Six Ways How To Improve Your Gambling Skills
If you want to improve your gambling skills and become a better gambler, you are at the right place here at High Rollers Casino. We will provide you with our six best tips how you can enhance your gambling skills – something which will hopefully come in handy next time you play at an online casino!
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Personal goals
Before we share our tips, we like to raise the following question which is very important: what does a “better gambling skills” actually mean? Does becoming a better gambler mean that you will win more money in the long run? Or does it mean you’ll have more fun the next time you play? Maybe it means you still might end up losing money – but significantly less per session.
Some people have accepted to be recreational gamblers, and the recreational gamblers are usually losing gamblers. After all, all games which you find at an online casino do have a house advantage. As long as they have fun playing these players likely don’t mind losing a bit of money and will already be satisfied if they can improve on their results a bit and lose a bit less.
Other players want to try to win money in the long run. They may not gamble for a living, but their goals are different from those of the recreational gambler. Regardless of what your own goals are, once you know are aware of them you have a better chance of achieving them successfully. This article contains several suggestions how you can improve your gambling skills. Hopefully you will at least learn something from it!
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1. Avoid games where you are at a disadvantage
When you play a game in the casino, the house always has a mathematical edge over the player. The house edge or house advantage is basically what keeps the casino running – if this wouldn’t exist, there simply wouldn’t be any casino around at all as they would all go bankrupt! The house edge is also the main reason why you are more likely to go home with a loss than with a profit in your pocket. It’s just a statistic of chance and probability.
The house edge is calculated using the probability of winning and the height of the pay-outs. The probability is just a ratio that describes how likely you are to win. Expressed in odds, the probability of winning a certain bet could be something like this: 37 to 1. The first number is the number of possible ways you can lose the bet. The second number is the number of possible ways you can win the bet. When you bet on a single number in American roulette for example, you have 37 ways to lose and only one way to win. Your chances of winning are thus 37 to 1.
Odds are also used to indicate the pay-out for a bet. A single number bet in roulette pays out 35 to 1. That is the ratio of winning to losing. If you bet one euro on a single number – let’s say number 14 – in roulette and this number is indeed hit, you’ll be paid 35 euro in winnings.
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You might think: “If the odds are 37 to 1, why don’t I get paid 37 to 1 and earn 37 euro?” That’s simply because the casino has to make a profit. The difference between the pay-outs and the odds of winning is the house edge as you can clearly see in this roulette example. This house advantage is usually described as a percentage of each bet you expect to lose if you would play in the long run. If the croupier would for example spin the wheel 38 times and you are betting 10 euro each round. What is your loss after these 38 theoretically turns? If you calculate mathematically, you will see that on average you are likely to lose your bet 37 times, for a total loss of 370 euro. On average you will win one round when betting on a single number, and thus win 350 euro. This means you have lost a total of 20 euros after 38 turns. The average loss per turn is 5.26 euros. That’s 5.26% of any bet on average – and that’s exactly the house edge in the game of American roulette.
Let’s now compare American roulette with European roulette. Instead of having 38 numbers on the roulette table (1 to 36, 0 and 00) we now have only 37 numbers (1 to 36, plus the zero). We are also playing a full round here, so we will be playing 37 theoretical turns. You are expected to lose 36 and win once, which means losing 360 euro and winning 350 euro as the pay-outs are the same. If we’d calculate the house edge here, we will find that it has dropped to just 2.70%. If you therefore have the choice between American and European roulette, you’d be mad to choose the American variant!
You should always compare game variants with each other as pay-outs and odds may differ. You should also compare individual tables – or in online casinos different game versions of multiple software studios. It’s not only roulette for which this counts. In blackjack, pay-outs for a blackjack might differ. Video poker machines are also infamous for having variable pay-outs and you are well-advised to select the best possible machine. Even when playing poker against other people in a casino you need to compare and find the table with the lowest tournament or pot fees.
Your odds are better with European roulette than French roulette.
2. Recognise your expected profit or loss
If you want to know how much money you are expected to win or lose, you can do the math once you know how the formula works. It’s simply the number of bets you place multiplied by the (house) edge. For example, if you’re playing blackjack and you have mastered the skill and tactic of counting cards, your edge could be around 1%. If you bet 10 euro per hand, and you manage to play 200 hands per hour, your expected profit per hour is 10 euro x 200 x 1% per hand, which is about 20 euro per hour. In the same way, if you cannot count cards but you managed to master the perfect betting strategy, the house edge is 0.5 percent. In this case, 10 euro x 200 x 0.5% makes for a loss of 10 euro per hour.
When assuming these kinds of expectations, keep in mind that the variance is going to have an effect in the short term. You may not win 20 euro per hour the first timey you play as you can easily lose 40 euro in the first hour and win 60 euro in the second hour while you are playing. You have to read these statistics as averages and they count for the long term, not the short term! There might be a bit of short-term variance, but if you can always keep playing with a 1% edge, you will eventually win in the long run.
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3. Think long term, not short term
Speaking of long-term probabilities, let’s talk about variance and the difference between long-term and short-term. Most players underestimate how long the long run actually is. Playing for an hour at the roulette table certainly doesn’t count as playing on a long term. In fact, you may have only played some 50 rounds at most tables after one hour, which is decidedly short term!
The more you play, the closer you get to the long-term expectation, but you may never actually arrive at exactly the mathematical odds. If you play blackjack for 10 hours, you are further away from reaching the long-term average than someone who has played for 100 hours. And someone who has played blackjack for 2,000 hours will even be closer to that average. If you change your perspective over the long term, you will have a better attitude if a session doesn’t go as expected and you will hit some losses. After all, some days you lose, some days you win. This will have two positive effects:
– You will start to enjoy gambling much more
– You are likely to make fewer bad decisions based on short-term variance.
Lots of players unfortunately make bad choices when gambling, especially when they are facing losses and try everything in their power to change their fortunes. In blackjack you could say you are playing the long run after playing 15,000 hands. If you’re playing at a blackjack table where no one else is sitting and you’re only up against the dealer, it’s quite possible to see around 200 hands per hour. This means that you only get into the long run after 75 hours of playing. If your short-term results after five hours are playing differ from your long-run expectancy, don’t panic! When people create mathematical simulations for the basic strategy in blackjack or in video poker, they have played millions of hands through computerised software to accurately determine the long-term odds. By following the strategy you always make the right choices and you play with the best odds at these casino games.
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4. Be creative
You don’t always have to look for strategies that will give you an edge over the casino. There are many more ways to have extra money or take advantage of extra privileges in casinos. It is important to be aware of special promotions or deals for loyal players. Lots of casinos have reward programmes where you can earn points for each bet you place – points which can be exchanged later for freebies, bonuses or other benefits.
Simply put, the more money you bet, the more points you will accumulate. It might thus make sense to focus all your betting activities on one single online casino so you can maximise this! Another popular, creative way for gamblers to improve their gambling skills and their results is simply to look for casinos which have cashback bonuses available. With a cashback bonus, you get a part of your losses deposited back on your balance. This way, a bad night at the casino without much luck won’t hit your wallet as hard.
Similarly, it pays off to search for casino bonuses and recurring promotional offers to get the most out of every deposit you make to your online casino account. Never miss the important bonuses that can generate extra winning chances. If you are planning to play regularly then the best thing you can do is look for a VIP online casino. These casinos have personal managers who assign them to their VIP players. You might even be in a position to discuss your own bonus deals as a high roller! Often, you will also receive invitations to exclusive events and tournaments – and especially the latter can be beneficial to talented gamblers.
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5. Don’t overestimate your skills
No matter how good you think you are at gambling, there will always be someone who is better. That’s not only true in tournaments when facing others, such as in Texas Hold’em Poker, but it’s also true when simply playing against the casino. Sometimes, the house edge is unsurmountable. Don’t think you possess the magic skills to beat the house edge at a game like roulette and you have some kind of unique tactic or betting pattern which will change your fortunes. Sure, you might be able to get a nice winning in the short term, but most casino games have a long term house advantage which cannot be overcome at all.
Simply put, don’t be overconfident and try to remain factual, looking at everything from a pure mathematical point of view. It’s best not to follow your gut feeling – when you start to guess and follow intuition, your winning chances normally drop significantly.
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6. Try some other games!
It never hurts to generate other possible income in your gambling career. If all you know is the basic strategy with blackjack that’s great, but it also means that you can never have a profit playing blackjack on the long run as the house will still always have an advantage on you. Perhaps that means it’s time to learn how to count cards and use this skill instead in a casino?
Or perhaps it’s time to switch games! If you know how video poker is played and you learn a perfect strategy, it is possible to get an edge over the casino with a video poker variant like Deuces Wild . There aren’t many casino games where you can beat the house, so grab these opportunities with both your hands.
A game of Deuces Wild video poker.
Conclusion
The first step to improve your gambling skills is to determine what your goals are. If you are happy with being a recreational gambler who solely plays for the fun of the game, then you can focus on getting more fun for your money. This means you should stick to casino games and bets that come with a low house edge. Casino games such as roulette, blackjack, baccarat and video poker are good examples of this. By improving your skills and finding the right table and online casino you can improve your results.
There are many ways to improve your odds while gambling. You just need to know where to look. Whether it’s the right game variants you play on, whether you use the right strategies or take advantage of casino bonuses. By following some of the advice on this page, you can be sure that your chances will be better the next time you visit a casino.
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