| On the lawn sit two helicopters ready to fly the world's finest advantage players to rare and favourable promotions in the Americas, Europe and the Far East. An idle fantasy? Possibly. But the dream has come just that bit closer to the real world of late. When my cheque for $50 million comes through the door it might well happen. All casinos, reasonably enough, require you to bet a minimum amount of action to withdraw your bonus, say $700 for a $100 bonus. But it does not always end there. Some require you to have actually won $100 on top of the bonus and deposit before you can withdraw the bonus and the deposit. For most gamblers, they are never going to get the bonus. The casinos know this, and it stinks. The best way to try to get the bonus is simple. Bet the table minimum, up till the point where the amount you have left to qualify for the bonus is equal to the amount you need to win to withdraw the bonus. Then you bet that amount, and keep on betting it, revising the amount if you lose, if neccessary. For example, deposit $100, get $100 bonus, bet a total of $650, and win $50. You now have $250 and have to bet another $50 and win another $50 to qualify for your bonus. You bet $50 and lose, leaving you with $200. Now you bet $100 and win, and can finally withdraw your bonus. If you follow this strategy you still have a significant advantage over the casino. Make it count. Some people think "bonuses" like this are worthless because you only "win" the bonus if you lose. This is not correct. The bonus has real value, albeit not so much as genuine "straight-up" bonuses where you are simply given a sum of money for so much action. To maximize the value of the bonus you would need to bet as much as possible. The more conservative you are, the more you reduce not only the risk, but also your advantage. A strategy I use is to bet the table minimum until I have met the bonus qualification requirements and then, if I have lost less than the value of the loss rebate, I bet whatever amount that would take me down to the total value of the loss rebate if I lost. For example, buy in for $100 and bet $500, lose $5. I then bet $25. I can't lose but still get the full value of a win. (This strategy is not strictly optimal, but it is practical, especially for online players who tend to be more conservative than real-world gamblers). This type of bonus is not worth seeking out by itself as it is only generally worth about 5% of your deposit or less, on average. Yet if a casino you know and trust offers you this type of deal, it is worth taking. Betting on the result of game before it starts is a chaotic science. Even the best handicappers struggle to beat 60% on conventional pointspread bets. However good you are, you have to acknowledge that most of what happens in a sporting contest can't be predicted beforehand. But, if you can bet in-the-running, the picture changes dramatically. You can keep statistics on a myriad of information that potentially can give you a very healthy advantage. This is where handicapping is going. In the future, handicappers won't just be looking for factors such as key injuries, psychology and tactics to get an edge over the bookmakers at sports betting. They will be measuring the individual performance of each and every athlete and how well they interact with each other at each and every stage in the match. Handicapping will move much closer to actual prediction rather than determining when the percentages have subtly shifted in one team's favour. Naturally, computers will play a key role in collecting and analyzing this data. Dealer mays inadvertently expose their hole card or the next card out of the shoe before it should have been exposed. They may make payoff errors. They may riffle or strip too high and, again, inadvertently expose cards allowing you to know their approximate location. Putting a dealer on tilt deliberately is a rather unpleasant thing to do. It is not something I do as a matter of course. It's mainly because dealers are mostly underpaid and often get treated badly by the customers, and I'm reluctant to make things even worse for them. However, I'll make exceptions for a minority of dealers who hustle tips aggressively. Many professionals think being rude or aggressive is a good way to put the dealer on tilt. This is not true. This has a major disadvantage from the cover perspective. If you behave obnoxiously the pit will be far more keen to get rid of you should they suspect you of being a skilled player. You have already drawn attention to yourself. My method of psyching the dealer is simple. I hold a level, focused gaze for several seconds longer than is comfortable. You make eye contact and persist with the eye contact after the dealer has averted their eyes. That is it. Practice this. You may be surprised at the results. I once managed to put the evil eye on a Korean dealer on a cruise ship once that she spilt a clump of aces all over the table during the shuffle revealing their precise location. The same problem occurs with card recognition. Explaining what a card is to a blackjack computer given the myriad number of possible designs is not easy. There is no margin of error here. If a computer thinks a 4 is an ace or vice versa it will blow your bankroll in minutes. |
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