The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

I don't always play roulette, but when I do, I use a strategy:

1. Always bet red.
2. If you lose, double your last bet.

There is nothing special about red, it’s just easy to remember. Here's a long-winded example:

You bet £10 on red, and win. You're happy because you're up by a nice, shiny £10. For the next round, you bet £10 on red again. This time you're unlucky however, because the ball lands on black. The croupier whisks your chips away, but instead of crying softly to yourself, you double your last bet, by putting down £20. But it seems the gods are against you, because you lose again! So gritting your teeth, you double again, betting £40. Finally, you win! So you made another £10, even though it took you longer this time.

Can you continue earning ten pound notes like this for as long as you like? No, unless you have unlimited money! Due to exponential growth in your bets, there'd come a point where you couldn't afford your next bet. Perhaps after a string of fifteen, ten, or just five losses, you would have to leave the casino, having no money left to play with. You would need an unlimited sum of money to be certain of always winning, and if you had that, you wouldn't need to gamble.

I went to a casino in Birmingham to try my roulette strategy. I had to cash in at the table. I held my £10 note in my hand, not knowing the etiquette for getting the croupier's attention. She ignored me. Everyone ignored me. It was like being back at school, surrounded by testosterone-fuelled males and standing on the sidelines feeling uncomfortable and inadequate.

Casino Niagara was my second casino experience. This place was huge, with a high ceiling covered in security cameras. Before I entered I drank a fuckload of rum, and I still had the bottle, half-full, hidden in my back pocket. I was terrified of getting caught with it. Anyway, I applied my strategy to the roulette table, and when I finished, I was up by $4! I congratulated myself on doing a great job pretending to be sober.

Next I went to a blackjack table, and put my chips down. The guy must have thought I wanted to bet everything, because he pulled all my chips in towards him. Fuck. I was too drunk to stop him. Everything happened quickly. The game lasted just a few seconds. I lost, about $24.

The third and last casino I've been to is Montreal's, just to see what it was like. It was a massive, depressing maze, and all the windows were darkened.

Online casinos are more appealing, because I don't have to feel inadequate, terrified, nor deprived of vitamin-D. As a student, I made an account on Betfair.com to bet on the outcome of the seventh series of Big Brother. I knew Pete Bennett was going to take first - he was a nice guy with Tourette’s. Glyn Wise, a nice guy from Wales, was the obvious next favourite. I bet £200 on Glyn coming second place, and I won, profiting £160. I had been planning to bet my entire student loan (several thousands of pounds) but the loan hadn't come through in time. If it had, I would have won thousands of pounds instead of only £160.

But I lost my £160 and the £200 I'd started with when I made my next bet, on the outcome of Celebrity Love Island, a show I'd never watched. I'd bet on the favourite to win, and there was a surprise win by someone else.

I'm not a chronic gambler. I'm intelligent enough to see that in the long-run, the house always wins. Except, not always... a few years ago, you could make money from online casinos by using their sign up bonuses. You simply play with the free chips they give you, and then withdraw your winnings as soon as possible. I did this once, and made about £50.

But it seems online casinos have recently caught on, and changed their rules. Simon Andras at Simonsblogpark.com sums it up:

It is no longer possible to make money using casino bonus hunting. That was possible back then but since casino bonus playtrough [sic] and wagering requirements have gone trough [sic] the roof since and wagering limitations are now commonplace. Now there is barely any difference between the casino bonuses.

As an example, Casinomidas.ca is giving players a $500 bonus for depositing $500 into a new account. However, you have to gamble both your deposit and their bonus a staggering 25 times before you can withdraw the bonus. Also, some games count less towards the wagering requirements than others - my favourite game, roulette, fulfills the wagering requirements twice as slowly.

I would have to gamble $50,000 ($1000 x 25 x 2) to withdraw their bonus into my bank account. With roulette, your money goes down at a rate of $1 for every $37 you gamble, because of when the ball lands on 0. So you could expect to lose around 1/37 of the $50,000 gambled. By the time you could withdraw the $500 bonus, you'd be down $1,351. Fuck it.

Ultimately, casinos are like cathedrals. Both are large, expensive buildings that prey on people's gullibility.