9 Important Facts About Advantage Gambling

What if I said you can beat the casino by turning the odds in your favor? This is not some scammy, get-rich-quick system, either. With proper advantage gambling in the casino, beating the house is very much possible.

We do not want to get you too excited, though. To be a good advantage gambler requires a lot of work. There are multiple layers to being a profitable advantage layer.

If you are someone that simply bets off hunches without considering the math behind gambling, then advantage gambling is not going to be in your best interest.

However, if you are someone that is good with numbers and does not mind working hard, read on. It does not take a degree in mathematics to be a strong advantage gambler. That being said, a solid understanding of gambling math is required.

Learning about the different casino odds and house edges is important, as well. For instance, in video poker, there are different paytables for what could be the same variant. Even if you understand all of the correct decisions to make, a bad pay table will not tilt the odds to your side.

What Is Advantage Gambling?

Before implementing an advantage gambling strategy, we need to understand what advantage gambling is. In short, advantage gambling is exploiting holes and deficiencies in casino games to turn the odds in favor of the player.

There are a wide array of different advantage play strategies. It depends entirely on what casino game is being played. The right conditions, and possibly a bad dealer, are often required for an AP (advantage player) to beat the casino.

Professional advantage gamblers can take weeks looking for the perfect conditions to execute their advantage play strategy. As an example, let us look at a bad dealer. In some instances, sloppy dealers who are usually inexperienced, expose their cards at the table.

Like a baseball pitcher on the mound who tips their pitch, careless dealers can tip their hole cards. There are some advantage gamblers that will locate where the rookie dealers are and see if they are exposing cards. Yes, it is rare, but they are out there.

Advantage Gambling Facts

There are some important advantage gambling facts that every prospective advantage gambler should know before beginning. Make sure that you do not leave any stone unturned prior to executing your advantage gambling strategy.

We suggest practicing before putting your advantage play to work against the casino. As we noted, it is going to take a lot of hard work before perfecting an advantage gambling strategy.

1. Advantage Gambling Is Not Illegal

The most common question among uninformed gamblers is whether advantage gambling strategies are illegal or legal. There is a misconception that advantage play is illegal. However, we are here to tell you that advantage gambling is very much legal.

As long as players are gambling within the law, then they cannot be criminally prosecuted for using advantage play. When we say gamble within the law, this includes avoiding using any type of device.

What the casino can do is remove the advantage player from their grounds. They have the right to trespass anyone from the property. If the gambler does receive a trespass notice and they return, then they can be arrested for trespassing.

Advantage gambling in itself is legal, though. Being banned from a casino property can be devastating to an AP, though. There is a continual cat-and-mouse game between advantage players and the house.

2. Casinos Use Sophisticated Surveillance Technology

Before going after the casinos with your advantage gambling techniques, understand that is you versus the house. Advantage gamblers always have a big target on their backs. Casino surveillance is continually monitoring for any signs of advantage players in their property.

Knowing what the casinos do to try to stop gamblers from beating the house is crucial to your success. Most modern casinos use advanced technology to spot and keep advantage players out of their property.

Israeli facial recognition tech is now in use at casinos in the U.S, raising concerns about how private entities will use powerful surveillance tools. https://t.co/HPS3dGLCpM pic.twitter.com/Bm2i9ZNauy

— Forbes (@Forbes) September 25, 2022

via@Forbes

These modern casinos use facial recognition to tag individuals that are suspicious. The software will flag the casino when this person or persons are on the property in the future. This makes it more difficult for advantage gamblers to make repeat trips to the same casino.

Getting trespassed from a property is the ultimate kill shot to an advantage player. The casino security will be notified the next time they are on the property and then the police can get involved.

The lesson in all of this is to hit and run as quickly as possible. No, the surveillance team is not going to come out of the back room right away.

However, you have to be smart if you are having a lot of success in one place for multiple trips. It might be time to move on to another casino if this is happening.

3. An Advantage Gambling Strategy Does Not Guarantee A Winning Session

Carrying over from our last point, this can be seen as somewhat of a positive. If you were to win every time in the casino, security would quickly pick up on your success.

Advantage gambling is not going to guarantee to leave the casino a winner every session. Instead, advantage gamblers are looking to tilt the odds in their favor, so that over time, the math is working for them.

The small edges adding up year after year is how advantages players make a living with their gambling strategies. Do not get discouraged if your advantage gambling system is not working in the short term.

4. Discipline and Money Management Required For Success

One of the most important aspects of advantage gambling is being disciplined. Without money management skills, becoming an advantage player in the casino is not going to be possible.

There will be cold runs even to the most efficient advantage players. As we noted above, advantage gambling does not guarantee a winning session. It does not even guarantee a winning month.

In other words, discipline and money management are going to be required for long-term success. And that is what this is all about: long-term profitability and looking at the casino as a marathon.

We suggest only taking a small portion of your bankroll to the casino for every session. Get on a routine and stick to it.

5. Card Counting Is Still An Effective Advantage Gambling Strategy

If you have not exhausted your “stay” in the casino and are not on the radar of casinos, then card counting is still recommended. There is a big misconception that card counting is dead because of increased casino surveillance.

As you found out, casino surveillance is much better than it was in the past. The MIT Blackjack Team took advantage of weaker surveillance from the late 1970s to the early 1900s.

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📽️21
🎬Kevin Spacey
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via@BrattonJC

While doing what the MIT Blackjack Team did for over a decade is going to be tough, counting cards as a professional blackjack player is viable. This is going to require tremendous timing to stay off the radar of casinos.

Staying in the same region and playing at the same casinos is not advised if this is a long-term gig. However, if you have the resources to travel the world and go on the attack at multiple casinos, a card-counting career is not impossible.

6. What Worked In The Past May Not Work As Well Now

Card counting is still usable for advantage gamblers going into 2023. However, there are advantage gambling strategies that are just about on life support. It is important that gamblers continue to evolve and look for new edges in the casino.

There was a time when using a device or instrument to help aid gamblers was not illegal. If caught, it just resulted in mafia-owned casinos beating up the perpetrator in a back room or worse. Laws have since been enacted that specify using any type of instrument to help gamblers beat the casino.

One advantage gambling strategy that has quickly disappeared is the roulette wheel bias. A biased roulette wheel favor one quadrant over the others. Advantage gamblers were finding these roulette wheels and betting on the numbers where the wheel was biased towards.

Most modern casinos have technology that will warn the house if this is happening. This informs them that parts may have to be replaced on the wheel. Roulette wheels can become biased because of wear and tear over time.

7. Edge Sorting Can Be Used For Most Card Games

The art of edge sorting requires a trained eye. This is not for beginners and gamblers that are not super observant. It is not easy, but if you can do it right, edge sorting can be mastered to beat the casino at a variety of card games.

The most well-known case of edge sorting was done by professional poker player, Phil Ivey. Ivey took the house for millions at baccarat because he and his partner noticed imperfections on the cards.

As a result of the imperfections on the cards, Ivey knew which cards were what just by reading the pattern. Ivey and his partner would go on to be sued for the money back. However, it is not illegal and is still a viable advantage play today.

The imperfection that Ivey was using to beat baccarat was a manufacturing defect on the playing cards. Any blemishes or bent corners on the cards can also be used by advantage gamblers.

8. Deuces Wild and Double Bonus Video Poker Is For Advantage Gamblers

The vast majority of video poker machines do not have better than 100% pay tables. In other words, video poker games have a house edge that actually favors players that use optimal play.

They are hard to find these days, but Deuces Wild video poker with a 100.76% payback is still out there. An advantage gambling strategy for video poker players can only be utilized on Deuces Wild, Double Bonus, and Double Double Bonus video poker.

A full pay Double Bonus machine pays 100.17%, while Double Double Bonus pays 100.07%. Along with finding video poker games with the best pay tables, perfect video poker play will be needed to flip the house edge.

Full Pay 100.76% Deuces Wild Pay Table

9. Comp and Bonus Hunting Is The Easiest Advantage Gambling Strategy

Comp hustling is taking advantage of the freebies that casinos offer gamblers to play at their casino. With the right comps, advantage players can take more from the casino that they take.

Some examples of comps include food, free play, rooms, shows, freeroll tournaments, special giveaways, and more.

Comp hustlers are not going to make a living chasing after freebies. That said, they can give savvy gamblers the advantage over the house with the right strategy. Spreading your bankroll around multiple casinos does help get the most comps possible.

Bonus hunting can be done at online casinos. This form of advantage gambling is at the best online gambling sites.

Beat The Casino With Advantage Gambling Strategies

The old adage is that the house always wins. In the end, casinos are going to exploit bad gamblers — which is the majority of gamblers — that do not understand the odds, this is true. However, it does not mean that they are going to exploit advantage gamblers.

In fact, advantage players know how to turn the odds around and beat the casino at their own game. As casinos look to improve their bottom line, we as advantage gamblers look to evolve and improve our AP tactics.