How to Improve Your Odds in Online Casinos
Very few people know that there are real ways to improve their chances in online casinos. Even fewer actually use them.
If you want to play consciously and use every available tool to improve your odds or even gain an advantage, you must start with the basics.
Level 1. The Basics
At the most fundamental level you need to understand three things:
how the random number generator works
how a slot is built
and how RTP is calculated
This alone will help you get rid of countless myths about rigged results, cycles, pools, hot and cold machines and similar nonsense. I wrote about this in detail here and here.
You also need a clear understanding of responsible gambling. Never risk more than you can afford to lose, set limits before you start, and never chase losses.
If your plan was to play for one hundred dollars before bed, and you ended up losing several thousand while trying to recover and even missed work, that is a serious warning sign. Even if you planned to lose one hundred and ended up losing two hundred, it is still a red flag. This is an important point that deserves attention.
Casinos use manipulative design at every step. Every button on the website and every near miss animation in a slot is created to keep you playing for as long as possible. I wrote about this in my article on education and legal manipulation.
Level 2. Risk and Probability
The next step is understanding volatility1. It affects your risk, your chance to be ahead or behind, and the probability of hitting max wins and large multipliers such as x1000, x5000 and more. I wrote two long posts about this, one about max wins and one about volatility.
You also need a few basic ideas from probability theory. For example, past events do not influence future outcomes. Or the fact that if a bonus round appears on average once in 180 spins, it does not mean that you will get one every 180 spins. The chance that you will not get a bonus even once in 180 spins is 36.8%.
Many articles tell you to try demo play before real play, but it’s useless. A couple hundred spins tell you nothing. To understand volatility, you need simulators that can run tens of thousands of spins.
For example, if you take a balance of two hundred dollars and make ten thousand one dollar bets on red in roulette, your chance to finish in profit is almost zero. If you make ten thousand one dollar bets on a single number, your chances to finish in profit are higher and the profit can be significant. Compare the two images below.
Slots are even harder. Even low volatility slots are as risky as betting on a single number in roulette if you have a two hundred dollar balance. It is almost impossible to understand this without simulators or massive experience.
If you need links to tools, write in the comments and I will send them privately.
Level 3. Advantage Play (+EV)
Now you can start improving your odds, including creating positive expected value situations using deposit bonuses, cashback, tournaments, progressive jackpots, comp points and other promotions.
Avoid playing without extra value and avoid high house edge games. If you still want to play a slot for fun, choose Book of 99 with 99% RTP or Mega Joker which has a base RTP of 96 without the progressive jackpot and an additional RTP that depends on the jackpot size. On average it is about 99 percent, and if you choose higher jackpot values, like above 15-20k, the average RTP goes above 100%.
Always try to get at least something for every deposit. A bonus or at least free spins. Some offshore casinos give three to five percent on every crypto deposit.It’s solid—definitely better than nothing. If there is cashback, play aggressively and avoid large wagering volume so you can increase your EV by recovering losing sessions.
Example. How I extract EV right now
While I am writing this, the following is happening in parallel. I received an offer for a 100 percent bonus up to 300 dollars with a wager of 20 times the bonus amount. This casino also gives 3 percent for crypto deposits, but every deposit must be wagered at least three times.
To maximize EV from the bonus I need to play max bet in a volatile slot. I wrote about this in detail in my article about squeezing bonuses. But in this offer my maximum win is capped at x15 the bonus, so the max payout is 4500$.
The wager is small. Even wagering with minimum bets in a slot with 97% RTP will cost me 6000$ multiplied by 0.03 which equals 180$. This is one of the rare cases where the formula works. In the linked article I wrote why it usually does not work.
EV calculation:
Loss from wagering: 180
Bonus: 300
Total EV: 120
Wager completion chance: close to 100 percent.
If there was no win cap the EV would be much higher with five dollar spins. For example in The Dog House the EV would be 208$ but the chance to complete the wager would fall to 19 percent.
So I deposit 2000$ to get another 60 dollars from the 3 percent crypto offer. I deposit exactly 2000$ so that I can complete both the bonus and the deposit wagering at the same time: 300 times 20 equals 6000 and 2000 times 3 equals 6000.
My EV increases by 60$, so now it is 180$.
But there is more.
The site is running a tournament where points are awarded for total multipliers on any bet of at least 20 cents. Only about fifteen slots qualify which means the number of participants will be limited.
The prize pool is 7000. First place is 1000, tenth is 100, fortieth is 30, and the last hundredth place is 5 euros. So to complete the wager I select a slot that is included in the tournament and has higher RTP. In my case it is Pragmatic Gold Party with 96.51 RTP.
While I was wagering the bonus and doing the 6000 turnover I reached 19 place and won 55 euros or 63 dollars.
Final EV: 120 from the bonus plus 60 from crypto plus 63 from the tournament equals 2 dollars.
This example does not include happy hours with double comp points which also add some value. And there is more. While I play a Pragmatic slot I also participate in the Pragmatic tournament and the random prize drops. I did not win anything this time but obviously there was some additional EV.
By the way, when you play slots from this provider you collect a puzzle of three pieces. The first two pieces appear quickly. I have never collected the third piece. A classic near miss manipulation.
In the end the deposit is squeezed for maximum value except for the enjoyment of the game. Advantage play and entertainment are two very different things. I hope the casino management does not read this.
You can also read more examples of advantage play:
Feel free to ask questions in the comments. If this post gets twenty likes I will publish the breakdown of the five million tournament with massive positive EV.
Although mathematics has no term called “volatility,” slots use it the same way finance does. Providers like Thunderkick, Nolimit, and NetEnt measure it using standard deviation in their technical docs.
I actually ended up with $306. I did 24,000 spins at 25 cents a spin, and even that wasn’t enough for the theoretical and actual RTP to line up. Lucky for me, variance worked in my favor this time.