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Creator of SETT. Adventurer.
11 years ago
I had never gambled before and knew nothing about it, but I'd gotten too many e-mails like it. I was at my parents house for winter break during my first year at UT, and I was bored.
"Free $50 just for downloading our casino!"
Hmm. That doesn't seem very risky. I might as well download to see what it's all about.
I downloaded, and sure enough they added $50 to my account, which I quickly lost. Even though I lost it, there was a moment where I was up to $75. What if I had cashed out? Would they have actually given it to me? (actually the answer is no... later in my career I found out that that was a particularly sketchy casino)
Then I took a chance. I found another casino that promised to give me $200 if I deposited $200 at their casino. It was a lot of money - but that just made the free $200 more appealing. I was scared when I deposited, and my heart jumped when I saw my balance double to $400 instantly.
Blackjack.
I played a few hands and was actually winning. I managed to get up to $500 and I cashed out. Was I going to get paid? I was skeptical, and felt like an idiot for trusting the site. There was no way they were about to give me $300 for fifteen minutes of playing a game at their site.
A few days later a strange envelope came for me in the mail. It was a check for the $500 I had won. Wow.
When I returned to school I found myself in the cafeteria eating with some friends. Also in attendance was a guy named Adam, who was a friend of a friend. I mentioned something about my gambling experience, and his ears perked up. He was interested in gambling too.
At that point I was playing cautiously, maybe winning or losing $20 a day. I didn't have a ton of money, and I was just testing the ropes - I felt like there just HAD to be some way to make money doing it.
After lunch I invited Adam to join me and gamble on my computer. He brought along a computer blackjack game and the manual that came with it. We played a few hands and then the "blackjack strategies" section of the manual caught our attention.
The Double Martingale System.
It sounded exotic. We read the description of it and it seemed pretty legitimate :
Bet $1. If you win, you've just won a dollar and you're done with this cycle. Start over.
If you lose, then you bet $3. If you win that you have won 3, lost 1, for a grand total of winning $2. That's $1 per hand played.
If you lose again you bet $7. If you win that you've won 7, lost 4, for a grand total of winning $3. Still $1 per hand played.
In fact, as the progression escalated to 15, 31, 63, 127, 255 and beyond, you would always end up winning $1 per hand played. And you had to win eventually, right? It was genius.
We decided that we ought to go into business together and try this strategy out. Being the prudent business men we were, we played about five minutes on his simulation and declared the strategy a clear winner.
I had some money in one of my casino accounts, so we used that. At first it worked - we made maybe $30 or so. But then all of a sudden the progression had doubled and we had to bet over $500. We didn't have that much money in our account. But that wasn't the strategy's fault - we just didn't have enough money.
At this point it was about 7am. In our excitement we had stayed up all night playing and planning what to do with our massive winnings. That's when we made an important decision - we would empty my bank account which contained the $1000 that constituted my life savings, and use that. We'd split the winnings or losses down the middle.
Excited, we went downstairs to the bank and wired the money. A few minutes later, it was all there. We placed our $500 bet and held our breath. 16 vs. 10. Not good. We hit, got a 2, and the dealer busted. We won! It felt great -we knew the strategy was good and that we had made the right decision.
The big bet scared us, though. I don't remember exactly how we modified our strategy, but we somehow changed it so that after some point we would cut our losses and start the progression over.
But then something happened... instead of steady winning, we started losing. Soon we were down to only $800, but our resolve remained. We WOULD make this work. I was exhausted from staying up so late so I went to sleep while Adam continued to play.
When I woke up, it was like a kid on Christmas. l couldn't wait to see the small fortune he had surely amassed. I logged in and checked the balance :
What? I expected an extra zero on the end - at least. I called Adam and woke him up.
"We need to get to playing. We need to make our money back."
Equally foolishly, he agreed. By the time he got to my room we were down to $150. Soon that $150 had turned to $77. Our hopes had been dashed. We failed, and all of my money was gone.
But then something strange happened. It was as if fate didn't wanted to avoid the imminent promises to never gamble again, and we started winning.
And winning. And winning. Soon we had recovered all of our money and then some! Our balance hit $2000. Every time we'd lose money we'd reevaluate the bizarre flowchart that described our strategy and add another branch to it.
Soon our friends were recruited, and a 24 hour playing schedule was implemented. We had a high score sheet where we'd write down our hourly profit and try to outdo each other.
We kept our lips shut about our winnings, but everyone in our dorm knew that we were gambling. More importantly, they knew that we had serious gambling problems. Random aquaintances would come up and try to explain the dangers of gambling. I'd keep a straight face, but inside I was dancing. I was going to be rich, and I wasn't going to work for it.
Soon we were up to $5000 or so and felt invincible. But the rumors around the dorm were increasing - everyone thought we were pouring all of our money down the drain like idiots. We had to change their minds.
We declared that we were big winners and offered a chance to invest with us. Give us your money on friday and on monday we would return it, reflecting our win. So cocky we were, that we guaranteed against losses. No one wanted to take it. Finally we found one person and took his $100.
On monday we proudly returned $200. Everyone was amazed, and we were happy because we'd just topped $10,000. The money went to our heads and we started spending it. We spent some in real life and even more future profits in our heads. We'd buy boats, an island, planes, or whatever else we wanted. I never had a cell phone before, but I went and bought the most expensive one available at the time that only high powered executives could afford.
Soon we split into two teams and kept playing. We'd go to the business building at UT and play side by side, smirking at the business students who were cranking out their term papers. Within a few more days we reached $15,000.
I thought we were unstoppable. But Hayden, eternally more cautious than I, managed to unravel our strategy and do the math. We were getting lucky... the odds weren't in our favor - they were just temporarily skewed and would catch up with us. As if on cue, Adam called to report a $5000 loss.
My whole world was crashing around me. The past couple weeks had me completely convinced I was on the fast track to wealth, and I didn't want to let go of that dream. Reluctantly we cashed out and split the profits.
Adam spent his $5000 on cello camp that year, leaving him broke again the next.
My $5000 sat in the bank for a while until I decided to try again. More thorough this time I worked and worked to try to come up with a winning strategy. By some fate, one hit me. It couldn't be that easy, could it?
Sure enough, the next few months proved that it could be that easy. I wasn't making much, but $100 per day for just an hour or two of work became my routine. Some of the casinos would pay me like that first one did, others would stiff me. Some seemed to have the games rigged and I couldn't win no matter what. As time passed I figured out which to trust and which to avoid.
I took my first job the next year. I wanted a car, but didn't want to spend all my money on one, so I decided to get a job and pay myself back before quitting. Using most of the money I didn't have in casinos I bought a 1985 Mercedes 380SE. It was my first Mercedes, and I was loved it.
My job was delivering pizzas, and I only needed to work for two months to recover the money spent on the car. Every day delivering in my Mercedes I would make $100, and then I would go home and make about that much gambling in just a few minutes. As pizza delivering became more boring, the gambling thing looked more attractive.
In a fit of irony my car actually broke on the way home when I was one day away from earning enough to pay myself back for it. The timing chain was broken and the car was totalled.
So much for a real job. I needed to focus on gambling and buy another Mercedes.
Shortly after, I decided to drop out of school. Class was getting in the way of gambling and thanks to Papa Johns Pizza, I knew I would never get a real job again - the money isn't good enough to justify giving up my precious time. With gambling I could play whenever I wanted, take time off when I wanted, and play from anywhere in the world.
I gleefully marched into the UT counselor's office.
"What can I help you with today?"
"I'd like to drop out"
"Oh... ok. Well.. why would you want to do that?"
"Because I don't like doing this, so I'm not going to"
"I'll just mark it as a semester off so that you can come back"
"No. I'm done."
And I was done. It felt surprisingly good.
Calling my mother didn't feel quite as good. In her life priority list, school is a clear number one. And possibly numbers two and three too. The conversation ended when she hung up on me :
"... Fine Tynan. Go play some poker. *click* "
It seemed like a good enough idea to me. She was convinced for a long time that I wasn't making any money. I'll never forget the quote : "Tynan, if you took a second and actually added up how much you won and lost, you'd find out that you were actually losing."
She was wrong, though. My monthly income doubled within a few months of dropping out. After a few months she began speaking with me again, and eventually gave me some of the money they had saved up for college to use in my gambling business. After that my income hit six figures and stayed there.
The next six years, peppered with a few stressful disasters, was pretty smooth sailing. I never worked more than 20 hours a week, and often less than 10. I hired employees, got an office, and had custom accounting software written. I even paid my taxes.
Finally I burnt out, though. It occured to me that although it was easy enough to make a huge salary every year, I was never going to become a multi millionaire from gambling. It has a limit. Also, after playing millions of dollars of hands every year, I just got sick of seeing casinos.
Yesterday after a business partner reneged on a deal that we made, I decided it's finally time to quit and move on to bigger and better things. I'll still deal with my existing cashouts, but within a month or two I'll probably be done with gambling for life. It's a bittersweet goodbye, since gambling was so incredibly profitable and fun for me.
It seems like a dumb idea to forfeit so much easy money, but the fact is that I don't enjoy it anymore. I really believe that it's important to enjoy what one does, so I'm going to work on becoming a rapper.
[Deleted affiliate link]
Two gambling related books that I love are :
Good luck!
EDIT: Someone has told me that Casino On Net is no longer 100% reputable. The incident he mentioned had to do with marketing and not player relations, but it's now been more than two years since posting this and I no longer know which casino is the best.
EDIT 2 (12/25/2009): This post is now four years old and gets a lot of people angry. Let me clear a few things up:
1. Yes, I was really a professional gambler for seven years. The idea that I would lie about this to make up a blog post (which all of my real life friends and family have read) is insane.
2. I will NOT tell how I made money. I will not tell you why. If you want to make money gambling, I suggest you play poker.
3. The links to Casino-On-Net are affiliate links. I don't know if I still get paid for them, since this was posted almost four years ago. I don't know if they're still a good casino. Back when I played they were easily the most reputable casino. They might not be anymore. Either way, I would NOT recommend gambling with them or anyone else.
4. I thought this was clear in the post, but I wasn't a very good writer back then: you are not at an advantage over the casino if you do the Martingale system. I got lucky.
No bio set
51 years ago
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No bio set
9 years ago
I just read this post today and feel compelled to post a reply.
To the people asking Tynan what his secret formula is, there is no secret, mathematical formula to win. This article is pure fiction. It did not happen. Think for a second and use common sense. There are millions of people who gamble in casinos and online sites every year, and thousands of researchers, math whizzes, college students, professors, etc. that have looked for ways to gain a mathematical edge over the house. At the top of the page, he casually comments, "Dedicated people may figure it out." Thats hilarious. If you think that Tynan devised his own little scheme that worked for 6 years resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in winnings, you are very gullible.
Ask yourself this question: Why, if Tynan can make all of this money on a whim with his magical formula, is he trying to make a few PENNIES per click through by hawking some low rent online casino on his site? The graphic at the top of the page right now says "Buy this ad for $150 a month".
Consider this: How much do you think this sort of information would be worth? The ability to consistently take money from a casino, making huge profits, all based on some secret technique? Would this guy really be running this site, selling ad space for $150? Does any of this make any sense to anyone? So please, everyone, stop asking for his magic formula, because it absolutely, positively cannot happen.
Also, does anyone believe that any online casino, which operates under no governmental oversight, would continue to pay this guy all of this money over a period of 6 years? Nothing here makes sense.
Finally, I request a response from Tynan, including some sort of proof of this feat. A testimony from one of his former cronies, pictures, bank statements, or, (gasp) an explanation of how this supposedly occurred. Something verifiable so that we can all say, "Well, I guess he really did make hundreds of thousands of dollars but decided he was tired of being so wealthy and now is selling ad space on his site for $150 a pop."
Sam@williamhill
Sam@williamhill
No bio set
4 years ago
Very well said, this guy Tynan is being paid by bookies to tell these tempting stories/lies
Keith Richards
Keith Richards
No bio set
5 years ago
Are people really that fucking stupid!!!
No bio set
4 years ago
I dont know why i just read this whole thread, or am posting this message, but the majority of people have missed the point at no stage is it suggested that any kind of martingale system works end of discussion on that point.
Anyone who doesnt believe you can make consistent money through gambling either hasnt tried or is stupid.
There are hundreds of viable systems out there the most commonly used are card counting in blackjack very easy and mildly profitable and bonus bagging even easier and also profitable.
I make between 100 and 400 gbp each week just bagging ongoing bonuses from IAS (2 bets on a friday night and one on a saturday morning plus opposing bets to guarantee profit) and bet365 4/1 offer with a lay bet on betfair or betdaq also nearly guaranteed.
The only times i have ever lost on these bets is either when i have typed in the wrong numbers or been unable to access the internet to complete the betting process.
There is also arbitrage betting agin very easy and almost guaranteed profits.PS tryon or whatever his name is may have fabricated his story but makin money from gambling is easier than making money in a 9-5 job unless you are very dumb
Baltimore Jones
Baltimore Jones
No bio set
3 years ago
So there are three possibilities here:
1) He was playing poker, which you can actually have an edge at since it's against other people and not the house. There was substantial money to be made from the early-late '00s even with a fairly basic level of skill. It got harder over the years though, and now you have to be really good just to grind out a moderate salary at online poker (and I'm not sure it's even possible in the U.S. anymore). Throw me with my current knowledge and skill back to 2002 to play online poker and I would make over a million dollars a year, no exaggeration.
2) He's really good at analyzing sports and was able to make good bets on that. Extremely unlikely, but again easier 10 years ago IF he had complex proprietary computer simulations and figured things out that have only become common knowledge more recently.
3) He was a scammer. That's what actually happened, because otherwise he would just come right out and say he played poker. Online casinos used to give big bonuses both for signing up and also weekly/randomly/monthly. If you played games that have a minimal casino edge and only played the minimum required to "clear" the bonus requirements (you were required to play a certain amount before they'd let you withdraw), you could be expected to make a tidy profit in many cases (this can be easily figured out mathematically). Again, if I could go back to
and play online casinos I could make a good amount of money. Over $10K in easy added income a year for sure, I don't really know what the ceiling was if you were doing it legitimately. But to make the type of money he's talking about, he was scamming.
What he probably did was constantly, fraudulently sign up for "new" casino accounts in order to get the large sign-up bonuses. Use friend/relative names, use fake names, open up new bank accounts, etc. For each new identity it was likely possible to make at least $10K in start-up bonuses alone in the first couple of weeks, plus the frequent weekly/monthly bonuses.
There are additional possibilities such as becoming an affiliate of the casinos, referring people, etc., but his main way of making money was almost certainly scamming.
mr.raccoon
mr.raccoon
No bio set
5 years ago
Well my friendly people. The case is.. Scamming people. In poker world they start takeing bucks for young and stupid players who just throw their money. They have there own groups with rules, maybe play together against someone or what ever. I guess before poker they did some things to get people in their so called business.. they didnt risk their own money, but if won they won free. Thats my point of "box" view. Hope you got the idea, sorry for bad english... Dont be foolish people, you start you need to start as a best and very concentrated and smart.You cant just learn to play a game and win everyone. Good luck!
No bio set
5 years ago
Can you do this on real casinos?
Student. Aspiring Entrepreneur.
5 years ago
Update: The site I was talking about earlier has been moved to
The site is about matched betting, which is similar to bonus whoring, but still profitable today.
No bio set
6 years ago
I won't ask how to win money... but how avoid getting banned if you keep on winning money?
AsianPunter
AsianPunter
No bio set
7 years ago
OH MY GOD.. This was what I had been planning to do after I decided to quit my university last month. We had the same plan. I was now on the beginning stage whereby I had to build up a capital for ard $5k to try out the normal martingale instead of double as I think double martingale is more risky than normal if you are on a losing streak. Additional, the max cap for table game is the way they counter martingale. My plan is to win 4 shoes of $50, $200 per day and multiply it by 20days if I compared it to 9-5 job which add up to $4000. Before reading your article, I feel like nobody understands me as I had been keeping this plan from my parents and friends as all are too bound to the society and thinks gambling = bad + no future. I wanted to start this gambling business for a few years, piled up a sum and start an office so I can end the gambling for a better income. Thx for your article which calms my minds and heart as I know there is someone in this world had been through with this plan and I AM NOT ALONE!!! Cheers! Btw I am from Singapore!
Caihuijuan
Caihuijuan
No bio set
3 years ago
HI, interesting to know we share the same interest . Pls let me know if you turned professional Gambler. I seriously think is possible - only have to exercise discipline.
Hope to hear from you soon if u are still active in this site.
Start writing your reply here...
Caihuijuan
Caihuijuan
No bio set
3 years ago
Interesting to know .. Me too very keen but no clue of a system .. But I guess is discipline ..do not be greedy . I seriously think is possible for $100- $150 per day . Cheers
No bio set
2 years ago
I want some money.because i want to repair my old hause
freddy22121
freddy22121
No bio set
3 years ago
I use a similar strategy to the martingale and it has worked well for me however I play games where the odds are more even
If there's one popular clich&A&&AE&&A&& that is dangerous to believe, it's this one."If it's too good to be true, it probably is."Actually, I can even live with that phrase literally. But most people take it to say "If it's too good to be true then it DEFINITELY is."
On A-LISTED
Guest Blog by Michelle ClarkeValentine's Day is a day to show your partner how much you love them, and this year was a special one for me and my husband as it was the 10th anniversary of our very first date.I was 19 at the time, he was 23 and we had been working together at a large law firm in Manchester for 8 months before he plucked up the courage to ask me out on a date.Thinking about it now, I still can't believe that was way back in 2004! This year, to celebrate 10 years together, we wanted to do something special but couldn't decide what to do, and then I spotted a competition running on the @A_Listed Twitter page to win a Valentine's night out at Lola Lo in Manchester.
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51 years ago
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