Daniel's Site - Professional Casino Player

A lot of players are intimidated the first time they sit down to play roulette. There's a lot of different places where they can bet and they find themselves trying to out-think the inherently random nature of the wheel and the ball. This method isn't designed to help you win, per se, but to help you understand how betting works and when you should walk away (and when you should stay)!

Step One: Find A Roulette Table With A Wide Betting Range.

This is easier than you'd think if you want to play online roulette, as pretty much very site will let you wager as little as $1 or as much as you want on each spin, up to $500.

Step Two: Start Betting

Bet a small amount on red or black and then if you win, walk away. Seriously, log out of the online casino and get a little fresh air. I'm serious about this step because it reminds you that winning is something that should be savored! If you lose, however, double the amount you last wagered and then place the same bet again. If you bet $1 the first time, bet $2.

Step Three: Continue Betting

Yes, we said double the amount that you bet the first time if you lost and make the exact same bet again. If you bet $2 in Step Two, then bet $4. If you win on this spin, you'll have made just as much money winning on your second bet as you would have if you had won on your first. Again, if you end up winning, take your money and walk away.

Step Four: Continue Betting

Did you lose again? Then double your bet and try again. Yes, just like you were supposed to do in Step Three if you lost.

Step Five: Repeat These Steps Until You're Done

Continue doing this until you've either lost the money you started playing with or you hit the table maximum.

Win Roulette Secret Strategy

Is this system a little foolish? Perhaps. However, this is the only system by which you're guaranteed to make money while playing the game. If you don't end up making a winning bet by the time you've gone through your bankroll, however, you've got an amazing story to tell your friends. On top of guaranteeing a profit (or giving you bragging rights), this method also teaches you the importance of pocketing your winnings when you have them.

You've probably heard of the term "house edge" to describe the percentage that a casino expects to earn on games such as roulette, blackjack or craps. Blackjack, for example, has a house edge of between .5% and 1% when someone plays with what amounts to "perfect" strategy over the long term. (Note that this is over the long term. In the short term, wild variances can occur).

Slot machines, on the other hand, are described according to their payout and hold percentages. A payout percentage is just what it sounds like: the percentage of money that the slot machine will pay out over the long term compared to what is wagered. If a slot machine is set to have a payout percentage of 98%, that means that for every $100 bet, $98 goes back to the players. It's important to note that this is over the long term, which means that multiple players' losing sessions means that another player will get a massive payout.

The hold percentage is the inverse of the payout percentage: it's the amount kept by the casino, which you can determine by subtracting the payout from the total amount taken in. A slot machine with a 96% payout percentage is holding 4% for the casino. For all intents and purposes, a slow machine's hold percentage acts as the house edge.

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Casinos are not cheap to maintain, as you can imagine, which means that many of them have their hold percentages set as low as they can manage in the area they're established. They have to balance that with the fact that players naturally prefer a higher payout percentage. In Nevada, for example, the hold percentage statewide is around 6%, but there's a great deal of variance within that.

Areas with a lot of guaranteed players such as the Las Vegas Strip have a higher hold percentage. The strip, for example has an average hold percentage of 6.88% and downtown hits 6.31%. On the other hand, Reno, which actively tries to get players to come out to visit has a significantly lower hold percentage of just over 5%. Overall, brick and mortar casinos have seen an increase in their hold percentages over the last few years with some casinos in Atlantic City holding up to 9% of the money they take in.

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Online casinos have lower overhead and also feature more players, which means they can be more profitable while holding a smaller amount of money. In fact, it's not uncommon for an online casino to have a hold percentage as low as 1%, as they have greatly reduced costs. With the number of players that a popular online casino sees, this means that progressive jackpots grow larger faster and that you're more likely to win in the long term.

Technology has integrated itself in our day-to-day lives and provided us with advancements like the iPhone and the coffee machine that turns itself on in the morning. It's also become a big part of gaming, and we're talking about more than just the online casinos out there. On the casino floor, it's easy to point to things like video poker and the fancy touch screen versions of games that have shown up in casinos, but there's probably no place that it's made a bigger impact than in the humble slot machine.

When Charles Fey came up with the idea for the first slot machine in the late 1800s, he was actually working on a poker game. The problem was that he was working way, way ahead of what mechanical technology allowed. He simplified his original idea greatly, boiling it down to three spinning reels that each featured five symbols: hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs and the Liberty Bell. Reducing ten cards to five symbols and five cards to three reels made it that much easier to pay out when someone wins.

This 3-reel slot machine became the standard for quite a while, paying out $0.50 for the biggest win. Others followed suit and soon 3-reel slot machines were even offering up gum and prizes to children in drugstores. Nowadays, 3-reel slots are mostly a kitsch thing, but there's no denying the charm in such simplicity.

The 5-Reel Slot Machines
While Fey had his problems with creating a 5-reel machines, the Sittman and Pitt company in New York City managed to create a hybrid slot and poker game that featured 5 reels and fifty card faces (ten on each drum). The payouts on this machine were based on standard poker hands, but the fact was that the play was greatly limited.

Mechanical versions of the 5-reel slot machine proved to be difficult until the late 20th century and the development of electromechanical slots. The need for these games didn't last long thanks to the development of video slots. The first video slot machine was set up on a modified Sony Trinitron with computer components attached to it in a bizarre hodgepodge that was more proof of concept than actual gaming device. However, the groundwork was laid for video slots that could feature 5 reels and offer second screens where bonuses were paid out. This also led to the invention of multiple paylines, a staple of the slot machine.

The 7-Reel Slot Machines
It was a matter of time before someone again increased the number of reels on a slot machine, and seven seemed like a good number, apparently. The 7-reel slot machines are a bit of a rarity now, both in brick and mortar casinos and on gaming sites that offer online slots. The sheer number of paylines and the size of the play area is still intimidating to a lot of players, but it wouldn't be surprising if the next generation of casino gamers took to them as quickly as the industry did 5-reel slots.