Out of Pod Experience

It’s 2016 May. I am a 7 years old capsuler in New Eden. I was selling my assets. I needed ISK, because I WANT ISK.

I’m stripping my old mission ships collection. I no longer do high sec missions anyways. I’m selling X-Type modules to low ball buy orders directly. I’m destroying T2 large rigs so I can repackage the ship and sell to yet another low ball buy orders. I’m not even bringing them to Jita for the best price. I’m selling at local hub. I need quick ISK. I’m liquidating my assets, because I WANT ISK.

I started gambling with ISK in mid-May 2016, through iwantisk website. I vaguely knew about them but never actually tried the site, and I don’t know why, I decided to give it a go. I started with 1 billion ISK deposit, this is pretty affordable starting ISK for 7 year old player with big enough wallet and assets.

I started off with raffles. It went well. I got up to a few billions, so I tripled my ISK. Then I had reached high enough level to try some high roller slots. On the second day of my gaming at iwantisk, I hit Ice Miner Jackpot. It was over 14 billion ISK. Now, even for an established player, 14 billion ISK win is a very nice thing. Then I kept on gaming, and only two days later, I hit Ice Miner Jackpot again, this time it was 22 billion ISK. In the space of few days, I’ve won tens of billions of ISK, and I was having very good time

When I had that much ISK in my iwantisk account, I didn’t look at the frigate and cruiser raffles. I started eyeing up the Jump Freighter and Wyvern BPO raffles. Those tickets cost quite a bit, and buying decent number of tickets for them could cost billions. So I was gambling in the region of billions. I hit some nice wins, suffered some losses. Then I thought about hitting double (or even triple) on the Jump Freighter and Wyvern BPO raffles. I started to buy 100% of the tickets. It’s a guaranteed loss of IS because the house values total cost of tickets as higher than the win value, but if I was lucky I could almost double or triple my ISK, in the units of tens of billions. I hit some double, but obviously the odd was against me and I wasn’t hitting enough to cover for the losses.

I was losing ISK fast, faster than I’ve ever lost ISK in any other way during my 7 years in New Eden.

There – that’s how I got to the point I had to liquidate my assets and sell to low ball buy orders to get quick liquid ISK to put into gambling. The experience felt similar to the gambling problem I experienced in my early 20s. I’m now in my mid-30s, but it seems I’m relapsing again after a decade of quitting gambling.

It was such a roller coaster ride. I had some awesome wins and some heavy losses. I’ve won Wyvern BPO bundle valued at over 100 billion ISK, I’ve won triples on Jump Freighter raffles, I was winning left and right. But at times, with bad losing streak, I was losing tens of billions in less than an hour. I would be losing ISK slower if I cyno a solo super cap with no backup into a red null sov system.

During this crazy up and downs, there was one defining moment. Considering I’ve won more than 10 Jackpots and won the highest valued bundles in raffles before, you would think the defining moment would be something awesome.

It wasn’t.

THE defining moment in my time at iwantisk was when I won a Flycatcher in a raffle with a single ticket. I think it was 1 in 36 chance, so the ticket costed me between 2~3 million ISK. The thing is that I was absolutely broke. Sure there were more I could liquidate in game, and I still had some reserve billions of ISK in my in game wallet. But at the time, that last few million ISK was all I had left after selling all my bling stuff in game, and after squandering tens of billions I have won before, including the slot jackpots.

I had already scratched all my cards. I had no more tokens. I’ve scratched them down to below 1,000 tokens. And all I had left was a few million ISK, just about enough to buy a single raffle ticket for a Flycatcher at 1/36 chance.

I won that, which brought me 72 million ISK or so. I took that ISK into Planetarium slots. I could lose 8 times in a row until I lost all my ISK. But I didn’t. I kept on winning. I was gaining ISK each spin. I won more times than I lost, and suddenly I had about 300 million ISK again. Then I took that ISK into Rat Race. I could spin about 10~11 times with that ISK. And within the first few spins, I hit 2 billion ISK combo.

I was back in the race.

(To be continued)

So here are some of my tips. If you are expecting a sure fire way to build up your ISK through gambling, I’ll tell you straight off that you won’t find it here. Do some other activities where you can control what happens and requires real skills and thoughts and analysis and all that good things. Earn your ISK with your ability, and develop your ability.

Now the disclaimer is out of the way, here are some of my core principles.

1. You win and lose by LUCK.

2. As such, you cannot control whether to win or lose

3. But you can manage your ISK.

4. Any ‘strategy’ that requires you to win more times than lose is not going to work over long run

5. Once you put the odds in your favour (e.g. buying more than 50% of raffle tickets), then you are ‘expecting’ to win, not ‘hoping’. For me, that is not gambling and it goes against my first principle of luck. For me, having better odds to win than lose takes away the thrill of gambling. Gambling is about winning against the odds. It’s about the thrill and the glory. At the end of the day, you stand good chance of either breaking even or losing some, and slim chance of walking away with big money. Do you want to methodically go through long process of gambling hours to lose your ISK? Or do you want to experience some glorious single ticket wins and against the odds big wins, a total rollercoaster ride, so when you do lose all in the end, which is most likely, at least you will have some awesome memory (and cool screenshots). The choice is yours, but I choose the thrill and the glory.

6. The house always wins. Don’t argue against this.

There are many things that can be said about gaming at iwantisk, or gambling in general, but these are minor details and people have different preferences. The main thing is that you have to accept that you are playing a game of chance, and R in RNG is random. There are also some core differences you need to understand between different games.

1. Raffles have fixed winning value, and the more you bet the higher your chance of winning, but you also increase the amount you could lose. So at the same time as you feel you are reducing your risk of losing (by increasing your winning odd), you are also increasing the amount you risk.

2. Roulettes, such as seen in casinos and eve-bet, work in different ways. Your winning amount depends on the amount of ISK you bet, and your winning odds depend on what you bet on, and you get paid according to the odds – higher risk (both in terms of ISK bet and odds bet against) means higher reward.

3. Slots are cheap way to make big ISK, if you hit the big win in a few spins that is. Theoretically, if you spin the slots X number of times where the X equals to the Jackpot odd 1:X, then you ‘should’ win once. But by that point, no matter how big the Jackpot, you have lost more than you’ve won (yes, even the big Rat Race Jackpot). I won Caldari Jackpot twice in incredibly small number of spins, and it’s a borderline miracle considering the Jackpot odd is 1:400,000 something, but there are slots where I hit the Jackpot after spinning more times than the Jackpot odd (Planetarium grrr, but at least now I’ve finally won it once!).

4. Considering these things, you need to consider slots vs. raffles. For Pirate Invasion, each 9 line spin costs 45 million ISK. If you spin it 100 times, you’ve spent 4.5 billion ISK. Let’s say a Wyvern BPO raffle comes up. The winning amount is 19.8 billion ISK, and there is chance for double or triple. Depending on the raffle ticket setup, you could be spending 4.5 billion ISK on raffle tickets and have higher chance to win double or triple on that which could be bigger than the Pirate Invasion Jackpot amount (when it is relatively low).

5. But of course, direct comparison is weird and you can’t/shouldn’t rationalize your bets too much. With good luck, you can win near trillion ISK in Rat Race Jackpot with a single spin. With bad luck, you can buy 75% of tickets in a raffle and still lose, and a guy who bought a single ticket wins triple – that’s pure salt.

So my ‘advice’ (if I’m in any position to give such…) is to accept that you are playing a game of chance and there are elements you cannot control or rationalize or manage. Enjoy the luck when it comes to you, curse at the near misses, it’s all about the thrill and the fun and the epic rollercoaster ride.

Take care & fly safe o7

Toobo

PS: Take it however you like, but I think it is undisputable that Toobo is extremely lucky. People who’s seen Toobo at iwantisk will know this. If you are into superstitious thing, or if you enjoyed my write-up, try Toobo’s iwantisk referral account below.

One guy got my referral link through local chat and hit a decent Jackpot on the first day & wrote back to thank me. My corp mate took my referral link and won 20 billion near Jackpot in Rat Race. Another friend of mine won Nothing But Jackpots after being introduced via Toobo. I give out free stuff randomly at locals when I win – for good karma and to give something back to the community. My corp now trusts Toobo’s luck so much that it has set up a dedicated gambling account for Toobo, because Toobo wins against the odds and put the ISK back into corp account. This could be all BS, but who knows – you could get some good luck off the talismanic Toobo. ;)

Here is the ‘lucky’ referral link.

http://www.iwantisk.com/?ref=1216023697

You need to use it through In Game Browser to register for now. Or search for Toobo and check my Bio in game, where you can click through the link.

This is a gamble, you win or you lose. Most certainly you wil lose if you play enough.

Best thing is not to bet.
Gambling like in slot machines and stuff.... you lose more than you earn, always, after some time playing it. House rules and all of that.

I bet only with sports, footbal matches because I can somewhat predict the result, but from time to time, I am wrong.
But since its ISK I bet, I dont feel so bad about it.

So I dont really think you can be a winner In all of this gambling stuff. After all what counts is a honest work, nothing can beat that.
Fortune comes and goes.

"Nice big win" is very misleading. Maybe its your last win and the next wil be "nice big lose" .

in 2014 I have won something like 1 B on betting, now its nearly 2 B....I am cashing out.

If you are greedy or have an adrenaline addiction, there are always some people that will exploit this weakness of yours.

They will make more ISK than you.

As Toobo wrote, we got a dedicated wallet account for gambling. The CEO and directors are making sure that the Gambling account stays just enough for entertainment purposes only. Toobo's daily return is so often and huge it's become bit of a work to shave off the excess and shuffle the money around the Corp accounts.

Interesting read, Toobo.

We've never spoken before, but I've paid plenty of your withdrawals since you started (whether you noticed or not lol), as I'm one of the Big Bankers for IWI. It's my job to pay the normal bankers wages, which is accumulated after they pay you guys. However, they can only see/pay withdrawals under 50 billion; so I'm one of the guys who pay out the huge wins.

I'm glad to see you're winning. That's what we, the bankers, like to hear. We earn a small portion (1%) of all withdrawals that our players make to pay for our time involved with banking and keeping the customers satisfied. So believe me when I say we have _every_ desire to see you succeed, as if you lose, we don't earn ISK for your withdrawals :D

As for gambling, I'm not much of a gambler myself. I love going to Casinos and drinking free drinks and playing the nickle or quarter slots, but I'm far too frugal to bet anything big. But like you, I won a _lot_ of ISK on IWI before becoming a banker, which gave me the opportunity to join the team where I've met most of my current friends in the game.

Anyway, just saw this post linked in the IWI chat and thought I'd pop in and say hi, congrats on your big wins and good luck in the future!

Thank you guys from I WANT ISK for coming here to read my WALL OF TEXT and posting here.

And Bewzee, I've just withdrew 210 billion ISK, so I guess that's 2.1b commission for you. :D

I have been meaning to reply to this thread over the past few days, but as you all know, Pirate Invasion jackpot was going crazy, and I wanted to make a special post after a special win, and it finally happened today - my first Pirate Invsaion jackpot at 231 BILLION ISK. XD

As I said in the original post, the reason I LOVE iwantisk site is that because it lets me enjoy my old bad habbit of gambling, but without risking RL finances like I have done before. So it's a bit of an indulgence thing for me, where I can experience the fun & thrills, but it's all for ISK, not for $$$, but ISK is still meaningful enough to give me enough thrill of gaming.

Mr. I WANT ISK gave some good tips here, that anyone who enjoy gambling should keep in mind. Set a goal, give yourself a 'Stop Loss' point and 'Walk Away' point, and be DISCIPLINED and actually stop/walk away when you reach either point.

Anyways, thank you guys for the amazing site - I'm loving my lucky streak now but as I'll write down below things are always roller coaster ride with gambling, and at the end of the day it's the House and you bankers who gets the ISK in the wallet - but hey, I'm having FUN so it's ok. ;)


Toobo.

(a special post to follow...)

July 5 UPDATE: The behind story of winning 231 Billion ISK Jackpot

I've just won Pirate Invsaion Jackpot at iwantisk.com - unfortunately due to auto-spin I missed the Jackpot screenshot, but here is a screenshot showing me as the latesst jackpot winner.

231 Billion ISK Pirate Invsaion JACKPOT WIN!!!

As I always stress, you win by luck and lose by luck. I won by sheer luck - I will not deny that and I'm not going to pretend that I win ISK by being smart of whatever - it's a freaking Slot Machine, you win if you are lucky and that's all there is to it.

But this Jackpot was something special for me and it was a very intense 2-3 days leading up to the climatic win.

Toobo has already won Ice Miner THREE times, Planetarium once, Nothing but Jackpot multiple times (I think 4 or so), Caldari Militant TWICE - only missing High-Roller Jackpot wins were Pirate Invasion and Rat Race - and there were some minor jackpots, like Gallete Jackpot at 5.8b or so and winning 20b ISK Jackpot on Rat Race (hitting 4 x Jackpot sign, missing just 1 from the big Jackpot) freaking TWENTY TIMES.

Let me start off by saying I REALLY wanted Pirate Invasion win, as this is one of my favourite slot game at iwantisk site. It's unbelievable that I have won so much stuff against all the odds, and Pirate Invasion has comparatively 'easier' odds compared to other things I have one (e.g. Caldari Jackpot odd is like 1:400,000 and Pirate Invasion is like 1:110,000 - but somehow I couldn't win Pirate Invasion even once while I won Caldari Jackpot twice at 4 x more unlikely odds :p)

Anyways. The Jackpot was building up rapidly, and I was determined to take it home. Pirate Invsaion can get very expensive if you are on a losing streak, as 9 line spin costs 45m and I was running multiple tabs (I vary the amount depending on ISK reserve I have, anything between 1~10 tabs at a time).

I got so low on ISK at some points I started liquidating again. I had been claiming Skill Injector raffle wins as items instead of as ISK because it's kind of a thing I would normally not buy with my ISK (I'm old fashioned n train the slow way normally), so I have been claiming them as items in case I get a new alt or something.

Anyways - I sold them all at much less value than I could have gotten if I claimed them as ISK. :p I also sold some PLEX I have been hoarding (which were bought cheap) direct to buy orders (bye bye long term investment).

I received some sponsorship money from the corp, but I was still not hitting the Jackpot for long time. At one point our director Professor Humbert warned that I'm starting to take too much ISK. I told him I will liquidate my assets to gamble more, he said that's pretty bad lol.

So anyways, there I was again, short on ISK, selling off assets for cheap, going for the glorly.

Even after I sold everything within reason and within my control, I still reached a low ISK level point.

There was a point I got below 1 billion ISK in the account, and with that little ISK you can't seriously go for the Jackpot on a slot that needs 45m per spin.

So I diversified and started running cheaper slots & combined with a bit of raffling. The turning point was when I opened 2 billion ISK worth of containers in Caldari Jackpot, which got me back up to a few billion ISK level. Then followed some nice raffle wins, like Providence bundle double and Phoenix bundle win, which each brought over 10 bilion ISK. At one point I had such good run on 5 tab run of mixture of slots that I got back up to 20 billion ISK (mostly combination of multi billion ISK money bags at Rat Race and Pirate BS wins at Pirate Invsaion Slot), and I thought about stopping there and cashing out, but by that point Pirate Invsaion Jackpot was over 200 billion ISK.

So I stuck to my guns and thew caution to the wind. Let's go all in.

But then the losing streak came again - from 20 billion ISK, I dropped down to about 3 billion ISK again at one point. Remember I had no more ISK to inject, and the corp leadership has already said 'stop' in terms of using corp ISK to gamble more. I really thought if I don't hit something soon this will be the end and Toobo has no more ISK to gamble for a while.

Then right at that moment, I hit 4 JP signs in Caldari Jackpot which I was running a single tab of. That brought me back up to about 9b ISK. And from there on I had some ups and downs, slipping around between 6b and 15b range depending on Pirate Ship claims from Pirate Invsaion.

Then when I was at about 10b level again, i thought I would try to make up some cash by raffles - maybe try to make a few bil so I can feel more secure.

I 'terminated' one of the 1b rated raffle & luckily (again, lol) won that with like 12 tickets out of 60, and when I refreshed the raffle page to claim the 1b win, I noticed my wallet was showing like almost 250 billion ISK. WOOT?!!!!

Yes, I missed the Jackpot moment, but I'm happy with the ISK in my wallet and finally having this Jackpot in my collection.

I withdrew 210 billion ISK & gave that all back to my corp. I have 40b left in my iwantisk account now so let's see what new adventures can happen from here.

Thanks for reading and thank you iwantisk! XD


Toobo.

Now, that's a horribly wrong idea...don't try this at home guys.

*checks corpwallet and goes