banflam
4d ago
Hi, I actually tried this and I'll warn against it. I got really excited by the same ACX review and here was my experience:
- Difficulty of finding expectation
The entire scheme revolves around using high expectation, low variance ("return to player" as the games call it). It is basically impossible to get an accurate take on which slot games are like this.
Even the ones that have this buried somewhere don't quite add up. For example there was a game that apparently had a 96% return to player over "thousands of spins". I did maybe 2k spins with the minimum possible bet of 10 cents to kill variance. For every 120 stakescoins I had, I was lucky to get back 98 and cash out without too much of a loss. Remember that according to the promised expectation I was supposed to get 117.6 which, given the $100 real money that this cost me I should have gotten $17.60 of profit.
- Counterparty risk
This was mentioned in the original ACX review which led me down this rabbit hole, but it's kind of serious. You will be risking $100 to make at best $20 in profit. The ACX guy was nonchalant about it, saying you could tell your credit card to cancel the payment but I've never tried it in practice. Be ready to wait for a week to get your money back.
- Time
Still takes a hell of a lot of time. The ACX reviewer had some bot system and also had been doing this for a while. I felt like he was heavily discounting the time it takes initially to set things up and find the right casinos and games and so on. Lists and "advice" online are fake and looking to cash in on referral fees.
- Savvy
This is the entire damn problem. The ACX guy made it sound so easy. He even began to muse "what if you had UBI and nobody came?". He made it sound like literally anybody with no skills could do this.
This actually requires a lot of savvy and isn't quite as foolproof as he made it out to be. Finding the right casinos, games, etc.
It's what I realized with sports betting arbitrage. Or thinking about getting good at poker. There's no free lunch. No money lying on the sidewalk.
In the end I cut all my losses and closed my positions and got a part-time retail job.
We are on the same side. If you have any way or maybe even specific online casinos to recommend please go ahead. Who would not want to sit at home and make $50/hr?
This game isn't really zero-sum either. The company wins because they have to do this by regulation. The gamblers whose losses you gain win because the online sweepstakes casinos continue existing because they can maintain the legal fiction.
Even though you're abroad just use a VPN. You might even be better off because the IRS won't get after you for your winnings
More options
Context Copy link