Basic Casino Strategy

It should be noted that the end of the previous millennium was marked by an unprecedented growth of intellectual knowledge among visitors in the field of games presented in casinos. This was facilitated by SERIES OF MATERIALS on the nuances and rules of games, the basics of basic strategies, the principles of BRM, mathematical modeling. New knowledge caused a furor, literally exploding the gambling world, dividing players and casino workers into two camps: those who read and understood the meaning of what was written, ready to use the information presented in it in practice, and people far from studying additional materials, accustomed to living the old-fashioned way and not burdening themselves with unnecessary information, who firmly believed that it was impossible to beat the casino.

CASINO GAME STRATEGY explains in plain language how to play different casino games, how to manage your money, when to increase the bet, and when to decrease it.

It is thanks to the BASIC GAME STRATEGY that a whole galaxy of legendary personalities has emerged among the regulars of Moscow establishments, successfully using the basic strategies and constantly going home with money, and quite good money at that. Among the best, the names of Partizan, Maradona, Uzbechka, Eric and Slava were mentioned.

Once there was a TV show about people who won decent sums of money at the casino. Partizan appeared in front of the camera and, in response to the question of how he managed to leave the casino in the black time after time, replied that he had “his own system” that allowed him to raise the bet correctly at the right moment. The answer satisfied the reporter, but did not provide an understanding of what such a unique intuition was based on. Sergey Okun gave an explanation. He called blackjack a game for the assiduous. The fact is that during the deal, the player balances the cards with a value of 10 points that have left the game (all pictures and tens, respectively) and cards with a digital value from two to six. And upon reaching the required figure, he either increases or decreases the bet.

It is not a fact that the required ratio according to the strategy will be achieved during the first or second shuffle (mixing the cards). Sometimes, in order to wait for it, you need to sit at the gaming table for not an hour, not two, or even three.

It is people who are able to wait long and patiently for their star chance that we call "sedulous", thanks to their ability to spend a lot of time sitting in a chair. In his interview, Partisan added that the longer he is at the gaming table, the more winnings he will leave with. Which is absolutely inconsistent with the "clock rule" in a casino: the longer a visitor plays, the greater the likelihood of his loss. A craze for studying strategies began. Phrases such as: mathematical expectation, basic strategy became popular among casino managers. Success in poker began to be measured in ante bets. Among the managers there were people who had earned a well-deserved reputation both for their length of service and for the additional knowledge they could easily and naturally use in practice. After watching the game of a new guest on cameras, they could accurately determine the level of potential danger for the establishment in terms of choosing the right strategy during the game and counting cards.

After the fun "mask shows" and the spectacular drawing of a million, the already thin stream of guests coming to the "Messenger" began to dry up completely. Yura then began to think about how to fill the once prosperous and rich in all matters establishment with its former glory and greatness. And he decided to organize a brainstorming session: he gathered his general managers and set them the task of generating ideas for emergency resuscitation. They sat down together with their loyal pit bosses and thought about it. And then a brilliant idea came to the bright head of Alexey Shurupletsov: why not arrange for us, by analogy with restaurants, such happy hours? We will increase the existing classic payouts, come up with something else, and we will be happy! And as an example, he proposed increasing the payout on the roulette when hitting the number from 35:1 to 40:1. Yura picked up the idea and developed it further: “Let’s also increase the payout for the same-name combination on blackjack! Let’s make it 2:1. And if the blackjack comes up suited, we’ll increase it to 3:1! And we’ll allow surrender if the dealer has an ace!”[48] Now it was only necessary to come up with some benefits for poker players, and then one of the remaining “old-timers” — representatives of the previous team who had not yet been fired — suggested simply increasing the existing payout system by one. Starting with triplets, a single coefficient was introduced to increase the payout: triplets are paid 4:1 instead of 3:1, straight — 5:1, flush — 6:1. And for larger and rarer combinations, you can be generous: full house instead of 7:1 will now be 9:1, quads instead of 20:1 will be 25:1. Well, they decided to increase the payout for straight flush and royal flush by 50 units - due to their extremely rare occurrence. The person who suggested this idea probably cared about the casino and did not want to obstruct it, so he proposed the maximum permissible change in the rules, which in three "happy hours" is not capable of giving the player a mathematical advantage in a particular game. But this did not seem enough to Yura: the introduction of a minimum increase in payouts in poker will not affect its popularization and will not bring excitement to the process. With the power given to him, he introduces the joker card, assigning it the ace of spades, which can replace the missing card in straight and flush combinations and all their derivatives [49]. Having figured out the games, they began to think about what else to do for dear guests? How to surprise and please them? And in joint creativity, a wonderful idea was born about an instant lottery. A person coming to the casino was presented with a special card by the receptionist at the entrance. All you have to do is scratch off the protective layer and read what benefit you have. And when a certain situation arises, show the card and use the privilege. The idea itself is very good, and it was supported by the players. After it was developed, scratches - that's what the guests called the cards - began to be additionally issued at the gaming tables. Moreover, competitors from other casinos "spied" and "stolen" this know-how. As my first teacher used to say: "If you look into someone else's notebook, you'll drag the mistake to yourself!" There is nothing wrong with the cards themselves, you just need to correctly write the benefit that it provides. And this turned out to be the most difficult. The meeting that adopted the new rules for working with happy hours resembled a funny story about two bulls, young and old, standing on top of a hill and looking at a herd of cows grazing below. The young bull says: - Let's run, let's run, let's fuck that little white cow over there! To which the old bull replies: - We won't. Then the young bull says again: - Let's run, let's run, let's fuck that little black cow over there! To which the old bull replies: - We won't. Then the young bull says: - Let's run, let's run, let's fuck that little red cow over there! The old bull looks at his young "colleague" and sums it up: - We won't run. We'll calmly go down and fuck the whole herd! The only difference was the absence of that old bull at the meeting (most likely, previously fired), who could have stopped the youth from making such ill-considered and harmful decisions. We, for our part, assign these innovations in terms of games place No. 9 in our hit parade of stupidities. You will now see what these "happy hours" turned out to be for the "Messenger". So, summer, June is a difficult time for many casinos, since many are on vacation or have left. But the "Messenger" is sold out from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM. An unprecedented number of guests! Every day this time interval gathered ten to fifteen people. The dealers worked without rest - there was no one to replace them, the whole shift was in the hall! Hooray! The idea works! Roulette was an amazing sight: the dealer stands at the table and launches the ball. There are no guests at the table. But there are chips next to the field. After each launch, the dealer rakes in the losing ones, takes new ones from the stacks standing next to the field and places them on the field only in the number corresponding to today's date (it was decided to increase the payout only by the number corresponding to today). The chips standing next to the field, of different colors, belong to different players, and the dealer only takes care of them, fulfilling the request to bet on the number, so as not to distract from the card game. Someone's bets are made with cash chips. As a result, all the numbers are empty, and the number with today's date is the Leaning Tower of Pisa in an open field. Everyone is waiting for it to come up! Which is quite logical: in theory, it is assumed that in 37 launches of the ball, each of the numbers will come up once. And here there is a bonus in the form of three additional throws! Why not use it? After all, no one knows when a given number will come up. Maybe it will not come up at all, or maybe immediately and with a repeat. Only the bet must be large. So people bet from 25 to 100 dollars on a number. And they waited. And waited ... There was no room to swing an apple at blackjack. Whoever came earlier managed to take a place at the table and did not give it up to anyone for three hours. And only the so-called "counters" came. The entire Moscow gaming elite gathered at the "Poslannik". And they all knew the work of Dmitry Lesnoy very well. The benefits introduced by Yura provided excellent grounds for increasing the expectation of winning at six-deck blackjack. And people took advantage of this. And they happily won. The management just threw up their hands. Poker, due to the introduction of the joker, also attracted attention. It was not as popular as blackjack and roulette, but it had its players. It would seem that everything they talked about came true! Life returned! Only the result was gone. For three summer months, the "Poslannik" worked 21 hours every day to "recoup" the money lost during the "happy hours". Instead of the obligatory daily result of $15,000, allowing to live comfortably and happily, the casino barely finished this time period at zero, which in itself meant financial death and the collapse of the idea, entailing the inevitable resignation of the management. We remember that the result should be a certain part of the money exchanged. And if the result is 0, then there is nothing more to talk about. Everything is clear. But the office did not think so and continued to wait. And they waited...

While working at the Lyudmila Casino, Maxim encountered people who showed extraordinary abilities in card counting. Realizing that they posed a real threat, he introduced the strictest rules for blackjack. The draconian rules did not inspire the players who came to Schilling for the first time for this game, and they scattered to other casinos, where the management managed to find a golden ratio between strictness in the rules and indulgences in the game. The few who accepted the proposed terms of the game were a priori targeted: being not stupid, Max could not help but be amazed by the fearless people who sat down at the gaming table and were ready in 2005 to play according to the hopelessly outdated rules of the early 90s. At first, he would look at them carefully, and in the case of a protracted winning streak, as in the case of the Armenian, he would add them to the blacklist with the wording “client unprofitable for the casino.” "Blacklisted" one, two, three... And the Russian side had questions for him: after all, the number of guests was not off the charts, out of 15 tables divided into two pits, no more than four were playing at a time. Therefore, the voluntary refusal of guests, even winning ones, looked extremely strange. Not wanting to explain his actions and tired of constantly thinking about ways to protect himself from dangerous "counters", Max decides to take advantage of the achievements of scientific and technological progress, forcing them to work for the benefit of the establishment. And, as always happens with him, he kills two birds with one stone. With the consent and help of the management company, he orders expensive shuffle machines for card games. A shuffle machine is a mechanical unit that automatically mixes the cards placed in it. This eliminates the possibility of fraud on the part of the gaming staff. But... The shuffle machine variant on blackjack mixed the cards in a mode that did not exclude that the next deal would be the same as the previous one, in other words, out of 312 cards (6 full decks), not all of them in a row participated in the game, but only those that the machine randomly "spit out". Moreover, it could spit out the same cards an infinite number of times. The meaning of the game was completely lost, and accordingly, the possibility of counting anything was excluded. Players, "counters" and ordinary "Kuzmichi", as soon as they saw this miracle of technology, ran from it like devils from incense: why play something that is impossible to win? Thus, Maxim achieved the main thing - he protected his casino from intellectually literate visitors, removing unnecessary concerns from the analytical department: its employees no longer needed to meticulously calculate shuffle after shuffle, calculating mathematically gifted visitors. Do you know why? Because as soon as the machines were in "Schilling", the gaming tables instantly emptied. And if someone dared to commit suicide, even this daredevil might not get the proper pleasure: the machines periodically "jammed", "chewing" and tearing cards: the traditional blackjack cards with a bee were the devil-machine's favorite delicacy. And to fix the problems sometimes required at least 10-15 minutes, so instead of becoming an assistant and speeding up the process, the fashionable device slowed it down in every possible way, dispersing the already few willing participants.

Today, there are three main types of gambling strategies for playing in a casino:

1. Game strategies.
During the game, the placement of bets on the field constantly changes depending on the game situation that has arisen.

2. Betting strategies.
Regardless of how the game process goes, the user places his bets, decreases or increases their size according to a certain scheme.

3. Combined strategies.
The strategies include elements of both variations. Thus, the player works with the location and level of the bet simultaneously, depending on many factors of the game processes.

It would not be superfluous to emphasize that any positive strategy must overcome the negative mathematical expectation (built into all casino games) and give the player the opportunity to make a profit over a long period of time.

Spot wins in casino games do not bring any system or benefit.

The main factor in the invulnerability of a professional plus strategy is the impossibility of detecting the strategy itself and, consequently, the impossibility of creating an adaptive process of counteracting what cannot be detected.
It is in such a case of failure to detect a strategy that the expert-analytical group of employees of any casino, together with software developers, recognizes the randomness of the win - the randomness of the match of the player's bet (several bets) with the number (several numbers) that has fallen out.
Pinpoint victories are the result of such "random" coincidences!
All the pros were once beginners and became successful players as a result of several pinpoint wins in a short period of a gaming session.
However, this is the exception that proves the rule:
point victories - cannot and should not be considered systemic processes denoting a strategy aimed at defeating negative mathematical expectation.