Gambling Basics

  

The main purpose of this website is to provide basic information about casino gambling that will allow casino patrons to make informed decisions about their gaming choices. However, please be careful. The information provided here is not a combination to the casino vault. Casino gaming as recreation can be affordable and fun. Otherwise, it can mean personal and financial disaster.

Compulsive and otherwise destructive gaming is a source of a lot of heartache in the world. It is my belief that understanding gaming is a way to help lessen the problems associated with it. If you have a gambling problem, you need to find help or take steps to stop gambling.

Before making any bet, a gambler needs to ask the question, "What is in it for the other guy". As you will see, whenever you place a bet with any individual or business that profits from gambling, you are at a disadvantage. Depending on your gaming choices, you may be at a much greater disadvantage than necessary. 

To demonstrate this phenomenon, lets start off with a very easy and obvious example. As most people know, state run lottery games are bad bets. In the Cash 3 Lotto, people are asked to choose three numbers between 0-9. Actually, what Lotto players are doing is choosing one number between 000 and 999. That means there are 1000 combinations to choose from. The odds of hitting any one combination is 999 to 1. The cost of a combination is $1. How much does the Cash 3 Lotto pay for a matching number? Generally, the Cash 3 Lotto pays around $500. The payout is what makes Cash 3 such a horrible bet. If all was fair, the bettor should receive $1000 back for his $1 bet. Therefore, the bettor is at a 50% disadvantage to the state run lottery. To further demonstrate this idea, here is one of my obligatory coin toss examples.

Lets say you and a I are flipping a coin for $1,000. Every time the coin comes up heads, you give me a $1,000. However, every time it comes up tails, I only give you $500. I would have a 50% advantage over you and the best you could possibly do in the long run would be to lose an additional $500 every other flip. If over 10 flips you won 5 and lost 5, you would be down $2,500. (5 * 1000 - 5 * 500 = 5,000 - 2,500 = $2,500)