Ever find yourself wishing you could keep playing a little longer? If you'd
like to end your casino session saying "that's enough fun for one day"
instead of "I'm broke!" then we've got a few suggestions for you.
There are basically four ways to extend your play time at the casino. The
first is obvious: be a low-roller! The idea here is to play games where a given
round of betting is a small or very small percentage of your bankroll. We're
talking penny or nickel Slots where your bankroll is in the hundreds or higher.
Or try $1 or $2 Blackjack where you've got a few thousand in the cash box.
No matter how bad a player you are if you start with a big stake and stick to
the small games you're going to burn out before your bankroll does. Mission
accomplished!
The second way to end the day bent instead of busted is to play the smart
bets in a game with good -- or at least decent -- odds. Baccarat comes to mind,
assuming you're betting Player or Bank (even better) and never, Never, NEVER
betting Tie. Craps is pretty good too if you only bet Pass/Don't Pass and take
the Odds bets religiously. Slots games with high payout ratios -- you MUST check
these, DO NOT assume anything -- are not bad either. Anything over 98% is
worthwhile for our purposes.
If your taking the good-odds/smart-bets-only approach it's still a good idea
to walk in with a healthy bankroll. I'd say 50 to 100 times your average betting
round is advisable. Haven't got that much in the cash box? Time to go back to
the first option (see above). The next way, our third way, to hang in there for
the long run is to play a sssslllloooowwww game. I'm not talking about a
"click ... click ... hello?" situation. That's just a slow internet
connection and while it will help stretch your play time it will also drive you
berserk which is not part of the plan.
No, here we're talking about games that don't rush you. This can be tricky
because most casino games are designed to play fast in order to maximize the
money flow across the table. Good candidates for the "Snail Pace"
award include Keno -- suggest your slow things down by reading your horoscope
and/or doing crosswords -- which will usually only go as fast as you let it, a
chatty game of low-stakes multi-player Poker, or Pai Gow where just figuring out
what the hell is going on is enough to get you to tea time without emptying your
pockets.
Last and trickiest in the list is playing a skill-based game very, very well.
Two options here include Blackjack and Poker. Blackjack is the perennial
favourite if you know your Basic Strategy and can play it without screwing up
all the time. Don't play hunches, don't "wing it", don't listen to
anything anybody says. Play your Basic, play it like Moses brought it down with
the tablets (it was in his belt, not many people saw it there), and Basic is all
you will play. Also a good idea to keep the table stakes as low as will hold
your interest.
Poker is another good skill-based option though Poker is never a "for
sure" thing. There's always someone out there better than you and if you
happen to run into him or her you're not going to do well. I recommend finding
rookies to play with and slowly taking all their money while giving them
"free" Poker lessons. In the end they'll like you for all your
helpfulness and you'll like them because they lost.
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