Anyone Done Serious Gambling?

[athom]

Good job you lost, you'd have had more than your soul ripped out in Luton.

At one break a friend who was a regular there told me about the people at my table, they all had interesting histories

[Mark Uttley]

When you sit down to study a horse race and look at the variables such as, gradient on that course in the run in, horse wearing blinkers, wind speed, weight ratios, trainer, average furlong speed, watching the last 3 races of every horse in that race-how strong they finished, did they look tired, were they catching...etc etc. The horse that finished in 3rd, 4th , 5th etc might be one to watch if he was finishing strong, the going conditions, the pedigree, the distance...As you can see countless variables...

Reminds me of what my mother-in-law says about my father-in-law.

"He knows what time each horse last had a shit, but he still can't pick a winner."

[frozen_out]

I think people give the bookies too much credence when it comes to pricing....the betting exchanges, particularly Betfair, are now the pricing source, anyone can go on and offer odds to back or lay any horse on any race. The bookies then just make their odds worse than Betfair. And any big bets they take I would think they are likely to lay-off on Betfair if they haven't got a balanced book.

Depends on the market. Premier league football and Horse racing you won't beat the bookie. French division 2, you might.

[Guest X-QUORK]

I've recently taken up playing Snap with my son. So far I've taken him for six grand.

[athom]

I've recently taken up playing Snap with my son. So far I've taken him for six grand.

That'll help pay for his summers at Camp Dawkin's http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...r-atheists.html

Pst... just kidding right

[SNACR]

I've found betting on the shares of a company going up after someone else has told me they're going to buy that company, has always proved lucrative.

[Three Pint Princess 2]

I see it's easy to just bet on 50 50 sports events, under 2.5 goals or odd/even in a game, all at slightly less than evens. Or even just sticking to the roulette table and having a set target to make (ie. being able to follow up say 10 reds in a row with doubled stakes each time)

Has anyone done this? Do betting firms shut down accounts where it's clear people are trying to do this? Is it actually that hard to beat the bookies if you have a set strategy and don't get excited/irrational

With spread betting there was an interesting case of a man who was spreadbetting using IG index/markets and straddling a share price with two bets going either way, as long as it didn't move up then down too fast he could

close the losing direction and let the winning one cover the loss then start making profit, provided it moved enough. The case concerned whether this was insider trading, as it didn't matter which way the share price went just

that it moved rapidly in one direction for long enough.

If you want to make money all you need is a large amount and a very small profit, so you could lose 500K and win 800K leaving you with 300K cash which is a bit like a casino's position.

There is always the Chinese delay

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime...rs-1687433.html

A jury at Newcastle Crown Court found the 31-year-old guilty of two counts of murder today after a three-week trial.

The popular couple, known by their anglicised names of Kevin Yang and Cici Zhou, were discovered by friends two days after they were killed in their flat.

Miss Zhou was found lying face down on a bed. Her killer had bound her wrists with tape and then hit her over the head with a heavy weapon, possibly a hammer.

A piece of towelling was stuffed into her mouth, which had been taped shut, and she suffocated around 90 minutes after the ordeal began.

Mr Yang was discovered in the other bedroom, having been hit with a hammer in the face and head. His throat was slashed despite him being unconscious already.

The court heard that the couple could have been killed for their part in a lucrative internet betting operation which saw £233,000 pass through their bank accounts in three years.

Mr Yang was involved in sending information from live football matches to Chinese gamblers who benefited from a TV time delay of several seconds, allowing them to bet on events already knowing the outcome.

In his defence, Cao claimed he had been blackmailed into unwittingly helping to set up the couple's deaths after threats were made to his family in China.

He said he was in the flat at Croydon Road when they were killed, but was tied up and locked in the bathroom.

He said masked gunmen burst into the house and killed Mr Yang because he made someone "unhappy" with his behaviour. "

[rolf]

[*]Value Betting - knowing your sports well, and betting when you believe the book has got the odds wrong. People can and do make money doing this. The idea is not to win everytime, but for example if you can get 10-1 on an outcome that has a 20% probability, you will lose most of the time, but on average of a number of instances you will come out on top.

Spot on. Amazes me the amount of idiots who claim to have a "system" and yet don't even understand value betting.

Good explanation here:

http://football-betting-101.blogspot.com/2...g-on-value.html

[ccc]

Spot on. Amazes me the amount of idiots who claim to have a "system" and yet don't even understand value betting.

Good explanation here:

http://football-betting-101.blogspot.com/2...g-on-value.html

I reckon the above method is the only realistic way of winning at betting.

The doubling up at roulette does not work. Simple fact. Me and my mates did it when living in Melbourne. The Crown Casino had a speed roulette section so it was perfect. Anyone who thinks 9 or 10 reds don't come up often in a row ? I have news for you. It happens a lot. You will always end up down. It may take some time for your big loss to kick in though. So I suppose you could be well up and then duck out just before your big loss. You can't know when it is coming though. That is the issue. And you have to be able to carry on betting every time. Otherwise there is no point. Then of course you have the 0. Not put there by accident..

With value betting you are simply scanning, in an event where you know a lot, for odds that the bookie has got wrong. Then if you do win, you win more than you should. Simple strategy. However not easy. You have to know as much as the bookies. I don't think that is easy.

I did this for the last Rugby World Cup. Thought the odds for England Vs Oz and France Vz NZ in the quarters were stupid.

England started pish, were getting better, and the Aussies had been mouthing off about how they would demolish the English. In a tough game like rugby the anger this could result in could end up turning the game. I was right.

France also were not playing great. But then this was the quarter final. NZ always seem to look great and then stumble at the final stages to a team like...well France. Especially as they were on home ground. I was right again.

Only wish I had taken the double !! Anyway I only do this very occasionally when I really think the bookies have messed up. In a sport I know a fair bit about. I imagine to do it full time is possible. Would be hard work though.

[Bloo Loo]

I wouldnt trust an online game...they are easy to cheat....by the programmers.

[VedantaTrader]

Reminds me of what my mother-in-law says about my father-in-law.

"He knows what time each horse last had a shit, but he still can't pick a winner."

Haha, but did your father-in-law make many millions from backing horses? This guy can certainly pick winners. Having a high level of mathematical ability also helps.

[VedantaTrader]

The High Tech Trifecta

They've got multimillion-dollar bankrolls, lightning-fast networks, and a probability-crunching system that leaves the odds in the dust. Meet the pari-mutuel fund managers who are redefining horse racing.

By Michael Kaplan

Crisscrossing telephone wires snake along the carpeting of Rod Dufficy's cluttered home office near Hong Kong's Happy Valley racetrack. Dressed down in baggy black velour sweatpants and a matching gym shirt, Dufficy, 32, sits at a large L-shaped desk, rocking back in his chair and eyeing three computer screens crowded with numbers. He is cramming for a race that begins in 22 minutes, calling up information from an online database and sifting it through a betting-analysis program built into his system. The Australian is one of Hong Kong's elite breed of super-successful professional gamblers, computer-assisted horse bettors who work in teams and net millions at the races each year. Tonight, however, is not one of Dufficy's big-money sessions; he is down US$300,000 heading into this race. "I'm going to have a lot of outlay on this next one," he says. "Maybe $550,000."

Three slender Hong Kong sisters face Dufficy, waiting for a printer to spit out a list of a couple hundred bets with potentially big payoffs. One sister grabs the sheets and snips them into strips, which she distributes to the other women. They punch the information into their handheld wagering machines, which transmit it to the track via telephone lines, filling the room with the chirping of outgoing data.

Four minutes and three-quarters of a mile later, Dufficy looks up at a large-screen TV and watches thoroughbreds lunging past the finish line. He scrutinizes a fistful of papers, then scans the race results scrolling across his desktop monitor. "We've got wins - quinellas and a tierce," he says calmly, referring to wagers that required selecting the first two and three finishers. He made $330,000 on this single race. "It'll put me ahead by $30,000 tonight," he says. By week's end, his earnings will add up to a profit of about $130,000 for essentially two days of work - a typical cycle for Dufficy, who, in fact, wagers and wins less than some other computer-assisted bettors in town.

But there's plenty of dough to go around. As Dufficy and members of the half-dozen or so computer teams in Hong Kong will tell you, this city stands as the land of opportunity for tech-inclined handicappers. The allure centers on Hong Kong's massive handle - the total amount of money wagered on each race - which is the highest in the world. It allows the teams to lay hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single race without upsetting the odds. But Hong Kong racing has other attractions as well: Run by the not-for-profit Hong Kong Jockey Club, it is scrupulously honest (fixing would hurt computer bettors' calculations), and there is a pool of only 1,200 horses per season (a manageable number for the teams to track performances). Then there are the extravagantly exotic bets and parlays, comprising a rich smorgasbord of financial opportunities that seems custom-made for the computer teams. One, the Triple Trio, requires picking the top three finishers in three races and routinely pays six-figure dividends.

"Racing is becoming more and more like a stock market model," says one insider. Horses should be thought of as Dell or Microsoft - their past performances are the equivalent of economic charts.

Unlike other sports, in which bookmakers subjectively set the betting odds or point spreads, horse racing is built around a pari-mutuel system. Payouts are based entirely on the public's opinions, expressed by the horses they bet on. Horses that receive the most bets have the shortest odds and pay the smallest dividends; the least popular horses pay best because fewer people need to divvy up the pool of money. In a pari-mutuel system, the house has no edge and no interest in who wins. (At the end of a race, the track earns only the fee charged for handling each bet; in Hong Kong it's 19 percent of the wagers, which total about $10 billion each year.) Therefore, someone with the right research capabilities can easily find the public's miscalculations and exploit them for great financial gain.

Computer teams pick their winners by culling data from past performances. They use custom-tailored software programs to determine their own odds, search for overlays (situations in which their odds - the calculated, objective odds - are more advantageous than the public's typically subjective odds), and place bets that can deliver big dividends for reduced risk. Team leaders provide the multimillion-dollar bankrolls, supplemented with investments from the 30 to 40 other members. Their jobs range from accounting to code writing to placing the bets. Annual salaries start at $50,000 for those who enter the wagers by phone and rise to more than $1 million for chief technology officers.

The teams are usually headed up by Westerners or Australians; insiders speculate that Chinese gamblers are inclined to emphasize fate and numerology and therefore find computers and horses incompatible. These team leaders walk off with what's left after salaries and operating costs. William Ziemba, alumni professor of financial modeling at the University of British Columbia and a longtime observer of the scene, estimates that a top-notch outfit can pull in as much as $100 million in a good season, netting the boss a cool $50 million or more.

"Computer teams are at a terrific advantage," explains Richard W. Munchkin, author of the forthcoming Gambling Wizards. "Imagine if Fidelity were the only professional investing company, and all the other investors were amateurs who chose stocks at random, on the weekends, for entertainment. Fidelity would be making a lot of money at the expense of those less serious investors."

While computer-generated horse picking is not particularly new, it has reached an apex of sophistication in Hong Kong and is spreading beyond China. Teams have recently made inroads in the United States and Japan. You can easily spot tech bettors at the track in Tokyo because they're the ones wheeling suitcases filled with yen. In the US, seven-figure windfalls are unlikely because of small racetrack handles, but pick sixes (choosing the winning horse in six races) paying over $100,000 are possible.

In Hong Kong, computer-assisted teams are not illegal, but the Jockey Club frowns on the practice, and some bettors claim the HKJC has shut down their accounts after it discovered they were connected to teams. "I'm running out of trustworthy people to hold accounts for me," half-gripes, half-brags one Australian bettor. While complaining that his wife's account was canceled, he is well aware of the professional gambler's credo: If they're not throwing you out, you're doing something wrong.

Competition among Hong Kong's computer teams is fierce. Technological secrets are closely guarded, nobody's keen to publicize their betting strategies, and the cagiest players aim to hide their wagers from other teams - all of which monitor the flow of racing money via an independent online service called Telequote, based in Hong Kong. Nobody's more skilled at masking bets than Bill Benter, regarded by many of his peers as the most successful sports bettor in the world: "Normally, you'd see the odds go from 141-1 to 116-1 and know it's got to be a big professional bet," says Dufficy. "But Bill has his betting model set to disguise his action with little $5,000 dribbles. He ultimately puts the right amount on a horse, but he does it over a sequence of time. He leaves no footprints, and that drives other bettors crazy."

The prevailing paranoia is summed up by a rebuffing email from another big player, who refused an on-the-record interview, chiding: "To highlight what I do only INVITES competition, so a high tech magazine is the least desirable place to have an article about me appear. Plus, any publicity is also [very bad] in terms of impact on the Jockey Club. They do not like computer teams, so advertising how much we make [will only hurt us]." Nonetheless, several team leaders agreed to talk about their operations, though not for attribution.

Working from mathematical models that are calculated to deliver a 24 percent return on investments, Hong Kong's most sophisticated computer-assisted bettors operate with long-term certainty of what their profits should be. "Racing is becoming more and more like a stock market model," says Ziemba, who specializes in statistical analysis and edited The Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets, a collection of scholarly papers on the mathematics of horse wagering that includes a chapter by Benter outlining the system used in Hong Kong. Horses should be thought of as Microsoft or Dell, Ziemba says, and their past performances are the equivalent of economic charts that provide fodder for the Street's quantitative analysts. "Racing is a financial market catching up with the rest of the world. One big difference, though, between the stock market and a horse race is that you can choose when you want to take your profits from a stock. With horses you must do it at the end of each race. So there is a lot more action."

The bedrock of a predictive betting system resides in a massive collection of data on each horse - including details about the tracks and jockeys. "You massage all of that information into a mathematical equation that can be used for predicting probabilities," he explains. "If you wanted to get started in this, you would spend a year building the probabilities system, and it could cost $1 million to put together." And that data bank needs constant updating.

Benter, for example, has employees whose sole job it is to review race tapes after every meet. They judge each horse on 130 characteristics - attributes like speed during the first third of the race, whether it got bumped coming out of a turn, the quality of its recovery from the bump, and, of course, how it finished - and assign numerical grades. This information goes into the database, where it can be cross-referenced and called up to help predict the outcome of any impending race that particular horse runs in.

The computer essentially simulates the race before it happens, based on what has transpired in the past and any anticipated conditions in the future. The software then determines each horse's likelihood of winning a race. When a horse's computer-generated odds are better than the public's odds, the team slams in its wagers. "You create a model that can analyze each type of bet, judge the conditions [in terms of money in the pool and the associated odds], and tell you when it will be most favorable to bet," explains Ziemba. "You do not necessarily want to bet a ton every time - you only do it when you can find advantages."

One top bettor explains it like this: "Our computer program churns through the history of the horses and adjusts all the probability in a very sophisticated way. Having established the probability of the horses, we feed that into our betting program, which looks at all the odds for the various outcomes. It looks at your true chances of winning with the latest payoff odds and calculates what the best potential bets are, based on the chances of winning and the odds. Then it runs through all the probabilities.

"The mathematical aspect involves [following] a basic formulation that all successful gamblers use - whether they know it or not," the bettor says. "It's having what mathematicians call a positive expectation on the bet. You multiply the probability of winning times the payoff odds of one bet. Let's say the horse is 20-1. If it has a .05 probability of winning, you multiply that by 20-1. You get 1.0 - or 1-1 - and that is a fair payoff bet.

The teams excel at complex bets. The biggest Triple Trio ever, paying $18 million, was snagged by a pair of computer-assisted players who covered 900,000 possibilities with wagers totaling $1.2 million.

"But if that same horse is paying 25-1, then it has a positive expectation. Now it is 1.25 [or 1.25-1]. It gives you a 25 percent edge. Given that you know the true probability of winning, the amount to bet is a closed-form problem based on how much you can lay down without hurting your odds."

Designing the software to do all this is a delicate operation with seemingly endless pitfalls that can disastrously skew the results. "You have to understand," says Ziemba, "that building this system, maintaining it every week, and updating the model once a year is a lot of work." And doing the work does not necessarily guarantee success. Benter went broke at least once before his system was efficient enough to turn a steady profit. "Every year, more and more people come here and leave with their tail between their legs," says Dufficy.

Whoever writes the team's software needs to decide early on which aspects of a horse's performance to take most seriously. For instance, if a debuting horse's odds of winning are 50-1 and it wins its first race, the software will note that - and might be inclined to view untried horses with long odds as good bets. So the system must be tweaked to give little weight to those outcomes.

Other, more ambiguous factors - turf firmness, recent time trials, second-place finishes, and the jockeys' racing styles, to name a few - must also be taken into account. "Memory is another thing," suggests Kelly Busche, an economist who has taught at Hong Kong University and consulted for one of the major teams in town. "How quickly do you discount information? And to what degree? What happened two seasons ago should carry less weight than what happened last season. You need a model and a database that are both agile and robust enough to handle a variety of ever-changing situations."

To build a good horse racing model, teams rely on workers with the skills of hedge fund technicians. Rumor has it that one of the teams has wooed programmers from Fortune 500 companies. "You need a hardcore nerd who is good with numbers and has a mathematical and engineering background," says one team leader. "What we do with computers here is similar to what you see with Deep Blue. It's about attacking problems by fussing around and fine-tuning rather than using intuitive knowledge."

Bettors believe the Jockey Club created big, complex bets like the Triple Trio as a hedge against the computer teams' skill-based advantages. The idea was that such wagers would be impossible to handicap, thus enhancing the luck factor and leveling the field. But things have not worked out that way. The biggest Triple Trio ever, paying a dividend of $18 million, was snagged by a pair of computer-assisted players who covered 900,000 possibilities with bets totaling $1.2 million. The top teams routinely make their fortunes through complicated parlays, quinellas, and exactas.

Never mind that most teams risk huge sums for their reward and shell out an estimated $95 million in commissions. The HKJC remains - at least publicly - unimpressed. "We are worried that if you have the computer people, then your average customer sees himself as having no chance," says Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, the HKJC's executive director of racing. "But they're the bettors who bring us 95 percent of our revenue."

The story of computer-assisted betting in Hong Kong begins with Bill Benter, the US-educated, impeccably dressed technician who developed the first successful program put to use at Happy Valley. The importance of his pioneering work is confirmed by rivals and experts alike. Benter got his start in the mid-1970s, when he discovered Beat the Dealer, a bible for blackjack card counters. He memorized the best-selling book's strategies and hit the casino circuit, where he met his future partner Alan Woods, a former actuary turned counter. It was in Las Vegas that Benter stumbled upon a slender handicapping guide - and turned from casinos to horse racing.

Equipped with a $150,000 bankroll provided mostly by Woods, the two card counters planned to apply the theories of winning at blackjack to winning at the races. Beat the Dealer, after all, had been written with the aid of a computer that analyzed every possible situation at a blackjack table and assigned numerical values based on which cards remained in the deck. The idea, when you follow that best-selling guide, is to rigorously stick to its formula and bet high even when you have only a tiny advantage. In the long run, despite frequent fluctuations and potentially long periods of losing, you will win a prescribed percentage of money. By the time Benter refined his program to the point where it worked consistently, he and Woods had bitterly fallen out over money disputes. But in the end, each wound up with an odds- and probability-crunching machine - both built by Benter.

More than a decade later, Benter seems to have more in mind than just being a racing guru. He's lectured at Hong Kong universities, consulted with internationally known mathematicians, and branched out into other technological endeavors (one is a digitized transcribing system for doctors). He's also served as president of a Hong Kong Rotary Club and made substantial donations to respected charities.

Woods is still on the scene, but his working style is described as being completely different from Benter's. He uses off-the-rack Pentium computers, still runs DOS, and employs an out-of-print program called Revelation for his database. At its core, it remains the original system created by his former partner, customized so that Woods can override it with his personal input. Benter now works with Sun Microsystems processors and uses the far more stable Unix operating system. His setup is said to be much more finely tuned than Woods', allowing him to reach conclusions with limited human interface, thus permitting fewer opportunities for subjective opinions to foul up the beautiful mathematics. When Benter's winners cross the finish line, you don't hear so much as a whoop from his crew. As any fan can tell you, the real miracle of this technology is that winning fails to come as much of a surprise.

The Hong Kong model seems to be catching on. Consider that as the horses bolted from the starting gate at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Florida, one day in February last year, the odds for the winning horse suddenly went from 10-1 to 8-1. A gambler reported the shift to Gulfstream's vice president of finance, Bob Zambreny Jr., who did a bit of investigating. He discovered that in a three-second span, 167 exacta wagers were placed from an outfit in Fargo, North Dakota, called Racing Services - a discreet betting parlor that attracts sky-high wagers with low commissions and liberal rules. Further snooping uncovered a computer team operating in the United States using handicapping software similar to the systems used by Hong Kong teams.

Zambreny and Racing Services decline to identify the team leader. But whoever it was had a special interface that allowed him to batch his bets - to place dozens of wagers per second - into the Racing Services system. This allowed the team to lay down a skein of complex exacta wagers after nearly all wagers were in, the odds were practically set, and it was relatively clear as to how much could be staked before upsetting the odds beyond a tolerable degree. The bets, automatically placed by the computer, ultimately paid out $246,020 on a total bet of $25,569. Even more impressive, over a 50-day period, the team had reportedly netted $3.3 million in profits on $12.9 million in bets.

Gulfstream quickly barred the team from using a computer to place bets, asserting that all bettors must have an even chance. But Susan Bala, president of Racing Services, plays down the unique access granted to the team and says she would let any customer place his wagers via computer from her shop. "We haven't had Joe Blow come in off the street and ask us to let him use his computer in here. But if he did, we would talk to him. We're a service company." Computerized betting is giving horse racing a much-needed dose of pizzazz, Bala argues. She hopes that computer-assisted betting will attract the same people to racing who once devoted afternoons to daytrading. "Technology is driving horse racing to new places," she says.

Other racing professionals are beginning to come around. After the Gulfstream incident, US racing executives discussed the possibility of introducing computerized betting. "I can see a future where patrons would be able to plug their laptops into docking stations," acknowledges Zambreny. "They would deliver their bets through computers and the batching of bets would be possible." Barry Schwartz, chair of the New York Racing Association, welcomes high tech action: "Computers are simply another tool for handicapping. There's no guarantee of winning just because you're using one. These bettors are willing to risk money just like everyone else."

No guarantees, but the evidence from Hong Kong suggests it's the closest thing to a sure bet. There, the models have been taken as far as they can go, and it will be up to a new generation of Benters to tweak them for use in other locales. As handicapping systems seep into the mainstream, the innovators anticipate a future involving artificial intelligence - a Kubrickian computer that blends the human sensitivity of the best old-fashioned gamblers with the brute force of a supercomputer. If that day ever comes, traditional horse bettors may really have something to worry about."

[Bloo Loo]

betting systems ******.

systems usually involve paying an insider to throw the result.

now THATS surefire.

[6538]

I reckon I'm about double up from the small stakes I play with. If I had a big capital fund (I mean 30k here not even 300k-many baby boomers would easily have this though) I'd be confident of easily making 10-20% a year. larger fund would let you double up more and chase any losses.

I see it's easy to just bet on 50 50 sports events, under 2.5 goals or odd/even in a game, all at slightly less than evens. Or even just sticking to the roulette table and having a set target to make (ie. being able to follow up say 10 reds in a row with doubled stakes each time)

Has anyone done this? Do betting firms shut down accounts where it's clear people are trying to do this? Is it actually that hard to beat the bookies if you have a set strategy and don't get excited/irrational

I like roulette and Blackjack but I wouldn't use online gaming sites because I'm never convinced they're straight. Also, you don't know if they are really dealing from a legit "pack" of cards or if it's just producing random cards so you can't play any sort of strategy. There's also the danger of not knowing when to stop when you are at home with a six pack and a credit card.

Blackjack is the only game you can actually play any sort of strategy and play the odds. Yes, you can do the odd-even thing on roulette and bet the opposite colour that has just produced a large run but, on balance, it doesn't really work in the end because it's not that unlikely that you'll get very large runs of a certain colour and you'll run out of money before you win.

Learn to count cards is the best plan.

[6538]

I have yet to meet a poor bookie.

About 25 years ago I had a chum who worked as a commodities dealer for a major City house: he was a frenetic and insane gambler who would bet on anything which moved.

When the City house closed much of their commodities trading side they agreed to sell one of the small companies to my chum and two other directors, stripped of assets and with zero liabilities.

They took a small office and started: the senior guy was a spice trader and did well: my chum stuck to "softs" and veered from making £100K to losing £100K week after week.

Then one day a friend of his, a retired bookie shook him by the scruff of the neck and said: "You are an arch gambler who will bet on anything: and knows every possible combination of bets and odds. Isn't it about time you wised up and became a bookie?"

So they jumped in the ex-bookies new Roller and set off for South London and found a suitable empty shop: which beame my chum's first betting shop.

Last time I spoke to him it was Derby Day and I caught him in one of his six shops: and he had just paid out a punter £500 on the favourite.

"Did you lay his bet off?" I asked thinking of his pain!

"Nope!" he replied, " At present he has gone to the pub with his mates: he usually punts 50 pence each way and drinks halves of stout. He is drinking double brandies and buying 'em for everyone else too; and smoking cigars instead of his habitual rolls ups. Before he left the shop he was laying down £5 each way on the follow up races. And he'll be back soon doing his brains!"

"Before the day is out I'll have my £500 back: and a load more!"

Another friend blew his last million in one of London's casinos playing roulette: and it wasn't his only million!

At the end he had lost two adjoining and beautiful purpose built houses in a quiet leafy lane in Surrey: all his money (Millions) and finished up living in a rented flat and working at a filling station evenings to make ends meet at the age of nearly 70.

Mug's game.

Only if you don't know when to stop. I like casinos but I set my self a limit and when it's gone, it's gone. Also try to set limit at where to stop when I'm up because if you don't it'll always disappear.

[6538]

It's fine, it's not something I've done and I can take any insults (not that you've insulted me there)

My point is that of course, you'll lose on average. However, martingaling with a set strategy can surely give you a fair return IF you have enough capital. Let's say you're playing red/black on casino, target of £50 a day. Bet £50, if lose £100, if lose again £200, again £400, again £800, then £1600 then £3200. The odds of getting say a run of seven is slightly less than 0.5 to the power of 7. Even if we assume a majorly unlucky run of say 20 losses, there's surely people (not myself unfortunately) who can cope with this

This theory falls down as soon as you hit the table limit though.

[Prescience]

Only if you don't know when to stop. I like casinos but I set my self a limit and when it's gone, it's gone. Also try to set limit at where to stop when I'm up because if you don't it'll always disappear.

No: A mug's Game thinking you can win.

Or, in most circumstances, win more than you lose.

Personally, whilst I like playing card games of skill for fun very occasionally, sitting for hours in a casino is the last thing in this World I need.

I've visited casinos here and there mainly as an observer: and watched idiots (particularly the Chinese and the Arabs in the 1970s) blowing tens of thousands.

And if anyone watched the programme earlier this year on John Aspinall (part of the Channel4 Toffs and Crims series), then they would have realised just how bent casino operators can be and all too often are.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-real-casino-royale

[6538]

There are a few ways you can make a living from sports betting. None of which are easy and of course require you to risk money. If you succeed the bookies will get to know you and be less willing to take big bets from you, so you may need to find a fresh supply of bookies worldwide to keep this up:

1. Arbitrarge Betting - finding an event where the best odds offered by different bookies are such that the overround < 100%, and you can get a guaranteed profit regardless of outcome. Profits can be anything from 1% to 50% of the amount staked. Beware of transactional costs. E.g. a 2% credit card fee could eliminate the profit.

2. Value Betting - knowing your sports well, and betting when you believe the book has got the odds wrong. People can and do make money doing this. The idea is not to win everytime, but for example if you can get 10-1 on an outcome that has a 20% probability, you will lose most of the time, but on average of a number of instances you will come out on top.

3. Angle Shooting - looking for ways to beat the system such as making bets on live games at the exact moment a goal is scored, a corner etc. Bookies will soon close your account if you do this though.

Plus anyone, yes anyone over 18 can easily make £1000+ one off by using arbitrage in conjunction with the free bet offers given by bookies. Due to the free bets, you don't need overround <100% so you can use any reasonable event to tease out the free bet. The idea is to spend for example £105 to win a guaranteed £100 and lose just £5 to get the free bet. Then just value bet it, or arb the free bet against another account.

It is possible also to make a living from online or live poker by being more skillful than your opponents. Also playing at the right times of day can help (when others are drunk for example).

Blackjack can be beaten in casinos by card counting as seen in the 21 film. I believe fruit machines can be beaten if you know what you are doing, the machine has a house advantage, but I think it gives out clues that can be picked up about when it is ready to pay out, so effectively you win money off drunk and inexperienced players.

Roulette cannot be beaten in the long term because it is pure luck with a house advantage. Best strategy for roulette is to make a single bet with your entire stake and walk away win or lose.

Or, similarly, bet using the delay given to international TV transmissions and get your self brutally tortured to death like the Chinese couple from Newcastle.

[frozen_out]

I wouldnt trust an online game...they are easy to cheat....by the programmers.

To what end?

My point is that of course, you'll lose on average. However, martingaling with a set strategy can surely give you a fair return IF you have enough capital. Let's say you're playing red/black on casino, target of £50 a day. Bet £50, if lose £100, if lose again £200, again £400, again £800, then £1600 then £3200. The odds of getting say a run of seven is slightly less than 0.5 to the power of 7. Even if we assume a majorly unlucky run of say 20 losses, there's surely people (not myself unfortunately) who can cope with this

By the time you get to your 3200 bet you've put 6350 down. If it comes in your bet is going to win you 6400, giving you an amazing profit of £50. Or odds of about 127/1 ON. The odds of your bet coming is roughly evens.

As the Americans say: 'you do the math'.

[ccc]

It's fine, it's not something I've done and I can take any insults (not that you've insulted me there)

My point is that of course, you'll lose on average. However, martingaling with a set strategy can surely give you a fair return IF you have enough capital. Let's say you're playing red/black on casino, target of £50 a day. Bet £50, if lose £100, if lose again £200, again £400, again £800, then £1600 then £3200. The odds of getting say a run of seven is slightly less than 0.5 to the power of 7. Even if we assume a majorly unlucky run of say 20 losses, there's surely people (not myself unfortunately) who can cope with this

In case anyone was wondering, this someone who would be willing to cope with 20 losses in a row ? They would have to be willing to bet over 52 MILLION pounds for the end result of a £50 gain. I don't think people appreciate how quickly these numbers extrapolate.

Me and my mates did it in only 5 dollar increments. We ended up losing almost 2 grand. Also the number of times 10 evens/odds come up in a row is actually rather surprising.

[6538]

In case anyone was wondering, this someone who would be willing to cope with 20 losses in a row ? They would have to be willing to bet over 52 MILLION pounds for the end result of a £50 gain. I don't think people appreciate how quickly these numbers extrapolate.

Me and my mates did it in only 5 dollar increments. We ended up losing almost 2 grand. Also the number of times 10 evens/odds come up in a row is actually rather surprising.

I remember seeing something on the TV years ago about this sort of thing. Was to do with settling a debt by putting an ever increasing number of pennies on each square of a chess board. I forget the exact reasoning but it was stupid.

Anyway, if you put one penny on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the forth and so on, by the time you reach the final square, the sixty forth, you need a number of pennies equal to every grain of rice grown in China in the past 300 years - or something astronomical like that.

You cant win money on roulette like this because you end up needing a vast amount of money which you will never have. You'd need an infinate amount of money to run this system and of you have that then why would you bother gambling?

The only way to win at roulette is to find a biased wheel that drops the ball into a given area more often than other areas but you would need to keep a check on it for probably weeks making notes and I think you might get spotted.

[Guest Barebear]

Doesn't blowing on the dice when they're in your hand guarantee a win ?

[6538]

Doesn't blowing on the dice when they're in your hand guarantee a win ?

Oh yeah, forgot that! That's that sorted then.

[swissy_fit]

I reckon I'm about double up from the small stakes I play with. If I had a big capital fund (I mean 30k here not even 300k-many baby boomers would easily have this though) I'd be confident of easily making 10-20% a year. larger fund would let you double up more and chase any losses.

I see it's easy to just bet on 50 50 sports events, under 2.5 goals or odd/even in a game, all at slightly less than evens. Or even just sticking to the roulette table and having a set target to make (ie. being able to follow up say 10 reds in a row with doubled stakes each time)

Has anyone done this? Do betting firms shut down accounts where it's clear people are trying to do this? Is it actually that hard to beat the bookies if you have a set strategy and don't get excited/irrational

Yes, I have. But in order to be worth it, you need to make BIG money(this I couldn't do), for the following reasons :-

It's boring but stressful at the same time.

It's very hard work.

You need steel balls.

Bookies hate you and close your accounts. Worldwide.

If you tell anyone in "polite" society what you're doing you'll be ostracised.

99% of people fail because they're too indisciplined.

It's crap, get a job. Unless you really feel that you're one of the tiny minority who can make at least 6 figures annually, it's not worth it.

[TheEmperorHasNoClothes]

And your next bet, assuming you lose, is 6400 so you have put 9600 down to win - again just the 50.

Thats not quite the case.

You are not betting £6400 to win £50, you are betting it to win £6400. And if you do win it, your net profit for the night is £50.

The £6350 punted so far is already lost, gone, dust. If the casino fire alarm rings at that exact moment, you go home with £6350 less than you started with.

Fire alarms - another reason not to Martingale, I guess.