Combs Spouts Off

Sometimes I’m amazed at how clever students and other people who want to avoid real work can be. The newest member of the Life, Liberty, Property community, Jacqueline Passey, reports that she’s made a tidy little profit at the expense of online casinos competing for new customers:

…  One way they attract new customers is by literally giving away money.  They must figure that most people will lose this money back to them and then some.  Since most people are stupid and lack self control, they’re right.  However, clever players can profit from these free money bonuses by choosing games with a low house advantage (like blackjack or video poker), playing perfectly (with a strategy card) and limiting their play to the minimum required to qualify for the bonus offer.

Personally, over the past six weeks I’ve made $1636.54 at $22.66 per hour doing this.  Not an exciting amount of money for those of you with real jobs, but it’s much better than the wages, schedules, and working conditions of the employment opportunities available to me as a full time student in Bellingham. 

If you’re interested, she provides detailed — boy, are they detailed! — step-by-step instructions. And note that she thinks time is of the essence:

… unfortunately we are nearing the end of the window of opportunity between when the casinos decided, “Hey!  Let’s attract new customers by giving away money!” and realized, “Oh, shit!  People have figured out how to exploit this promotion and we’re losing money on it!”  So the terms and conditions of the bonus offers are changing to make them unprofitable.  Also, most bonus offers are for first deposits only, and eventually you will run out of casinos.  So, get in on this now while the getting is good, but don’t count on it to last for much longer.

So how detailed are those instructions? There are 14 steps, some of which have lengthy substeps. Here is Step 13:

13. Keep some sort of record of your results.  I have an Excel spreadsheet on which I record:
Casino: Name of the casino
Start: Date I opened my casino account and deposited
Cleared: Date I finished clearing the wagering requirement for the bonus
C. Out: Date I initiated cashing out my winnings
Rcvd: Date I received my cash out in my Neteller account
URL: URL of the casino website
Software: Software the casino is running
Group: If the casino belongs to a group of casinos, the name of the group is here
C: Currency I played in (dollars or pounds)
FX In: The foreign exchange rate on my casino deposit
Deposit: The deposit amount in the currency I played in
Dep in $: The deposit amount in dollars
Bonus: The bonus amount in the currency I played in
Bon in $: The bonus amount in dollars
Type: Whether it is a cashable or sticky bonus (right now I am only playing cashable bonuses, but eventually I will play stickies too and want to keep track of which is which)
WR: Wagering requirement in the currency I played in
Game: Which game I played
HA: House advantage of that game
EV: Expected value of profit in the currency I played in
EV in $: Expected value of profit in dollars
Bet: Amount I bet per hand
Hands: How many hands I played
Hours: How many hours I played
W/L: How much I won or lost playing
AV: Actual value of profit (or loss) in the currency I played in
AV in $: Actual value of profit (or loss) in dollars
FX Out: The foreign exchange rate on my casino withdrawal.
Cash: How much I cashed out back to Neteller
Profit: How much profit (or loss) I made at this casino
$/Hour: How much profit (or loss) I made per hour at this casino
Hands/Hr: How many hands I played per hour at this casino
R Profit: Running profit
R Time: Running hours
R $/Hr: Running hourly rate
R EV: Running expected profit
% of EV: What percentage of the expected profit is my actual profit?

But I am an obsessive data freak.  You can probably get by with a lot less information.

Yowsa! Jacqueline, my dear, you are an obsessive data freak’s obsessive data freak.

Subscribe To Site:

Full Post Feed | Summary Feed | Comments Feed