How to stay safe at the online casino

Online casinos offer the chance to gamble from the comfort of your own home.  Unfortunately, unlike a physical casino, it is possible to get very drunk and not be ejected from the game.  The isolation involved can mean very few checks on your behaviour, leaving to open to make some classic gambling mistakes.  Here is an outline of a few of these, as forewarned is forearmed.

One of the classic mistakes that many gamblers commonly make - both novice and experienced players alike – is to get caught up in the Gambler’s Fallacy.  Gambler’s fallacy is essentially faith in the ‘law of averages’, applied to the decision making process when placing a series of bets during certain games of chance.  The reason that ‘law of averages’ is in quotation marks is that there is no mathematical support for the theory – it is not really a law at all – and is perhaps best described as a common misunderstanding of probability.

An example of this in casino terms could be putting a heavy bet on black after 9 reds in a row; given that it is an almost 50/50 chance of either colour being hit each time (not quite 50/ 50 because of the green ‘zero’, but near enough) then it must be more likely that blacks will come up next, right?  Well, if the table has a bias, or the super skilful croupier has a bearing on the throw of the ball - thus skewing the odds away from the natural odds of a ‘true’ throw – then perhaps black may be more likely to come up than red.  But in general, if we assume no untoward bias changing the odds of around 50/ 50 each time the ball rolls; then the odds stay 50/ 50.   A previous series of 10, 100 or 1000 throws of the ball have no bearing on the outcome – the ball has no memory, and each new throw is a new random event. 

One of the oldest and most established gambling systems takes the premise of the Gambler’s Fallacy and runs with it.  The Martingale system involves doubling up the stake each time a bet is lost, so that when a win finally comes along, all losses will be recouped – and added to the gains from a win.  This form of the system assumes even money betting – that is, that your stake is doubled by a win, and could in fact work in theory but for a few small snags: you need access to near limitless wealth, limitless time (to play enough games), and a casino that has no maximum bets (to stop you doubling up your stake each time).  The lifting of the last rule (no maximum bets) is unlikely but physically possible, while the first two are unlikely to happen in this universe!

So the moral of the story is: avoid betting systems – the only one that works is card counting in Blackjack, and even then, the swing of the odds in your favour is small (not to mention the fact that you’re likely to be thrown out of the casino if you’re caught practicing this technique).  Enjoy your time on an online casino site (like 32 Red) by treating it as a bit of fun.  Only stake what you can afford to lose, and try and quit while you’re ahead.