Anybody here ever make money gambling?

[CobyRupert]

I bet some people could make money gambling if they stuck to a system and kept their emotions out of it.

A friend won one of those million dollar homes (or take the cash) from a hospital lottery, with the $200.00 tickets. He is not a gambler but felt a debt for them saving his sons life after the dishwasher door smashed his head. Dishwasher had a bit of acetylene in it. lol Funny how things sometimes work out.

Well yes, some people will always win money. That's the appeal. That's the bait. That's literally "the news". "Somebody has to win."
but:
Most people HAVE to lose. Otherwise there would be no Casino.(or racetrack, or lottery, etc...). The House would go broke. Basic math.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I knew a very charming guy. Life of the party. Always gambled, always won. Always won the door prize. Invested money with friends and made a killing in the Trivial Pursuit Fad. Then dropped dead of a heart attack in his forties, I think. I guess it was like the song says. He was here for a good time, not a long time.

 

[California]

... basic math.

Yep. After taking a couple of statistics courses I was further convinced that taking the wrong side of any 49/51 bet is a fool's stance.

There are so many other opportunities to be on the 51% side, starting from a simple Ebay strategy to bid low and resell the occasional win for more.

Another thing I learned along with statistics is most people are averse to risk. So there's a lot of money to be made by taking on the risk yourself.

Flipping houses is an opportunity to take some risk and make big bucks. Cleaning up one that was unsalable because its shabby would be a simple example, spend $20k on contractors and make $100k. Most people would avoid that house, somebody who never intends to live in it and sees it as simply a profit opportunity can make a substantial living doing this. Used cars, similar, if that better matches the resources you can afford to put into a project.

My neighbor's house in town was vacant after she died, then a woman bought it and told me she maintains a nice lifestyle in Hawaii by coming back to clean up/flip houses like this every couple of years. No hands-on, just project planning on her part. Far better odds of profit compared to gambling! (And a similar approach renovating rentals was how I started to accumulate savings. The market price of a rental property is a direct multiple of the rent schedule. That worked out very well). No gambling for me.

 

[California]

I've forgotten if I read this or heard it first hand: Someone moved on from working at the lottery commission after he got fed up with what he was responsible to do. As insiders they could stack a huge number of losing tickets with numbers very close to the winning ticket, maybe one digit off in the thousands column or something, to persuade losers to think they had almost won and would come back to play again. There was no rule saying the number assigned to tickets had to be random.

The odds that you're playing against when you buy a lottery ticket may not be what you thought.

 

[lilranch2001]

I have received lottery tickets for my b/d, christmas and retirement.
I have NEVER purchased the first one for myself

 

[MossRoad]

My wife and I look at gambling as entertainment. No different than going to a movie, dinner, event, etc... we set a budget, run that amount through the machines, and whatever comes out the other end we go home with. Some days it's less than what we went in with. Some days it's more. We're about even for the year. We go about once a month. My in-laws are now up a couple thousand for the year. But they go twice a week.

 

[California]

I worked in an office where we routinely used statistics to draw random samples that had to be representative of larger universes of financial transactions. Everyone there had an accounting degree or like me, minimum 20 upper-division units in accounting and statistics.

Several employees had no concept how statistics influenced their personal life. The guy I reported to lost his home to casino gambling losses. Another supervisor I reported to earlier kept taking out endless high interest car-title loans on her Camaro to fund her continual lottery ticket buys.

And worst example of all - when I started there, there was a paycheck pool that had an even risk of long term win/lose. Just name a number and when paychecks were issued, the person with check serial number closest to their own guess won the pot. Harmless, over time you should break even.

Then the state lottery began. The paycheck lottery participants voted to buy state lottery tickets with the winner's pot for the winner, instead of paying the pot to the winner. Since the state lottery pays 50% of its income to education and 50% to ticket winners, one's results dropped to a probability of half what it was before. Plus the pot winner was encouraged to put any state lottery winnings into buying more lottery tickets ... another 50% hit. Insane. I kept my opinions to myself.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Never met a person who wasn't their own worst enemy.

 

[drssg]

I shouldn't do this, but I'll give y'all my secret formula for winning at roulette. I made it up, but other people probably made it up before me. It goes as follows:

- Put your money on black for every play.
- Start with a $2 bet.
- Every time you lose, double your previous bet.
- Every time you win, revert back to a $2 bet.

The net effect of this process is that every time you win you'll have $2 more than the last time you won. Since the odds of winning are slightly less than 50%, you'll average about $1 in winnings per play. (Check the math, it works!)

The flaw in the "system" is that you'll eventually encounter a long string of loses in a row. The amount that you have to bet during these strings goes up exponentially, and it quickly exceeds the amount of money that normal people are willing to risk. Even if you have tons of money, the table will have a maximum bet that is allowed.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Many years ago I went to Vegas with a friend. We bought a package and it came with some gambling script, maybe $200.00. So friend says do roulette and keep betting black or red. Hoped to get some of my money back and leave. I don't remember, it kept coming up the wrong color, and so halfway through my friend says, bet the other color and I lost everything!