The focus of this chapter is on common gambling games played by people with gambling problems and the strategies or systems they use to attempt to beat these games. This chapter has several goals:

1. As a therapist, it is not important to know the full range of possible plays for each type of game, but a general understanding of the game played by a client might help the therapist develop a rapport with the client and give the therapist some insight into the needs the game fills for that client.
2. The results of interviews and group discussions indicate that a basic understanding of a game can improve a therapist’s credibility when challenging gambling myths. Our gambling treatment colleagues caution, however, not to get into  head-to-head battles with clients over their systems. Some clients have a very strong faith in their system. One of our colleagues focuses not so much on the myth but on the outcome of the belief by discussing the failure of the system (e.g., the debts that have resulted in spite of the “logic” of the client’s system).
3. We also believe that understanding the experience of the gambler is an important step towards understanding gambling problems. For example, incremental betting strategies are based on mistaken notions about the nature of random chance. A person who adopts such a strategy, however, actually experiences much more substantial positive reinforcement than one who bets the same amount each time. The strategy itself may be the cause of the gambler’s problems—both the addiction and the resulting debts. Systems of play invariably push around random numbers in such a way that the outcomes no longer seem random but appear to be under the control of the player (see Turner & Horbay, 2003). Thus a system player is left with a strong illusion of control.
4. We also believe that some understanding of the games themselves is necessary in order to understand the difference between problem and non-problem gambling.
5. Finally, we hope that the definitions in this chapter will serve as a useful resource for the development of gambling-related education information.

Many books have been written on how to gamble. Books on how to gamble in general give relatively accurate descriptions of the games (see Turner, Fritz, & Mackenzie, 2003). Books on specific games of skill are generally accurate, but often contain some misinformation. Books on non-skill games, or games of luck, are generally inaccurate, with a wide variety of misinformation.

The authors’ knowledge of these games comes from reading books (see Turner, Fritz, & Mackenzie, 2003), attending conference presentations about game strategies (e.g., Thirteenth International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking), conducting simulations (see Turner & Fritz, 2002) and playing the games themselves. This chapter discusses the more common games. For more information about specific games, we recommend Darwin Ortiz’s On Casino Gambling (1986), Wong and Spector’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Gambling Like a Pro (1996), Reber’s The New Gambler’s Bible (1996), and Harroch, Krieger and Reber’s Gambling for Dummies (2001). They each give detailed accounts of the rules and attempt to correct some of the common errors that people make regarding gambling. Other books, magazines and websites on “how to gamble” can also be found. Many such materials, however, contain factual errors (see Turner, Fritz, & Mackenzie, 2003).

This chapter begins with an overview in Part 1 of the types of games that people play; it also discusses the concept of the payback percentage. Part 2 covers games of chance. Part 3 covers strategies or systems that people use in games of chance. Part 4 is an introduction to games of skill. Part 5 describes in detail blackjack and card counting. Part 6 discusses the game of poker. Part 7 covers games involving subjective probability, such as horse betting, sports betting and playing the stock market. Finally, Part 8 briefly discusses betting on games that one is playing in.