By Garry Robinson

Okay, this is a Racing site. Still Racing is a bit of a gamble, so why not have a look at some of Australia’s favourite gambling sports, which these days is the Casino.

Our governments have always been a bit unfair. They always want to legislate to get the last possible dollar out of each person. To do this they set up monopolies. Yes I know, the Trades Practices Act forbids that, but then this is the Government we are talking about.

The only legal place to play Casino games is at the casino, although, there are blackjack machines and roulette machines in Clubs. Of course, these machines don’t play by the same rules, so don’t get caught.

A roulette wheel for instance, can only cause the customer to lose 2.7% and that means that on a random night, you have a good chance of winning using a staking plan. I’ll give you some of those shortly.

Blackjack, the card game, is another Casino game that has only a small edge for the house, and once again, using a strategy which is beyond the scope of this article, the casual player would usually win.

Playing either of these games on an electronic machine though, you can expect to have a percentage of up to 15% against you, thus guaranteeing a loss unless you are exceptionally lucky.

Let’s look at some possible Roulette strategies at the Casino.

Firstly here are the odds.

Any number between 1 to 36 pays 35/1

Betting red pays even money i.e. you will double your money if red gets up.

Betting Black pays the same. About the only strategy you can use on just red or black, is simply, to double up. In other words your bets will be 1,2,4,8,16,32,64 and so on.

The drawback here though, is that each roulette wheel has a limit on the bet size. On a wheel with a minimum bet of $5 you may well find that $300 is your maximum bet or just under your 64 unit bet size. The managment is trying to stop you from getting lucky. They know that sooner or later, your number must come up.

You can bet on the numbers 1-12, 13-24 or 25-36. In each case you will be paid 2/1.

Here you can use the bet sequence

1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 or a total of 54 units.

A winner at any stage guarantees you a profit of at least one unit. For example, if bet four wins you have previously lost bets of one , one and two units for a total of four. Now we have a three unit bet and a return of nine units, profit is six units less the four we previously lost for a profit overall of two units. Not bad. Now we can start again.

You can almost guarantee a winning night by betting with three banks and therefore you must be on a winning number for at least one of the banks with each spin of the wheel. The only time you can experience a loss is when the 0 comes up. As the odds of this happening is only 1 in 37 you may not see it come up once in a night.

The trick with playing casino games is to quit when in front. Walk away a winner. That way there is every chance you could win every time you go to the Casino.

Many years ago, I went for a tropical cruise on the Fairstar. They had a casino and I had knowledge of the best strategies for playing blackjack. Every day when the Casino opened I would play Blackjack until I was in front $5. Then I did whatever else there was to do.

On the second last day I got in front as usual after about fifteen minutes of play and I said to myself "You’ve seen everything there is to see on this ship. What are you going to do for the rest of the day?" Well I played for the pleasure of it and eventually lost every cent of my winnings back to the house. That doesn’t mean that I was a loser. It simply meant I was playing for the entertainment value and that’s the difference.

There are many strategies for playing Blackjack on the Internet. I suggest you have a look at these after checking the blackjack rules at your local Casino as they do vary. Then after practicing at home with real money, (with friendly opposition only) you can go out and play until in front and then quit. Now you can try the roulette strategy and pick up a few more dollars.

With a bit of luck, your visit to the Casino along with your food and drinks can be on them.