1. You can never be sure of a win, no matter what the “experts” say. Every game is a game of chance.

There are things you can do to be a successful gambler. Its just that “successful gambler” doesn’t mean “wins every time.” A successful gambler is a gambler who manages to leave the casino or track richer than they were when walked in, and someone who doesn’t let their gambling control them.

You can never eliminate the risk when you gamble, and you don’t want to, anyway. The risk is what makes gambling exciting.

What you can do? Avoid risking too much, and maximize your chances of winning something while guaranteeing that you’ll enjoy every minute of it. There are some tips and tricks : 

Emotionally driven decisions are usually bad decisions. Emotions cloud your mind and make it hard to think clearly. When you’re gambling, both winning and losing can stir up a lot of emotions in you that can lead to poor decision making. If you’re winning, you feel a natural high. We’ve all felt it, it’s great. But it clouds your judgment in a big way.

Win one bet, and you feel good. Win two, even better. Win five in a row? You’re on cloud 9, and you feel invincible. You should stop, but now it’s hard to quit. This is when a lot of people get themselves into trouble. They let a winning streak go to their heads, and they just keep betting.

Eventually, you’re going to lose. And now you’re going to chase the loss- you’ll just keep betting and betting, trying to recover what you lost, and maybe restore some of your pride in the process. You’ll just lose more, though.

Successful gamblers know when to quit. They might stop after winning one bet or, if they’re feeling a little bold, after a streak of two or three.

Losing can be just as hard to handle, but not in the way you might expect. Of course losing feels bad, but if you’ve lost several bets in a row, you might start to tell yourself that the next bet must be a winner. You’ve lost so many you must be due for a win, so you keep betting and digging yourself into a deeper hole.

Don’t let your emotions rule you. Successful gamblers know when to quit while they’re ahead, now matter how much they’ve won or lost.

2. Stick to what you know. If all you know is the slot machines, that’s fine.

If you don’t know the rules of blackjack, don’t gamble on it. If you don’t understand basketball, don’t place a bet on it.

Most people understand this fairly well when it comes to sports betting. Few people will bet on a football game if they don’t watch football regularly enough to understand what they’re betting on. Not everyone applies that logic to the casino, though.

To have a shot at winning a bet on blackjack, you really need to understand the game clearly. You don’t just need to know the basic rules, you need to understand the strategy for playing to win. It’s not just blind luck hoping to be dealt a good hand; you need to know when the cards in your hand are telling you to quit.

Same with Poker. There’s more strategy and decision making involved than a lot of people realize.

Sure, the decisions are mostly about when to take a risk and when not to, but if you don’t know how the game works you can’t make those decisions wisely. Successful gamblers don’t bet on games they don’t know. Successful gamblers don’t just know the rules, they know the odds.

For instance, you have a 46% chance of winning every blackjack hand. If you lose 10 hands in a row, you still have a nearly 50/50 chance of winning the eleventh hand. This helps keep your emotions in check and avoid the Gambler’s Fallacy, too. You always have a 46% chance at every hand in blackjack, no matter who you are, how well you know the game, or how many hands in a row you’ve won or lost. 46%, every time.

If you know the odds, you’ll handle losing streaks much better. The odds never change, not in any game. If you always know the odds, you’ll always have a rational frame of reference to base your decisions on.

Never play a casino game without knowing the odds. That’s a surefire way to lose money fast.

3. You have to practice. 

To be a successful gambler, you’re going to have to be an unsuccessful gambler first. That’s because consistently successful gambling requires that you understand the game and the math. You have to actually sit down and play the game for a while, and you’ll lose while you’re learning.

That’s why you should play it safe when you start out. Make small, safe bets. Not only does that minimize the amount of money you lose, but making smaller bets keeps you in the game longer, and it doesn’t affect your win probability at all.

You can even play some games, like blackjack and roulette, for free online. You can learn the game and be an expert in it before you ever bet a single dollar.