Have you ever just sat there and wondered – what if there was a way to actually beat the casino or the bookies? Well, there are methods out there that people have used for ages to beat the casinos and lately there are also theories on how to beat the bookies. Some would argue that not all of the strategies one can read about are strictly ethical. Then again, many people out there today would argue that betting companies aren’t all that ethical as they profit from the loss of sports bettors.
Of course, the very nature of gambling companies is that people have to lose for them to remain in business, but some clever people have come up with their own ways and methods that they have used to beat both casinos and bookies over the years. Let’s check them out.
Matched Betting
Matched betting is often advertised as a risk-free way of betting, and to some extent it is. Matched betting is essentially a strategy whereby players take advantage of online bookmaker offers to guarantee that they can make a profit. This may sound too good to be true, but it does work. Let us explain.
Say that an online site is running a $10 free bet promotion, although you are required to bet $10 first to get this. What some smart people figured out is that they could offset the initial bet using an exchange, therefore making a very small loss, but then guarantee the profit when they bet with the free cash given by the online bookmakers. With hundreds of bookmakers that are online today, people have been able to make thousands through this method, and it is still going strong today.
Live betting with “help”
When this method was first discovered it was described as ingenious, and to be honest, it was. This strategy applies specifically to live tennis betting, and it has been exploited extremely successfully when people work in pairs. Basically, one person will go to a live tennis event and one person will stay at home betting. The person who is live at the event will communicate instantly with the person back home regarding what has happened in the game, allowing the person at home to place a bet on a live market with foreknowledge of the outcome.
This works incredibly well with point-by-point betting, and it basically takes advantage of the time delay between the umpire updating the score and the bookmakers receiving this data. There is a gentleman in the United Kingdom that has made hundreds of thousands through this method, and he continues to do so today.
Card Counting
Card counting is one of the most debated strategies when it comes to beating the casino. There are many myths around card counting in Blackjack and it’s considered the most difficult yet most effective way to gain an edge over the casino. This strategy has been around for years, and it applies specifically to the very popular casino game of blackjack. Card counting works by assigning a value to a card that is dealt at the blackjack table, and then the player keeps a running count in their head so that they can accurately predict what card could be dealt next.
This essentially allows players to bet low when the deck is ‘cold’, and then bet high when the deck gets ‘hot’. In order to execute a card counting strategy you need to be incredibly quick with mental arithmetic and be able to keep your composure under pressure, but there are people out there that have done it. Card counting actually works best with single deck blackjack, but the casinos soon caught on to this and introduced multi-deck blackjack.
This makes it much more difficult to keep the count, and therefore more difficult to exploit the casino.
Conclusion
People are always coming up with weird and wonderful ways to beat the system, and there are more methods available than the ones that we have just mentioned. It’s fair to say that there are some rather clever mathematicians out there who are involved in betting, and no matter what betting companies do to try and keep things controlled, these guys will always come up with new methods to try and beat the bookies.
One thing is for sure, we all enjoy reading about the stories and attempting some of these methods ourselves should we get the courage to do so. More methods will no doubt emerge during 2020 as well, so stay tuned!