figure out why.
7. One place the casino probably isn’t watching you too closely: the poker rooms.
(iStock)
“Believe it or not, we don’t spend a whole lot of time on poker at all,” says Derk. For one, since poker players play against each other, and not the house, the casino doesn’t have much money at stake. The poker players themselves, do, however, and that’s the second reason why casino security staffers don’t need to monitor poker rooms that closely.
“The players really police themselves,” Derk says. “When you get people who play poker all the time, they know when someone is screwing off or trying to take advantage of something and they’ll say something. They pay attention to it better than anybody.”
8. Dealers would rather you bet your tips for them.
(iStock)
It’s a basic bit of casino etiquette, but tip your dealers. “Dealers make minimum wage or in some places might make a little bit more than minimum wage,” says Sal. “A dealer’s salary is all tips.”
Sal’s wife and business partner, Dee — a former casino dealer herself — agrees. But she says that despite common casino policy, most dealers would prefer that, instead of handing them a chip or two as a tip, players just put the tip up as a bet. “If a player asks you if you want to bet it or if you just want to take the tip, you’re supposed to just take the tip,” Dee says. “But most of us want to bet it because you have chance of doubling your money.”
9. The dealers feel bad for you.
(iStock)
When someone loses their shirt, you can expect some silent pity, but not much else. “I can feel sorry for the guy, but I can’t say, 'Sir, you’ve lost enough, you’d better walk away,’” Sal says. “It’s not my job. There’s nothing I can do.”
Still, Sal admits dealers do find themselves following the players’ success, or lack thereof. “If a guy’s tipping, you don’t want him to lose,” he says. “If a guy’s not tipping, you’re rooting for him to lose!”
10. Yes, dealers sometimes steal.
(iStock)
What’s the most common case of casino malfeasance Sal has dealt with? Hint: It’s not 11 tech-savvy scammers led by George Clooney. “This is not as Hollywood as you would think, but honestly, it’s dealers just reaching in, grabbing a chip and shoving it in their pocket,” Sal says. “Nothing sophisticated.” That’s the reason behind all those strange rituals you may see dealers do. “Everything the dealers do was put in place for a reason,” Sal says. For example, when a dealer leaves a table, they have to “clear their hands.” “They clap their hands and turn their hands palm up and palm down for the camera to show, 'I’m not stealing nothing,’” says Sal.
If a dealer is stealing, Sal says there are many different ways security will handle it, depending on where the casino is. “In Vegas, they’ll arrest you right at a table,” he says. “They’ll actually handcuff and walk you right out so everybody gets to see you. They call it 'The Walk of Shame.’ Some places, they don’t want the negative publicity. They’d rather do it off the game. So maybe they’ll call you to the manager’s office and arrest you there.”
Sure, it’s no secret that in a casino, the game is rigged, numerically, at least. “The longer you’re there, the more the numbers are going to take over and the casino’s going to make money,” says Dee. “Let’s be realistic; they’re in it to make money.” But even though we know the score, that doesn’t take away from how much fun casinos are. “People come there to have a good time,” says Dee. “So if you’re having a good time along the way and you win a few bucks or you lose a few bucks, great.”
More from Yahoo! Travel
WANT TO EARN 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
- LifePoints: Quickly becomming one of the best survey sites and apps out there. Earn up to $10 per survey in a short amount of time. Join LifePoints Now to Get a 10 Point Bonus
- Webull: Earn 2 free stocks of value between $5 - $1,400 when you open a new account and make your first deposit of any amount. Open Your Webull Account Now
As a casino dealer I learned a lot about how to win big money.
The primary lesson?
Stay away from casinos and invest your money rather than gamble with it. Unlike with gambling, the odds are in your favor when investing.
But even in a casino you can increase your odds of a big score, and without risking much. For example, over the years I saw many people turn $50 into $1,000 or more, while other players had no chance of ever doing that.
What was the difference? It’s all about how they played, as I’ll explain in a moment…
The lesson goes well beyond blackjack and roulette. In fact, there are many areas of life where you can risk a little to win a lot.
But for our purposes I’ll stick to examples involving money, starting with those hopeful (and hopeless) casino gamblers…
How To Win Big At Roulette Or Blackjack
On American roulette wheels (which have a “0” and “00”). the house edge is 5.26%, meaning that, in the long run, you’ll lose about 5.26 cents for every dollar you bet.
So, for example, if you bet one dollar at a time on red or black (which pay “even money” or 1-to-1), you’ll win and lse, but on average you’ll be down 5.6 cents for each dollar bet.
That means that, for example, if you have a $50 bankroll, it will take an average of 950 spins to lose all your money ($50 divided by 5.6 cents).
I ran a fast table, squeezing in about 60 spins per hour. But even at that rate, a player betting a dollar at a time could expect $50 to last over 15 hours (950 divided by 60 equals 15.8).
And that’s exactly what some players did. They sat there endlessly, betting a dollar every spin on red, black, odd, or even (all the even-money payouts).
That’s great if you love the casino atmosphere and want to soak it up for as long as possible without losing much.
But since you can never win more than a dollar at a time, your ups and downs are limited, and even doubling your money is almost impossible.
On the other hand, if you bet “straight up” on a number, and win, you get paid 35-to-1, or $35 for each dollar bet.
A few lucky wins and you might soon have $100 or more in front of you.
Once you have $100, if you place four $5 bets straight-up on four numbers, each time you win you’ll make $160 ($175 on the winner minus the three losing $5 bets). Hit a few of those and you might build up to $1,000 in an hour or less.
Of course it’s more likely you’ll just lose your money faster and go home early.
But if you want the chance to win big, that’s what you have to try. You can’t sit there and bet a dollar at a time on even-money bets.
A similar strategy works for blackjack.
To turn a small bankroll into big winnings simply “parlay” early winnings into bigger and bigger bets. If you’re betting $5 per hand and start to win, bet $10, and then $25 per hand.
Many times I watched a player start out betting a dollar (we had very low limits when I worked as a blackjack dealer) and, after winning for a while, bet $5, $10, or even $100 per hand as he won more.
Note that either way you risk the same $50 (if you choose to quit once you lose that amount), but your only real chance to win big comes when you do one or both of the following:
- Make bets with bigger payouts
- Parlay winnings into bigger bets
Of course, in the long run those big wins will be eaten up by faster and more frequent losses, since the odds are almost always with the casino.
So enjoy your casino time if you must, but let’s also look at how to apply these principles in areas of life where the odds are with you…
Real Life Small Bets That Can Pay Off Big
What constitutes a “small” bet depends on your particular financial situation, but several of the following examples involve risking nothing more than a few minutes or hours of your time. For example…
Ask For A Raise – Yes, this is a really obvious example, but sometimes we need reminding. A raise of $1 per hour, after all, is worth $6,000 if you stay at your current job for another three years (3 years times 2,000 hours annually times a dollar).
That’s a decent payoff for the risk of a few hours of preparation followed by a few minutes talking to your boss.
Also, unless you’re really in love with your current work, you might risk an hour applying for a higher-paying job once in a while.
Maybe one of these small “bets” will result in a job that pays $3 per hour more than what you’re making.
That’s $9,000 extra over three years.
Bet On Cryptocurrencies – According to Fortune magazine, if you had invested $100 in Bitcoin in July of 2010, by 2017 your investment would have been worth $28.3 million by the end of 2017.
I think most of the 200 or so cryptocurrencies will eventually be worthless, but just in case I invested $200 in about 4 of them two years ago. My $200 investment is worth about $57 at the moment, but who knows what the future will bring?
Speculate With 5% Of Your Stock Portfolio – In his book “The Black Swan” Nassim Taleb, who became a millionaire one day when the stock market crashed and his long-shot options paid off, suggests a low-risk strategy for speculating in the stock market to possibly hit it big. It’s as simple as this: Leave most of your money in index funds and use just a small percentage to make long-shot bets.
Those speculative bets could include the next up-and-coming tech company. Or they could involve stock options, many of which can pay off at 100-to-1 or greater if the market moves the right way.
Think of it this way: In the worst case scenario, if you make a 7% return over the years from your mutual fund investments, and you lose all of your speculative money every year (that 5% of your portfolio that you “play” with), you’ll still be ahead over time — at least by a little bit..
But if a few of those small bets pay off big, well… Consider this: If you had invested $1,000 in Amazon when it went public in 1997, your investment would be worth than $1.2 million today.
Write A Book – I once spent a weekend writing a book on ultralight backpacking, and then published it on the Amazon Kindle platform. Total cost: $0. Now that’s a small low-risk bet, right?
The payoff> I made several thousand dollars in royalties. That’s not a huge win, but others have made millions with Kindle books (and I made many thousands more with other Kindle books, none of which took me more than a week to write).
For my first print publishing adventure I paid $500 to self-publish a book on how to get lucky (no longer in print), which made a few thousand dollars, got picked up by a Japanese publisher (they paid me a $2,000 advance), and later helped me land a contract (with a much bigger advance) for a book on weird ways to make money.
To keep the risk really low (at least the financial part), you can learn to do everything yourself through a “print-on-demand” service like Amazon Direct Publishing.
For less than $50 you can have physical copies in your hands and international exposure on Amazon’s website (my wife has done this and had four copies of her book in her hands for under $30).
Yes, the odds of creating a best seller are small, but if you do, the payoff could be huge, and the risk is so small that you can probably afford to keep trying over and over.
Start A Website Or Blog – You can risk a lot of money starting a blog or website, but you don’t have to. For less than $50 you can register a domain and cover your first few months of hosting, and there are even free options like WordPress and Blogger.com.
Okay, the risk is low, but what’s the potential win? Millions of dollars, in theory, but let’s consider a more modest example.
Years ago my brother owned a carpet cleaning company, so I bought him lunch ($20) and picked his brain on how to remove carpet stains of every type.
Then I spent $10 and one long weekend creating HowToRemoveCarpetStains.com.
The website may soon be gone due to falling traffic and revenue, but for years it produced over $1,000 per month — about $60,000 total so far.
That was with very little additional work after setting it up (I even look at it for months at a time). A $30 (and 50-hour) gamble for a $60,000 payoff.
Flip A Real Estate Contract – I’ve seen people lose tens of thousands of dollars trying to flip a house for a profit. Ouch! So how do you invest in real estate without risking more than a few hundred dollars, and still have a chance to make some serious money?
There are a number of ways to bet small and win big in real estate.
One way is flipping contracts instead of buying the real estate yourself. Essentially you hunt for a bargain fixer-upper, make an offer that includes the right to assign the contract, and then find another investor to whom you sell (assign) the contract.
You risk little or nothing if you include a small deposit ($100 to $500), and include contingency clauses in the contract that let you cancel the deal without cost.
For example, you might specify that your future “partner” (the investor to whom you sell the contract) must approve of the property within ten days.
The potential payoff?
How To Win Big Money At The Casino
Suppose you see a flip with a projected profit of $40,000. An investor might pay you $5,000 to take over your position, leaving him with a $35,000 profit. In other words, you risk $0 to $500 to make $5,000.
Of course, once you’ve done a few of those you can parlay your profits into a deal where you keep the property and get the entire profit from the flip.
Look For More Small-Risk, Large-Win Bets To Make
Want to find more opportunities to risk a little and win a lot? Look around, and keep asking:
- Is the risk here small?”
- Is the eventual profit potentially large?
If the answer to both questions is “yes,” you have an opportunity.
How To Win A Lot Of Money In Big Fish Casino
For example, in my article “6 Steps To Starting A Business With Absolutely No Money,” I list about two dozen businesses that you can start for nothing. The profits from any one of them could be parlayed into creating a bigger business, even one that eventually makes you rich.
Keep your eyes open and keep making those small bets. One of them (or several) might just result in a big win.
If you have your own experiences where a small bet paid off big time, please share them with us below … and keep on frugaling!