roulette
EDIT: Just read Kip's post even further down and now I feel like a fool for repeating his idea. Oh well, I added some bonus guff about football.

Browser's post about roulette below reminded me -

Most casinos have some sort of system in place to prevent this from happening, but you can often avoid detection just by moving around tables.

It works like this: say you're at a roulette table, and you bet £1 on black. One of two things will happen -

1) Black wins - £2 return, £1 profit (2-1)
2) Black loses - if this happens, double your bet and place £2 on black next time, again, one of two things will happen -

1) Black wins - £4 return, £1 profit (4-2-1)
2) Black loses - double your bet and place £4 on black etc etc.

As soon as you win a bet, go back to £1 and start over.

It's important to set yourself a high limit (what's the most you're prepared to lose?) and not exceed it. The higher your high limit, the less risk is involved, but you don't want to get into a position where you're risking a couple of hundred quid each time. But obviously the odds of losing the 7 or 8 times in a row that it takes to be risking that kind of money are pretty low.

You can do a similar thing with betting on a player to score in football every time they play. If it's a player who scores every few games (say Drogba, Torres, not Ronaldo as his odds are often too low). It is important to make sure that their odds are consistently above 2/1. The beauty of this is that if they go 2 or 3 matches without scoring, their odds get slightly longer and you make more money when the bet eventually pays off.
(jabboy, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 13:51, 14 replies)

Errr...
b3ta.com/questions/getrichquick/post214850

about halfway down this page...
(Kip, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:04, closed)

Yeah
just apologised for that.
(jabboy, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:06, closed)

Nay
Worries laddie.
(Kip, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:08, closed)

Casinos do have 'a sort of system' in place to prevent this.
It's called the "00"

The inclusion of the double zero, being neither red nor black is enough to swing the odds away from your favour, from 1:2 to 23:37 or a bit worse than even odds. That means that over X period of time your pot will steadily decrease.

Beside that fact, the most you stand to win per spin is the original bet of $1. And you won't win every spin, so even if there was no '00' it would pay very slowly.
(Edktstsss, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:17, closed)

what about 3:1?
I thought you could tip the odds in your favour by betting evenly on two of the "1st 12 / 2nd 12 / 3rd 12" marks.

That way, you place 2 even bets at roughly 3:1 odds with a 2 in 3 chance of winning. When you win, you're up 1, when you lose you're down 2.

Could some clever b3tan work out the odds properly and disprove me, as I really can't be arsed!
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:33, closed)

@Ed
I think you're a bit confused, me old son.

The green 0 is what gives the house its edge in this country - the green 0 *and* 00 is what you find in those United States.

Not sure about your numbers either - bets on red/black, odd/even or high/low pay evens (ie you win what you bet plus your stake back), but the addition of the 0 makes the odds of you winning 18 in 37, or 1 in 2.05555, or 1.05555:1 against. In a fair world you'd therefore expect to end up with £972.97 for every £1,000 you went in with.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:33, closed)

Gambling Get Rich Quick
As a former gambling man who has packed it all in, I can safely say I'm already a couple of thousand up on the deal already.

It took me years to realise, but every punter with a "system" is just another mug punter to the sheepskin-coated grabbing bastards that run these establishments.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:43, closed)

@Greencloud
Those bets pay out 2-1, with odds of 12 in 37, or 1 in 3.08333 or 2.083333 against.

Expected result: (12/37 x 2) - 25/37 = lose 0.27 times your stake.

If you play two at once, you have a 24 in 37 chance of going half your total stake up (2 units won, 1 unit back, 1 unit lost) and a 13 in 37 chance of losing your total stake.

Expected result: (24/37 x 0.5) - 13/37 = lose 0.27 times your total stake.

In other words, you can't beat probability.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:45, closed)

The only way to win at casino gambling
Be a casino.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:45, closed)

I tried this
Worked quite well for the first few weeks, pocketing at least £20 a time, made about £140 which was quite good going whilst at uni.

But then, the unthinkable happened...

13 in-a-row black streak when I was on red. Kidney beans and pasta for a week!

A better, less scary sequence is the 'fibbonacci', where you add the preceding number to your total, ie:

£1, £1, £2, £3, £5, £8, £13...

Lose, go to the next number, win, drop down a number on the sequence.

*pop*
( elgordo, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 14:49, closed)

Cheers cockbrush
I still don't quite get the probability thing (never have really) but i know enough (and trust your explaination) to steer clear of gambling except for social 'throw-away' betting.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 17:16, closed)

Zero
British roulette wheels have '0', which is green rather than red/black, and losing bets on red/black or other even money bets lose half if zero comes in.
Bets on the dozens and columns (3:1) just lose if zero comes in. The trouble with chasing losses by doubling your stake is that when you lose, you lose massively, and when you win, most of it is immediately swallowed by the preceding losses.
Lots of punters who play large on these outside bets will also put a few quid on zero, just in case, furthering their losses.
It's been a few years since I was a croupier, but the fact that casinos are still profitable disproves every theoretical system ever.
The best system (without cheating or counting cards) is to play blackjack after memorising every correct decision (pretty easy, most of them are obvious) and even then, its still just fair, there's no advantage to either you or the house.
The casinos love, and actively encourage, the illusion of these systems, because if people actually realised that they had fucks chance, they'd stay at home, and as long as there are punters at the tables, the casinos will rake it in.
I'm no anti-gambling evangelical, I've had some great nights in Casinos, but you won't if you expect to win.

/bitter ex croup blog
(Udidin is chuffed to have made the newsletter, Tue 5 Aug 2008, 21:17, closed)

bloody hell
Is it not obvious that the whole system is set up so that the house always wins?

It annoys me that there are people who need to win so badly they're willing to overlook the blindingly obvious fact that casinos and the like are out to fleece them.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Wed 6 Aug 2008, 11:04, closed)

@ jabboy
'Most casinos have some sort of system in place to prevent this from happening'

Er, not quite. Every casino in the world loves players like this. It's called the Martingale and as others have pointed out, the '0' makes it an impossiblilty to win over a sustained period of time.

It works on the basis of 'gamblers fallacy', the argument that if there have been for example 9 reds in a row, there is a greater chance that the next will be black. Clearly, it will still be 50% red / 50% black.

The only winner is the casino.
(quantum raspberry quizzically quashing Quebecans, Wed 6 Aug 2008, 19:34, closed)