Welcome to GamblingExperience.com, the site where gamblers share their experiences with other gamblers!
Currently you can find reports on the eight topics below. If you want to send us your experiences, you can do that directly here, we look forward to your contribution and will publish it anonymously here shortly.
Sports betting
Bets are especially popular with men. While in the past there were only simple bets such as those on the outcome of a horse race, thanks to online betting providers you can now bet on countless events, such as whether a football team leads at least 2:0 before the break or whether a team does not get a goal during a match.
Depending on how likely the playmaker and the other participants are to estimate an event, different odds will be paid in the event of a win: If you bet on a blatant outsider and are, contrary to expectations, correct, the odds are significantly better than if you bet on a win by Bayern Munich against the last player in the standings.
Slots
Slots is the most popular game in casinos. It is no coincidence that slot machines occupy the largest space in casinos. Slots are about the round three or five reels, which are equipped with different symbols, coming to a standstill in such a way that their particular winning arrangement is created.
Slot machines are also known by the term “one-armed bandit” because the reels (at least earlier) could be set in motion by pulling a lever.
Most slot machines are now computer-controlled. This may eliminate some nostalgia and the games run much faster, but there are new ways to win. Depending on the machine, you can not only win with the correct arrangement of the symbols in a horizontal line, but you can also win money on 2, 3, 10 or even 243 possibilities.
Slot machines are a relatively fair game because most of the money is paid out again. Depending on the casino and the machine, the odds are between 95% and 99%. Especially exciting are the slot machines, where you can play for constantly growing jackpots. At certain online casinos, millions can be won if the jackpot has not been hit for a long time.
Roulette
Roulette is very popular in the casino or online casino. Everyone knows the game with the wheel and the saying of the croupier “Rien ne va plus”, when no more bets may be made, and each new round offers again high tension.
Roulette is about guessing where the small ball thrown into a rotating wheel will end up. There are 37 squares in the cauldron with the numbers 0 to 36, with the numbers 1-36 each highlighted in red or black and the 0 highlighted in green. You can place various bets, and the lower the probability of winning, the higher the payout. The smallest probability of winning is a bet on a single number (1/37 or 2.7%). The highest probability of winning is with the bet on the simple odds, i.e. by betting on one of these events: red/black, even/odd or 1-18/19-36. Here the chance of winning is almost 50%: 18/37 or 48.6%, but you can only double your bet if you win.
The expected profit per euro bet is 36/37 because of the green 0, that is 97.3 cents, with which you can gamble for a long time with good money management.
Black Jack
The goal of blackjack is to have 21 or less points with your cards and to score at least as many points as the bank. If you have 22 or more points, you lose. If you win, you double your bet.
Blackjack, unlike Roulette, is not just a game of chance. This is about making decisions based on the dealer’s cards and your own cards. However, the rules are designed to ensure that in the long run the dealer wins. Because the game is not fair: the player must decide before the bank whether he wants to draw another card. If he has 22 or more points, he loses in any case.
It is, however, possible to lower the bank advantage to approx. 1% with the optimal strategy (i.e. you win back an average of 99 cents per euro used). This is possible because the bank reveals one card and you can choose if you want to draw more cards. In addition, there are other options, so you can about double if you have two identical cards.
Poker
Poker is played in countless variations. The most common variant is no longer Five Card Draw, but Texas Hold’em. Here you first get two “hole cards”, which you look at hidden in front of the other players. Then there is a round of bidding. Then the flop is revealed with three cards. Then there is another round of betting, and then one more card (“turn” and “river”) is revealed, each with one round of betting. The winner is the player who has the best combination of five cards, consisting of his own two cards plus the five cards on the table, or who was the last player not to discard his cards voluntarily.
Texas Hold’em Poker is played either as a cash game or as a tournament. In the cash game, you can play as long as you want (and buy new chips each time), while in the tournament, the first prize goes to the player who has all the chips at the end.
In contrast to the above games of chance, poker has little to do with luck in the long run. In the short term, it may seem like a game of chance to an outside observer. But in the long run it is not the luck of the cards that decides, but one’s own skill. It is important to correctly assess the situation (value of one’s own cards and presumed range of the value of the opponent’s cards) and to control the expected value of one’s bet with skillful bidding in such a way that one makes a profit in the long run.
Because Texas Hold’em Poker is not a game of chance and because you are not playing against the bank but against other people, it is actually possible (unlike the above games) to make money with it in the long run. However, very few players can make a living from this. Because one must not only be better than the opponents, but be so much better that after deduction of the fees to the casino (rake) still enough money remains.
Lotto
Lotto is the most popular game of chance in Germany. Who doesn’t love to fill out a lottery ticket and dream of winning the lottery for a few hours or days? It’s not for nothing that people say that you “buy a dream” with every lottery ticket. Unfortunately, for most players it bursts at the next draw. But no problem, because every Wednesday and Saturday you can look forward to the new winning numbers.
In Germany the number lottery is played as “6 out of 49”. The main prize and thus the jackpot can be won if you correctly bet 6 correct numbers plus the super number (a number between 0 and 9). The chance of winning the main prize is around one in 140 million.
Because only 50% of the stake is paid out again, Lotto is a very unfair game of chance, but the chance of the main prize with each new draw again attracts countless players.
Forex Trading
Forex trading involves trading foreign exchange, stocks, indices or commodities online. Due to a leverage of e.g. 1:50, you can move a lot of money with little betting and can achieve high profits with small price movements. However, if you are wrong, the invested capital is lost very quickly.
In contrast to buying shares, FX trading does not incur any fees. The offerers finance themselves by the spread, thus by the difference between the purchase and selling price. However, the spread is usually very low, so that you can trade Forex Trading inexpensively.
Binary Options
The product Binary Options was developed because Forex trading was too complex for many hobby traders. Binary options are very popular and are now advertised on television. This is about betting on a certain currency pair or a certain stock whether the price will be higher or lower at the end of a certain period (this can be 15 minutes, but also only 60 seconds) than at the end of the bet.
If you were right, you usually win 70-80% in addition to your bet. If, on the other hand, you are wrong, you lose your bet completely or get a small “consolation” back (5-15% of your bet).
Even if the providers tell you a lot about strategy and want to make you believe that binary options are about skill, market understanding and correct chart analysis, from our point of view trading binary options is a game of chance with worse payout rates than roulette, for example. The reason is that the expected value per euro used is much too low: we are not aware of any provider where the expected value per euro used is more than 95 cents. And this massive disadvantage can be beaten in the long run also with the best strategy hardly. Thus also many former traders speak of fraud, scam and dubious business conduct of the offerers. However one should take oneself here also at the nose, because there is no possibility of getting rich fast and simply. Despite some negative headlines, Binary Options brokers attract new customers every day. Because not least, many gamblers appreciate trading binary options because it promises a lot of thrills and at least gives you the feeling of being able to beat the market with your own skill.
An important hint at the end
No matter how euphoric certain experience reports are here (we can’t check the truth content): Except for a few very skilled or extremely lucky players or traders, most people lose money in the above games.
The rules for such games of chance are written in such a way that in the long run the casino or trading provider earns more money than it spends. You should therefore not be blinded by the odds of winning and observe these two important rules:
- Gamble only with money that you can easily afford to lose
- Play games to have fun and not to make money
