Ever since my trip to Shreveport for a friend’s wedding, I’ve taken to small amounts of casino gambling. I’m not much of a gambler due to my unwillingness to get totally violated by the house odds, but it is an enjoyable pastime if you think of the money as already burned. When you lose, it’s gone. Just try not to lose too much. Sometimes you’ll win some, but the gambling bug will keep you playing until you lose that too. Let it ride.
I’ve been to casinos in Las Vegas, Shreveport, and Oklahoma, and the best thing I learned is: don’t blow your whole casino bonus check. Otherwise here are a couple other things.
- Casinos in Oklahoma suck. The Indian casinos have gotten their revenge on the white man by charging fifty cents ante per hand just to play. That means if you play $5 a hand Black Jack, you’ll also have to kick in fifty cents or 10% to the house for each hand. After ten hands, you’ve paid $5 just for the privilege of losing your chips. Not only does the house have the advantage, they also make easy money off each player each time the cards are dealt. Las Vegas and Shreveport do not do this.
- You can win with Black Jack and Poker. If you look at the odds, the only games where you can beat the house and make some money are Black Jack and Poker. This is because in each of these games, you can affect the outcome to a certain degree. For example, if you’re at a table where the dealer is dealing out of a six deck shoe and for several hands everything is low cards, you can be relatively certain there will be more high cards at the end of the shoe. Then you just bet accordingly. In Poker, you’re playing against other people. So, if you get some good hands and play against people worse than you, you can win there too. In almost every other game, it’s pure chance.