Review of Beating the Casinos at Their Own Game
- Title:
- Beating the Casinos at Their Own Game
- Author:
- Peter Svoboda
- Publisher:
- Square One Publishers
- Date:
- 2001
- ISBN:
- 0-7570-0005-3
- Pages:
- 278
- Price:
- $19.95
January 27, 2001
Beating the Casinos at Their Own Game is intended to provide
strategies for the casino gambler to "increase the odds of winning".
The key to understanding this book is to understand what this phrase,
"increase the odds of winning" means. The strategies presented in this
book will not eliminate the casino's house edge. The house
will still be a long term winner. However, in any given short gambling
"session" using the methods described in this book, the player is more
likely than not to be a net winner during that session. Most people
who understand this distinction will probably not find this book useful.
I believe that most people that don't understand this distinction should
not read this book. From the descriptions in the book, I don't know whether
the author really understands this distinction or not.
Anyone who has been in a casino more than once has heard about gambling
systems. These are methods of varying one's bet sizes and patterns to
attempt to achieve some end, usually with the promise of nullifying the
house's edge. The problem is that the casino has about a 1.4% edge on
every pass line bet placed on a craps table, period. No system of
betting can change this. However, using gambling systems a player can
make it likely that they come away a small winner for most of their
gambling sessions, at the risk of having huge losing sessions on occasion.
Similarly, a player can use a betting strategy that usually leaves them
a small loser with a small probability that they could walk away a
big winner. However, over the long run, the house will take their edge
out of every bet, and this is something a gambling system cannot change.
However, if a player understands this, some of these gambling systems
can be fun to play, and I have no objection to an informed gambler using
a betting progression. However, Svoboda's book doesn't make this point
clear, and, indeed, I'm not sure the author understands it at all.
The book does provide reasonable introductions to several casino games,
such as roulette, craps, and baccarat. I don't think his description
of how to play blackjack is very well written, however. The book does
contain some good advice, for example, Svoboda advises craps players to
not make the proposition bets in the center of the layout.
However, this is interspersed with
some very bad advice, such as betting the 5-number bets at roulette,
the very worst bets one can make on the layout, and his recommendations
regarding blackjack basic strategy are just wrong and should be
disregarded. Admittedly, there exist a fair number of players who gamble
so poorly that they might benefit a little from reading this book, but
with other titles like The Complete
Idiot's Guide to Gambling Like a Pro available, which covers
essentially the same material so much better, I really can't recommend this
book to anyone.
Svoboda does provide information on some betting systems that are interesting
to read about, some of which the author recommends and some of which he
decries. However, none of these are intrinsically better than any of
the others, despite the author's advice. If one is interested in hearing
about new gambling systems, maybe this book is worthwhile, but I doubt
there are many people who fall into this category. The back cover says,
"This is the book that casinos don't want you to read." If I were a casino
owner, I'd hand out free copies to anyone who promised to follow its
advice.
Capsule:
Beating the Casinos at Their Own Game describes flawed gambling
systems for winning in a casino at games such as craps and roulette. While
I've read worse advice on casino gambling, the strategies presented in this
book are not long term winners and will cost a player more money than
following better strategies. There are a number of novel gambling systems
that are amusing to read about, but there is just too much bad advice in
this book for me to recommend it to anyone.
Note: I received a review copy of this book from the publishers. I
have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this
book.
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