Gambling's the Name of the Game

Bet the odds. Long shots and sucker bets do pay off once in a while, it's true.

But the smart person doesn't bet on what's possible, only on what's probable. Sucker bets aren't called that for nothing. To bet the odds in any form of gambling, you have to have a clear understanding of how the game works--- what's likely, and what isn't.

There are hundreds of stories about gamblers who put a lot of money on what they thought was a sure thing, but lost because their knowledge was inadequate.

They didn't really know what they thought they knew. A well-known gambler in Las Vegas, for example, bet $100,000 against a baseball pitcher who the gambler knew had spent a wild night with a certain lady. He lost.

The bettor assumed he knew that some kinds of physical activity would adversely affect some others. But no doctor or physiologist would ever have made such a bet.

The lesson is clear: Stick to what you know when gambling, and be sure your knowledge is real, not just superstition.

Also, be prepared to concentrate. Otherwise, you aren't gambling to win. If you're a vacation visitor to Atlantic City, with a few hundred budgeted to lose, and nothing much on your mind except having a good time, and forgetting about your job for a week or two, this doesn't apply to you.

Concentrating is hard work: It isn't fun, and it isn't relaxing, but it is essential, if you want to win. Good gamblers can do complicated arithmetic in their heads faster than a pocket calculator.

They have to, because if they brought a pocket calculator to the table, the game would be likely to tighten up beyond all recognition. Good gamblers can count cards, remembering their own bets, as well as those of their own fellow players, and assemble bits of remembered information from disparate sources in order to come up with the winning intuition about a horse or a quarterback.

The more clearly your game is a game of skill, the more single-minded your concentration should be.

The obsessive gambler is only happy when the odds are against him. In a way, this seems true of the pro, too, but appearances are deceiving.

An old-timer offers his advice: "Never play when you're tired or sick or in love. Those are conditions that ought to find you in bed, not in the casino. Only the fit should gamble". To be fit means that you're able to reason and remember, so if there's anything wrong with your head don't play.