Category: Gambling and Casinos

Very common and popular system among newbies who like roulette, but not a very useful one. Sure, it seems simple and logical – you start with, let’s say, 10 bucks and you double it every time you lose in order to win it back.

Let’s look how the bets increase with every loss – 1) $10, 2) $20, 3) $40, 4) $80… 9) $2960! Okay, it’s very rare to lose 9 times in a row when playing roulette and betting on red/black, but let’s face the facts and more important – the ODDS. The chance of losing 9 times a row is somewhere near 1/500, meaning that chance of losing 3 grands in order to win back your $10 is around 1 in 500…

You may get lucky, of course, and probably you will first few times, but in the long run you lose and when you lose, you lose really big. Hey, I’ve seen roulette ball landing on black 13 (thirteen!) times in a row and I have heard stories of people getting 17 reds in a row. Now, if you take this initial $10 bucks and calculate, you can see that if you keep using Martingale and if you wait long enough, you will lose hundreds of thousands. For example, if you start with $5 and lose 17 times in a row, your last bet will be $327,680. Now – how sick is that?!?!

“If I had the money and the drinking capacity, I’d probably live at a roulette table and let my life go to hell,” said Michael Ventura once. I think he forgot to mention “Martingale Betting System”.

Some people use Anti-Martingale System, where you have to predict a win (6 blacks in a row, for example) and where you have to double every time you have won. If you’ve won three times in a row, start all over again. If you lose, start over with minimum bet (do not increase!).

GamblingRalf recommends Anti-Martingale System (if any system at all, and IF roulette at all…), because it’s not as nerve-wrecking as the others – you don’t have to place cosmic bets to win back your pocket change.

Cuban has been fined over $1 million since he bought the Mavericks in January 2000, and I have loved every outspoken comment he ever made. Many folks dismiss Cuban as a guy with a big mouth and a lot of money who can afford to say anything he wants. Therefore, his comments are usually discarded and brushed off as a sideshow.

I must disagree with that characterization of the billionaire owner. Nearly every time Cuban condemns the officials, he has an excellent point. In addition, he knows the consequences, but he is man enough to still speak his mind.

Can you name four other owners in the NBA? Everybody knows who Mark Cuban is, and whether you dismiss him as a wacko, everybody should listen to this guy. He is a savvy businessman who made billions off his industries, and that is not something to take lightly in this world.

Cuban founded a computer consulting firm as well as broadcast.com before selling both to make the money he used to buy the Mavs. Despite turning around a pathetic Dallas franchise and making them a contender every year, Cuban still is mostly known for his outbursts against officials and the fines he has racked up over the years.

Nobody is going to fine me, and I would gladly ghostwrite Cuban’s rants here in this column only because he has a point. Ok–maybe running on the court was a little overboard, but $100k overboard? I don’t think so.

In his blog entry on 5/7/06, Cuban rips the selection process of officials for the NBA playoffs. Based on what Cuban suggested and on the official NBA policy for picking playoff referees, maybe the NBA should be thanking Cuban for his suggestions rather than fining him.

Instead of selecting the best officials to referee playoff games, the NBA uses the playoffs as a reward system for them. Officials get promoted to the playoffs, and the NBA whittles the regular-season pool of officials down from 60 to 33 for the playoffs.

The problem with this system, as Cuban points out, is the NBA should not be using the playoffs as a place to evaluate officials. He correctly says the NBA should be using the top twelve officials from the regular season to officiate in the postseason.

The playoffs are a bad place to experiment with officials who are not the best. A good majority of games in recent years has been determined by a referee’s call, and losing in the playoffs means losing money for the franchise; there can be no compromise on an issue of such importance.

Nobody even knows how the NBA evaluates the officials or what the exact criteria for getting “promoted” to the playoffs encompasses. Perhaps David Stern throws knives at a board with all the officials’ names on it, and the winners are selected that way?

Cuban says officials should be ranked from 1-12, and those top guys should then work a little harder and officiate all the playoff games. I would suggest a pool of 20 officials due to travel constraints, but Cuban is on the right track, and fining a guy for comments made in his blog is a bit out of hand.

Do the NBA and David Stern feel more powerful after levying a fine against Cuban? Why can’t an NBA owner make a valid point in his own blog and not be harassed by the league. Cuban is not a nutcase; he is an apt and credible businessman who just wants to be heard. Many of his rants are valid, and people should seriously consider his arguments.

This week’s comments drew headlines because of the fines, but nothing was reported in the media beyond the amount of the fine and his criticism of the officials. I had to actually go to his blog to see what Cuban was complaining about, and now it all makes sense.
There is a witch hunt going on in the 21st century, and Mark Cuban has evil tattooed on his forehead. He is not a bad guy, but rather a plain guy, a fan actually, who happens to own a team and is concerned about the product on the floor.

The Mavs’ owner might not win too many fans for his remarks, but hey, Mark; I got your back, and call me about that ghost-writing gig…anytime.

The first thing you need to do is decide what your stake is. Maybe you are going to Las Vegas for 4 days and your “play money” is $1,000. If you are smart, you will divide this up equally and only play with $250 per day. If you lose your $250 the first day, stop. Wait until the next. This is probably one of he biggest tests of self-discipline.

The next thing you want to do is avoid blowing your daily wad in one sitting. With your $250, take out $100 and get your chips and start to bet conservatively. You want to stretch out the playing experience and play the ups and downs. Make sure you check out the minimum amount for the table.

Let’s say you take your starting $100 and bet $5. You lose the first hand. What do you do next? Many players will double their bet hoping to break even by winning. This is commonly called throwing good money after bad. What you should do is continue to bet the $5 and if you lose 3 or 4 hands in a row, change tables or take a break.

Never send good money after bad.

Now, let’s say you win that first $5 bet. The next hand you should increase your bet and make it $10. If you lose, go back to your original $5 bet. If you win, continue to increase your bet. Don’t double it each time; just make it a bit bigger. So, this time you wager $15. Again, if you lose, go back to the initial $5 bet. If you win, bump it up to $20. This way you are increasing your bet and still retaining some of your winnings. Always go back to your initial bet once the streak is over. Don’t walk away from table saying “I wish I had bet more”.

When you play blackjack, you will find that there are up and down streaks. You want to minimize your losses during the losing and increase your bets when you are winning.

I can remember playing in Canada, and there were five of us on the table. I had been having a bad day and just sat at this table and immediately started winning. This was a $5 minimum and that is what I started with. I kept increasing my bet as I was winning and in about an hour, I won over $3,000. My tablemates were all buddies and were betting $5 per hand whether they won or lost. They all won, but not much. They could have won so much more but didn’t know the correct strategy.

So, plan your money strategy as wisely as you plan your playing strategy. Smart betting, self control, and riding the winning streaks, will net you much more money. Good luck.

Lotteries offer the common person a glimmer of hope to become rich and solve all of their financial problems. People realise these days that the more lottery tickets you hold, the better your chances of winning are.

For the UK National Lottery, there are about 14,000,000 different combinations so if you have one line, or one ticket, you one 1 in 14,000,000 chances of winning. Now if you have, say, 1000 tickets you have 1 in 14,000 chances of winning so your odds increase considerably. But purchasing 1000 tickets is beyond most people’s means. Who could afford $1000 a week? So the answer is to join a syndicate and spread the cost and share the benefits of better odds.

If you were in a 100 person syndicate paying $10 a week into the pool and you won $10,000,000 you would each win around $100,000. Not bad for your $10 investment.

When you start a syndicate you should make sure you set things up properly because there will always be disputes and arguments especially concerning people who leave or join.

Here are some suggestions:

* Put everything in writing. Set up a contract detailing the rules of your syndicate and get everyone to sign it. All members should have a copy, give a copy to a solicitor or independent adjudicator and display a copy where you can all see it. Here are some things you should include in your contract.

* Decide on the maximum number of people you allow in to your syndicate.

* If you are going to play the same numbers each time, ensure they are noted in the contract.

* Decide who will be responsible for filling out the tickets and putting the tickets on each week. Include that in the contract and ensure a system is in place to deal with occasions when this person is unavailable. The ticket stubs should be made available by this person(s) as proof that the tickets were put on.

* Decide how and who will collect weekly subscriptions.

* Decide what will happen if someone misses a subscription – will they be excluded from a win, or will their subscription be made up by others? If someone misses a set number of consecutive subscriptions, you might want to exclude them fro the syndicate and allow someone else in. – Whatever you decide, ensure it is in the contract.

* Decide what happens with minor prizes. Do they get carried over and saved for distribution at a later date (for example Christmas) or are they shared out when the amount reaches a certain level. Or do you play additional lines when there’s a roll over for example?

* Check your local tax laws to see whether you need to declare the syndicate for tax purposes.

* Check with your employer to ensure you have permission to run a syndicate on their premises and in their time.

* Decide how people can leave and join your syndicate. If you have a maximum of 20 people allowed, you might have a waiting list of people who want to join.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but any contract is better than no contract at all.

The most common kind of dispute is when someone has missed a payment, and the syndicate have a win that week. If it is the jackpot – there will be arguments over whether that person should be included in the payout. Decide now, document it and get everyone to sign up to the rules. Even if you have been running a syndicate for years, it is not too late to initiate a contract. Get everyone together, discuss and agree the rules, get them down on paper and get everyone to sign up to them.

The same applies to family syndicates. To avoid any rifts and arguments, make sure everyone knows the rules.