Pro Gamblers?

Just curious if we had any pros or any aspiring pros around here. Feel free to tell your fish stories or share tips.

I've had an interest and a knack for gambling since I was 17- starting on computer games then progressing to Indian casinos where you can play at 18. I've been above average so far. I'm by no means a pro at this point, but I can generally count on winning more than I lose. I even paid for my truck shooting craps. (It's not a great truck in all fairness).

Anyway, recently the history channel was nice enough to start a TV show about my hobby and given me a few books to add to my reading list. On top of that it's inspired me to develop a system for the special brand of craps played in California casinos (using cards instead of dice). Details on that will follow once I've done some experimenting this week.

Anyway, I thought I'd invite any other players around here to shoot the breeze about their game of choice, and if anything comes of my tinkering this week of course I'll share my discoveries.

Well, I consider myself the master of Roullette!
But I am wanting to learn howto play some cards.

how do u play roulette ? whats teh strategy?

When I was playing Texas holdem I had two 9, I then raised the bet to 20 dollars. Ha ha he had two 7s and I won all that money!

That's what I loved about playing hold 'em poker online. If you are a decent player you start to intimidate people, then you can start to bully them. Always watch the guy who sits their quietly folding almost every hand. It's easy to forget he's there in an online game. Then you'll run into a hand like this.
You: A K
Flop: AA2
Him: 34(suited- note that calling the blind for him is a semi-bluff unless he posted the big blind, but from time to time quiet guys will go to the flop with small hands).

Everyone checks for fear of those Aces till some sucker bluffs, then you and the quiet guy call. You should be afraid right now because the quiet guy didn't fold- if you should probably be asking yourself if he has a full house, but if you haven't been paying attention to him you wont even know what you're getting into.

He catches his 5 on fourth street and now he's got the straight- bluffer opens, quiet guy raises, and you figure he's got the last ace and you'll beat him with the king kicker, or maybe that he's got a pocket pair, so you raise eachother all the way to the limit. He's gonna put a nice little dent in your bankroll and make up for all the folding he did earlier.

I'm no rounder but I learned real fast that online it's the quiet ones you gotta watch. You can't bully them too easily because they wouldn't be in if they didn't have the cards.


In other news, I've started developing a counting system for the card craps they play at some of the Indian casinos here in CA. It shows promise, although I'm still a little uncertain how it will perform with "live ammo". Its not good all of the time, but it would give me a hint when I can expect 2, 3, hard 4 hard 10, 11, and 12. All big payoff bets.

It basically works like this. In the casinos around here they take two seperate stacks of 20 decks (ace through six only) and pull one card from each stack to generate the numbers instead of using dice (illegal in CA).

I assign a value of negative 1 to Ace and 2. Zero to 3 and 4. positive one for 5 and 6. I keep a running count of the deviation from zero in each stack. If both stacks are in deep in the negatives, we can expect to see the high numbers start showing up, so hard 10 and field bets are in order. If both stacks go high, we can expect low numbers. hard four and any crap bets are in order. If both decks hang close to zero, or if one goes high and one goes low 6, 8, and 7 will be coming up- with the odds favoring 7 heavily- a 3 unit don't pass bet can insure 1 unit place bets on 6 and 8 to generate profits just about no matter what in this situation.
If one goes low or high while the other hangs close to zero it is a good time to place the 5 or the 9 (5 if the deck has gone high, 9 if it has gone low.

What remains to be seen is if this system will work with as many decks as they are using in the casinos. It looked impressive on my first run through this afternoon, but I only had 4 decks per stack to work with (I wasn't gonna spend 30 bucks just to buy a bunch playing cards you know) So after a few more trials i may go see if it looks as good at the tables.

if it goes well I'll post a chart and the results of a few more trial runs to demonstrate.

Nothing beats Texas hold'em. Its a beautiful of game of strategy, anticipation, character, and just a little luck. There is no other game where momentum can shift so rapidly.

forget about gambling that's a money pit , i got a friend that have gambling problems. Once i went with him just by curiosity and he made like 500 beans in 20 minutes in my face. The problem is you always want more and bottom line you're a looser :bnghd:

I have to disagree about it completely being a money pit. It can be, and it is for most people. There are several noteworthy exceptions to this.

1. Poker is not played against the house, therefore there is no house advantage. The most skilled player at the table is the one leaving with everybody else's money- period. That's why there can be such a thing as a professional card player.

2. It has been shown that if you can keep a count in blackjack without being spotted and ejected that you can defeat the house advantage (which is only 0.5% to start with). Look at Team Hyland. Tommy Hyland and his crew have been banned from every casino in America. Most of them have even been taken out back and roughed up for what they do- but they're not cheating- only counting the probability of getting a high card on any given draw. Three of them actually stood trial for it in Canada- the judge ruled that what they were doing was perfectly legit.

3. As with counting blackjack, it may be possible to count the card-based crap games in California, which is my pet project at this moment.


In the longrun, almost nobody makes money. The house always keeps a thin advantage, so that the only way to stay up your whole career is to be very lucky very consistently. That's the wrong way to gamble, unless you just want to do it for kicks once every few years on a vegas vacation. The right way is to learn games where the player can gain an advantage and master them before putting substantial funds on the line.

Originally posted by croatianguy
Nothing beats Texas hold'em. Its a beautiful of game of strategy, anticipation, character, and just a little luck. There is no other game where momentum can shift so rapidly.

I can think of another game!! CHESS!! yAYayAYyYAYyAY