Separate gambling fact from fiction

Casino lore is full of myths, legends and superstitions.

That's natural enough. Few players understand the math, the odds and percentages that explain what's really going on in the casino. It's easier to blame that losing streak on someone else's poor play, and more fun to claim our own smart play led to a big win, than to make sense of the eternal tide of random results.

I try to bust casino myths from time to time, but they're persistent. Rarely does a week go by in which I don't hear from a reader about one long-held misconception or another. Let's take a look at some of the most common casino myths:

MYTH: Other players hurt you at the blackjack table.

FACT: Other players sometimes hurt you, but help you just as often. Their play has no effect on your long-term results.

No one knows what cards are coming next, nor do we know what card the dealer has face down. The player you think is taking the dealer's bust card may actually be taking a card that would have given the dealer a pat hand.

Let's say the player at third base - the last player to make a hit/stand decision - has a hard 16, and the dealer has a 6 face up. If the player follows basic strategy, he'll stand and the dealer will get the next card. If he makes a bad play and hits instead, the dealer gets the second card down.
Which would you rather the dealer have, the next card or the second one? Answer: It makes no difference. You don't know what the cards are, and either is just as likely to be the one that busts the dealer - or makes his hand.

MYTH: Hot craps tables are likely to stay hot; cold craps tables are likely to stay cold.

FACT: Unless you've found a rare player who can control the dice, every roll is an independent trial. Past outcomes have no affect on future results.

Several years ago, I tried an experiment in which I waited for two consecutive passes, then tracked the next decision. Of the next 1,000 sequences, 489 were passes - almost dead on the 494 average expected by random chance. No evidence there of hot streaks continuing. At the same time, I charted 1,000 sequences starting with two don't passes. The result: 470 wins for don't bettors, 493 losses and 37 pushes on 12. No evidence for cold tables, either.

Do hot and cold streaks occur at the craps table? Sure, just as they do in any game of chance. That's a natural outgrowth of probability. Can we predict when the streaks are coming? No. All a hot streak means is that the table has been hot in the past. That streak has no value in predicting future results. If it did, we could all stand and watch, waiting for a hot roll, then jump on and get rich.

MYTH: If the same roulette number comes up three or four times in a row, it's time to jump off that number - it's not "due" again for hours.

FACT: Numbers are never "due" or "not due." On an American wheel with both a 0 and a 00, the odds against any given number turning up on the next spin are 37-1. That's true whether the number just hit on the last spin, the last four spins, or if it hasn't hit at all in a couple of hours. Just as at the craps table, each trial is independent, and past outcomes have no effect on future results.

Rarely, a wheel may be biased, with some numbers turning up more often than expected by random chance. The wheel may be off balance, there may be a warp or a loose fret. In such cases, a number that has been showing up frequently may continue to hit more than once per 38 spins. Finding a wheel bias is painstaking work that most of us won't do. Still, the long shot that a wheel is biased gives us more reason to stay with a repeating number than to jump off.

MYTH: The casino can reward slot players by pushing a button to let them win a jackpot.


FACT: There is no jackpot button in the casino front office, the surveillance room or anywhere else. The casino has no control over when jackpots hit.

The closest the casino has to control is in programming it orders from the slot machine manufacturer. The manufacturer offers chips that will make a game pay out at different levels - the casino might order an 89 percent chip, or a 92 percent chip on the same penny game. Some games might pay the top jackpot an average of once per 10,000 pulls; on others the jackpot might hit only once per 20,000, 100,000, even 1 million or more pulls.

All those are long-term averages. Given millions of pulls, those averages will hold up. But there's no way to predict, or change, what will happen on any specific spin of the reels. Each spin is as random as humans can program a computer to be. A casino can't make a jackpot appear on the next spin. There will be winners and losers. The casino can't determine who will be which. It just knows the losers will more than balance out the winners.

Can basic strategy give players an edge?

Q. The blackjack rules I play under yield about a .38% house advantage.

Does that (somehow) include the variables of doubling down, splitting and 3 to 2 blackjack payoff?

I thought that I could overcome that house edge using those variables but it looks like I might be wrong and therefore doomed to eventual failure in coming out ahead. (I play online so can’t count cards.)

Actual rules are 4 decks, stand on soft 17, double after split, no surrender, dealer peeks for blackjack

A. When the house edge is listed at .38%, that assumes basic strategy for hitting, standing, splitting and doubling, and takes into account the 3-2 payoff on blackjacks.

If you used dealer strategy, hitting all 16s and below, and standing on all 17s and higher, the house edge would be about 5.7 percent. It’s through making the proper hit, stand, split, double decisions that you get it down to half a percent or so.

Without counting cards, you can narrow the house edge, but not eliminate it.

Reader asks: Can you track roulette numbers on paper?

Q. My wife and I went to the casino, and I was playing roulette. Sunday night I played at one table for five hours. I was sitting on the end where every employee passes to enter the pit. I had a piece of paper on which I was keeping track of the numbers, and I had a round copy of the wheel that I was reading and studying to pick my next bet. We played till about 1:30 a.m., then went to the hotel. I was comped two meals in the morning and then we went back to the casino.

I went to the same table and started to play the same way. I put down about 5 bets and this pit boss comes over and tells me to put the paper away. She said I can't have it on the table and can't be writing down the numbers. I told her I played last night and no one said any thing.

I put it away and played some more bets. Then this other pit boss tells me to put away the little copy of the wheel that I was using. So I did and won a little money.
Is it OK for me to copy down the numbers and use this picture of the wheel?
When we play at a different casino close to home, no one says anything about me copying the numbers. What gives?

A. There is nothing wrong with tracking roulette numbers, but in any game some casinos and some individual supervisors are more paranoid than others. The casino does have the right to set its own policy and can refuse to accept your bets if you don't comply with its policies.

 What they're afraid of is that you'll find a biased wheel, an unlikely circumstance. If you want to write down numbers and have a copy of the wheel in front of you, by all means do it until you're asked to stop. Once you're given the word that you can't do that anymore, that's that. Put your stuff away. Whether you continue to play is up to you.

Reader asks: Hold the flush, or chase the royal?

Q. I was recently playing a 25-cent Bonus Poker machine. I bet the maximum number of coins and up came the 7, 10, Jack, Queen and King of clubs. Without thinking, I held all five clubs for a flush and a payout of 25 coins. As soon as I did this, I was kicking myself for not going for the straight flush or royal flush for a payout of 250 coins or 4,000 coins.

 I also had six other cards to make my flush and six to make a straight.

 I believe I should have thrown the 7 of clubs away and drawn one card. What is the correct play and what are the percentages?

A. The correct play in that situation is to discard the 7 of clubs and give yourself a chance at a royal.
Once you have seen your initial five cards, there are 47 possible one-card draws. One, the Ace of clubs, would give you a royal flush worth 4,000 coins, and another, the 9 of clubs, would give you a straight flush for 250 coins. Any of six cards - the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 8 of clubs - gives you a flush worth 25 coins. Any of six others - the 9s and Aces of hearts, spades and diamonds - gives you a straight worth 20 coins.

In addition, any of nine cards - the Jacks, Queens and Kings of hearts, spades or diamonds - gives you a high pair worth a five-coin return.

That's 23 cards that complete a winning hand; any of the other 24 would leave you with a loser. Per 47 times you make this play, your expected return is one royal flush for 4,000 coins, one straight flush for 250, six flushes for 150, six straights for 120 and nine high pairs for 45. That's a total of 4,565 coins per 47 plays, an average of 97 per hand.

If you stand pat on the flush, per 47 plays your return is 1,175 coins, or 25 per play. You're nearly four times better off taking the chance with a one-card draw.

The only time to stand pat on a hand that includes four cards to a royal flush is when it includes a pat straight flush.

Slots never due, so don't chase losses

Those who have read me for very long know that one of my running themes is that a slot machine is never "due." to hit. From time to time, I send out a warning to slot players that they shouldn't expect a slot that has been cold for hours to suddenly start paying out the big bucks.

Some things apparently can't be repeated often enough.

I once received a phone call from a woman who'd had a bad day at the reel-spinning slots. Actually, "bad" doesn't begin to describe it. Awful, horrendous, disastrous is more like it.

Normally a table games player - she likes roulette - she recently decided to play a $5 three-reel slot machine. The machine took two coins at a time, so she was betting $10 on each pull.

And cold? Better she'd just given her money to the cashier and left the casino. Because after she lost what she had brought with her, she started drawing money against her credit cards. That's expensive money, with a hefty charge off the top being added to any credit card interest.

Before it was over, she'd lost . . . well, her initial message said $4,000, but when I spoke with her
later, the amount had grown to about $7,000.

"This machine was paying out nothing," she said. "I kept playing because I figured it was due. It had to give me something back. I played that machine for hours," she said, "and it didn't pay out anything like 95 percent."

And when it didn't give her anything back, she thought something was wrong with the machine. She complained to the casino, and she complained to the gaming board . When both told her there was nothing wrong with the machine, that it's normal for a machine to stay cold for long stretches, she complained to me.

Then it was my turn to tell her there probably was nothing wrong with the machine, and that it's normal for a slot machine to stay cold for long stretches, especially on three-reel games with low hit frequencies. Those frequent payoffs for less than our bets do tend to stretch out play, and bonuses on video games help soften the losing streaks.

Our player, unfortunately, was operating under a couple of misconceptions that, coupled with some poor money management, made for a day of casino hell. Here's where she went wrong:

**Cold machines can stay cold: In today's microprocessor, random number generator-controlled slots, your last pull, or your last 10, or last 100, have no effect on your next pull. If the top jackpot is programmed to come up an average of once per 10,000 pulls, then the odds of hitting it on the next pull are 1 in 10,000. That's true even if you've been playing all day and have counted 10,000 pulls without a jackpot, and it's still true if you've hit the jackpot on the last pull. The odds of hitting any particular combination are the same on any given pull, regardless of whether that combination was last hit one pull ago or 100,000 pulls ago.

There is nothing in the programming that would tell a machine to suddenly start hitting if it's been cold for hours. If a machine has paid out little all day, the most you can say about it is that it's been paying out little all day. There is no way to tell if it's going to stay cold or turn hot over the next few hours.

**Payouts vary wildly in the short term: In a period as short as the 10 or 12 hours this woman said she gambled, a machine can pay out 50 percent or less. That would lead to big, fast losses for a day, but the machine still could easily pay out 95 percent for the month, which is about normal for a  $5 three-reel game. A machine that pays out 50 percent for 10,000 pulls would have to pay out only 96.55 percent for the next 290,000 pulls to average 95 percent for 300,000 trials.

Our gambler, if she played 10 hours, was losing about $700 an hour. It's pretty easy to play 500 pulls an hour - really dedicated slot fanatics play faster. So let's say at two coins at a time for 500 pulls, she was risking $5,000 an hour. Her $700 hourly loss represents 14 percent of her wagers.

Far from having to sink as low as 50 percent, a machine could gobble up the funds that fast while paying 86 percent.


**Money goes faster on slots than on tables: Borrowing money to gamble is a bad idea no matter what your game. And slot players must remember that their game is the fastest in the casino, far faster than even craps.

With $1,000 in your pocket, it might be tempting to try the $5 machines. But if the losses mount early, it's far better to switch to $1 slots or even quarters than to dig for more money.

If she were playing roulette, her favorite table game, at 45 or 50 spins an hour, our player would have had to bet $100 per spin to risk as much per hour as she risked on the $5 slots. A $5 slot player is every bit as much a high-roller as a $100 blackjack player; in fact, the $5 slot player's expected average losses are higher.


Early in the day, our player was offered a complimentary dinner in the casino's high-end restaurant. It's the least they could do.

Good service makes for happy customers

On any given day, most people who play in casinos are going to lose money. Casino operators know that, and players know it too.

The trick for the operators is to make the players feel good about their day out. Little customer service touches go a long way toward keeping us happy, or close. Check out a few readers’ stories of times the casinos got it right:

Mae: I was in a casino that was practically empty. That seems to happen a lot lately. Crowds seem smaller than they used to be.

Anyway, I practically had my choice of slot machines. There were probably a few hundred people scattered around the casino, but in any one area there were only a few, and I could play what I want. I started looking for a machine, and a slot attendant caught my eye. “You should start with that one over there,” she said. “It still has money on it.”

I smiled and thanked her, and went to check it out. It was an older quarter three-reel game, and I usually don’t play those very much. But sure enough, there were 31 credits on the game. I guess the player must have left, because there was no club card in the machine and the attendant wouldn’t have told me to play if there was still someone there.

So I played the 31 credits. To be honest, I felt a little funny about it, and I put in $10 of my own, too, so I started with 71 credits. I wish I could tell you I won a big jackpot or something, but nothing like that happened. I hit the single bars a few times, and a few cherries, and played for a while, but in the end I lost the 71 credits. Then I went and played the video slots I usually play.

Still, it was really a nice, unexpected bonus to start with “their” money. I’d never had that happen before, and I’ve never had it happen since. I always figured the casino just kept the money when someone left credits.

Margie: This was pretty cool. My husband and I drove a couple of hours to a casino I’d never played in before. He’d been there a few times, but I hadn’t. When we got there, I spotted a sign that said they were giving a free case of soda to new club members after some minimum amount of play. It was a kind I liked, so I asked my husband about how much I’d have to play. It would be a nice bonus, since I buy it anyway.

He said I probably wasn’t eligible, that he thought I already was a member of the club. There’s another casino we go to that’s owned by the same company, and he said they have the same club.

I didn’t think to bring my card from the other club. He did. He had his card in his wallet. So I went to the booth to get a new card, and I asked them about the soda. They said yes, I was already a member, but that I’d never redeemed a new member bonus, so if I played, I could get the soda.

It only took me about a half an hour, and I was playing penny slots. We played a couple of hours more than that, had a nice time, went to the steak house for a nice dinner. Then on the way out I picked up my soda. I teased my husband that he should have left his card at home. Maybe we could have gotten two cases. They were so nice about it.

Eleanor: I once did a really dumb thing in a casino. I went to cash out, and pushed the button to print out a ticket. While it was printing, I changed glasses. I wear bifocals for normal wear, but looking at the screen for a long time gives me headaches. So I change to a pair of reading glasses while I play, then change back when it’s time to walk around.

So I put my reading glasses into their case in my purse and put on my regular glasses, and started to walk away. A slot attendant saw what was happening, and shouted after me, “Wait, honey! You’ve forgotten something,” and she stood by my machine.

I’d forgotten something all right – ticket with $283 on it. “It’s a good thing I caught you,” she said. “If we don’t notice, there’s always somebody ready to pick off those tickets.”

I thanked her, and thanked her again, and slipped her a $10 tip. It was worth it.

New video on YouTube

At the beginning of October, when I was in Las Vegas for the Global Gaming Expo, I got together with American Casino Guide publisher Steve Bourie and his son Matt. I write a couple of articles each year for the Guide, an annual publication I highly recommend. It's chock full of articles about the games people play along with listings of every casino in the United States, their phone numbers, games offered, and amenities. In the back, there are coupons for travel, meal and gambling deals. It's a resource I turn to several times during the year.

While were together, we recorded material for two videos. The first, on the five best bets in the casino, is now up on YouTube. We're talking games only on the main casino floor that you're likely to encounter in any casino market. That excludes live poker, horse racing and sports betting, leaving a mix of blackjack, craps, video poker and baccarat.

If you want to check out the video, it's at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0oGLwWugFo