Taking What They are Giving (and no more!)

One sure way to get an edge is to take advantage of casino promotions. This is literally free money that is being given away, and if you are smart you should be able to figure out a way to get your share of it. To the casino it is simply written off as part of their advertising budget. Many casino promo specialists do nothing but follow the promotions around and derive a semi-steady income from them.

A classic example is the Las Vegas Advisor, which is a publication that keeps Vegas residents apprised of all the best promotions around town. Unfortunately for the locals, many of them require an out of state ID in order to take advantage of - especially the coupon books. The LVA maintains a list of the best coupon runs available and smart visitors would do well to follow the latest coupon hunting strategy that this publication prints.

But there are much better promotions to be found than the $5 free bets in the coupon books. In David Sklanky's classic book Getting the Best of It, he describes the life of a professional gambler living in Las Vegas hitting the best casino promotions for big money as they appear. Now, it helps that Sklansky is a professor-caliber mathematician. Some of the stories in that book are amazing, including the two weekends that he hit a couple of casinos for more than $50,000 in football parlay card promotions where the casinos made serious math errors in the offer (allowing somebody to bet all possible outcome combinations for sure profits, which is exactly what he did).

Consequently I cannot give you a concrete system for taking advantage of the creative promotions at land-based casinos. They tend to be short-lived and you just have to do the math and figure out if they are worth pursuing and then work out the best method of working them. Online casinos that offer deposit bonuses are a different matter however. So are the comp systems that land-based casinos offer.

Working the Comp System

Regular visitors to a land-based casino should get the player-point cards and work the system. The trick with these is to give the illusion of a lot of action, without actually giving them as much action as it looks like you are giving them. When you make the preferred customer list, your rooms and some of your meals will be free. More importantly, you will get special offers for the monthly  invitation tournaments that the casino puts on. These tournaments are free money, and for the events that actually require some skill, such as the blackjack tournaments, you can get quite an edge on your opponents if you know how to play them. (Read Stanford Wong's book on tournament strategy to maximize that edge.)

There are a lot of creative ways to work the player points system, but perhaps the best way is to buy-in for large amounts of money at smaller-stakes tables as often as you can get away with. For example, sit down at a $10 blackjack table and buy $500 worth of chips. Give them your card when you buy your chips. As they are writing you up make a couple $25 bets but after the pit people walk away just bet the minimum for about 15-20 minutes and then go cash in your chips. Go to another pit and repeat. When you run out of pits start the process over.

I would also recommend video blackjack while using your points card. Make $3 or $4 bets and play very fast. Put in several hours of this on your trip and you will rack up a lot of points.

Bonus Hunting

There is a community of online casino bonus hunters who know how to work the deposit bonuses. This is the closest thing to sure money that you will find. There is some tact required however, and unfortunately country restrictions as well (players from the United States are generally barred from online casinos). For detailed information on this outstanding strategy go to www.beatingbonuses.com.

There is even some software available to help with the wagering requirements. Just Google the term blackjack bot and you will find a few. So you can set the software to play for you while you sleep and grab the free money without even having to work for it. Gambling systems just don't get any better than that!

Disclaimer: The information on this website is for entertainment purposes only and is not to be taken as financial advice. Gambling is extremely risky and you might lose a lot of money. In some jurisdictions gambling, whether online or offline, might be deemed illegal - so check with your local laws before doing any gambling. The gambling systems mentioned on this website, and the products that are linked from it, may not work. Problem gamblers should never gamble and never try to work a gambling system and should stay away from all gambling games and not even read any of these web pages. Pursue the contents of this website at your own risk. Please act responsibly.

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