Gambling for Cheap
Poker players love to gamble (ldo, right?) One problem many of them face is finding a cheap way to do it. It is not atypical for a poker player to be too nitty to gamble on games with a house edge since they have grown accustomed to expecting to win when they gamble. However, there are a few ways to circumnavigate this problem by finding cheap ways to gamble.
Sports-Betting Rogue Lines
Sports-betting is a favorite of many poker players. It’s very difficult to actually win (in the long-run) at sports-betting, but with a little know-how, it’s pretty easy to only lose a little.
One way is by using what I like to call the ‘Pinnacle Trick’. This method is not without flaws, but it’s still a good way to find cheap gambles. Pinnacle.com is the best online sportsbook with the lowest vig and largest allowable max bets. From a business operation standpoint, Pinnacle’s lines have to be very, very accurate otherwise well-bankrolled, savvy bettors could run them out of business by exploiting their inaccurate lines. So basically as far as line-makers go, Pinnacle is god.
Unfortunately for us Americans, we cannot bet on Pinnacle. There are several other good sportsbooks though, like Bodog, where you can implement the ‘Pinnacle Trick’. How does the trick work? It’s pretty easy. Find a line on Pinnacle and average it out to find the “vig-free” line. For example, if Detroit is -142 against Kansas City’s +136, the “vig-free” line in this game is +/- 139. Make sense? So, the logic on this method is that if you can find Kansas City for +140 (or higher) or Detroit for -138 (or lower), it’s a +EV bet. Like I said, this method isn’t without flaws so it’s not perfect, but it definitely can be a weather vane for finding good lines to bet.
This method works best for baseball betting since there are so many games and the vig is so much smaller compared to football or (shriek!) futures bets. Bodog in particular is a good sportsbook to use since the players there tend to bet so fishy. For example, when the Pirates play the Cubs, everyone and their Uncle with a Bodog account bets on the Cubs thinking it’s a “sure thing” which alters the line and makes betting on the Pirates a better-value proposition.
Craps
The poker world is filled with tales of talented players who can never keep a dollar in their pocket because of one major leak: craps. In truth, craps is actually a perfectly reasonable gamble to make if you actually know what you’re doing and is cheaper, from an expected value standpoint, than pretty much any other game in a casino, blackjack included. The problem with most casino patrons is that they don’t know what craps bets they’re getting robbed on and which ones aren’t that bad. As a general rule, the sexier the craps bet, the more you’re getting ripped off. For example, never bet on “snake eyes”, the house-edge on that is an absurd 13.9%.
However, the house edge on the pass line is a modest 1.4%. Best of all, you can place an “odds” bet once the point is set which has zero house edge! This is, I believe, the only bet you can make in a casino where the casino has no edge.
Most casinos limit the amount you can place on the “odds” to 3-5x the size of your pass line bet. However, a small hole-in-the-wall next to the Venetian in Las Vegas called the Casino Royale lets players bet up to 100x their pass line bet on the odds! So what does that mean? It means you can bet $5 on the pass line (giving up a paltry $0.07 per bet… big deal) and then bet up to $500 on the odds where there is no house edge. So for the cost of a bottle of water, you can enjoy high-variance gambling action for a couple of hours. To top it all off, they’ll probably throw you a handsome comp to the Outback Steakhouse upstairs. Just stay away from the ‘Field’ bet!
