Bryan Micon here, decade-long professional poker player. Don't believe me? hit the google. I am also the SwC Poker guy.
I see a lot of terrible gambling advice and general misunderstanding of gambling thrown around this forum. I think there are many young humans in the bitcoin world an they could benefit from asking a guy like me some questions and getting some straight answers.
I'll hit some highlights before we begin:
1) Martingale is a long-term losing strategy, assuming you don't have an infinite bankroll and the betting game has limits.
2) If a game has a "negative expected value," there is no system that can beat it. If someone tells you they have a Dice strategy, they don't. If they did, they would run it themselves and certainly not share this information.
3) Most gamblers will tell you they can beat sports betting. >99% of them are lying.
4) Most gamblers will tell you they can beat poker. ~85% of them are lying.
5) Blackjack, when playing with certain rules, keeping a proper count, and knowing what to do when the count is X, can be beaten. It is really fucking hard and very few people can do it properly. There is also massive variance. Most players that tell you they can count and beat blackjack are lying, but it is possible.
6) Craps is beatable, google "The Dominator" and watch his "Breaking Vegas" episode. Very few, I mean likely <100 humans can beat craps. Only a handful for big money. it's possible, but again, if someone tells you they are beating craps, ask about their controlled throw and how many months they have practiced. If they look at you funny, they are lying. If they have a craps table in their garage, maybe they are not lying. But still ask to see them throw.
7) Roulette was once beat by a team strapping a small computer to one member, timing the wheel rotations, timing the ball spinning, and zero-ing on a quadrant during the short window of time that betting is open after the wheel and ball have started spinning. There is also such a thing as a "corrupt wheel" in roulette that favors one number or a group of numbers. It is hard to get statistically significant data off of 1 roulette wheel as a player, but again, it can be done. However it's highly unlikely anyone telling you about their roulette strategy is a winning roulette player. In fact, I've found most roulette players to be the most degen.
Poker is of course beatable. I've beaten it over a long set. ~8/10 players lose. ~1/10 players is break even, or close enough to break even on either side it rounds to 0. ~1/10 players win over the long set. Poker has gotten much harder since I started playing professionally in ~2005. I would never suggest someone try to play poker professionally. If you want to play a lot of poker and follow the tour, I'd suggest limiting it to no more than 5 years seriously. And do so after you have become wealthy enough that your "pro" career won't affect your personal finances. So often have I seen really smart kids get into poker and then do nothing but poker for such a long period of their lives. Sure it's a lot of fun, but many of these stories don't end well. The life of a small-winning poker player isn't very glamorous. Only a select few are killing it to the point where it's a dream-job in terms of money and how much time you have for other interests. Most of those beating poker for big money also have sponsorships or some other source of income. I would never play poker as my main source of income ever again, and even when I was making very good money during the "golden years" of online poker, I still had businesses and websites and other income streams. If someone is going to become a pro player, there is likely nothing I can do to stop that person. If you are on the fence, don't do it. Start a business, make something useful that other humans want or need. So much brilliant brainpower banged up against each other over 2 cards down and 5 in the middle. Seems like we should be trying to solve the energy crisis - you know - doing real shit, not just playing games. That's most of my rant on poker.
Ask me anything about gambling.
