Recently I watched quite a bit of gambling Youtube videos, where Youtubers would publish videos of them gambling on various physical casinos or online gambling sites. The videos would usually show them winning big or earning easy profits. Sure there are losses here and there, but they would always manage to flip it around and earn a month, a year or 10 years’ worth of our salaries in just a few minutes or hours. However, if money is that easy to earn, there will be no poor man on the streets. What is the catch?
Expected Value
This is a bit mathematical, but I will try to simplify it as much as possible. In statistics, there is a concept called expected value, which is the mean (average) of possible values of an outcome, weighted by their probabilities. For example, if I play an unfair game where I earn $10 if I toss a coin and it lands on heads, and I lose only $5 if the coin lands on tails, then my expected value will be $10 x 0.5 (probability of heads) + ($-5) x 0.5 = $2.50. This means that if I play long enough, I should expect an earning of $2.50 per coin toss.
Now we bring it back to a more practical example. In casinos there is a game called big small, also known as sic bo. The simple game is 3 dice are cast, and you can either bet big or small, of which the payout is 1:1. Many people will think this game is a 50-50 odds, and the casinos do not have any edge. However, if all 3 dice gets the same number, you will not win anything. Mathematically, any of the 16 numbers from 3 to 18 can result when 3 dice are cast. We now have the following table of probabilities:
Assuming a player is logical enough not to bet on a low probability high winning stakes like triples, and only bet on either big or small, the expected value of his gamble per game per dollar will be (0.4167 x $1) for a win + (0.0277 x -$1) for a loss due to triples + (0.4167 x -$1) for a loss = -$0.0277. This means that over the long run, for every dollar he bet on a game, he will lose 2.77 cents.
How Casinos Operate
Casinos do not cheat outright (a different ball game for online casinos though), nor do they depend on luck. However, they make use of probabilities to kill you. Cold hard numbers which will eliminate almost all luck in the long run. I graduated with a degree in Statistics, and quite a number of my cohort mates went on to work for the casinos. Using the example above, one may think the house only has a slight edge for every game, and that it does not matter. However, gamblers almost never bet on one hand only. As more bets are placed, so will the probabilities stack up against you. If in 1 game, you are expected to lose 2.77 cents, then in 10 games you are expected to lose 27.7 cents on a dollar.
Some may then say, well how about I play Blackjack? While certainly luck is involved, the player can count cards to a certain extent and force the house to bust 21 on certain games. Bankers must draw on 16 and stop on 17. However, the player can decide to stop at 12, 13, 14 or even draw on 19 or 20. Even if the casino put in a few decks of card in a batch, with experience and calculations, the player can still work out the sums to his advantage. Is that really true?
Theoretically speaking, with card counting, your expected value (EV) is bigger than 0, meaning you will actually earn money when playing. Do note that in the previous paragraphs your expected value is negative. However, the edge in expected value is not high, and we would have to play many games in order to make it a certain victory. We use a simple example.
We assume that you have a slight edge over the house at 1.05 : 1, or 105 : 100. If you win, you get $1. If you lose, you lose $1. Theoretically speaking, you will earn 5 cents on every dollar if you play long enough. For example, if you have $100, but you bet $20 on each hand, there is a chance that luck works against you and you lose 5 games in a row straight and that is game over. However, if you manage risks properly, and bet only $1 each time, then by statistics, you will be able to stay in the game long enough to get the probability to work in your favour.
However, things are not as easy as it seems. Firstly, you will need to learn card counting. While not an easy task, it is something which can be done with proficiency with some training. Secondly, it is unlikely that you will be able to operate alone, as casinos monitor very carefully on big winners. You are likely to need to operate in a group to share the load and to get eyes off you. But as you need to manage your risks, you will have to win many small amounts for it to be worthwhile, but that also increases the risks of catching the attention of the casinos. Upon getting caught, you are either banned from the casinos or maybe get sent to prison.
In short, while you theoretically can have an edge over the casino, you will need to invest time and effort to train up the skill, get a group to work with you, slowly and carefully manage your risks in terms of probabilities and not getting caught, and get stopped out when are finally caught. For a short term gain, the investment of time and effort and the risks of getting caught may not really be worthwhile. If you know the game can be broken, so do the casinos. The casinos are allowed to win over the long run using probability, but not you.
Partnership With Influencers
Influencers or Youtubers who seem to win it all in the casinos are actually being partnered with the casinos to do so. Do not be tricked by their seemingly endless money and their constant wins. It is not normal for a 20-something or 30-something Youtuber to have hundreds of thousands or millions to gamble. It is not normal for them to win thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions in a very short span of time while everyone else is slogging like a dog. If it is that easy to earn money, the casinos would have shut down long ago.
Online casinos have partnerships with these so-called influencers, where they get money for referring customers, or opt for revenue-share. Basically, if a person sign up through their affiliate link, the revenue-share model allows the influencer to directly profit from his fan’s loss. Just open Youtube and choose a random gambling video, you will see the Youtubers promoting their affiliate link every single video. Almost every video ends with a win.
In fact, there are certain articles claiming that certain Youtubers are gambling with fake money provided by the casinos, and everything you see on video is but a lie. I am not going deep into this, for there are quite a few articles and discussions online, nor do I want to risk wrongfully accusing anyone. But the screenshot below shows an example of such a claim against a particular famous Youtuber.
I do not have direct proof on this, neither do I plan to wrongly accuse any particular entity, but there have also been many claims that in online casinos, the algorithm is set in such a way that you will lose. It is something that one should ponder carefully about.
Conclusion
Gambling is a zero-sum game, and we know that casinos are very profitable. Where do these profits come from?
Even if we believe that casinos do not cheat with the algorithms nor give fake money to influencers to gamble, the statistics stack against you. And if you do decide to use probability against them, you will soon find yourself either getting banned, or behind bars.
Do not gamble. You will ruin your life.
