Best Way To Stop Online Gambling
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A solid way to beat that gambling urge MUST READ. Today is my first day actually of being a recovering gambling addict. I have lost thousands, stolen from my family, lied, and lived with a tremendous amount of guilt due to all the harm gambling has inflicted on my life. You prioritize gambling over obligations related to work, school, family. You may stop going to work or school so you can gamble, or stop buying household necessities so you can use the money for gambling instead. You’re experiencing financial hardships due to gambling. You may have lost your home, car, job, and important personal possessions due to gambling.
First, let’s say a few words how the big guys work in this business.
The gambling industry is mostly made up of sports betting operators, casinos and poker rooms. These are the industry’s big winners, due to how games are stacked against players. Bookmakers make money due to vig, casinos are guaranteed to profit due to the house edge and poker rooms receive rake from every pot.
Total global gambling market gross win from 2003 to 2015 [Courtesy of Statista.com]
If you want to win big and constantly, you need to start a gambling business. No other way around. You cannot take a bigger cut of the gambling pie unless you are one of these companies. Even the most successful poker players and sports bettors cannot compete them in profitability.
Yet, these businesses are not one-man shows. Plenty of people work in the gambling venues, from dealers and odds compilers to marketers and public relations staff. They are real businesses with business plans that guarantee them a profit for offering a service to the public. That service is entertainment. Because that is what gambling is.
Entertainment.
For all that people to work and get paid their salaries, gambling companies need big cheques and margins. Otherwise, their business isn’t sustainable.
There are two ways to accomplish that: by either having bigger-than-average profit margins or increasing their turnover. Usually, brand new gambling companies go for the former. As they build up their customer base, they reduce their margins to attract more turnover and compete with the big guys. By the time a gambling operator generates sufficient revenue and net profit every year, their business is safe, as long as they don’t fall behind to competition.
Then, it’s a matter of how many more gamblers find their service attractive. The more they do, the bigger the cut for the company.
Either way, gambling companies are after punters’ money. Those 300 billion dollars. Gamblers are feeding the whole gambling industry. Even in poker where at first glance whales (wealthy bad players) lose to better, regular players. Note “regulars”. Eventually, those regulars will keep playing, paying rake on a daily basis, giving a portion of their winnings back to the poker room.
So, here’s how to stop feeding the gambling industry.
Stop gambling!
If you have been gambling, stop. Unless you are a winner, you need to stop. And since you are reading these lines, you have been losing money. So, stop losing money!
So simple.
Now that your bankroll stopped depleting, it’s time to understand the ins and outs of the gambling industry. That is known as the iGaming industry if you are gambling online.
Size of the online gaming market from 2003 to 2015 [Courtesy of Statista.com]
In gambling, someone has an edge. It’s either you or the man on the other side of the betting line. That usually is the house, standing for bookmakers and casinos. That edge is either predetermined (think of roulette, where you are paid 35-to-1 on a 37-number wheel) or fluctuating (think of betting odds that move up or down).
The best way to comprehend the edge is a coin toss.
Imagine you bet on a coin flip, at less than even odds. No matter your choice of heads or tails, you are going to lose money, in the long run. You are betting on a 50-50 chance but only get paid less than double your money on each coin flip! Depending on how much less you are getting paid, your bankroll will withstand a certain amount of bets.
So, if I’m offering you 1.90 (decimal odds) for each coin flip, your money will end up in my pockets after 200-300 coin flips. That’s how you have been feeding the gambling industry. And that’s what the house edge is all about.
But how do I know how big is your bankroll?
Risk management in gambling
Before you even think of beating the casinos or the bookies, you must understand risk management. Also known as bankroll or capital management, risk management will be the decisive factor in your success. No matter how much edge you gain over the gambling companies, bad risk management will make your betting bankroll evaporate.
If you are going to remember one thing from this article, note this:
That’s easy to remember, right? Set aside a specific amount of money for your gambling habit and split it into 100 parts. No matter your gambling medium, you should risk no more than one part on each bet you are placing.
That’s pretty much it!
That would also get you in a safe distance from disastrous staking plans, like martingale systems. When the time comes, you’ll move up to more advanced staking strategies than flat betting, such as the Kelly staking plan. Until then though, stick to risking 1 per cent of your bankroll and you’ll be fine.
Remember that this rule applies to small and big bankrolls alike! So, your bankroll’s size doesn’t matter when it comes to risk. Size only determines how much money you will make or lose in currency terms.
Find a gambling system
Now comes the really tedious task of creating a profitable gambling strategy. Finding an edge in the market isn’t easy, I’ll tell you that. If it were that easy, and given the simple risk management rule I explained, everyone would be a winner. But you already know that only 5% or so of gamblers can make it pay.
In order for you to make money, someone has to lose. It’s a zero-sum game, where gambling operators also get their cut. Thus, we need to exploit the market, looking for leaks and biases, like the favorite-longshot bias . The average gambler follows specific betting patterns. You mustn’t do the same. Always do something different, always think different.
Be the first to … or be the best in exploiting a known fallacy.
Oh, and if you do, don’t let the world know unless you are after fame and reputation. Otherwise, your edge will diminish as more people will imitate you, and market finds its new balance.
Ways To Stop Online Gambling
Finally, don’t worry if your first betting system fails!
Be disciplined, stay on your toes and avoid burnout
So, by now you should have a viable system and know how much to bet on the next game. You are on your way to becoming one of the elite professional gamblers. What can go wrong?
First, you may not be disciplined enough to follow your own rules! Wouldn’t it be pity to lose money, after all that research and study? Yet, even reputable and notable sharp bettors may lose their discipline after a long losing streak.
Don’t be that guy.
Trust your proven strategy, stick to your risk management plan and always be prepared for variance. Embrace the drawdown and never question yourself at tough times, as long as you are doing everything by the book.
By the time you experience several months or years of successful gambling, there’s a big chance you feel… bored! Yes, believe it or not, no matter how much money you are making, doing the same, dull thing every single day, will get you bored. At first, making money from gambling seems like a dream. But like in every other business, routine will take the pleasure away.
Find the missed fun, by exploiting new markets, trying something new or improve your methods.
Finally, burnout is a serious hazard in all kinds of successful gambling. Take breaks, go on holidays, and enjoy your profits and hard work. Don’t let gambling consume you, no matter how big you are winning.
Enjoy life, because in the end, isn’t that the meaning of living?
Let’s not hurry things up though. Most probably, you’re having a difficult time to break even to say the least. Winning in the long run seems too far away at the moment. Don’t despair. Stop gambling your money away, find an edge, forward test your system in paper and when you feel ready, do not risk more than 1% of your bankroll. I am sure, we’ll be hearing from you soon!
How To Stop Online Gambling Addiction
Readers ask if quick reflexes are the key to winning
By John Grochowski
I keep a list of questions that I’m most often asked about slot machines. You could probably tick off some of them: “Are games programmed to go cold after a big win?” “Do you get less payback when you use your rewards card?” And the big one, “Can you tell me how to win?”
How To Stop Online Gambling
Those have been standards ever since I started writing about casinos and casino games 20 years ago. But recently, another question has been shooting up the charts. I have it all the way up at No. 2 on the readers’ hit parade:
“I’ve noticed on a lot of video slot games that if I hit the button a second time while the reels are spinning, they stop right away. I was wondering if I could use this to my advantage. If I see the bonus triggers or the jackpot symbols at the top, should I quickly hit the button again and try to stop the reels?”
I had that thought myself the first time I accidentally double-hit a button and saw the reels click to an immediate halt. Could this be an answer to the chart-topping question, “how to win on the slots?”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. In nearly all slot games that allow you to stop the reels, there is no skill or timing involved on your part. The random number generator has already determined your outcome when you hit the button to spin the reels, and you’re going to get the same result regardless of whether you stop the reels early, or let them halt in their own time.
When you play a slot machine, the game isn’t actually being played out on the reels, whether it uses “real” reels or video reels. It’s being played internally, on the game’s random number generator. The reels are just a player-friendly interface, and are told where to stop by the RNG. If there’s a malfunction and the reel display doesn’t match the numbers generated, it’s the RNG that counts. Large jackpots can be denied—and have been denied—if a check shows the random numbers on the internal computer chip don’t match the winning symbols on the reels.
But this is extremely rare. The engineering is good enough that almost all the time, the RNG and reel display are going to match up. This doesn’t change if you double-hit the bet button. If the RNG has spit out a random number that tells the first reel to stop on a single bar, then you’re going to get a single bar—regardless of whether you hit the button a second time for a “quick stop,” or just let them take their own sweet time.
There are rare exceptions. When I’ve answered similar questions in the past, I’ve mentioned IGT’s Reel Edge games. In their original incarnation, Reel Edge games enabled players to touch and stop the reels one at a time. There was actual skill involved. Your timing in stopping the reels determined the outcome. The reels spun very, very fast, so it was going take a keen eye and sharp reflexes to get better than random results, but it was possible.
I gave it a try, and found my reflexes just weren’t fast enough to generate more than my normal share of winners. In the original three-reel Blood Life game, I identified a green 7 as the easiest symbol to pick out as it whizzed by. I touched each reel individually as I saw a green 7 reach the top of the slot window, and managed to stop 7s on all three reels. Alas, I failed to land them all on the same payline. Some younger folks with quicker reactions may have been able to do better.
I don’t know if any of the first generation of Reel Edge games remain on casino floors. They were never widespread, and I don’t get lists from casinos or manufacturers telling me what games are available in any given casino. The new generation of Reel Edge puts the skill-based portions of the games in the bonus events.
Blood Life’s updated video incarnation, Blood Life Legends, allows you to test your skill with a joystick to guide a bat through the ups, downs, twists and turns of a cave as you try to collect gems for bonuses. There is actual skill involved, but it’s not the reel-stopping experience readers have been asking about.
Ruby fortune casino online. On most slot games, even in the bonus events you’re getting an illusion of skill rather than actual skill. And when it comes to stopping the reels, it’s the random number generator, not your reflexes, that determines the results.
What about my readers’ other top questions?
To answer another—no, games are not programmed to go cold after big wins. Results remain as random as humans can program a computer to be. As long as the RNG keeps doing its thing, any big jackpot, any hot streak, and any cold streak eventually fade away into statistical insignificance, and the machine comes very close to its expected payback percentage.
No, you don’t get less payback when you use your rewards card. The player rewards system doesn’t interact with the RNG.
And no, with rare exceptions, there is no way to beat the slots except by being in the right place at the right time. There have been opportunities for small profit on games with banked bonuses such as the old WMS game Piggy Bankin’, where the sharpies would start to play only when there were enough coins in the bank to give the player an edge.
Such games are not common. Just as with stopping the reels early, your results are up to chance and the RNG.