Beating blackjack counters is a matter of perception. If the house counted and shuffled as soon as the count was favorable, that would be viewed by players (rightly or wrongly) as “unfair”, and so people (even non-counters) would stop wanting to play blackjack, and so the house would lose all that money. So instead, they go to continuous shuffle, which is just as effective at stopping the counters, but is not perceived as unfair.
Yes, it’s very easy to tell the difference between a professional gambler and a gambling addict. The professional isn’t trying to borrow money from you.
I was gonna say. I never played, but bingo was popular in my parish (and I think it still is.) we had both regular five-in-a-row games and then the big “coverall” game as we called it.
I believe that the psychology of the game of poker is subject to models or labels that are convenient to hang on opponents after a preliminary assessment of their behavior at the table, for example, this “cautious” and comes forward only with a strong card, the other is “inadequate” and rushes for a raise in any situation in the hope of others’ passes, and if you take the psychology of online poker, which is full of such labels, then the faster you learn to make a preliminary assessment and mark confirmation or denial, the more profitable and interesting the game will become for you
From what I’ve read (which may be out of date), celebrity poker players don’t make money by their poker skills, but by acting as celebrities. That is, they need to be out there winning poker tournaments and such to keep their reputation, but it isn’t what makes them rich. The biggest way to riches in poker is being enough of a celebrity that rich guys will want to have you in their poker games, so will stake you (that is, pay for your chips) in games with huge amounts of money on the table for the fun of playing with a celebrity or to show off to a friend that they can get you there. Endorsements, books, videos, classes, and the like also provide a lot of income.
Once I met someone who put himself through school by playing poker (no celebrity appearances involved!), so it can be done. Of course, he had to spend late hours at smoky card tables, and could have made as much or more money at a “real” job.
Yes, in poker you don’t have to beat the house, you have to beat Melvin from Topeka.
But Melvin probably plays at the low stakes table, so even if you are quite good you probably won’t make huge amounts of money.
This is absolutely a thing. Bob Voulgaris made an enormous fortune by betting on NBA basketball.
However, the ratio of actual professional sports bettors to addicts and maniacs who THINK they’re professional gamblers is one in a million or so. Someone like Voulgaris found inefficiencies in the sports betting markets, and exploited them. Famously, he realized like 30 years ago that NBA games usually have more points scored in the second half than in the first - and yet the casinos and bookmakers didn’t know that at all. They would set a line on the total points for the game based on good data, but then would set lines on the points scored in each half by just cutting the total in two. Voulgaris would bet massive sums on almost every single NBA game that the first half score would be under the line and second half score over, and he won a fortune.
The challenge in sports betting is finding information you have that the bookmaker does not have. Of course, that’s WAY harder now than it was in the 90s. But it’s theoretically possible, because the bookmaker doesn’t control the sport (you hope.) It is not possible to be a professional roulette or craps player without cheating, because you cannot exploit an information advantage. Unless the roulette wheel is broken, the casino has accounted for every possibility.
That’s generally not true. Major celebrity poker players do in fact have vast cash winnings, and their positive expectation in most tournaments and cash games is extremely high. You won’t get famous enough to make money off your celebrity without winning millions. A top pro like Antonio Esfandiari or Vanessa Selbst can walk into any high stakes casino game or private game tomorrow and have a huge, huge positive expectation. Rich people and celebrities play in those games, and those people have far more money than skill. Below the famous poker player, there are grinders who eke out a living by beating up tourists and fools in $2/$5 games and such.
Yeah, I call that making money off of being famous, not off of poker skills. They aren’t making money by overcoming the skills of other players or by winning competitive tournaments, they’re making money because they will be invited into games where rich people are tossing around huge stacks of money. Obviously they need some level of poker skill to come out ahead, but the key to making huge stacks there isn’t whether your skills rank as a 5 or 10 compared to other poker players, but the fact that you have access to play against a bunch of rich people with skills at a 1 or 2 level.
That doesn’t make for good TV or stories though, so those kind of games aren’t what get televised or what you hear anecdotes about.
I knew a guy who did that. He was a natural for it, tremendous attention to detail. He knew the various games very well, knew how to avoid being cheated, how to exploit advantages in odds, and he had a great sense of the psychology of the gamblers in private games. He thought the best targets were bored middle-aged men in sleepy southern towns where he went to school. Those weren’t big stakes games but those guys wanted to show they could afford to lose $50 to $100 on a bet (late 60s, would have been serious enough money in those days). When I knew him he enjoyed playing poker for fun but he really objected to any serious money at risk, he didn’t want to see the dark side of people that could bring out.
By definition, if they win money at those tables, they are doing so with poker skills. Celebrities who play a lot of poker are generally going to be good players, they just aren’t good enough to beat the masters.
Poker isn’t THAT big a thing. The ancillary sponsorships and whatnot aren’t like what you see in major sports.
By your definition, not the one I was using. Not really interested in a semantics debate, I clarified what I meant and so I’m done now.
“A child tossing one coin after another, trying to catch an elusive toy, does not assume that the furry bear cub won, in the end, cost him much more than its real value. Likewise, an adult player who has bet big money and won, in the end, does not weigh his costs and revenues”
My friend’s son is a professional gambler, which is an interesting profession for the son of a Mormon bishop.
I understand he makes a “reasonable” income but the drawbacks include lots of late nights. He doesn’t drink and it appears to be simply a job for him.