Mines Games Pattern Casino Gambling Strategy
Knowing how to play a game will only get you so far.
Success at any online casino depends not only on a familiarity with the game’s rules, but an understanding of the underlying concepts of the game and proficiency with the best strategy.
Much of casino strategy consists of reducing, or in some cases even eliminating, the casino’s advantage (commonly known as the house advantage, or the house edge). Once you understand the house edge, the strategy for minimizing it can be implemented and applied to individual games.
Minimizing the House Edge
All forms of gambling include an inherent advantage for the casino. If you think of an online casino as a business, bets are its product. Since the casino determines the rules, policies and payouts of each game it offers, it guarantees a profit margin through a fixed commission. This is the house edge.
To understand how the house edge works, imagine the casino allows you to bet on the outcome of a coin flip. You bet $10 per flip and the rules are laid out so that each time the coin lands tails, you lose your bet. Each time the coin lands heads, you win, but the casino only pays you $9. Basic probability tells us that the coin stands an equal chance of landing either heads or tails, and thus you will win as much as you lose. This does not mean you will break even.
With the casino pocketing $1 of each of your payouts, they will continue to collect more money the longer you play. In fact, if you brought $500 to the table, you would lose your entire bankroll after 1,000 coin flips, even if you won half of them. In this example, the $1 represents a 5% house edge for the casino ($1 commission per $10 bet, divided by two coin flips). Believe it or not, some casino games have a house edge as high as 25%.
As you can see, casino gambling sites do not depend on you losing every bet. As players, we fixate on whether we win or lose. The casino doesn’t care what happens, as long as we keep playing. Statistically, all major wins will be neutralized with a series of losses over time, plus the commission collected on each bet. The example above features a game that offs 50/50 odds with less than a 1:1 payout. Sometimes, the reverse holds true; for instance, betting black/red in roulette pays 1:1, but the odds of winning are slightly less than 50% (18/37 in European Roulette). Either way, the casino wins.
