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During my years as a blackjack and roulette dealer I watched a lot of people lose a lot of money. I also saw a few players win money — I’ll get to that in a moment.
Oddly, most of my coworkers loved to gamble. You would think they’d know better, since all of their wages (and all those pretty buildings) are paid from gambling losses.
I didn’t (and still don’t) share their gambling habits. On the other hand, it can be fun to hang out in a casino, especially if they have free drinks.
So I understand why people might budget a little bit of money to lose at the slot machines or table games.
Of course it would be even more fun if you could do better than limit your losses, right? It would be great if you could make money at casinos.
Well, you can! And 44 states have casinos!
Here are ten ways to make money at casinos, along with some ways to save money by going to a casino, and — in case you need to satisfy your inner gambler — a way to risk a little money to win big.
Table of Contents
1. Become a Card Counter
Regular blackjack gives the “house” (the casino) an edge of about 0.5% to 3.0% depending on the rules and how well you play. However, at times the game is in your favor as a player.
Specifically, you have an advantage when the remaining cards include more aces and face cards than normal.
To know when this situation has developed you can track the cards using a simple plus-or-minus count, and then bet more when the count is right.
You can learn card counting in a few hours, but to be proficient while playing at a busy blackjack table takes many more hours of practice.
Keep in mind that casinos can ask you to leave, even though card counting isn’t illegal. Where I worked management tolerated small-time card counters.
They probably figured that having a few winners encouraged the less-disciplined players to keep trying. The edge from good card counting is only 0.5% to 1.0%.
So, for example, if you play at a table with a $5 minimum and alternate your bets between $5 and $50 (when the count is right), and there are 50 hands dealt per hour, you might bet a total of $700 per hour, for an expected profit of just $7 per hour (with a 1% edge).
Clearly, to make some serious money you have to be good and bet more.
By the way, having the odds in your favor doesn’t eliminate the ups and downs. I can tell you from experience that even the house, with a larger statistical edge, loses on some days.
So with bets of, say, $25 to $100, you may do well in the long run, but you have to stomach nights when you lose thousands of dollars.
Still, if you do it right, you’ll be ahead in the long run, so you’re working, or investing, not gambling.
2. Try Credit Hustling
Credit hustling is simply looking for leftover credits on slot machines. Players often forget and leave without cashing out.
On slow nights when I had no players at my blackjack tables, I used to watch credit hustlers checking the machines, and they sometimes found credits.
A Daily Mail article on people who live in the tunnels under Las Vegas reports on one couple that survives by doing this.
They once found more than $900 in a single machine, although finding a dollar or two is the norm.
While not illegal (if the credit have been truly forgotten and abandoned), casinos don’t care for credit hustlers, so you’ll normally try to keep a low profile.
3. Join A Players Club
Almost every casino has some sort of “players club” you can join for free.
Apart from earning points as you play, which can be redeemed for freebies of all sorts, you also usually get some rewards up front for signing up.
For example, many casinos offer “match play” money. That might be $5 coupons or chips, for example, but you have to bet $5 of your own along with each one.
You can lose, but when you win $10 for betting $5 of your own money the odds are with you even at the worst games.
If you round up enough of these deals you can be pretty sure you’ll make a profit playing just long enough to use up your match play.
Casinos may offer a free meal or other goodies for joining the club too, which at least saves you some money.
4. Take Advantage Of Promotions
The casino where I worked handed out out $10 in free play to everyone who walked in the door (for a while anyhow).
Some couples came every day to get $20, playing perhaps 50 cents each in the slot machines before leaving with the rest of the money.
When my wife and I lived in Florida we went to a casino where they gave us each $5 in free slot machine play, and a free dinner, and free wine.
The catch was we had to play at least 100 times, but at nickel machines with a 12% house edge the expected loss is only 60 cents (100 x 5 cents x 12%), so, by playing slowly, we left ahead (and full) every single time we went.
Watch for any promotions at casinos near you, and see if there is some way to turn a profit from them.
5. Become A Good Poker Player
When you play against the casino, the house has the edge, but when you play against other players, you can have the edge if you’re good.
There are plenty of online tutorials on how to win at casino poker, but keep in mind that the house takes a cut of every pot, so you have to be significantly better than the other players to come out ahead.
As someone who has won money at poker (and chess) without much skill, I can tell you that the key is to play against weaker players.
Going against stronger competitors might help you prove something, but if you want to make money, look for tables with weak players.
6. Play In Slot Tournaments
Slot tournaments usually involve playing to see who does best in a set time, using machines set up with fake credits.
These events encourage fast play and are meant to get people into the casino, where they might gamble their own money before and after the competition.
Googling “free slot tournaments vegas” turns up (at the moment) a couple options, including one tournament that cost nothing and has prizes of up to $500 in slot play (you may have to play it through a machine, and then you keep whatever you’ve won).
Even tournaments with an entry fee can be money makers, because the prize pool often significantly exceeds the total of the entry fees.
In other words, if you’re good, and you play in a dozen tournaments, you’ll probably win more than what you spent on entry fees.
7. Play A Biased Roulette Wheel
There are 38 pockets on an American-style roulette wheel, and a “straight-up” bet pays 35-to-1 when you win (plus you keep the bet). You can see that this is a losing proposition.
But what if, instead of each number coming up randomly 1-in-38 spins, some numbers came up more often than they should?
It happens.
When I ran a roulette table one of my customers made a profit of $80,000 over the course of 16 months or so. I met him at a coffee shop after I quit, to get the whole story. Here’s the short version:
He wrote down the winning numbers for 5,000 spins (it took weeks). The number 2 was winning an average of 1-in-28 spins.
He bet $5 repeatedly on that number. On average, he lost $135 for every 28 spins (27 losses), but won $175 (35-to-1 payout) when the number 2 came up, for a net profit of $40 per 27 spins.
There are various possible reasons for a bias, ranging from a sticky pocket (temporary) to manufacturing imperfections (a more durable bias).
The good news is you don’t need to know why a certain number comes up more often to take advantage. You just need to verify that it’s a true bias (which takes thousands of spins).
I’ll let others teach you more about biased roulette wheels, but I’ll warn you that it’s tedious work to find one, and even with an edge you’ll have losing nights (my customer sometimes lost over $700 in a night, even though he was far ahead in the long run).
8. Identify A Roulette Dealer Signature
Some dealers may habitually (unconsciously) repeat certain patterns when they spin the wheel and the roulette ball, which makes the winning pocket more predictable.
My experience? On a slow night with no players a pit boss and I each chose a number and alternated spinning the wheel and dropping the ball, betting a dollar for each win
I came out $14 ahead in couple hours, meaning I spun my number 14 times more than he spun his.
So I strongly believe dealer signature is possible, and even gambling expert Frank Scoblete agrees, but how often it happens in real play, and whether you can take advantage of it… well, who knows? But here’s what you might look for…
Note the number passing by at the moment the dealer releases the ball, and note the winning number. After doing this many times (with the same dealer) look for a pattern.
For example, a dealer might be so consistent (in the speed of the wheel and the ball) that the ball lands in a certain “section” of the wheel (in relation to the release point) more often than it should.
If it lands in a section that covers a third of the wheel, but lands there half of the time, you have a signature.
Now it gets trickier. If the target section is, say, the 13 numbers starting 4 pockets to the left of the release number, you have to identify the release number and quickly place bets on as many numbers as possible in the target section, before betting is closed.
Could it work? If not casinos wouldn’t be so quick to change balls, change dealers, and move roulette wheels when it looks like people are winning. Where I worked they did all three often.
Good luck!
9. Use Casinos For Business Networking
I heard a lot of conversations at my tables. Sometimes they resulted in players getting new clients or developing new business relationships.
And I learned about how to make money from scrap metal from one such conversation.
It’s common for players to talk to other players at a blackjack or roulette table, which makes a casino a great place to network and find new ways to make money.
And watching how players handle those stacks of chips in front of them can tell you a little about whether you want to do business with them or not.
10. Get A Casino Job
In 1994 I was making $14 per hour dealing blackjack and roulette. A BLS inflation calculator tells me that’s the equivalent of $24 per hour in today’s dollars.
And, in fact, a friend who still works at that casino says she makes over $20 per hour.
Dealing table games is just one of the many positions you might find at a casino near you. One of my coworkers started as a surveillance officer with no experience, and used the knowledge and experience gained to later build a successful business selling surveillance equipment.
Other positions include slot machine tech, bartender, waiter, cage worker (handling the money), and pit boss.
Also, working in a casino usually means you’re forbidden from gambling there, which might be a good thing for some readers.
Save Money By Taking Advantage Of Casino Freebies
Some casinos have free events at which they put out snacks or even full meals. Other casinos offer inexpensive meals at their restaurants. Watch for these deals as a way to save money on a night out.
Even the free drinks offered by many casinos can make for a cheap night out if you know what you’re doing.
For example, my wife and I play 5-cent slot machines, set the speed to “slow” (keno machines usually have three settings), and, by the time we have lost a couple dollars we’ve had a few drinks and some fun.
Turn $60 Into $600 By Betting The Right Way
Maybe you like to gamble, and you’re smart enough to limit your losses. But how you play still matters.
For example, with a $60 bankroll, if you bet $5 per hand at a blackjack table you can often play all night, but you’ll never be very far ahead at any point.
That’s great if you want to sit there and enjoy the free drinks.
But to win big you need to make bigger bets at some point. For example, if you’re $20 ahead, bet $10 per hand, and if you get further ahead, bet $20 or $40 per hand. To summarize:
Bet the table minimum when you lose, and bet more and more when you’re winning.
Most of the time you’ll lose your $60 faster this way (because you’ll often those big bets), but it gives you a chance to win big from time to time.
I saw many people turn $60 into $600 over the years, and not one player did it by always betting the table minimum.
You have to “press your luck” to win big. Just be sure to bring a limited amount of money, so your losses are not a big deal.
Final Thoughts
You may like to gamble, and if you limit your losses, it’s affordable entertainment. Even better, if you time your casino visits to coincide with promotional events you might get some free food and drinks.
And finally, if you’re willing to do the necessary work, you can even make money in a casino, and without really gambling.
If you know other ways to make money in a casino, share your ideas below … and keep on frugaling!
Almost every online casino has some sort of welcome bonus to help try and persuade you to sign up and use their website rather than their competitors. With a little bit of thought and cleverness, we can take these new-player casino bonuses and convert them into withdrawable cash.
But before we delve into casino bonuses, let’s talk about sportsbook bonuses. Making money from them is known as matched betting and is pretty easy and may be where you started off?
But right now because of the COVID-19 coronavirus most sports aren’t running so there aren’t that many matched betting offers available. But to try and keep customers casinos are offering better bonuses than normal. Now is a great time to try some casino bonus bagging – especially as we all need to make some more money!
Contents
Unlike Matched Betting, Casino Bonus Bagging Isn’t Risk Free
Unlike matched betting, making money from casino bonuses is not risk-free. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be profitable and worth doing.
We call this notion EV (expected value). By using maths we can work out how much money we will make on average from the bonus. So why is that not risk-free? Because of variance. Each time we make a slightly different amount, but over the long term it averages to the EV.
If you understand what I mean then feel free to skip straight to the how casino bonuses work section.
Note: this can get quite complicated. If you want someone to explain it to you one-to-one then Oddsmonkey have an onboarding coach who will hold your hand when you sign up to their £17.99 a month service.
The Maths – How Casinos Make Money
Let’s say that we are playing a game of flip the coin, and because we’re fun people we’re also betting on it.
If we bet £1 a throw.
- I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
- You win £1 and I lose £1 if the coin comes up tails.
That is what we call a fair game.
There is risk – we could play 100 flips and I might lose money, or I might win money. But either way, it is just down to luck. Statistically, I am not more likely to win than to lose.
There is a 50% chance of me winning each throw, and a 50% chance of me losing each throw.
That is not what it is like in a casino. The casino has an edge.
How To Make Money Online Casino No Deposit
Let’s change the rules slightly:
- I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
- You win £1.10 and I lose £1.10 if the coin comes up tails.
That is not a fair a game.
There is still risk – we could play 100 flips and I might make money. But I am more likely to lose.
On each coin toss I expect to lose 5p. We use this word “expect” a lot when it comes to making money from casino bonuses. It means the average in the long-term.
Here is a very simple tree showing you how we worked out that expected loss of 5p.
(0.5 x £1) + (0.5 x -£1.10) = -£0.05
That number becomes what is called the house edge. For every £1 we bet we expect to lose 5p.
If we play 1,000 flips, I will have bet £1,000 and expect to lose £50 (1,000 x 5p).
The More We Play The Closer To Expected We Get
Now we get a bit more complicated. The longer I play, the more likely I am to lose money.
I am not going to explain the maths here (email me if you want to know), but over 1 coin flip my chance of walking away with a profit is 50%. The coin can either come up heads or tails.
Over 100 coin flips my chance of making a profit has dropped to 31.7%, that’s almost a 1/3rd chance which still is quite high. I might decide that I’m feeling especially lucky and take that 1/3rd chance. But over 6,000 coin flips my chance of leaving with a profit drops only 1%.
That is how a casino makes money. If there are 60 people playing at your casino and each plays the coin flip game 100 times, then each person has a 31.7% chance of leaving with a profit. But as the casino is playing 6,000 total flips it only has a 1% chance of not making a profit overall. A pretty clever business model.
Biased Roulette Wheel
What Are The House Edges Of Different Casino Games?
Now you can’t actually play our coin flip game in a casino so let’s apply this concept to two real casino games.
Roulette. Is a very basic game which almost everyone understands.
There are 36 numbers not including the zero. Of those 36 – 18 are red and 18 are black. The number zero is not red or black. Each time the wheel spins there is an equal chance that the ball will land on any of the numbers 0 – 36.
If you bet on red and it comes up, you win your stake back. So a £1 bet would win £1.
There is an 18 out of 37 chance of a red colour coming up. That means that you have a 48.6% chance of winning, and a 51.4% chance of losing.
Let’s draw that same tree we did earlier but this time for roulette:
(0.486 x £1) + (0.514 x -£1) = -£0.028
For ever £1 bet we expect to lose 2.8p. That’s the house edge.
That’s pretty low. But roulette is not the casino game with the lowest house edge. That award goes to….
Blackjack. Forget card counting or anything you’ve seen in the films, your basic blackjack is the casino game with the smallest house edge.
There are many different rule sets for blackjack, and the house edge depends both on those rules and also on how close to perfect strategy the player is playing. But most games of blackjack have a house edge of about 0.5p per £1 bet (0.5%).
Let’s just think about that, 0.5%. That’s so low! It’s the equivalent of playing the coin flip game with the rules:
- I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
- You win £1.01 and I lose £1.01 if the coin comes up tails.
If we played 1,000 hands of blackjack at £1 a bet, we would have staked £1,000 and expect to lose just £5.
How Casino Bonuses Work
Thank you for sitting through all of that. Now that the basics are out the way let’s talk about the juicy stuff. How we can actually make some money from casino bonuses.
Just like with matched betting, most casinos offer new players an incentive to sign up and play at their casino.
Unfortunately, unlike with matched betting, there is no way we can hedge out our bets. But we can use this knowledge of the house edge to turn things in our favour. Provided the bonus is good, we can expect to make money.
Let’s take a look at one bonus that is currently offered by William Hill on their live casino.
To get the bonus, we need to deposit £25 and then place a series of bets that total at least £200. When we have reached that target and we contact customer service, a bonus of £25 will be added which we are then free to withdraw along with whatever is left of our initial deposit.
How We Make Money From Casino Bonuses
£200 sounds like a lot, but after what we’ve learnt about house edges and blackjack it shouldn’t sound so bad. Remember blackjack has a house edge of 0.5%.
Over £200 staked we expect to lose only £1. That means we expect to keep £24 of the bonus!
This is what we expect to happen.
- We deposit £25 into William Hill Live casino.
- We place 200 £1 bets. At the end, we have lost £1 and have £24 left.
- A £25 bonus is added to our balance.
- We withdraw our balance of £49 (£24+£25).
- We have made a profit of £24.
But, there is risk.
There is a chance we will lose more than just £1. There is even a chance of us losing more money than the bonus is worth. If we use up all of that £25 we would need to deposit more in order to finish the staking.
We won’t go into the maths on variance. But understand this. Blackjack has a house edge of 0.5% and a standard deviation of 1.15.
That means that at a £1 bet size there is a 95% chance we will make somewhere between £7.75 and £40.25. But it also means there is a 7% chance of making a small loss.
That is the essence of making money from casino bonuses. You are simply moving the odds to your favour.
Websites like Oddsmonkey and Profit Accumulator (more on them later) have calculators for working out your variance and house edge from different casino games. They also have strategy calculators to help you play the games optimally.
Whew. So after all that explaining, the actual steps were very simple.
But we had to go into all that details because it will enable you to look at more advanced offers and take advantage of them as well. Every casino bonus has different terms and you need to be able to work out what strategy to follow to get the highest ‘expected profit’ or ev from the bonus.
Which brings us on to the hardest part of making money from casino bonuses.
Where To Find The Best Casino Bonuses
You can only do that William Hill Live casino offer once, so to continue making money you need to find some more offers.
And the unfortunate truth is for more casino bonuses it is not profitable to make money from them. You need to find the diamonds in the rough.
You can do this in exactly the same way as you would when sports matched betting. And in fact, if you have done matched betting before you will probably already know the following two choices:
- Look through casino terms and conditions manually.
95% of people pay for a service. Compared to the EV you can make the services are cheap, they give you a curated list of offers to work through, and they point out any dangerous loopholes in the terms and conditions.
My two favourite paid for services for casino bonuses are:
- Profit Accumulator. Free for your first few bonuses, then £19.99 a month.
- Oddsmonkey. Free for your first few bonuses, £19.99 a month.
Nowadays they are both pretty similar with largely the same offers but different communities, website feel and customer service. They each have free accounts you can try out so I suggest signing up to both and then choosing which one you like the most.
Note: this can get quite complicated. If you want someone to explain it to you one-to-one then Oddsmonkey have an onboarding coach who will hold your hand when you sign up to their £19.99 a month service.
There Are Lots Of Different Types Of Casino Bonuses
Wow what a beast of a post!
How To Make Money Online Casino Roulette
Let’s just finish on saying that there are lots of different types of casino bonuses and all have slightly different best ways to exploit them.
By now you should understand the concept of expectedvalue and therefore making money from casino bonuses. You have a guide to tackle your first bonus and you have plenty of resources to help you research and find new offers. Good luck!
USEFUL LINKS
- More details on casino wagering requirements.
- My summer betting diary where I made £250 a week throughout the summer holidays.
FAQ
What happens if I lose all of the £25 before completing the wagering requirement??
This is a very real risk and is also the reason why there is a chance of losing a small amount of money while completing the wagering requirement.
What you need to do is to deposit more money and finish the betting.
I hear people talking about ‘sticky’ bonuses or doubling up. What does that mean?
You should really join a forum and start asking people there. You are getting into some quite complicated areas with the potential to lose some large amounts of money if you make a mistake.
But in short: A sticky bonus is one that you can never withdraw. You can only withdraw the winnings. This means that the tactics we spoke about earlier don’t work. Doubling up is a technique to make money from them. You basically bet the whole bonus on red on roulette. If the bet wins you withdraw the winnings. If you lose you’ve lost the bonus which you couldn’t withdraw anyway.
What are the house odds of some other casino games?
- Baccarat – 1.06%
- 3-card Poker – 2.01%
- Craps – 0.34%
- French Roulette (you get 50% of your stake back if it lands on 0) – 1.35%
- American Roulette (two 0s) – 5.26%
- Slots – 3-10%. Average is about 5%.
Can I card count online blackjack?
No, you cannot. Card counting relies on the contents of the remaining cards changing as the rounds go on. In online blackjack the cards are shuffled every hand so the contents don’t change. You can do it with live blackjack – but I believe they shuffle regularly to make it more difficult. I have never tried.
I have a question that is not answered here?
Drop me an email at hello@sampriestley.com and I will do my best to get back to you.
Can you make money from casino bonuses while self-isolating or under quarantine?
Yes you can! It is actually a very good time to do it because you can do every step of the offer from your home.