Good question - I think hold 'em is definitely more popular than it was 10 years ago (almost certainly related at least in part to Chris Moneymaker winning the world series of poker in 2003. He was literally a complete unknown, and was in the world series after winning a small satellite tournament online).
The games definitely change over time, and in some respects I suppose you could say the games might be ‘tougher’ - there’s more info online now vs 10 years ago, for example, so anyone willing to put in a bit of effort should gain at least a modicum of relevant knowledge faster and cheaper than the ‘tuition at the table’ old timers had to pay.
But really, the fundamental mistakes that people make at the lower stakes are all exactly the same as 10, 20, 30 years ago: playing too many hands, playing too many hands out of position, poor tilt control, zero bankroll management…there’s always money to be made as long as long as players are willing to ‘gambool’ with K4 off-suit from the big blind.
And I don’t have to worry about having to fight off pros/semi-pros; none of them are playing at the low/mid-stakes, mainly because - while profitable - the winnings wouldn’t really be enough to live on / support a family etc (especially in the US, where you have to pay taxes on winnings). A pro 2/5 player might make $30/hr if he’s really good, but even at 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year with no time off, that only puts him at a bit over $60K before taxes…hardly a ‘baller’ lifestyle, and one bad six-month stretch could blow out your bankroll.
Sam, pleased to meet you … let me buy you a drink.
Seriously my system works better at home on my makeshift crap table at home than it does in Vegas, but like in sports you have to keep at it to get better. Amazon has a diamond back drop for $45 and felt layout for under $10 and numbered dice go for $13. So give my system a try at home and make sure you are ten feet away, put a folding table at the end of a pool table or something.
The real problem is getting those two ivory dice down to the other end of the table just right without one going off the table or one not hitting the backdrop. Then there is the player with his hand in the way or a stack of chips to bounce off of, but putting the dice in a vee with two three’s up and taping them on the table and pitching them just right does wind up making more hardways than just shaking them like in the movies.
The tipping the dealers allows you more personal attention from the stickmen to pay you an know your style of play. Craps is a fast game and in my early years the dealers would give you suggestions on what is a better bet. So put a bet on the line for them.
The good looking girl is to keep the croupier (did you know that Dean Martin use to be a croupier) busy looking down her dress while you adjust the dice to the way you like them, plus a good looking blond (dumb or not) just seems to have a way of throwing 7’s and eleven’s on the come pout roll. I knew one that threw 7 eleven’s in a row. One guy was betting against her and lost a lot of money, but he just knew that another eleven couldn’t possibly come up … fooled him, uh?
Now about sucker bets … I would think, not from personal experience of course, that video poker would be the biggest sucker bet in the casino due to it being an electronic/mechanical controlled machine. A crap table has karma, has spirit and the odds are always with the house, but there is no other game like it.
If you didn’t like my suggestions for craps then you surely wouldn’t like my suggestion to watch the roulette wheel for the last time bottom six numbers came up and then bet $10 on all six. Winner, winner, winner … winners play for free
A player’s bankroll management skills or lack thereof doesn’t really help me. If he sucks he sucks and I’ll probably beat him, and if he doesn’t he doesn’t and it won’t help me if he’d bad with his bankroll after he took my money. To use an extreme example, Stu Ungar was famously terrible with his bankroll and every other dollar he ever got in his entire life, but he’d still take all our money if we played him (assuming we could bring him back from the dead.)
Recreational players don’t have a “bankroll” per se anyway.
Mr Quatro, you cannot beat the house at craps without cheating, full stop. And I’ll bet on it.
Everything is better if you have a hot babe beside you in a low cut dress.
Oh, and there’s one other situation where it can be possible to win in Vegas. The line for the sports book is not based on the actual probability of the game, but on the behavior of the other bettors. So if you can find a game where a sufficiently large number of bettors are betting sufficiently irrationally, and bet against the irrationality, you can theoretically make some money there. It’s a similar situation to poker, where you’re effectively playing against the suckers, rather than playing against the house.
I know. Those poor casinos–players come in with a “winning” mentality, and just take those poor bastards for huge money. It’s amazing that casinos still exist, with all these systems and winners out there. And then people who bet big and let it ride? They’re shaking in their boots every time that happens!
At this rate the casinos will have trouble paying for gilt edge decorations, all the comped drinks and meals and rooms, flying people in to gamble, and all the ways they bring people in to gamble. Don’t they realize they’re risking everything? Sure there are suckers, but if you go in dressed sharp with the right attitude you’re basically taking candy from a baby!
A to this, “tilt control” simply means the ability to prevent oneself from acting emotionally at the poker tables. Bad beats, frustratingly long runs of bad cards, or even stretches of GOOD luck can cause a player to “tilt,” e.g. play poorly due to emotion. If you think “Christ, I haven’t gotten a decent hand in an hour, and that jerk just won with Q5 offsuit, I might as well call the raise with this KT offsuit” you’re on tilt and not controlling it. Similarly, if you win four pots in a row and call a raise with 76o just because “hey, I’m on a rush!” that’s tilt.
A lot of players are otherwise good players but lose just because they can’t control their tilt when things go wrong.
There used to be trivial based slots which actually rewarded you for knowing stuff in bonus rounds, which is the only case I know of where skill had anything to do with payout. I’ve often wondered if being very good at trivia tilted the odds to be positive in these. Maybe it did, since on my last excursion to a casino I didn’t see any.
Given chaos theory, if you could prove under controlled circumstances that you can affect the outcome of dice by any means, you’d be world famous. You should try an experiment at home someday, and tape it so you can be sure your numbers are accurate.
Though for craps, the house edge can be so small and the variance so large, you could fool yourself for a long while before you learned what the math should have already taught you.
No–it’s also possible to make money waiting tables, serving drinks, dealing cards, mopping the floors, maintaining the IT department, bouncing, and many other lucrative possibilities.
It is kind of sad to think of the professional blackjack player sitting there grinding out hand after hand and getting a respectable edge, who isn’t making as much per-hour as the guy dealing cards.
First I should say that, while I like to play poker and I’ve done some study of the game, I am by no means an accomplished player. Having said that, I have never lost money at a casino or poker room playing cheap No-Limit Hold 'em ($1/$2, $2/$4). I haven’t made much, either, but all I really want to do is play a few hours of poker and not lose too much.
I started with Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book. It’s not the most exhaustive or detailed book on poker strategy out there, but for me it was a good entry point to the game, and it was very easily understood. “Super/System”, Sklansky, or Harrington are more detailed and get really, really deep into some advanced strategy, but I found them too daunting for a brand-new player; Gordon’s writing style made it much more digestible.
Gordon’s book won’t get you winning big money or necessarily even make you a winner at all, but I think it’s an excellent first book for a newbie.
After that, just be disciplined. The cheap tables still attract lots of people who play dealer’s choice on Saturday night at home, and people whose entire poker education comes from watching the WSOP. Just a little bit of self-study and a lot of self-control makes a remarkable difference in entry-level casino poker. Sure, it’ll be frustrating watching people play absolute garbage and winning on the river, but a good tight-aggressive game will generally beat those players over the course of a few hours, and it’s extra-satisfying when you do eventually take a big pot from them by playing “correctly” with a good hand against their small off-suit connectors.
