The Three Best Books On Gambling

Ever been invited to a poker night, but turned down the invite because you don’t know how to play the game? Have you always wanted to head downtown to visit a casino, but been put off the idea because you haven’t got a clue how any of the games work? You’re not alone. Most of us played a few rounds of snap when we were young, but the card games that can actually make you money are an acquired skill, and the last thing you want to do is lose your cash to more experienced players who know more than you.

The other aspects of a casino can be confusing to the uninitiated, too. You might have stood and watched somebody else take the jackpot out of a slot machine, seemingly displaying a mastery of when to use the ‘hold’ and ‘nudge’ buttons and an innate understanding of the bonus features that just looks like witchcraft when you don’t know the mechanisms and theories of how the games work.

Help is at hand, though. There are many books aimed at beginners which are designed to take away the mystery, explain the rules at a basic level and help you to hone your skills. We’ve identified a few of the best of them, which you might want to pick up and read if the idea of trying your hand appeals to you.

Take It Slowly

As a suggestion, if you are going to give gambling a try, we suggest practicing on your own first. In the beginning, that might just mean dealing the cards out yourself and understanding what’s a good hand, what isn’t, when to hold and when to fold. You can also play UK online slot games on the internet, too, so you can get your head around how they work and what a winning line looks like before you go and play them in the wild. Some people actually find the online variants to be a more fun gaming experience anyway; as you can see from the Egypt Slots website, there’s a variety available designed to appeal to all manner of interest groups.

With that being said, let’s take a look at those books!

Casino Gambling For Dummies

There is an entry in the ‘For Dummies’ book series for pretty much any skill or topic you could ever hope to learn. The first one was released in 1991 with the intention of helping people learn how to write computer code, and since then they’ve been written and sold to people wanting to learn fishing, chess, first aid, mountaineering and hundreds of other topics. The tone of the books is perfect for someone who’s never touched the world they’re trying to learn about before, and is starting from scratch.

’Casino Gambling for Dummies’ promises to take you through everything the casino has to offer, including all formats of popular card games, roulette, slot machines, and even a special section on online gambling. There’s assistance in the book to help you understand odds, recognize a bad bet, and even ‘insider secrets’. The book collects tips and advice from a range of sources, so it should provide a well-rounded summary of the gambling world, and a balanced knowledge base to build from.

Scarne’s Complete Guide To Gambling

You’d expect somebody who made a fortune as a professional gambler to be able to teach you a thing or two about how it all works. John Scarne, in his lifetime, was one of the most successful gamblers in the history of the habit. Scarne was not only a gambler but a magician, whose skill and fame made him quite the celebrity in his heyday.

His book is something of a gambling encyclopedia; he gives various pieces of advice about how best to play many games, goes into details about the rules, but also gives you a history of each game which really brings it to life. Where he differs from a lot of advice-givers is that he goes into detail on a lot of the math involved in successful gambling – working out odds that someone else has a card that you need, or what the chances of a winning line or hand are, is a vital skill if you’re going to excel as a player. He also offers up a couple of creative ways to cheat, although obviously we don’t condone that!

Beating The Casinos At Their Own Game

This book, by Peter Svoboda, is the ideal one to pick up if you’re someone who learns more from pictures and visual guides than you do by reading endless lines of text. There are illustrations everywhere, and it’s written and presented as a coffee table book with glossy pages that make it feel accessible.

Svoboda wrote the book with the amateur in mind, and so the language used is easy to understand and follow. All of the jargon of gambling is explained, but he takes his time to break it all down and makes sure you get the point. If you’re an entry level gambler, you should find that the content is basic enough to make you feel welcome without ever becoming patronizing, which is exactly where the tone should be. Whether you’ll ever beat casinos at their own game is another matter; they tend to make a lot of money, and if anybody knew how to beat them regularly and reliably then there wouldn’t be as many of them in business!

Other titles do of course exist, and it might also help to have a friend who knows a thing or two about the hobby to give you some real hands-on experience with it at your own pace. Ideally, that friend won’t be mean spirited enough to take money off you whilst you’re still learning and lose regularly! If you’ve always dreamed of being a casino high roller, these books should help you take a step closer to making that dream a reality. Just work at your own pace, try the online world first where there aren’t other human players around to trick or judge you, and only take steps up when you feel comfortable doing so. Thanks for reading!

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