Can somebody share his/ her best surprise experience in gambling?
Any success stories at casinos or lotto? or just crossing the road once intoxicated? sailing 40+ ktn? skiing 100+ km/h? bike riding? crossing Tasman in the kayak? Sharks? asking wife something? asking pay rise? found the gold nugget? When you think you may lose to you did win?
The happy story will be appreciated, not the lost one
Is it investment or gambling ( if you do so every day)?

anyone on forex?

That is a pretty interesting thread, I am quite surprised that there were not interested or people with no good stories. So, I don't think that my story is the best but I think it is pretty interesting. I want with my wife to an all inclusive hotel for the summer holiday. There we want to turkish bazaar outside the hotel and I took my bag with wallet (with bank cards inside) and there also were our plane tickets. Shortly, someone stole it and I could not observe because I was trying a t-shirt and remained with only one card that I was using for online casinos. When we went to the hotel, we were sitting at the bar and I was playing w88 as I usually do and thinking about how to get new tickets. Suddenly I won $5.2k in slots, that was incredible! Hope you like it.

Bought 100,000 ROO Monday morning @ 2,3c Sold at 4,1c same day
get in, get out, before they figure it out

Hit by lightning, does that count ?
I know , it explains a lot !

My wife walked into the Melbourne Casino once....put $1 on the chocolate wheel, won $50 and walked out.

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Rails said..
Bought 100,000 ROO Monday morning @ 2,3c Sold at 4,1c same day
get in, get out, before they figure it out

Playing the penny dreadfuls. Gambling thread is the right place for this.

Put a trifecta on the Melbourne Cup one year, accidentally stuffed up the card and ended up paying double what I wanted, only about $12, was pissed off as didn't want to spend that much, but was too many people behind me in the queue 2 minutes before race start to complain, won it and got paid double.

I was at the Agincourt Hotel (pub) in Sydney, waiting for some friends to arrive to have dinner. Decided to put $2 through a 10c pokie to kill time. I just kept winning and winning, and couldn't get rid of the money. In the end I had a plastic schooner glass filled to the brim with 10c coins.

Epilogue
I placed the cup full of coins on the table while we had our dinner. When we left, I forgot about it because it was surrounded by other empty beer glasses. Some waitress got a surprise tip that night.

In the 80's, my brother was a surfing mate with one of George Freeman's sons. Together they bought a greyhound that ended up being ridiculously good, kind of a Phar Lap of greyhound racing. After the first 5 starts, it wasn't worth backing because the odds became so short. His mate knew how good the dog was and that this would happen, so put big money on the first few races. Unfortunately, my brother and I didn't fully appreciate the situation or opportunity, so only made a few hundred bucks out of it.

My grandmother was given a big bunch of Scratchie's for her birthday once. She was scratching them while her sister was over visiting. There were quite a lot of them, so she handed a few of them to her sister and said, "Here, you can scratch these ones if you like". Her sister scratched a $25K winner and exclaimed, "Oh, I've won 25 thousand dollars!", keeping the ticket. My grandmother was a very polite person and did not make a fuss of it. Her sister said, "I'll have to take you out to lunch as a thank you". My grandfather, who was not quite so polite, replied sarcastically, "Fish and chips will do". They got fish and chips.

Pretty poor form considering my grandmother was a pensioner, and her sister was quite well off.

I know a guy in England who makes a living from betting on horses. He employs a couple of people to input data from all the races around the country into a database and from that is able to pick enough good bets to make a pretty decent income from it.

In the 90's a few of us ratbag enginerding students would pool our money and play roulette this way:
You need to start with $1280 in a kitty

Bet $5 on black - if black comes up you win $5

If the wheel comes up red
Double up to $10 on black

If it comes up Red again
Double up again $20 on Black

If it comes up Red
Double up again $40 on Black

You get the idea.... but by the seventh consecutive Red spin you have $640 on the table plus the $635 already 'invested' in previous bets - just to win $5

You can keep doing this until the table limit of $1000 - wining $5 each time black comes up.
8 Reds in a row and you loose the lot - the odds of 8 reds in a row is 1 in 256 but it seems to happen a lot also if the table rolls a green 0 or double 0 you get wiped out instantly.

Before starting our betting we'd watch a table to find one that just finished a long red streak, in hindsight this doesn't help at all but makes you think you are clever. The longest streak we watched was 13 Reds in row and couldn't do anything about because our money was already gone.

We always drank the profits and all things considered never ever got ahead. It was just a fun thing to do at the time and none of us went on to become gamblers. Casinos always win.

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knot board said..
In the 90's a few of us ratbag enginerding students would pool our money and play roulette this way:
You need to start with $1280 in a kitty

Bet $5 on black - if black comes up you win $5

If the wheel comes up red
Double up to $10 on black

If it comes up Red again
Double up again $20 on Black

If it comes up Red
Double up again $40 on Black

You get the idea.... but by the seventh consecutive Red spin you have $640 on the table plus the $635 already 'invested' in previous bets - just to win $5

You can keep doing this until the table limit of $1000 - wining $5 each time black comes up.
8 Reds in a row and you loose the lot - the odds of 8 reds in a row is 1 in 256 but it seems to happen a lot also if the table rolls a green 0 or double 0 you get wiped out instantly.

Before starting our betting we'd watch a table to find one that just finished a long red streak, in hindsight this doesn't help at all but makes you think you are clever. The longest streak we watched was 13 Reds in row and couldn't do anything about because our money was already gone.

We always drank the profits and all things considered never ever got ahead. It was just a fun thing to do at the time and none of us went on to become gamblers. Casinos always win.

Haha, a bunch of engineering students doing this? I'm assuming your statistics knowledge was good enough to know the method was flawed and were just doing it for a laugh?

Trust the Yanks to put a second 'zero' on the roulette wheel.

I sometimes wonder if it would be possible to treat sporting events that have really short odds like a mathematical equation.
Say football,cricket or soccer when the favourite is $1.05 or $1.10 and the other team is paying $5 or $6
There would have to be a games like this happening all over the world several times a day.

Could you allow the winnings to compound like interest over time?
How often do upsets happen?

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Harrow said..

knot board said..
In the 90's a few of us ratbag enginerding students would pool our money and play roulette this way:
You need to start with $1280 in a kitty

Bet $5 on black - if black comes up you win $5

If the wheel comes up red
Double up to $10 on black

If it comes up Red again
Double up again $20 on Black

If it comes up Red
Double up again $40 on Black

You get the idea.... but by the seventh consecutive Red spin you have $640 on the table plus the $635 already 'invested' in previous bets - just to win $5

You can keep doing this until the table limit of $1000 - wining $5 each time black comes up.
8 Reds in a row and you loose the lot - the odds of 8 reds in a row is 1 in 256 but it seems to happen a lot also if the table rolls a green 0 or double 0 you get wiped out instantly.

Before starting our betting we'd watch a table to find one that just finished a long red streak, in hindsight this doesn't help at all but makes you think you are clever. The longest streak we watched was 13 Reds in row and couldn't do anything about because our money was already gone.

We always drank the profits and all things considered never ever got ahead. It was just a fun thing to do at the time and none of us went on to become gamblers. Casinos always win.

Haha, a bunch of engineering students doing this? I'm assuming your statistics knowledge was good enough to know the method was flawed and were just doing it for a laugh?

Trust the Yanks to put a second 'zero' on the roulette wheel.

haha, yeah the idea was born after a first year stats and probability lecture so we had no idea but heaps of enthusiasm for drinking and fun.

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knot board said..
I sometimes wonder if it would be possible to treat sporting events that have really short odds like a mathematical equation.
Say football,cricket or soccer when the favourite is $1.05 or $1.10 and the other team is paying $5 or $6
There would have to be a games like this happening all over the world several times a day.

Could you allow the winnings to compound like interest over time?
How often do upsets happen?

You can make guaranteed profits with online sports betting using 'matched betting'. In short, it's a mathematical method of taking advantage of special offers from the betting sites and involves placing enough bets to cover every possible outcome, with the right amount wagered on each of the bets. (Google it to learn how to do it - plenty of YouTube's explaining it too). It takes some time and effort though, and you need to keep opening new accounts with different sites because they automatically detect you winning consistently and stop accepting bets from you.

Machines in gambling eg pokies, and prob most casino games favour the house.
So if payout is 85% (most pokies), you are guaranteed to lose 15% on every play when averaged over time.

A few years back a good mate who is an actuary and who has bet on horses most of his adult life, put together a spreadsheet analysis system that worked on anomolies, scanned all the odds from all the online betting systems, then calculated bets.

Not many using computers for analysis and placing bets back in early 2000's, so odds did not get crashed like today.
Using NT bookies, they would build the bank up to about $30K, then get their account stymied - because they were winning!

Open under another name, up to $30K, stymied, change etc.
They needed my name , then my wife's name , for a 25% commission.
"The Bank always needs to win"

Then there was an enquiry into betting in Qld and the anomolies dissipated.
Fun times as I was following the betting on my account as well.

From then on I have only ever bet on the odds and anomolies, sparingly.

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knot board said..
I sometimes wonder if it would be possible to treat sporting events that have really short odds like a mathematical equation.
Say football,cricket or soccer when the favourite is $1.05 or $1.10 and the other team is paying $5 or $6
There would have to be a games like this happening all over the world several times a day.

Could you allow the winnings to compound like interest over time?
How often do upsets happen?

I listened to a Freakonomics podcast about sports betting a while back that claimed there is a way to win on races by backing short priced favourites but only for a place.
I tested the claim for a few days against Australian horse races, defining short price as odds on in a field big enough so that there would be a third place pay out.
I didn't lose any money, but that was because I was only testing the theory.

The guy who set up MONA in Hobart is a professional gambler. He got his start with a group of students who threw money at Keno when the jackpot had risen to a point where the expected gain was well above 1. I think their payout was about $4M. A few years ago he managed to win against the Tax Office by somehow convincing the judge that his professional gambling activity was not anything more than luck.

Tried to bet $5 on just red in roulette.
I was so pissed I dropped another $5 chip I didn't know I had, on a number
Wandered off thinking I'd lost, security pulled me up as I was leaving and I won $300 + something

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YoungJulian34 said..
That is a pretty interesting thread, I am quite surprised that there were not interested or people with no good stories.

It must have slipped under the radar at the time...

My three favourite good luck stories:

1. Won $600 on a horse race once just picking by name. The best bit was giving the money to friends who needed it more than me.

2. Dropped my wallet on the footpath in Johannesburg at the end of a big night out. Called the restaurant the next day and they had it, still full of money.

3.

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Imax1 said..
Hit by lightning, does that count ?
I know , it explains a lot !

Got hit by lightning once, shocked by proximity to it twice more, survived all of them (obviously).

My wife once gave me a birthday card with a bunch of scratchies & I looked & said these are already scratched & she said yeah you didn't win .

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actiomax said..
My wife once gave me a birthday card with a bunch of scratchies & I looked & said these are already scratched & she said yeah you didn't win .

That is both terrible and funny at the same time

I wonder, do you think she would have told you 'you had won' if one of them had scratched $10K, or do you think she would just buy a few more tickets...??

I remember when I was a kid and mum and dad would gamble on the Melbourne cup or whatever special race it was then. I gave mum some money to bet on a horse and it won... turns out mum had not bothered placing the bets and just pocketed the money, so you can guess whether I got my payout or not

Bought some crypto and sold at the right time paid for an indo trip and new board, than I got a tax bill for 1/4 of the cost of the indo trip because I'd made money on crypto. Still well worth it, a 7k trip really only cost me a 1500 buck crypto bet and a 1400 buck tax bill or thereabouts.

Was on a surf trip over east with a mate went to the pub put 50 in a pokie it paid out 560 or something bucks, couldn't believe it,,so we upgraded our hire car which took half a day and cost 300, than we had a 4wd went down around Lennox and Yamba and had a beer one night in a pub, the locals pointed us to a 4wd track we went down and stayed 3 days scoring the best ever point/beachies I had seen as a young man
it was like a triple crown of luck


nowadays i dont win win anything but I'm pretty happy with that...

Reckon if you'd bought shares two months ago you would be winning right now

Going back to Macro's original list of "happy stories", I've never had any luck gambling, not that I've done much gambling. But I have gone over 100k/h on snow skis, Jan. 2017, Furano, Hokkaido. Feels very fkn fast, but peanuts to a downhill or GS skier. If I ever try it again, I WILL wear a helmet next time .

No wouldn't have seen a cent .
Did win a car from McDonald's took family out & I paid she used receipt to enter but because she entered with her phone and it won it was her car which is her logic she then sold it & kept the money for .
After having it for a year being Basically not used & me having to pay insurance on .Never saw a single cent

I did win a bottle of summer wine on a chocolate wheel up at the Airly beach when the fun race was on but that's it .
If I didn't have bad luck I would have no luck at all .

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actiomax said..
No wouldn't have seen a cent .
Did win a car from McDonald's took family out & I paid she used receipt to enter but because she entered with her phone and it won it was her car which is her logic she then sold it & kept the money for .
After having it for a year being Basically not used & me having to pay insurance on .Never saw a single cent

I did win a bottle of summer wine on a chocolate wheel up at the Airly beach when the fun race was on but that's it .
If I didn't have bad luck I would have no luck at all .

It's not ex-wife is it? If she isn't, she's a keeper!

In the news the other day there was a story about the 'dilemma' a guy had in whether to share his lotto win with his ex-wife... The way I read it was the only dilemma he had was if she found out about it. Otherwise no dilemma in my mind!

I think Macro's original intention was to draw attention to share market losses, but no one cares about anyone else's loss. The same way that no one cares about anyone else's wins.

I used to work with a guy that used to tell us about when he won at the casino. Funnily enough you never used to hear about when he lost at the Casino, which was no doubt more.

Someone told me once (a professional forex trader) the markets are designed to take money from the highly educated to those not educated. So yes for most, the markets are indeed gambling and poor gambling at that. Don't have a lucky sorry soz, never gamble.

one thing this pro trader did tell me though which some of you have touched on, even with a 50/50 bet on a short or long (obviously certain methodologies can improve these odds) you will still get ahead of your money management is sound plus discipline to follow a well tested system to the letter, regardless.
so good gambling is essentially strict money management and self discipline than honours a back and forward tested system. But most are too stupid and/or lazy to be bothered with either.

Dabbled Trading forex a few times , first go traded the news and went from 2k to 7k over 4 months, compounding wins, best trade was on nzd aud made $1500 in less than 2 seconds ;never enjoyed the trades too stressful, of course ended closing that account at 1800 after I went big in the aud reserve bank interest and a revenge trade , left trading for a while recently had another go recently with a bot using mt4 , made 800 bucks auto trading then closed it down , lucky run , forex is more rigged than the casino. Good Money management is only a slower way to loose money.
Know one person that bought 20k of shares on a penny dreadful and turned it into 2.5 million several years later

The au share market has returned around 11% nominal on average (about 7% in real terms given average inflation) since 1876 (in accumulation terms ie. with dividends reinvested). It's not like the nags or the casino - it is hard to lose money if you play long not short.

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Marvin said..
The au share market has returned around 11% nominal on average (about 7% in real terms given average inflation) since 1876 (in accumulation terms ie. with dividends reinvested). It's not like the nags or the casino - it is hard to lose money if you play long not short.

I'm about seven years into my long game and I'm down 85%. Thought I'd play it safe by going with a reputable broker.
If I'd ignored every single word he ever said I'd have been up $400,000 in the first month and who knows where after that.