Going to a casino this weekend, any advice?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

…other than don’t go, that is. :wink:

I’ve never been to a casino before, and i think I will have a good time, even if I lose all my money. I enjoy gambling (cards, mostly,) so I think it can be fun. There is a Native American casino about an hour’s drive away, and I’ve been thinking about going ever since I found out it was there.

Now, I consider myseslf somewhat intelligent, and as such, know that the odds are against me, I’m probably going to lose, blah blah blah. That being said, I also know that there are things I can do that, at the very least, will slow the amount of time it takes for me to lose all my money. I do not plan on playing any slots, roulette, craps, kino, or any other game where I have no say in the outcome, where it’s just random chance. That generally limits me to card games (or possibly video poker…but that’s still too much like slots for me to take it seriously.)

My poker skills are…ok, at best. If I took all my winnings and losing in the friendly games I have played, I would come out behind, but not by much…maybe $50 over the course of my lifetime. Considering that for about two years I played cards every week, that’s fairly good, I think. The thing is: I never played that much Texas Hold 'em or blackjack, which seem to be the two big casino card games. I know next to nothing about blackjack (pretty much just the rules and a few basic strategies,) and Texas I know an average amount, I would say. I know what pocket cards are considered good and bad, but I’m not too familiar on good betting strategies.

Now, at these casinos, how many tables are there where I could find low-level players like me? I know that in blackjack it doesn’t matter what the skill of the other players are, but I don’t want to go to a table where I get yelled at by the “good” players for every mistake I make. And will there even be Texas tables where I have even a smiggen of chance?

In addition, are there other card games where my decisions still have a big impact, but take either less skill, or skill is only vs the dealer, like in blackjack? I know that my group of friends and I played Popito (sp?) a lot, and some people said it was a casino game. For those who don’t know, in popito, you get 13 cards, and have to make two five card and a three card hand, and have to beat the dealer on two of them to win.

So, should I just save my money and not go, because I will not have fun from the frustration, or should I throw chance (along with my money) to the wind and say to Hell with it?

2

First of all, play nothing except poker. Poker is the only casino game that’s not also a sucker’s game.

I’m not all that familiar with casino poker, but you should be able to find people that are pretty amazingly bad at the low-limit tables. Play tight, don’t drink, and you have a decent chance of coming out on top.

3

I say go for it. I’d suggest setting a limit that you won’t go past, but I’m sure you already knew that.

Good luck! :slight_smile:

4

Take your gambling kitty in cash, and leave the debit/credit cards at home. When the kitty runs out, leave the casino.

Advice from someone who doesn’t gamble because he can’t stand the idea of losing that much money learninfg to play well.

5

Thats a good idea, VunderBob, I was going to do the whole “get cash. playuntil cash is gone, thel leave” thing, but I didn’t think to leave the credt/debit cards at home. Good idea, as it keeps me from getting more money. Of course, then there’s the while “well, what if I need it for some emergency” thing. Well, those are pretty slim odds, and since there is almost nothing between here and there, and no cell service, even if I do break down or something, they won’t do me much good anyways.

And what are the typical limits at the low-limit tables? $1? $5? $20? And from watching Celebrity poker on Bravo, I noticed they ahve small and big blinds. I never played this way, I have just playued where everyoen who wants in puts in the ante, and it goes from there. How exactly do blinds work? Are they only with no-limit hold 'em (which I will want to avoid, I assume)?

6

The blinds are kind of like a collective ante. The blind rotates around the table, forcing each person to take their turn at paying the blind.

This is an important strategical issue. If you’re already in for the blind, you’ll play differently than if you have no money in the pot.

I’d suggest checking out partypoker.com or a similar site (they allow you to play with play money). They have rotating blinds, and you might get a feel for how they work.
Good luck!

7

Unless you find idiots to play against, you’ve got a much better chance at craps than at poker. It’s also more fun.

–Cliffy

8

Yeah, my advice was to NOT play poker. Sure, you don’t have to beat any house odds, but that little old lady at the table might not be as clueless as she seems. There are people who frequent casinos looking for the guy (or gal) fresh off the bus.

And if you want to have fun, craps is fun. Exciting. Not that Blackjack can’t be fun or exciting also, but a craps table on a roll is like a big ol’ party. Of course a cold craps table is like a morgue.

So my advice is to try a few different things, you might find something more fun that you had imagined it to be.

Go to an online poker game and play for play money to get a feel for the game. If you show up at a casino poker table and literally don’t know what a blind is, you’ll be in for a short session. I play (poorly) at PokerRoom dot com.

As for other casino games, go to Omni Casino online and DL their interface. It’s an online casino (which may not be legal where you live, and I don’t recommend playing with real money), and play with play money. Their craps interface is pretty slick for example, and most of the games play really well. It’s free, so you get some free computer games if nothing else.

And leave a $20 under the floormat in your car. That’s a tradition we started so we’d be sure to have money to get out of the parking garage if worse came to worse. (Never needed it…yet!)

9

If the casino has a website it should list the games and levels, so you know ahead of time what’s available.

Agree with leaving behind the plastic. If you simply must have one for an emergency, take the one with the least amount of available credit. You might also call your credit card company and ask them to disallow any charges made from the casino, just in case you can’t resist the temptation. Dunno if they’ll do it but it can’t hurt to ask.

Put a couple of bucks in a slot machine, just for fun.

10

I personally wouldn’t bother leaving your cards at home unless you know you would be tempted to get more money after losing all your cash. I’ve never had a problem setting a limit and sticking to it.

If you can find a $1/$2 table and you play fairly conservatively, you could play poker for a while without losing too much money. Since you don’t really know how to play, you’ll probably lose, but $100 can last a good long while at $1/$2.

Blackjack’s also fun, and easy to pick up. Search on the web for a table showing how to play each hand to maximize your odds. Memorize it, and you’ll have pretty close to 50/50 odds. (Most dealers will tell you what the book odds are on a given hand if you ask.) The key to blackjack is setting both a win limit and a loss limit, i.e. a point on either end where you’ll leave the table. If you start with $100, say you’ll leave the table when you’ve either lost it all or won e.g. $200. If you don’t have a win limit, you’re guaranteed to lose, since you’re basically saying you’re not going to stop playing until you’ve lost it all.

Good luck and have fun!

11

Another vote for craps.

IMHO, poker’s more of a social game to be played with regulares or friends than it is a casino game.

You didn’t say where you were planning on going - but depending on locale, check the sporting lines - though this upcoming weekend isn’t peak season. Oh, and avoid the mousetraps for anything less than amusement.

12

It’s also one of the least fun table games at the casino.

The only thing you really need to keep in mind is figure out the max you’re willing to lose, take that amount in cash, and once it’s gone, go home.

The two most fun tables at the casino, IME, tend to be craps and blackjack (especially if you’re going with friends). Craps is always a good time, because everyone generally cheers for everyone else. Blackjack can be fantastic fun when you’ve got a good table with people who aren’t taking it too seriously - but if you’ve got an asshole who throws a fit if you “take his cards” just walk away. Fortunately, I’ve never sat at a table like that. Before you sit down at the table, see how the table is interacting. If the dealer is friendly and everyone is joking around and having a good time (even if they’re not winning), it’ll be a good time. If nobody’s really talking to each other, just walk on by.

13

Craps? That seems too confusing. All I know is some guy throws dice and we bet on the outcome, but I ahve no idea what is good/bad to bet on, do I throw the dice? Do we rotate who throws the dice?

14

Try to win, not lose. :smiley:

15

The easiest way to participate and keep the house advantage to the minimum is to bet on the pass line $1 (if you find a $1 table), and max the odds after the come out roll. The higher the odds, the narrower the house advantage becomes. A 2x odds table means that you can put up to $2 behind the pass line on a $1 pass line bet. 5x odds is even better…up to $5 on a $1 pass line bet. The $2 (or $5) will be paid off in by the odds of the point rolled instead of 1:1 payback on your pass line bet. So you have a better payout when you have $1 on the line and $4 behind, rather than having $5 on the line and $0 behind.

Dice are rolled by a person who bets, and goes in a clockwise direction when the roller “7s out” while trying to make an established point (4,5,6,8,9,10…what ever the comeout roll was, it needs to be repeated again before another 7 comes up). Come out rolls of 2,3, and 12 are automatic craps and the pass line bet is lost. Come out rolls of 7 or 11 are automatic winners for pass line bets. All the other come out rolls become established points that I described above and you should back up your pass line bet with odds bet behind the line.

As for rolling the dice, you will be given the option to roll or you can just say “Pass” and the next guy/gal to your left will be given the option of rolling. Nobody will give you a second look if you pass…no big deal.
If you do play hold’em, play tight in the beginning. Play the lowest table that you can find. Tight means playing high pairs only (AA through TT, maybe 99 through 66 in late position, depending on how many others are in, based on 10 players) and (AK through AJ offsuit, AK through AT suited…actually, how far down in rank is debatable). This is pretty tight, but you’ll get a look at a lot of hands. Blinds will be about $1.50 on a $1/$2 table every 10 hands on a full table, so with $100, you can milk it for hours if you just happen to fold every hand.

Also, come join us at this Doper Thursday Night Hold’em Thread and have fun playing for bragging rights with play money on pokerroom.com.

16

I’d say for craps (and Ellis Dee might disagree with me on this one), consider making only about three bets. Bet the minimum on the pass line, take the maximum odds (although I’d probably stop at 5x), and make $6 place bets on the 6 and 8. If 6 or 8 is the point, make a $12 place bet on the other one. All you have to do is tell the dealer “$6 on 6 and 8,” give them $12 in chips, and they’ll get you from there.

If you’ve won a couple of place bets, you might want to start pressing the bet, especially if you’ve covered the original amount of money you put on the table. Say, for example, you’re playing a $1 minimum table (not likely in my experience, you’re more likely to find a $5 minimum table) with 5x odds. You put down $5 on the pass, $25 on the odds, and $6 on the 6 and the 8. So you’ve got $42 there on the table. Place 6 and 8 pay 7:6, so each time the dice land as 6 or 8 you get your original bet back plus another 7 dollars. So, if the shooter is fairly consistenly throwing 6s or 8s, you might want to start pressing the bet, especially if you’ve already won part of all of your original bet back. The 7:6 payout means that you need to increase the bet in multiples of 6–first bet 6, press to 12, press to 24, press to 48, and so on until you hit the table limit, the point is thrown, or it’s a seven-out. I honest to God once saw a guy win pretty big just by pressing a 5 when the shooter was throwing a ton of them until he hit the table limit. However, I would never start pressing right away. See if there is some sort of pattern first–there is danger in chasing patterns, but if the shooter has a consistent method of shooting, it might work in your favor long enough to make some good money.

I suggest The Wizard of Odds to learn the strategies. Never go into a casino to play a game you know nothing about. At least know the strategy. Even better, do download one of the online casino software packages. There’s nothing possibly illegal as long as you don’t play for real money. For that matter, The Wizard of Odds now has some pretty good Java applets, though he doesn’t have much of a craps simulator. WinCraps is a good freeware simulator.

17

I just realized I botched my math up there. I got a $5 min table stuck in my head. For a $1 min table:

$1 pass
$5 odds
$6 place 6
$6 place 8

$17 total on the table

After two or three place wins, especially if the shooter if consistent, I’d start pressing the bet. By that point you’ve gotten back most or all of your original bet so then I think that it’s worth taking a bit more risk.

18

I’ve played poker in a major casino before. I don’t happen to like live limit games (especially since I’m used to tournaments). I recommend a poker tournament, a no-limit live game, or craps (solely on the recommendation of the others in this thread, and my sister and her fiancee) - maybe blackjack.

Everything else, I understand, is even more a sucker’s game, especially if you don’t have fun just sitting and pressing buttons, waiting for a bonus game.

19

I live in Las Vegas (although from you location, I assume you are going to one of the casinos on the East Coast).

I say stick to video poker. That is almost the only game locals play here. Check the payouts on the machines…you will find some that pay 45 coins for a full house on a 5 coin bet. That is a very good return. Also, I like Double Double poker as if you should be so lucky as to get 4 Aces, or 2’s, 3’s or 4’s and you get a “kicker” (one of the other low cards), you get a nice double payout.

Even better is to find a reversable Royal machine. In a recent thread I wrote about my SO hitting one and he got $12,500! Granted, you see that as often as Haley’s Comet, but we are living proof you can actually hit it.

Video poker allows you some control of the game…if you keep the Ace and discard the two 9’s…and two other 9’s show up, you can blame only yourself. Of course, if the three other Aces show up, you can pat yourself on the back for being so clever. It is all luck, but the old adage, “play your cards right” really does hold true even on the video poker machines.

Another good thing about those machines is you can play for nickels, quarters, dollars, 5 dollars and I have even seen machines that go up to over $100 per hand. So start off on a lower denomination and get some practice. Even on a nickel machine, a Royal pays off with about $200…not a bad pay out for a 25 cent investment!

Also look for the progressive machines…where the payouts increase until someone wins. Look for the largest amounts and play there. Also, even if a machine seems to be just sucking your money in and not paying out, it doesn’t always pay to jump to a new machine. The microchips are based on random selection, despite what many think, so your chances of winning really don’t improve on video poker machines if you hop around a lot.

And try the triple poker machines for nickels. Sorta fun and keeps you on the ball.

Have fun and write back and let us know how you did!

20

If you get down on yourself for losing too much, go the thr roulette tables and play top and bottom third. You’ve got a 2/3 chance of winning 1.5x your bet. If you play for long enough, you’ll eventually make back your losses. That’s if you don’t get kicked out of the casino for being the most obnoxious, pathetic, desperate, spineless player in the building. Nobody plays top and bottom third for very long. I know this from personal experience…