PORTLAND, Maine — If you go to a casino expecting big wins, you’re doing it wrong.
“You’re there for entertainment, you’re not there to get rich,” said Charlie Frair, who earlier this month launched a Portland-based online business where he — as the tuxedoed Casino Ed — guides a video course that promises to teach “how to have a great time and not lose your shirt” at casinos.
“This doesn’t have to do with gambling addiction at all,” he said. “This has to do with people who are responsible and go to the casino for fun.”
The startup Casino Education Co. is a new chapter for the “semi-retired” Frair and a full-time engagement, after a 23-year career in the nonprofit sector, in a casino gambling hobby that began about 40 years ago and has provided him with lessons along the way.
But he also thinks the time is right and the market is ripe.
“There are very few courses out there that are what I would call consumer education,” Frair said. “I’m not going against the casino and not going against the customer.”
For that reason, he said he sees potential to get casinos to buy into the course as well, but that’s to come later. He will start by marketing directly to customers, charging $50 for access to the two-hour course.
“There’s now a phenomenon called casino saturation, where they’re having to compete more and more for customers,” Frair said.
Casino operators claim that’s at work in Maine, as Hollywood Casino saw revenue dip in 2014 as the newer Oxford Casino’s revenue rose slightly from 2013 to 2014. Representatives of both casinos lobbied lawmakers last year not to allow more competition from casinos sought by Indian tribes and the owners of Scarborough Downs, testifying the state had reached that saturation point.
“Casinos, I believe, will love our workshop because it will promote customers coming back again and again,” Frair said.
His experience and focus centers on the larger resort casinos in places like Las Vegas and Foxwoods, however.
Frair in July issued $40,000 worth of equity in his company up for investors and as of the latest filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission had an investor in for $4,000. Startup costs for the business are relatively low — under $100,000, as a general figure — as building the website and video courses are the primary cost.
Testing on the website wrapped up last week, Frair said. He’s set a goal of having 5 million people take course in its first five years. Out of a pool of about 87 million people he said are estimated to have visited a casino last year, he thinks that’s a reasonable goal.
And he’s focused on having expectations not get too far from probabilities.
He said this aim is at the core of the course — to keep people from the pitfalls of gambling. The most common pitfalls, he said, include not studying the game, not setting a plan for spending time and money and not sticking to those plans if they are made.
That varies depending on the game, but he said there are four steps for playing any casino game, starting with learning the basic rules of the game.
Most people err in stopping there.
“If you’re going to learn a game, then learn the best plays, for Pete’s sake,” he said.
Tips abound on the Internet and other resources for finding the best moves to make in every possible situation in a casino game, he said, and can help someone know that, even if they lose, they gave themselves the best chance they could have at winning.
“I’m not quite as happy when I play well and lose, but I know that I played well and so it doesn’t bother me,” Frair said.
The third step, he said, is coming up with an overall strategy and sticking to it, whether you aim to stay at the table the longest or just make a few good plays with bigger wins. In the course, he has a co-host who takes a more conservative approaches to gambling.
And fourth, he said, is making a set plan for managing time and money.
“It’s a painful look on a dealer’s face when people who keep losing and keep putting more money down don’t have a limit to what they’re going to lose,” Frair said.
While blackjack and craps are his games of choice, he said the strategy applies to games like slot machines, too. With slots, he said, he’ll play no more than 75 cents a spin and give himself up to $10 to lose on any one machine. If he wins back $20, he cashes out and puts $5 back in to see if he can get to another $20 before cashing out again.
“That’s called having a stop win and a stop loss,” Frair said.
In other words, it’s learning just when to cut your losses or cash out and do something else.
“I’m not saying I don’t enjoy winning, but that’s not the point of why I’m playing,” Friar said. “I like that you have to be really smart. When I go home and won $200, I say I played good today and did the right things, and I was so smart when I stopped there.”