I recently read a book dedicated to probability in gambling.
It is very well known that the exact payoff rate of the slot machines are pre-calculated and fixed to be somewhere in the range of 94–98%. This means that a lot of people are going to win a lot of money, but over a very long run the casino will make about a nickel of profit off of every $1 spent gambling.
The very neat thing about this is that you will lose a consistent percentage of your money no matter how much money you bet. There is absolutely no way to overcome these odds. Period. For every man that makes a fortune playing slot machines, hundreds more lose their fortune.
For other games of pure chance, the odds will always be tilted in the casino’s favor. There is no difference between playing roulette and playing slot machines. Most people don’t see much danger in the two small green 0 and 00 slots on roulette wheel, but they are what mean that the casino will always make money in the end.
Some games offered in the casino are widely known to have a negative house edge, if played by a perfect human. Of course, the people who are capable of doing that are few and far between, so the casinos really don’t care. Whenever a good system becomes widely known, they just change the rules.
You won’t see me gambling any time soon…