Your horse in the race.

Some of my business ideas come from gambling, the parallels are very interesting between the two. For example, when I gamble from time to time I get staked, the term “staked” is a slang that means: You are funded by another person to gamble, as stupid as it sounds to have someone else gamble your money, it is quite common. I am staked all the time; even my best buddy Marco will gamble on me paying me a percentage if I win. When I play in the bigger games I will look for stakers this reduces my exposure to going broke, and even then sometime that don’t help… heehee. So what are the chances of you walking through the casino door and winning some money? Depending on the game you play, the implied odds of you winning are in the ball park of 40 percent. Let’s say you make a sports bet every day. One team straight bet to win would move you closer to 50/50, but if you only bet eight team parlays you might win two times a year if you’re lucky.

Let’s look at this another way, you ever go gambling with your friends? Gambling with someone else even if they are a loser, you are giving yourself another change to win, more importantly a greater chance to break even. I was in Denver CO., going to Blackhawk, a small casino destination 30 miles outside of Denver on a mini road trip. We decide to make a windfall deal. A windfall deal is if the other person you are gambling with does well, or gets really lucky and hits a jackpot you get a piece depending on the size of the win. It could be 10%-25%, but not affecting him if he wins $200.00 dollars and vice versa, this is a great idea.

I one day this paid off. We were in a poker game 2 – 5 limit Texas Hold’em my friend and I were playing sitting side by side, and about 20 minutes later he hit the bad beat jackpot, aces full of kings over aces full queens; paying him about 15k and me getting a table share of about $1200.00 plus a chip off his share of about $3,000.00.

One of my favorite things to do would be to drive to California, and play this tournament on Sunday night $300+25 no-limit buy in 100k guaranteed at 7p.m. We had a deal like this, when we would drive to California, four of us would call a save. If any of us would make the final table the remaining three in the car would split 15% of the winnings. Taking this trip about 15 times this paid off for us three times.

Most of the time when I go gambling if I have $500 for example I will part with $100.00 in a parcel stake to give myself more chances to win, to break even and to save losing session.

Other interesting deals that take place is called signers, what signers are is when someone hits a jackpot of, let say 10k, this requires a hand pay. This is where the casino host brings you the cash along with an I-9 tax form to sign, and what people will do is have someone stand in their place for tax responsibility for a percentage of the jackpot.