Gambling's Winning Attitude is the Only Key
I am continually amazed at the number of players who always manage to lose during their trips to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, on the riverboats and Indian reservations, in the Bahamas, and all the other gambling Meccas around the world. And it's not just video poker players. I see blackjack and craps players, poker players, slots and roulette players, basically, gamblers of all stripes consistently losing because they don't come into the casino with a winning attitude.
Does a good attitude affect the odds of the games or the machines? No. It does not matter whether you are the happiest person alive or not. The slot machines won't care how you feel because they won't know. And the odds on those machines aren't affected either. If you and I sit down to pull the handle for 10 spins each, it won't matter which one of us pushes the button and sets the reels in motion. The result will be the same, regardless of our mood or what our horoscope says.
But how you feel most definitely affects your overall chances of winning, and there's no two ways about it. A player that goes into the casino with the goal of winning does everything he or she can do to achieve that goal. This gambler will closely follow the money management advice in every book he can buy. That's the mark of a winner. They'll play within their means, they'll set reasonable limits, they'll control themselves at the machines, and when they're winning big, the casinos will see their back at the cashier's case converting the loot into bills before they see that money again.
Losers, on the other hand, will do everything wrong. From the outside, to the casual observer, they will appear as if their goal is to lose. Losers have loser written all over them, in their actions, their moods, and of course, their results. No crowbar will pry these players away from the machines or tables until they've managed to lose their money. We've all seen plenty of these players. Myself, I've seen and heard enough stories to fill an encyclopedia of gambler's stories about losers.
To be sure, the casinos hold the edge at certain machines, and in many places a substantial edge. But players can still beat unfavorable machines (and they can beat ones where they have the edge as well), that is, the smart players can. Follow the advice, learn from strategies and you'll be smart too, the one gambler the casinos don't feast on. You'll feast on them instead.