Gambling tip: Easy way to know if you can win

• Mike Caro   Exit

Note: Not at the old Poker1 site.

The main consideration in determining whether a particular form of gambling can be beat is: “Do my decisions really matter?”

If the odds are against you and you can’t make meaningful decisions that will improve those odds, you can’t win. This is why no statistical analysis can give you an edge in craps or roulette. There are no magic betting systems.

Remember, meaningful decisions are intelligent ones. They are decisions based on provable science. One choice must be clearly better than another for reasons that make sense. We’re not talking about whim, intuition, or observed short-term trends. We’re talking about the type of decisions that can be logically explained.

Logic

If your decisions cannot be logically explained, then they are not meaningful. They are just guesses, just hunches. And guesses and hunches can’t overcome the odds against you.

Sure, after the fact in roulette, you might see that you would have won by betting red instead of black, but you had no reason to make a meaningful decision beforehand. Before you made a bet on red or black, there was no logical reason to favor one over another. Therefore, if the odds are against you to begin with — as they are in most casino games — you can’t make winning decisions, simply because those decisions don’t matter.

In games like poker and blackjack, your decisions do matter, and so these games can be beaten through expert play. It matters whether you decide to play a hand or fold it in poker. It matters whether you hit 18 or not in blackjack. The fact that those decisions change the odds, either favorably or unfavorably, opens up the potential for winning by making quality decisions.

The easy way

So, the easy way to determine whether any form of gambling potentially can be beat is to ask yourself: “Do my decisions really matter?” If the answer is no, the odds must be in your favor to begin with — and that usually isn’t going to happen unless you’re the casino.

Now, it may be that your decisions matter, but not enough to overcome the odds against you. So, not every form of gambling in which your decisions matter can be beat.

But, you will only have a chance to control your own odds in games where your decisions count. That’s why I teach: “In order to overcome any odds against you in gambling, your decisions must really matter.” Think about it.

— Mike Caro (telling the truth about gambling)