I've seen a lot of back and forth between veteran players, casuals & newcomers alike about this update, Rockstar and the game in general. Some are against thier actions, some defend them and some are neutral. Personally I love the game I played during BETA and now on PC, but I also despise it for it's issues. This latest update feeling like one big warning to stop playing altogether. For now, I'm taking a break from playing. So I've compiled and left a list of issues, general facts and lack-of for people to better judge & talk about the current situation of the game below:
•Online was first released in BETA November 2018, during BETA they introduced Microtransactions with a very scarce amount of content.
•Online later came out of BETA in May 2019 still scarce in content, and then in September it's first major update introducing 3 core roles.
•As a comparison to GTA Online, RDO lacks the Rockstar Editor, Creator Mode, Private Free Roam, aim locked Free Roam/PVP Modes (Free Aim or Auto Aim) & even text chat on PC.
•There was a 7 month period with no news or any information about an update alongside the community protesting as clowns to garner some communication from Rockstar to no avail.
•The collector role was nerfed/randomized due to how rockstar underestimated the ingenuity of the community, one of the main reasons being it was the best paying and easiest to do with a player guided map. Rather than also balancing other roles to make them equal. Such as bounty targets/target rewarding a measly $2
•Naturalist update releases, a sort of rehash of the collector role that lacks in useful content such as re-skins of the exact same legendary coat, being punished for killing animals despite a separate role & dailies that depend on it, pumping animals full of 20 rounds of sedative ammo just to take a sample, overpriced tonics & gold pamphlets that allow you to become an animal in a limited area for a limited amount of time for seemingly no purpose.
•We get outlaw passes, limited time content that relies solely on purchased or earned Gold along with XP or gold rank ups. This taking up a decent portion of content that people tend to get fixated on. This tactic alongside limited time stock clothing is just to put pressure on the purchase of Gold Bars (If you're running low) and to keep player numbers afloat for a longer period. (Fallout 76 has a similar tactic with Atomic Shop Items only being available for a limited time and the Legendary Run) We even have/had legendary bounties, emotes and legendary animals drip fed to us to drag out the update.
•Most of the new content that is added is either locked behind a Role or the Outlaw pass, hair styles, clothing, skills, horses, weapon styles, even emotes and walking styles. So essentially, we have to pay to unlock content so we can then buy or earn said content in game. Sounds a lot like buying a DLC pack with extra steps (As a comparison to GTA Online they can get 200+ new clothing options, hair styles, multiple vehicles, emotes, weapons, walking styles and tattoos immediately available to purchase or are free such as emotes and walking styles)
•There was a period after a botched update for about 1 to 2 days where the game was utterly broken and couldn't actually be played on consoles, they eventually reverted to a previous patch. People lost hard earned streaks and got no compensation for their screw up unless directly reported on an individual basis.
•There is often rampant hacking with modders even being able to stop themselves from being reported and being able to crash your system or boot you from a session, alongside bad Peer to Peer connection rather than dedicated servers. Hackers have even gotten players banned for tricking people into opening nearby illegitimate spawned treasure chests.
•There are many bugs and glitches that still haven't been patched to this day. Not to mention new bugs that come with new updates. For instance: (Not being rewarded XP & money, gold bar coupons not being rewarded, the infamous hanging gun bug, black screens, crashing, not being rewarded money for sales, NPC's suddenly firing their whole clip at you within less than a second, cloth wraps reverting to a different colour, gun belts floating, UI Errors such as not being able to use coupons or browse the full selection of bar decor and much more)
•Next to no advertising or info about this latest update before it released besides a small paragraph at the end of a social club post about the $5 Sale Of RDO. GTA Online on the other hand getting 3 in-game teases and 2 separate video teasers and a main post introducing a new island to a game that has been around for 7 years and 3 console generations now.
•We now have the daily challenge nerf that not only resets your streak automatically but is also rewarding half as much gold. As an example, with the old system if you did 5 daily challenges a day for 4 weeks you'd end up with 49 gold. If you did the same with the new system you'll get 24 gold. If you were to stay at the same pace and do 5 challenges a day with the new system you'd have to do it for 8 weeks straight or alternatively 10 challenges a day for 4 weeks to earn the same as the old system.
•With this latest update, technically they've added time limited pay-to-win skills/benefits behind an outlaw pass. Standard Ammo Capacity Upgrades, multiple meat cooking and wilderness camp fast travel (Outlaw Pass 5 has also leaked and is in the game files and has further ammo skill upgrades included such as arrows and varmint ammo) That's a slippery slope that could potentially lead to bigger and better things being P2W.
•We have to pay an extra 15 Gold towards the "Prestigious Bounty Hunter License" despite having already bought a license for the role.
This update alongside the standalone sale of RDO is nothing but a way to draw in and nickel & dime new unaware players of thier money. All the new players lured in by a cheap game will most likely know nothing of what the game was previously like. I saw one post of someone on here who bought it and spent £45 on gold bars to get the pass, roles and also advance the pass. And he didn't yet receive his free gold bar benefit tokens back from it. Don't forget that everyone before this had paid upwards of £45 or £89 for the base game or ultimate edition which includes Online benefits.
"It's free content bro, quit complaining" Just because it's technically free does not mean it's exempt from criticism. Especially being a live service game & the way they market and dish out their content. Might as well BE a paid DLC pack.
"You're just entitled gamers who want everything free and easy" At the end of the day it's a game, we play it because we want to have fun or to escape from the realities of day to day life. Not to feel like we're working a minimum wage job to survive. Why would you defend a nerf that makes the game harder not just for veterans but newcomers alike and sucks the general enjoyment out of the experience?
"They need money to give us free content bro" If that's the case, then the online content and live service they're currently providing people is pretty lacking and crap, plain and simple. If anything spending money towards the game in it's current state is only going to encourage them to stick with their new strategy. That being said, not everything they do is terrible. Some changes are good, such as the new $$$ bounties.
At the end of the day, we shouldn't be FORCED into a harder grind experience just to HOPE for some good future content. You can clearly see what title Rockstar & Take Two favor most, GTA Online their cash cow. If the content they put out for RDO was actually decent and bug free there wouldn't be this much uproar from everyone. People might actually be more inclined to buy gold bars if the content was good and consistent. If we're expected to further fund the content online they should at the very least listen and communicate with the community. They're a multi million/billion dollar studio, not a small indie dev team. I'm sure they can afford to produce better content and live services than what's currently available for a AAA experience.
The game is a bit like a slot machine, you can pay little for lesser reward but loose less cash (Grind) or double down for improved reward but bigger loss (Pay for gold) Either way when the wheels stop (Content Update) You're gunna get something, but it doesn't mean it's going to be what you wanted or what you were hoping for no matter what option you choose.

I will be reviewing these mod menu's as a normal user, so things such as protection testing, kicking, or crashing will not be covered too much as I do not encounter those situations too much.
If you would like me to talk about a feature about a certain mod menu that I own, feel free to leave a message at the comments and I will review it for you. I have tried to be as unbiased as I can when reviewing these mod menus so that it can help you guys make a decision about which mod menu you may get.
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Disturbed: (Basic costs around $10, VIP costs another $20)
By far the mod menu with the best support, extremely professional and quick to respond to your issues. The mod menu itself is kind of unstable at times, but is one of the best budget mod menu’s priced at around $10 for a lot of features that improves your gameplay experience along with powerful recovery features which has a lot of recovery options, as far as I know, I think the unlocks are unrivalled, with the most unlocks options I have seen in a mod menu. Disturbed has very quick updates, normally releasing a public beta testing version within a few days and finish the beta testing in around a week for normal access to be restored for the basic users. The mod menu has options for just about anything in the game, some are implemented kind of poorly such as ‘drift mode’ which instantly activates upon activation, which is kind of difficult to use practically and the vehicle boost function which increases or decreases in increments of 1 instead of 10, making it quite difficult to change the speed quickly. I would say the protections are quite good from what I have heard, but not as good as some other mod menu’s such as Luna. Not too sure about that as I have never really used Disturbed’s protections before. Overall, I would recommend this mod menu as it is quite cheap to get the basic version and the support team is extremely quick and professional. A new update is coming to Disturbed which should address the crashing issues that some people are going through with the mod menu.
Luna: (Price locked at $27)
Luna is a very good mod menu which packs many features for its price. It has some of the best kicks and crashes (aside from Cherax) and some of the best protections for a public mod menu. Priced at $27, it has features for trolling, recoveries, and generally having fun as this is one of the most stable mod menus I have ever used. Using this mod menu in missions is easy and provides little to no issues with the protections off. The report blocking feature also makes sure that you can maintain a good account reputation ( not that it really matters too much anymore ). It also includes features such as loading story mode mods with a ScriptHookV loader and load in custom vehicles. I would say that the custom vehicles do cause instability for the mod menu, but it still functions well enough. Updates are kind of regular, which each update adding new features that improves the user’s experience or expands on its already large list of options to choose from. For $27, it is one of the best mod menu’s to get for the average player either trying to protect themselves or have more fun with the game. However, Luna’s community has recently gone through quite the change, but I think everything should be going more or less smoothly from now, the community seems friendly enough, and the staff seems to be active to help out as well whenever a user requires some help or is running into an uncommon issue with the mod menu.
Impulse:
Essentials: (Around $10, price varies from reseller to reseller)
Impulse Essentials is often compared with Disturbed Basic due to their similar prices, however, Impulse Essentials does not offer the same kind of experience compared to Disturbed. I would say that Impulse Essentials is more catered towards trolling other players and providing a fun experience for when you play GTA V or GTA Online, but not so much for recoveries. All versions of Impulse has kind of a slow recovery option, maximum at GTA$500,000 every few seconds, it is much slower compared to Disturbed’s GTA$6,000,000 per tick and Luna’s 2,500,000 chips per tick. However, Impulse does offer a more stable mod menu for the price even though the protection options are lesser compared to the VIP version. As the name says, Impulse Essentials is meant to provide you with the tools for having the basic modding experience in GTA Online. I think Impulse Essentials does not have a ScriptHookV loader and you cannot change the banner, but those should not really be too much of an issue as many fun features are already included in the Impulse Essentials mod menu. However, Impulse’s support is rarely online depending on your time zone. Impulse’s Discord server has quite a lot of resources on it, but I have heard people getting banned from there from doing seemingly nothing. Fortunately, from what I could see, unless you are being annoying or asking / doing what they would consider to be stupid things, you should be fine.
Standard: Never owned the standard version of Impulse, so cannot really do a review of it.
VIP: (Apparently it should be around $55 from most resellers)
The VIP version of Impulse provides an extremely large number of features that is so large that it would be impractical to cover them here, a list of the features should be able to be found online. Impulse VIP has features that, as far as I know, are incomparable with other mod menu’s as Impulse VIP seriously has the largest list of features that I have ever seen. The features are extremely fun to use and has provided me with one of the most fun freemode experience that I have ever had with a mod menu. From vehicle weapons to spawning vehicles with custom parameters which allowed for control over freemode that I have never experienced before. The Impulse Overseer’s function allows for you to track players’ status and also you can lock lobbies to stop people from joining, which is a nice feature to have. The recovery features are still not that great, but everything else is very fun to use. Most of the features are quite stable and function as intended. If you have the budget for it and you want one of the most fun experiences in GTA Online freemode, Impulse VIP is a good option for you. However, Impulse has always had some issues with missions as their protections are kind of difficult to manage sometimes. Some solutions that I have seen online is to disable every single protection and join missions, however, I do not have too much experience playing missions with Impulse, but as far as I have tried it, it works well enough. I use the Impulse auto injector to use the mod menu, but the time it takes to authorize the current session is very long and sometimes makes the experience feel less polished.
The user interface in Impulse VIP is one of the best designs I have ever seen in a GTA V mod menu aside from Disturbed’s user interface, which is also designed quite nicely. What I enjoy about Impulse VIP’s user interface is the information box at the bottom of the screen which talks more about the selected option and if there is a hotkey bound to the function and which key it is bound to if there is a hotkey set. It allows the user to quickly go through the information without guessing which key it is set to. Impulse VIP also has a search function for the mod menu which allows you to quickly look for a specific function in the mod menu as there are a lot of options to go through. Overall, I feel like Impulse VIP is quite good if you are planning to do a whole lot of things such as trolling or giving other players a funny experience with the various options in the mod menu.
2Take1:
VIP: ( 2Take1 VIP Lifetime costs around $120 either with PayPal or from most resellers, 2Take1 also provides a standard edition, and a subscription license for both variants at varying prices. )
2Take1 is by far the most stable mod menu (other than Kiddions mod menu) that I have ever used. It comes with most of the major features in the larger mod menu’s such as recovery with the ability to unlock most of the things in the game. There are options unique to this mod menu such as the chaos options which provides quite the experience for players in the lobby. My game does not really have any performance issues with 2Take1 and at times, I feel like my game is more stable with the mod menu.
One of the features that I enjoy using with 2Take1 is the aimbot and triggerbot options as it causes your aim to move towards the target instead of having just the bullet hit the target, giving the user a more natural experience. 2Take1 comes with an editor that allows you to modify GTA V to your liking, removing or repositioning just about anything in the game. One of the other unique options is the LUA executor for the game, which allows the users to add functions to the mod menu, making it as simple or as powerful as they want it to be. 2Take1’s Discord server provides many LUA scripts to use with the mod menu and other configs for protections or for stat editing in order to provide the user with just about anything they would want to do with a mod menu if they can use LUA. A nice feature about 2Take1 is a business manager where you can enable an overlay that shows the status of all of your in-game businesses and manages them automatically for you, purchasing supplies, production, selling, etc.. With the ability to change license plates as well, it makes itself to be one of the most unique mod menus that is famous for its safety as it has been undetected for over a year and updates for the latest version of the game within hours. If you have the budget for it, 2Take1 is a very good mod menu that you know you can rely on for its reliability and function.
However, the user interface of 2Take1 is not that nice in comparison to mod menus such as Disturbed and Impulse VIP. It looks quite basic and plain, but you can customize the fonts, the colours, and the headers to your liking, which can really transform how the mod menu looks if you put some time into customizing it. Overall, I can recommend this as one of the most stable mod menus for GTA V as I think I have never crashed with this mod menu by itself.
Over mod menu: ( Priced at around $3 for now, price will apparently increase to $20 when Over V2 comes out. I would recommend purchasing from Protein, PringleMan or Elechugas from their Discord as they provide cheap prices with the best user support out of the majority of the other resellers in their Discord server. )
The mod menu itself is decent at best. Many of the options do not work, clicking on IP information instantly crashes your game, but I would say that it is a good entry level mod menu. Costing only around $3 for now, the resellers there such as Protein, PringleMan, and Elechugas has distinguished themselves from the majority of the other members of the staff by displaying friendliness and concern for the customers and quick response times. A warning for the people that are considering this option, their Discord server is quite toxic, with members of the staff saying this such as “Oh, the ScriptHookV loader doesn’t work? Well, nobody cares.” “Oh, the Fortnite cheat no longer works? Hm, really does not matter to me.” and banning people who are being kind of annoying with the way they describe their problems while being quite insulting to the people of colour. However, Over V2 is coming out soon, so the mod menu issues should be addressed by then. Unfortunately, the staff will likely continue to remain the same, but I think they are kind of toxic in a joking type of way? Not really sure how to explain it anymore. Over is a good entry level mod menu to get into modding as it also includes other cheats such as cheats for Fortnite, Among Us, and also includes a VPN as well. It is a good value for money license as far as I know.
Kiddions mod menu (suggested by user):
Kiddions is a free external mod menu for GTA V that you can download from UnknownCheats. Kiddions provides a lot of features for a free mod menu such as becoming invincible, teleporting, healing, spawning vehicles, repairing vehicles, anti-idle kick, and some basic protections. Kiddions also has quite a powerful unlocks sections, able to unlock many of the unlockables from past events. It also provides some fun features such as ammo modification, money dropping, and infinite vehicle boost or rockets. Unfortunately, being an external mod menu, Kiddions does not provide a smooth teleportation experience. Sometimes, using the teleportation function can result in your going into the ground, where you have to accelerate to get out of. Kiddions also cannot perform some features that people consider fun or for trolling since the capabilities of a mod menu that is external becomes more limited. Overall, Kiddions is a very good mod menu for beginners looking to get into GTA V modding as it also provides some recovery features such as changing levels, unlocking things in the game, and it also provides some money-making options such as doing bunker selling missions instantly or rigging the slot machines. I would recommend using Kiddions along with GTAHaxUI for general stat editing to make it a more complete experience. DiaModz website provides a download for Kiddions with GTAHaxUI along with the files for the various stats that you can edit inside the game.
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Phantom-X: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
Ilusion Engine: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
X-Force: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
XCheats: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
Fragment: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
Tactical: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
Lightning-X: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
Robust: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
Cherax: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything much about it now, but I have heard that it has the best kicks for a public mod menu.
Paragon: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
Ephemeral mod menu: I do not own this mod menu, so I cannot write anything about it as of now.
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I would also be willing to review any mod menus that any team or mod menu staff sends me, of course, I will still be unbiased but I will try to be more detailed in any parts that you want me to specify on.
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Hopefully this has helped you in making a decision with which mod menu you want to purchase, again, if you have anything you want to know about a mod menu that I have access to, feel free to let me know in the comments. If I have made a mistake in a part of my review, let me know and I will check through it again to make sure.

Free tools & menus
Although the majority of free menus ARE viruses, scams, detected etc. As far as I know there is 1 decent free menu, decent as in safe to use any paid menu can easily out-class it and can probably crash there game.
The free tools/menu that I would recommend are
Kiddons Modest Menu - https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/grand-theft-auto-v/433685-kiddions-modest-external-menu.html
This is the one and only free mod menu out there. Its recovery options and tools are lacking however you can set your own experience level with it. It also has a god mode option and a basic vehicle spawner. You can make a decent amount of cash with this menu by going into Online Services/Casino/Rig Slot Machines and remove the limit. With this play the Egyptian themed slot machine and always bet max. You will win every time and you’ll make around 2.5mil per loop, you can cash out the chips to cash. It’s a slow method but the most effective one with kiddons and it still beats dropping yourself or grinding.
GTAHaX - https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/grand-theft-auto-v/275597-gtahax-1-52-external.html
This is a stat editor for GTA 5, it’s only really useful for setting your character stats, unlocking locked items and skipping heist preps. You cannot modify your xp or cash with this although there might be a way to modify your health, which would be pointless as all menus include a god option. This is also free, Its not a menu but I still include it as it is a cheating tool.
GTA 5 Online Mechanics to know for modding
GTA 5 is a P2P, or Peer to Peer game for online. There are two special types of players used for this, Host and Script Host. Hosts will be hosting the lobby and most menus, except for kiddons ofc, have an option to use a host kick that will kick ANY player in the game, regardless of what protections they have enabled. This is basically an UNBLOCKABLE kick, this is why becoming host is so valued, some people will even kick ½ the lobby in order to gain host. As a host your game can still be crashed or kicked by other modders though, it depends on whether or not your menu is good enough to withstand the kick. Some mod menu’s. You then only need to kick one person. After host there is script host, you can take this away from any player WITHOUT kicking them, although kicking them also works, Script host has a stronger kick than normal but it can still be blocked, so even though it’s nice to be script host it isn’t required or even super helpful.
Paid Menus and what they are good at
I’ll be listing menu’s then talking about them and what they have pros/cons at. There isn’t an exact tier-list however as it mainly depends on what you want
Luna – This is the mod menu I personally usually use, its quick to update and has pretty good recovery options, kicks and protections. As far as I know it’s got the best protections from other menu’s as well as kicks/crashes. It’s not the most stable menu however and I’ve noticed that I crash more with it than normal, although not an extremely high amount. It costs $25 and can be got from https://lunacheats.org/welcome/ Not taking sides, menu was either taken down by a C&D or it was an exitscam. There is no proof of a C&D, articles use Luna as source and Luna use Articles as source but there is also no proof of an exitscam as menu was doing pretty well at the time they got rid of it.
Impulse – Impulse has a few tiers, I’m not too familiar with the individual tiers however Impulse is usually known for its good trolling options, last I checked its recovery options were not that good however it’s still a good menu if you’re looking to troll. It can cost $15 - $50 depending on what tier you get. You can get Impulse from https://impulse.one/
Disturbed – Disturbed is a medium tier menu in my opinion, its not good at crashing other people or protecting against other menu’s however it has great recoveries and it is cheap. It costs around $10-$15. I would not recommend buying Disturbed VIP as your better off getting a different menu. You can get it from https://www.w1tch.pro/
Phantom-X – Phantom-X is also a cheaper menu, It compares to Impulse in the sense that it’s good for trolling and I’ve even seen some people say its better for trolling. However Phantom-X doesn’t seem to be good at that much else. From what I’ve heard its pretty stable. It can be brought from https://recoverygods.xyz/ there main website is pretty hard to find and after 30 minutes of searching I could not find it’s official website as I’ve not personally used Phantom-X.
Paragon – Paragon is one of the more expensive menus. It’s very stable and has a pretty nice looking menu in my opinion. I’ve used it for a while during the free weekend and liked it. It used to be known for its great protections but recently it’s been lacking in protections. However it has decent trolling options, more recently it seems like an all-around menu. You can get it from https://paragoncheats.com/
Ozark – I haven’t tried Ozark much, it’s a cheaper menu but its also in beta. It looks promising and has some unique features. Apparently it has a WIP Lua Injector which is great news for people who are in special groups or know how to code Lua. You can get it from https://ozark.gg/
2Take1 – 2Take1 is usually considered to be the best menu out there, especially if you know Lua as it is the only menu with a working Lua injector. However it is also the most expensive menu and it also partially uses a subscription model, the menu costs $140 to permanently keep and it can be brought from https://2take1.menu/
Menu’s that you should NEVER get
I’ll just list these off without much elaboration as they are usually stolen code, have poor support or are viruses.
Free Youtube/Ebay/Discord Menus – 99% of these are going to be viruses and the other 1% is going to be detected. Don’t install Kiddons from a youtube video go to the unknowncheats link I posted, make an account and get it from there if you want it.
Kingpin – Pretty bad over-all, usually considered to be the worst menu out there.
Never get any mod menu’s that are new, they can be exit-scams and will usually take the cash
and bail after a month. Examples of these exit scam menu’s are
- Over
- Hypno
- Indara
A lot of these exit scam menu’s are also using stolen code.
Resellers
Since most mod menu’s use bitcoin only there are resellers which can sometimes charge at a slightly higher price but will deliver the menu and accept payment forms like PayPal. These are resellers that I know of/am aware of. If you know of a reseller comment it below and I'll add it.
realdudesync
radiantcheats
recoverygods
freshkeys
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Disturbed keys can only be brought through there discord. You can find a link through there site (W1tch.pro)
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Updates: V1.1 Added more Resellers, Crossed out Luna

Last updated 2:00 EST, 27 July
^{RIP my inbox}
All new posts asking about information already provided here will be removed and redirected here to reduce redundancy.

Release

As of 5:15 EST, the update has released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

• 3.4GB on PS4
• 3.2GB on Xbox One
• 2.9GB on Steam
• 2.6GB on Social Club.

On the note of releases... Some countries will not be able to access certain content from this update due to gambling laws. Thankfully though, players from these countries will still be allowed to download the update in general.

Money for Diamond Casino

For ways to make money to afford the new DLC content, along with methods to make an empty lobby to do CEO/MC work, check the Mega Guide.
Tips

• You only need $50,000 to register as a VIP! If you have at least that much, you can register as a VIP for 4 hours and get access to VIP missions (which can be done in an invite only session), giving you a lucrative way to save up.
• If you own both a crate warehouse and vehicle warehouse, you could use them together to make more money overtime than you could by using either exclusively. Use your sourcing/exports between crate pickups and sales, and you'll be getting the best of both worlds, gaining from the postive money-making aspects of both.

Content and Prices

Content that has initially released with the update.

Southern San Andreas Super Autos

• Weeny Issi Sport - $897,000
• Vapid Caracara 4x4 - $875,000

Legendary Motorsport

• Annis S80RR: $2.6million
• Enus Paragon R: $905,000
• Obey 8F Drafter: $718,000
• Truffade Thrax: $2.3million

Penthouses

• Cash Pad: $1.5million
• Party Penthouse: $3.78million
• High Roller: $6.5million
• "Design Your Own": $1.5million

Penthouse Customizations

• Colour options: $215,000 or $258,500
• Pattern options: $92,000 - $210,000

Penthouse Addons

• Lounge Area: $400,000
• Media Room: $500,000
• Spa: $800,000
• Bar and Party Hub: $700,000
• Private Dealer: $1.1million
• Office: $200,000
• Extra Bedroom: $200,000
• Garage: $800,000

Gambling

As this is a Casino-centric update, there's plenty of ways to gamble away your hard-grinded money.
The gambling in this game centers around a new form of currency, called Chips. These chips are pretty much like real-world gambling chips, with a one-to-one dollar value, except you keep your chips when you leave the casino. Chips are an actual currency in GTA Online, as they can be used to purchase exclusive items from a shop inside the casino, along with being used to bet with when playing the Gambling Games, listed below

• Slot Machines: There's plenty of options to choose from, but they all perform the same way. Spend some chips, and let the RNG decide whether or not you earn anything from it.
• Blackjack: Casino style blackjack with up to four simultaneous players, all of which play against the dealer. Anyone who beats the dealer individually wins, anyone who the dealer beats individually loses, and if the dealer gets Blackjack (an Ace and 10/face-card), everyone immediately loses. Assuming your initial hand isn't a Blackjack, you have the option of doubling-down, which doubles your initial bet with the caveat of only being able to hit once.
• Poker: Three-card poker. You make your bets, check your hand, and similar to Blackjack, each player wins if their hand is better than the dealer's, and the dealer beats whoever has a worse hand than him. While there is no option to double-down, how much you win does depend on how good of a hand you have. The better your hand, the more you win. Also, while you can fold your hand, you lose your initial bet anyway.
• Horse Racing: Pretty much standard horse racing bettering. You choose a horse, you put your money down, and if you bet correctly, you get double the amount you bet in return. Otherwise, you just lose the amount you bet.

To gain more chips, there is a counter inside the casino where you can buy them, however you are limited in how many you can buy per day (real-world 24 hours). As standard, you can buy a maximum of 20,000 chips per day, but if you own a penthouse of any tier, you can buy up to 50,000 chips per day. Chips can also be traded in for money, but there does not appear to be a limit on this. No matter how many chips you win from gambling, it appears that you can trade them all in at once for the equivalent dollar value.
Lastly, there is the Wheel. It's a roulette wheel that you can only spin once per day, which costs $500 per spin. There are twenty reward slots, and since some rewards are in multiple slots, they have greater chances of being selected. The biggest note about this wheel however is that there is one slot in which you can win a free car! What makes this so significant is that since the car takes a 1/20 slot on the wheel, that means you still have a 5% chance of winning a free high-value vehicle! Compared to most online games, that's pretty much the most generous RNG you can get.

Business and Missions

coming soon

FAQ

Are there any differences between the penthouses
For once, yes! Well, technically... they're the same basic property layout, but each option gives you different addon options.

• The Cash Pad: The basic Penthouse with no property addons available . You cannot purchase a garage, extra bedroom, lounge, etc. with the Cash Pad. You can, however, purchase penthouse customizations (colour and wall patterns).
• The Party Penthouse: Gives you certain of the addon options: the main Penthouse, the Extra Bedroom, the Lounge Area, the Spa, and the Bar and Party Hub. You are locked to these options, no more, no less.
• The High Roller: Gives you all of the property addons as standard, and the most expensive penthouse customization options... this means that you cannot choose your own colour and wall patterns with this version.
• The "Design Your Own": ...What should be the standard option. It gives you the basic penthouse and allows you to choose which addons and customizations you want, with an extra cost for each one, of course. Just get this one. You can also renovate this option later, allowing you to purchase more addons and change your customizations later.

What do the Penthouse Addons do?

• Lounge Area: Allows you to purchase the other Penthouse Addons (except for the Extra Bedroom and Garage, which are the only items addons that can be purchased without a Lounge).
• Media Room: You know the cinemas around Los Santos? The ones that play a few 5 minute animated films on repeat? That, but in a Penthouse.
• Spa: Gives you access to a hot tub and a Personal Stylist. The Stylist's services are the same as the ones spread around Los Santos (hair, contacts, and make up), but they're all free.
• Bar and Party Hub: Allows you to consume drinks that instantly intoxicate your character, along with access to special arcade games that aren't available anywhere else in the game.
• Private Dealer: Allows you to play gambling games in your penthouse.
• Office: Adds a standard computer, a Gun Locker, and a money vault (don't get excited, it's just aesthetic).
• Extra Bedroom: Bedrooms in owned properties in GTA Online are used as spawn points, so why can you pay to have an extra one? Because you can now allow a friend of yours to claim it! The Extra Bedroom allows a friend of yours to use your penthouse as a spawn apparently, though the exact implementation of this is not completely clear.
• Garage: Access to the Penthouse's garage bay.

How do I get the armored car?

• To recieve the Enus Paragon R (Armoured), you have to complete the Diamond Casino's mission series, which you must own a penthouse to access. Once of the missions are complete, you'll be given the vehicle for free! But remember, it's uninsured and you only get it once, so immediately go into passive mode and take it to the nearest Los Santos Customs to insure it, or else you could lose the vehicle permanently.

Passive Mode

Good news, passive mode has been fixed!

• Passive Mode can now no longer be active when using a weaponized vehicle
• A Passive Mode cooldown of 2 minutes is now in place for players who have just killed another player
• Players now must wait 5 minutes before they can activate Passive Mode again after disabling it
• Players now must wait 30 seconds before they can disable Passive Mode after activating it

These changes make is so that grievers can no longer abuse passive mode, or at least no where near as easily. If you start to get the upper-hand on a griefer and destroy whatever death-machine they're using to troll you, or if you confront them in a death-machine of your own, they can't abuse Passive Mode to try to get the upper-hand on you!

Solo Session

Check the Mega Guide for ways to push yourself into a public Online session with no one else in it. Keep in mind that some missions and abilities are unavailable if there's no one else with you though!

Bugs and Glitches

• Apparently on PS4 and Xbox One, you must have full size of GTA V available to download the update, so if you have less than ~60GB free, you may have trouble downloading the update. This does not mean that the entire game is re-downloaded, it just means that the update may not download if you don't have that much space available.

Credits

Special Thanks: u/Rebored_Warrior - Sent me the official patch notes link!

• u/LordMcze - Information on countries that restrict players from gambling functions.

PISTOLS⚠️
The AP Pistol is, pound for pound, the best-in-class weapon, purely based on its full-auto firing mode. Don’t underestimate this gun: with the extended clip it carries 36 rounds, and can produce a real mess against weaker AI. If you’re down on ammo and in a clinch, you could do far worse.
It would be great if you watch my video about this: https://youtu.be/pJZBI9siz50
MACHINE GUNS⚠️
This category contains both SMGs and LMGs, but the SMGs are, unfortunately, a useless class. You’re almost always better off using an assault rifle. The only exception is the Micro SMG, which can be fired from cars. Apart from the AP pistol, it’s the only full-auto weapon capable of doing so. That aside, the best machine gun to have equipped in this slot is the Combat MG. It features slightly higher damage than the MG (3.2/10 compared to 3/10), but the real benefit comes from increased fire-rate (6.5/10 compared to 6/10), accuracy and clip-size (200 rounds compared to 100 rounds, both extended). Both guns have the same range at 6/10, but the Combat MG is a fine choice when attacking vehicles, and especially helicopters. There’s a reason the game gifts you one in the fourth round of a Survival. But, assuming you aren’t level 80, go for the normal MG. It doesn’t unlock until rank 50, unfortunately, so until then you’re going to be stuck with the Assault SMG and it’s 2.2/10 damage. Really, though, the only circumstances you should be using a machine gun over an assault rifle against human targets is either because you need full stopping power at the longer end of mid-range or you have an ammo problem.
There is an oddity in this class. The Gusenberg Sweeper came free with the Valentine’s Day Massacre Special DLC, and hasn’t been carried over into the new-gen versions, presumably because it’s so OP. It features a very high rate of fire (600 RPM) with significantly higher damage than the basic, AK-47-based assault rifle (5/10 compared to 3/10). It also has a slightly greater range. Did you get it? Lucky you.
ASSAULT GUNS⚠️
The assault rifle will likely be your default weapon for most combat situations, as they’re more powerful than SMGs and more accurate than machine guns. The Special Carbine is my go-to assault rifle. It was part of The Business Update DLC, and it’s unlocked from rank 1 in GTA Online. Fully tricked out it’s a devastating gun, a truly multi-role weapon capable of the toughest jobs that has no problem scoring head-shots at range. If you’re looking for an alternative, the Bullpup Rifle has exactly the same stats. Some higher level players prefer the Advanced Rifle because it has an increased fire-rate over the standard Carbine, but it’s less accurate and the extra rounds-per-minute don’t compensate for the drop-off in damage. The Advanced Rifle debate is an odd one, because many, illogically, see it as the preferred option. The Advanced Rifle was one of the original assault rifles in GTA 5 before DLC added more, so its relatively high fire-rate over the standard Carbine Rifle put it at the top of older tests. Now, though, the stats make the Special Carbine or Bullpup an easy choice, as they beat the Advanced Rifle on damage (5.7/10 over 3.4/10), accuracy (6/10 over 5/10) and fire-rate (7.3/10 over 7/10). Straight up: they’re better guns.
SNIPER GUNS⚠️
There isn’t much of a choice here. The basic Sniper Rifle unlocks at rank 21, but the Heavy Sniper doesn’t appear until a far distant rank 90. The Heavy is the superior weapon, with better range, damage and accuracy. More than one long-time player has claimed the Heavy is the best gun in the entire game, but you’re a long way off owning one if you only started with the new-gen GTA 5 release. The only alternative is the Marksman Rifle, a recent addition from the Last Man Standing Update. I actually use this a fair amount. It has the best fire-rate of any of the three sniper rifles (4/10 compared to the Heavy’s 2/10), the pay-off being a relatively short scope with no zoom. I don’t have the Heavy yet as I’m rank 65-ish, but I tend to find I use both the Marksman and Sniper Rifle in equal measure, depending on the distance to the target.
SHOTGUN⚠️
There are a two schools of thought in the shotgun class. The first is based on one-shot kills. This is normally used for a situation in which you’re looking to deliver as much damage as possible to a hard target (probably another player) at very close range. The second is willing to sacrifice the immediate take-down for an increased fire-rate and longer range. This is better for a more open scenario with mixed distances, such as a Deathmatch. The gun you’ll pick will depend on your play style and the situation in which you find yourself. GTA Online definitely has a “thing” for shotguns; whichever way you decide to go, there’s hardware to suit your needs. The obvious, correct overall choice in this category is the Assault Shotgun. This beast of a gun has a 32-round extended clip and fires full-auto, making it pretty difficult to argue with. Its fire-rate is off the chart at 5/10 compared to the Sawed Off, Bullpup and Pump, which all stand at 2/10. The Assault’s extremely powerful, but it’s not the only option. It’s fire-rate and range come at the expense of damage. The two hardest hitting shotguns in the game are the Bullpup Shotgun and the Sawed-Off Shotgun. Both suffer from glacial fire-rates but are seriously powerful, the Sawed-Off being the most potent. The Bullpup causes less damage, but is more accurate, has a higher range and carries more shells. I prefer the Bullpup: you really do have to be standing close to get the most from the Sawed-Off, and in a situation in which you need to take down more than two enemies there’s going to be a reload issue. As a final note, I’d count the Heavy Shotgun out. It was added with the Last Man Standing Update and looks good on paper as it causes more damage than the Assault Shotgun, but it suffers from significant damage drop-off at range and the mag only extends to 12 rounds. So yeah: Assault in general, Bullpup for “personal” work.
HEAVY GUNS⚠️
You won’t even get a heavy weapon until you buy the grenade launcher at rank 60. The only other two weapons in the same class are the RPG at rank 100 and the Minigun at rank 120. Even when you hit 100, you’re probably going to keep the grenade launcher equipped. The RPG’s only advantage is its ability to fire an explosive in a straight line, and is therefore useful for taking out choppers, but the grenade launcher carries ten rounds and fires semi-auto. It’s capable of turning even the most desperate situation into a total bloodbath (although it’ll cost you: Ammu-nation charges nearly $4,000 for a full clip), and even a single, well-placed shot can save any day. When you get to 120, it’ll be Minigun all the way. It’s the most powerful weapon in the game by so many miles, a gun in front of which police choppers turn into immediate matchsticks. All others transmute to pieces of exploding meat when you finally get your hands on one of these. That’s life, I guess.
That's all for today see you guys later. Oh wait forgot to mention Sticky bomb best C4 replacement

Since the Diamond Casino update, I have seen a large number of 12-year-olds posting Blackjack memes on this sub. As a parent, this has me very worried.
On top of that, I have seen some of the most trustworthy GTA Youtubers giving flawed gambling advice, which can have damaging impact on their gullible audiences.
So that's why I decided to write this up, to educate everyone on the subject, so there will be no more misunderstandings.
(2020 Update down at the bottom.)
If you're one of those Youtubers that wants to use this information in a video, feel free to do so. The more people (especially kids) that become educated about gambling, the better.
But then also please go back and review your own work, and delete or edit the videos that are giving out the wrong advice, like where you're saying you have "a good strategy for making money with roulette", or some other nonsense that I've heard this week. Delete that please.
Before I get into the individual games, I need to discuss a few concepts first, that will make understanding the rest a lot easier.
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Expected return and variance
A game like Roulette or Slots has a fixed expected return on your bets. This is a percentage that you have no way of influencing. Say you are flipping a coin against a friend, and you both put up $1. The winner gets the pot. Since the odds are even at 50%, in the long run, you will expect to break even. Your expected return is 100% of your bet.
But imagine if you would play this coin flipping game in a casino against the house. On the "house rules" listed at the table they would probably say that you would only get 95 cents back for every win, while you are forfeiting a dollar on every loss. Would you still play?
Sounds stupid to do so, but still, everybody does it. Every bet they place on Roulette, every coin they put into a Slot machine, is based on the same concept.
Those few cents they take on every bet are their profit margin, and has paid for all the Vegas lights, the Mirage volcanoes, and the Bellagio fountains. Make no mistake - casino gambling games are not designed to make you lose, because sure, you can get lucky on a single night, but they are designed to make them win. That's the beauty of it. They can both exist at the same time.
Too many people that don't see how this works, are just destined for disaster. Just because you went on a lucky streak and won 8 games out of 10, does not mean that flipping coins is a profitable game, or that choosing tails is a winning strategy. Always be aware of the house edge, your true chances of winning, and just realize that you got lucky. There is no such thing as a strategy in flipping a coin that will give you a higher expected return, so it's just pure gambling, just like Slots and Roulette.
Most casino games are made in such a way, that your expected return is a little under 100%. This means that from every dollar bet at the tables, the casino expects to keep a few cents. For individual players, results may vary. Some will win, most will lose. But for the house, it doesn't matter. They take millions of bets each day, so for them, the expected average works out a lot sooner. In short: the house always wins.
When looking at the house edge, we're talking about the expected long-term result, based on the game's house rules. But for a player, it can take literally tens of thousands of hands or spins before you also reach this average number. Until that time, you can experience huge upswings and downswings, that are the result of nothing but short-term luck, which is called variance.
Some games and some bets have a much higher variance than others, which means your actual results will differ enormously from what you're expected to be at.
Take for example betting on red/black at the Roulette table. This is a low-variance proposition, because it has a high percentage chance of occurring, and a low payout.
Contrast this with betting single numbers in Roulette, which only win once every 38 spins on average. This bet has a much higher variance, meaning you can easily hit a dry spell, and not hit anything for 200 bets in a row, or you can see a single number hit three times in five consecutive spins. This is not a freak occurrence in high-variance bets.
Even though the expected return in both these bets is exactly the same, there's a huge difference in variance, causing massive differences in short-term results, which can go both ways. You need to be aware of this, before you decide what types of bets you are comfortable with placing.
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Gamblers' Fallacy
Another thing to realize, is that each individual game, hand, or spin, is completely independent from the one(s) before it, and after it.
Gamblers tend to believe, that the chance of a certain outcome is increased, based on previous results.
The most famous example comes from the Casino de Monte Carlo, where the Roulette wheel managed to land on black 26 times in a row. Gamblers lost many millions during that streak, all frantically betting on red, believing that the odds were in favor of the wheel coming out on red, after producing so many blacks. This is not true. Each round is completely independent, and the odds are exactly the same.
You will hear people say things like a Blackjack table being "hot" or "cold", which is completely superstitious, and should be ignored. The exception was when Blackjack was being dealt from a shoe. It made card counting possible. But with the introduction of shuffle machines, and continuous shuffling like is being used in GTA, this no longer exists.
This is also why "chasing your losses" is a very bad idea. After being on a losing streak for some time, many gamblers believe that now it's their turn to start winning. So they will often increase their bet size, believing that when their predicted winning streak comes around, they will win back their losses, and more.
The reality of it, more often than not, is that people will indeed start playing higher and higher limits, until they are completely broke. Nobody is ever "due for a win". There is never a guarantee that you're about to start winning. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. You are, after all, in a casino.
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Betting systems
Some people like to think that they have a fool-proof betting system, like the Martingale system. Simply increase or even double your bet when you lose, and keep doing that until you win. In theory, this system will always win. So that's why table limits were introduced, and where the system fails.
If you start at the Roulette table, playing red/black, with a small 750 chip wager, and just double your bet every time you lose, you only have to lose 6 times in a row, before you will be betting the table limit of 48,000, just to get that 750 chip profit.
Sure, you can go on all evening without this happening, winning 750 chips each time, but this losing streak only has to happen once, and you're bust. Any betting system like this is ill-advised, because you are hugely increasing your so-called "risk of ruin", and that's what we were trying to avoid.
And even if your starting bet is only 100 chips, after only nine straight losses, and nine doubled bets, you are betting the table limit at 50,000 chips. If you lose that bet, you're 100,000 chips in the hole, with no way to recover that with your 100 chip base wager.
So don't believe anyone that says this is the perfect system to always win in the casino. Sooner or later they will understand why they were wrong, when they're asking you for a loan.
​
Set your limits BEFORE you start playing
One final point before we get into the games, a general tip for people that head out to play: money management.
Just like in real life, before you go to the casino, decide on a maximum amount that you are WILLING TO LOSE.
Bet small enough, so that amount can last you through the entire evening, and you will not be tempted to run to the ATM to continue playing.
Considering GTA money, some people will be comfortable losing 1% of their GTA bank balance, some people will be comfortable with gambling away 5% of their total GTA savings. It's up to you what you can handle. Decide for yourself where it will start to hurt, and don't cross that line.
But whatever number you decide on, as soon as you lost that amount, get up and walk away. Don't chase your losses, stick to your limits, and accept that this has not been your day. There is always another game tomorrow. Always agree with yourself on a simple stop-loss rule, how much you would want to lose at most, and simply stop playing when you get there.
Same goes for winning. You can decide on a number, how much profit you would like to take away from the casino. You can go on a hot streak and be up half a million in a short period of time, but if you would continue to play longer, looking for more, chances are that you're going to lose it all back.
Most people are happy with doubling their daily casino budget, for example. Others are looking for 10 bets profit in Blackjack. Whatever you choose, when you hit that number, you can stop playing and bank your profits, or you can continue playing if you're still enjoying the games, but then only just play minimum bet sizes. Then you're just playing for fun, not for money. You've already made your profit, so simply keep it in your pocket, and don't risk losing it again.
Either way, decide on what your money management strategy will be, and STICK TO IT.
​
Casino games in GTA Online
Now, I'm going to dive into the games that you can find at the Diamond casino, ordered from worst to best.
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6) Slots
Generally the rule is this: the less strategy a game has, the worse it is for the player. And with slots, this is definitely the case.
The only influence you have, is choosing what type of machine you're going to play. Basically, there are two types of slot machines:
-high frequency, low payout slots
-low frequency, high payout slots
In the first type, there is no huge (progressive) jackpot on offer, just your average selection of prizes that don't go up to crazy amounts.
This will result in a player having many more spins resulting in a win. The amounts that you win on the bigger prizes, will be smaller, but they do come around more often. This type of slot machine has a lower variance, which means that your money should last you longer, winning many smaller prizes along the way to keep you going.
The second type of slot machine lures you in with the temptation of a huge jackpot prize. Even though the long-term expected return on these machines is the same as the previous type, the prize distribution is hugely different. The large jackpot prize weighs heavily on the scale of expected return, but the chance of it hitting is extremely small. This results in a much higher variance on this type of machine. Usually your money will go down very fast, because the smaller prizes are less rewarding than on the other type of machine.
At the Diamond, the info screen says the player return at slots is set at 98.7%. This means that, on average, for every maximum bet of 2,500 chips, you expect to lose 32.5 chips.
This might not seem like a lot, but the danger of slots is that the game is extremely fast. You can spin about once every 6 seconds, which would result in an expected LOSS of about 20,000 chips per hour of playing.
But again, in this long-term expected number, the large jackpot awards are also factored in, and as long as you don't hit those big prizes, you'll see your money go down a lot faster.
In any case, thank heavens the max bet is only set at 2,500, or else we would see more players go bankrupt at alarming rates.
Optimal strategy for slots:
There is none. Because after betting, you have no more influence over the outcome. The only choices you have, is what type of machine you want to play at, and how much money you are going to risk. And those are all personal preference. As long as you stick to your loss limits, as discussed above, there's no harm in having a go every once in a while, hoping to get a lucky hit. Just realize that you don't have a high chance of scoring a big win, so as soon as you do, get up and walk away.
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5) Roulette
Roulette is also a game where you have no influence over the outcome. There is zero skill involved. You place your bet, and that's it.
In traditional French roulette, a table has only the single-zero, but of course, for American casinos that wasn't enough of a house edge, so they simply doubled their profits by adding a second zero. The house edge was increased from 1/37 to 1/19, which is huge.
This makes playing on a double-zero roulette table by definition a sucker's play.
The payouts scale evenly, which means that a bet on a single number, and a bet on half of the numbers, and everything in between, yields the same expected return. The only difference, again, being the variance that you are willing to subject yourself to.
The player return for double-zero Roulette for all bets is 94.74%.
Except for the 5-number bet, which can only be made by placing a bet on the two top rows that contain 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3. The expected return on this bet is lower: 92.1%. This is because it only pays out 6-1. Why? Well, the number 36 isn't divisible by 5, so the greedy people that came up with double-zero Roulette had to round it off someway, and as expected, it wasn't going to be in the players' favor.Just remember that that 5-number bet is the worst bet at the table, and should be avoided. All other possible bets have the same expected return.
So it really doesn't matter how you spread your bets, if you bet only one chip, or if you litter the entire table with a bucketload of chips. Each chip you put out there, has the same expected return, so there is no strategy that will improve your long-term results.
Assuming that you're betting the maximum table amount of 50,000 chips, you will be looking at an expected loss of about 2,630 chips per spin. Considering that a round takes about 45 seconds to complete, your expected LOSS at the GTA Roulette tables will be around 200,000 chips per hour of playing.
Optimal strategy for double-zero roulette:
Stay away. Stay far away.
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4) Three Card Poker
With Three Card Poker, we come across the first game where there is actually some strategy involved. You get to look at your cards, and then decide if you want to fold, and surrender your ante, or double your bet.
Additionally, you can choose to place a side bet on "Pair Plus", which offers progressive payouts.
There are some websites out there that ran all the numbers with computer simulations, and even though I would like to quote the source here, these websites are understandably littered to the max with online casino ads, so that's why I have decided against doing that.
Optimal strategy for Three Card Poker:
For this game you only have to remember one strategy rule: Always bet on any high card queen-six-four or better, and fold any high card queen-six-three or lower. That's it. Just don't forget to double check if you're not folding a straight or a flush, and you'll be fine.
This strategy will result in an expected return of 96.63%.
The Pair Plus sidebet, with the payout table that is used at the Diamond casino, gives you an expected return of 97.68%, which is actually a bit better than the main ante bet.
So by playing both wagers, you're reducing your expected losses per bet, but since you're betting more, you're also increasing your expected loss per hour.
My advice would obviously be to not play this game at all, but if you do, put as much of your bet as possible on the Pair Plus, while making our Ante bet as small as you can.
To be able to compare it to the other games at the Diamond, let's stay on that 50,000 maximum wager, meaning making your ante bet 35,000, and your pair plus bet 15,000, if the table would allow it.
This results in an expected loss of about 1,525 chips per hand, and with a round taking about 45 seconds, this adds up to an expected LOSS of around 120,000 chips per hour of playing. In comparison, if you would only play the ante bet for 50,000 per hand, you expect to lose 1,685 chips per hand, which means an expected LOSS of about 135,000 chips per hour. So the more out of that 50,000 wager you can put on the "Pair Plus" sidebet, the better.
Even though it may be fun to try out this game for a bit, since there's only one simple strategy rule to follow, you'll soon find yourself robotically grinding down your bankroll until it has vaporized. You're not missing out on anything if you skip these tables, there is no real challenge.
Just like with Roulette and Slots, if you want to try it out nonetheless, you can just bet the minimum amounts and only play for fun, so it won't matter if you win or lose.
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3) Blackjack
Blackjack is the most complicated game by far. Simply because the player has to make a series of decisions, which will largely decide the outcome. Luckily, there is such a thing as an optimal strategy, which will be outlined below.
However, the strategy is also dependent on the house rules. These not only affect your expected return, but in some places also your decisions.
Here are the house rules at the Diamond casino:
-The game uses 4 standard decks, and a continuous shuffle.
-Blackjack pays 3 to 2, dealer checks for early blackjack.
-No insurance offered, no surrender.
-Dealer stands on soft 17.
-Double down on any two cards.
-Player can split only once, but doubling after split is allowed.
-Seven-Card Charlie.
Under these rules, and following the "basic strategy" chart, your expected return at Blackjack is a shade under 99.6%, which is extremely good for a casino game, that's why Blackjack should be your table game of choice.
But it comes at a price: you are going to have to memorize the relatively complicated strategy chart, or at least stick it to your monitor until you have it in your head. But in case you ever stumble into a real-life casino, you won't regret having this table memorized, so I would definitely advise you to work on that.
The strategy chart might look complicated at first, but you will be able to notice certain patterns. Your decisions are mainly based on the dealer's upcard, which is basically divided into a weak card (2 to 6), and a strong card (7 to ace).
When a dealer shows a strong card, you will be hitting more often with the risk of going bust, but when a dealer shows a weak card, you're not taking that risk, and you will be standing more, but also doubling and splitting more. You want to increase your bets when the odds are in your favor, and get out cheap when they're not.
But it also helps to take some time to think about why a certain advice is given. For example, why does it say that you always have to split two eights, even against an ace. Well, that's because two eights equals 16, which is the worst total you can have. It's better to split them up, and give yourself a chance of finding a 17, 18 or 19 with the next card. Once you see the logic in that, you'll have one less thing to memorize.
The playing advice in the basic strategy chart is a result of computer simulations that ran all possible outcomes against each other, and produced the most profitable decision for each situation. So you can't go wrong following it.
Optimal strategy for Blackjack with Seven-Card Charlie
The added house rule of Seven-Card Charlie, adds a small advantage for the player, and it does influence a few strategy decisions. For example, you might have a 14 with 6 cards, against the dealer's 5 upcard.
Normally this would be an automatic stand, but if you're only one card away from the Seven-Card Charlie, meaning an instant win for the player, regardless of the dealer's hand, it turns it into a hit.
Here's the most optimal strategy chart to follow for the Diamond Casino house rules: https://prnt.sc/olct6g
You'll see that two fives are missing from the chart, and that's because you never split them. You treat them as a regular 10. You also never split tens. Just stand on 20.
If you follow this strategy religiously, even with a maximum wager of 50,000 chips, you only expect to lose about 215 chips per hand, and with rounds taking about 30 seconds, that amounts to an expected LOSS of 26,000 chips per hour, which is only half a bet. A small price to pay for an hour of entertainment.
But since the expected return is so extremely close to 100%, you will see more positive short-term results than with other games. But obviously it can also swing the other way. Again, this is supposed to be the game where your money lasts you the longest, but always set your loss and win limits before you sit down. That rule simply always applies.
​
Still, even with optimal strategies applied, all these games are expected to lose you money in the long run. So betting any kind of large amounts is not advised. If you simply want to enjoy playing these games, there's nothing wrong with betting a minimal amount. Playing these games for a longer period of time will already cost you money anyway, since your daily property fees will still be charged while you're playing in the GTA casino. As long as you can play for fun, there's nothing wrong, but when you see yourself betting insane chunks of your entire bank balance to try to recoup some unfortunate losses, you're doing it wrong.
As the commercials in Britain all correctly say: when the fun stops, stop.
​
2) Virtual Horse Racing
Now onto the good stuff. I ran some numbers, and I believe Rockstar has made a mistake with the horse racing game. Because as it stands, and if I read the numbers correctly, this game is actually profitable for the player. You can actually make money with this, at least, until Rockstar figures out their mistake and patches it.
If anyone wants to jump into the math and double check this to make sure, please do so. I will add any corrections to this post. This is one of those "to good to be true" things, so I keep thinking that I might have overlooked something. So please verify it if you can.
The setup is this. There is a pool of 100 horses, each with their own attached payout. These are divided into 3 groups, ranked by their odds. From each group, 2 horses are randomly selected to provide a pool of six runners for you to bet on.
Now it's not an actual race you're looking at. You are looking at a raffle. This is important to realize.
Each horse gets awarded a certain number of raffle tickets. The favorites get awarded more tickets than the underdogs, and therefore, have a higher chance of winning.
If this distribution works like it does in the real-life casinos, then the raffle tickets are awarded according to the betting odds.
Example 1: imagine a race with 3 runners, all have 2/1 odds, representing a 33.3% chance of winning. (Because 2/1 means 2 AGAINST 1, so 3 total.) In this case, each horse gets one third of the raffle tickets, giving them an equal chance to win.
Example 2: imagine a race with 3 runners, one has 1/1 odds (or EVENS), representing a 50% chance of winning, and the other two horses are marked up as 3/1, with a 25% chance of winning. The favorite gets half the tickets, the other two get a quarter of the tickets each.
A ticket is drawn, and you'll have a winner.
It doesn't matter in this game which horse you bet on, because the expected return is always the same: 100% or break-even, for the above examples.
Now, what happens if the percentages don't exactly add up to 100%?
They must add up to 100%, because there will always be a winner. And only one winner.
So when this is the case, the actual winning chances of the horses are adjusted to meet the 100% requirement, using their payout odds to determine the scale.
So, if the represented percentages add up to more than 100%, the actual winning chances of the runners will be DECREASED, resulting in all bets becoming losing propositions for the players.
Example: In a 6-horse race, all runners are listed at 4/1, representing a 20% chance. Only with six runners that amounts to 120%. So all chances are scaled down by 1/6th, to end up at 100%.
This means your horse's chances are reduced from 20% to 16.67%, turning it into a losing bet: 5 times you will lose your bet, and 1 time you will win, but only get 4 bets back in this instance, instead of 5. A losing bet in the long run.
This is the type of odds that you find in regular casinos, with fields as large as 15 runners to bet on, where the assumed winning chances always add up to more than 100%, therefore are decreased for all runners, resulting in a house edge.
​
But in GTA Online's Inside Track, there are other scenarios, because of the small field, and the way that they are put together.
In some cases, the represented percentages when added up, are LESS than 100%, meaning that the actual winning chances of all runners, are INCREASED.
This creates profitable bets for the players, because in the long run, you're expecting to win more money than you lose. This is a gambler's dream, pure and simple.
So, according to the in-game information, the three groups of horses are divided as follows:
-Favorites: EVENS to 5-1
-Outsiders: 6-1 to 15-1
-Underdogs: 16-1 to 30-1
​
Let's take the two most extreme examples to show what's happening.
The worst possible field to bet on: two runners at EVENS, two runners at 6-1, and two runners at 16-1.
EVENS represents a 50% chance, 6-1 is 14.29%, and 16-1 is 5.88%. Add those up and you land on a total of 140.34%.
This means that the actual winning chances of the horses are decreased by 28.75% (to get that 140% down to 100%), which makes betting on this field extremely unwise.
A horse at EVENS will only come in as a winner 35.63% of the time, instead of 50%,
a horse at 6-1 will only win 10.18% of the time,
and an underdog at 16-1 will only win 4.19% of the time.
​
The expected return on a bet on any of the horses in this field is only 71.26%, so a maximum bet of 10,000 chips on any of these horses holds an expected LOSS of 2,875 chips.
These returns are the same, because the winning chances are scaled equally, according to the payout numbers. So it really doesn't matter which horse you bet on, in the long run, you expect the same results.
But as explained before, it does influence variance, and therefore your short-term result, which can swing both ways.
​
But now, the best possible field to bet on: two runners at 5-1, two runners at 15-1, and two runners at 30-1.
Odds at 5-1 represents a winning chance of 16.67%, 15-1 odds means 6.25% chance, and 30-1 odds means a 3.23% chance of winning. Add these six horses together, and you only get 52.285%.
This means that, to get from 52% to 100%, the actual winning chances of these horses will be almost doubled! Multiplied by 1.91 to be exact.
So the 5-1 favorites will now win 31.88% of the time, instead of 16.67%,
the 15-1 runners will win 11.95% of the time,
and the underdogs at 30-1 odds will still win 6.17% of the time.
When betting on this field, the expected return on your bet is 191.25%!
This means that a max bet of 10,000 chips will result in an expected PROFIT of 9,125 chips.
This is printing money, if there ever was such a thing.
Optimal strategy for Virtual Horse racing
So all you have to do, is only bet high on the games where you have an expected positive return, and bet the absolute minimum on the games where your expected return is negative. Or back out of the racing game to refresh the field.
If you don't have a way to quickly add up all the percentages, and until somebody shows up here with a neatly formatted table, just use a few general rules of thumb:
-Always bet the maximum on a race with favorites at 2/1 and 3/1 or higher in it.
-Simply skip all races with two favorites at EVENS in it, and at EVENS and 2/1. Or bet the minimum, if you can't skip or refresh the field.
-To decide if you should play races with other favorite combinations EVENS and 3/1, EVENS and 4/1, EVENS and 5/1, or two favorites at 2/1, the payouts on the other four runners determine whether or not it's profitable to play them. The results of betting on these fields vary from an expected 1,330 chip loss (worst-case) to an expected 1,680 chip win (best-case), with a max bet of 10,000 chips.
But if you're not looking for another strategy chart, you might just want to skip these borderline cases, and just cherry pick the best ones, which are easy to recognize, and with which you can never go wrong.
It's difficult to put a number on an expected win-rate, because it all depends on which fields you get presented with, but it's not unreasonable to state that you can maintain a steady win-rate of around 200,000 chips per hour, with about 50 seconds per race.
Remember, you're not trying to win every race. You're trying to win the most money per hour. So don't sweat it when you bet on a 4/1 favorite, and lose a couple of races in a row. It will still be more profitable in the long run. You have the math on your side.
To reduce negative variance, always bet on the favorite, when betting on profitable fields. We're not gambling anymore, we're grinding out a steady profit. We want to keep the swings to a minimum.
I contacted Rockstar support to verify if this is indeed how it works, but the only reply I got after 6 weeks is that they were "looking into it".
User u/Garsant made a useful Excel-worksheet, available for you to download, where you can quickly type in the payouts on the horses, to see if it produces a profitable bet or not. You can find it in his post here: https://www.reddit.com/gtaonline/comments/ekp8na/gta_online_inside_track_odd_calculato
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1) Wheel of Fortune
The number one profitable casino game in GTA Online is obviously the Wheel of Fortune, because it costs you nothing to play.
Unfortunately, you only get one free spin per day, but it holds great value, so make sure you do it.
With a chance to win a super car, vehicle discounts, expensive mystery prizes (which also can be vehicles), and a lot of cash and chips, the expected return on a single spin is around $100,000 in value.
So don't forget your daily spin, it's definitely worth your time.
​
2020 Update:
As of the Diamond Casino Heist update, the Inside Track horse racing is confirmed to still be as profitable as outlined above.The only thing that seems to be changed, is that you can't refresh the field anymore by backing out of the screen. This does affect your hourly rate in a negative way, but does not change the fact that this game has a huge positive expected return, and should be your go-to when you're trying to take money from the house, without having Lester's nagging voice in your ear. That should also be worth something.
​
And with that, I conclude my 5,000 word essay on gambling in GTA. Questions, comments, feel free to add your input to this guide.
​
Cliffs:
-Gambling games should only be played for fun, not for big money. You should expect to lose in the long run. The house always wins.
-A casino game doesn't have a memory, and betting systems don't work.
-Set your limits before you start, how much you are willing to lose or win, and then walk away when you get there.
-Don't play slots, roulette, or three card poker.
-Only play blackjack following a basic strategy chart (https://prnt.sc/olct6g).
-Inside Track betting can be played profitably, if you only bet on fields WITHOUT a heavy favorite.
-Wheel of Fortune is always your best bet, because it's a free bet.

This is not mine, the creator of this is u/enderpiet
​
Since the Diamond Casino update, I have seen a large number of 12-year-olds posting Blackjack memes on this sub. As a parent, this has me very worried.
On top of that, I have seen some of the most trustworthy GTA Youtubers giving flawed gambling advice, which can have damaging impact on their gullible audiences.
So that's why I decided to write this up, to educate everyone on the subject, so there will be no more misunderstandings.
(2020 Update down at the bottom.)
If you're one of those Youtubers that wants to use this information in a video, feel free to do so. The more people (especially kids) that become educated about gambling, the better.
But then also please go back and review your own work, and delete or edit the videos that are giving out the wrong advice, like where you're saying you have "a good strategy for making money with roulette", or some other nonsense that I've heard this week. Delete that please.
Before I get into the individual games, I need to discuss a few concepts first, that will make understanding the rest a lot easier.
Expected return and variance
A game like Roulette or Slots has a fixed expected return on your bets. This is a percentage that you have no way of influencing. Say you are flipping a coin against a friend, and you both put up $1. The winner gets the pot. Since the odds are even at 50%, in the long run, you will expect to break even. Your expected return is 100% of your bet.
But imagine if you would play this coin flipping game in a casino against the house. On the "house rules" listed at the table they would probably say that you would only get 95 cents back for every win, while you are forfeiting a dollar on every loss. Would you still play?
Sounds stupid to do so, but still, everybody does it. Every bet they place on Roulette, every coin they put into a Slot machine, is based on the same concept.
Those few cents they take on every bet are their profit margin, and has paid for all the Vegas lights, the Mirage volcanoes, and the Bellagio fountains. Make no mistake - casino gambling games are not designed to make you lose, because sure, you can get lucky on a single night, but they are designed to make them win. That's the beauty of it. They can both exist at the same time.
Too many people that don't see how this works, are just destined for disaster. Just because you went on a lucky streak and won 8 games out of 10, does not mean that flipping coins is a profitable game, or that choosing tails is a winning strategy. Always be aware of the house edge, your true chances of winning, and just realize that you got lucky. There is no such thing as a strategy in flipping a coin that will give you a higher expected return, so it's just pure gambling, just like Slots and Roulette.
Most casino games are made in such a way, that your expected return is a little under 100%. This means that from every dollar bet at the tables, the casino expects to keep a few cents. For individual players, results may vary. Some will win, most will lose. But for the house, it doesn't matter. They take millions of bets each day, so for them, the expected average works out a lot sooner. In short: the house always wins.
When looking at the house edge, we're talking about the expected long-term result, based on the game's house rules. But for a player, it can take literally tens of thousands of hands or spins before you also reach this average number. Until that time, you can experience huge upswings and downswings, that are the result of nothing but short-term luck, which is called variance.
Some games and some bets have a much higher variance than others, which means your actual results will differ enormously from what you're expected to be at.
Take for example betting on red/black at the Roulette table. This is a low-variance proposition, because it has a high percentage chance of occurring, and a low payout.
Contrast this with betting single numbers in Roulette, which only win once every 38 spins on average. This bet has a much higher variance, meaning you can easily hit a dry spell, and not hit anything for 200 bets in a row, or you can see a single number hit three times in five consecutive spins. This is not a freak occurrence in high-variance bets.
Even though the expected return in both these bets is exactly the same, there's a huge difference in variance, causing massive differences in short-term results, which can go both ways. You need to be aware of this, before you decide what types of bets you are comfortable with placing.
Gamblers' Fallacy
Another thing to realize, is that each individual game, hand, or spin, is completely independent from the one(s) before it, and after it.
Gamblers tend to believe, that the chance of a certain outcome is increased, based on previous results.
The most famous example comes from the Casino de Monte Carlo, where the Roulette wheel managed to land on black 26 times in a row. Gamblers lost many millions during that streak, all frantically betting on red, believing that the odds were in favor of the wheel coming out on red, after producing so many blacks. This is not true. Each round is completely independent, and the odds are exactly the same.
You will hear people say things like a Blackjack table being "hot" or "cold", which is completely superstitious, and should be ignored. The exception was when Blackjack was being dealt from a shoe. It made card counting possible. But with the introduction of shuffle machines, and continuous shuffling like is being used in GTA, this no longer exists.
This is also why "chasing your losses" is a very bad idea. After being on a losing streak for some time, many gamblers believe that now it's their turn to start winning. So they will often increase their bet size, believing that when their predicted winning streak comes around, they will win back their losses, and more.
The reality of it, more often than not, is that people will indeed start playing higher and higher limits, until they are completely broke. Nobody is ever "due for a win". There is never a guarantee that you're about to start winning. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. You are, after all, in a casino.
Betting systems
Some people like to think that they have a fool-proof betting system, like the Martingale system. Simply increase or even double your bet when you lose, and keep doing that until you win. In theory, this system will always win. So that's why table limits were introduced, and where the system fails.
If you start at the Roulette table, playing red/black, with a small 750 chip wager, and just double your bet every time you lose, you only have to lose 6 times in a row, before you will be betting the table limit of 48,000, just to get that 750 chip profit.
Sure, you can go on all evening without this happening, winning 750 chips each time, but this losing streak only has to happen once, and you're bust. Any betting system like this is ill-advised, because you are hugely increasing your so-called "risk of ruin", and that's what we were trying to avoid.
And even if your starting bet is only 100 chips, after only nine straight losses, and nine doubled bets, you are betting the table limit at 50,000 chips. If you lose that bet, you're 100,000 chips in the hole, with no way to recover that with your 100 chip base wager.
So don't believe anyone that says this is the perfect system to always win in the casino. Sooner or later they will understand why they were wrong, when they're asking you for a loan.
Set your limits BEFORE you start playing
One final point before we get into the games, a general tip for people that head out to play: money management.
Just like in real life, before you go to the casino, decide on a maximum amount that you are WILLING TO LOSE.
Bet small enough, so that amount can last you through the entire evening, and you will not be tempted to run to the ATM to continue playing.
Considering GTA money, some people will be comfortable losing 1% of their GTA bank balance, some people will be comfortable with gambling away 5% of their total GTA savings. It's up to you what you can handle. Decide for yourself where it will start to hurt, and don't cross that line.
But whatever number you decide on, as soon as you lost that amount, get up and walk away. Don't chase your losses, stick to your limits, and accept that this has not been your day. There is always another game tomorrow. Always agree with yourself on a simple stop-loss rule, how much you would want to lose at most, and simply stop playing when you get there.
Same goes for winning. You can decide on a number, how much profit you would like to take away from the casino. You can go on a hot streak and be up half a million in a short period of time, but if you would continue to play longer, looking for more, chances are that you're going to lose it all back.
Most people are happy with doubling their daily casino budget, for example. Others are looking for 10 bets profit in Blackjack. Whatever you choose, when you hit that number, you can stop playing and bank your profits, or you can continue playing if you're still enjoying the games, but then only just play minimum bet sizes. Then you're just playing for fun, not for money. You've already made your profit, so simply keep it in your pocket, and don't risk losing it again.
Either way, decide on what your money management strategy will be, and STICK TO IT.
Casino games in GTA Online
Now, I'm going to dive into the games that you can find at the Diamond casino, ordered from worst to best.
6) Slots
Generally the rule is this: the less strategy a game has, the worse it is for the player. And with slots, this is definitely the case.
The only influence you have, is choosing what type of machine you're going to play. Basically, there are two types of slot machines:
-high frequency, low payout slots
-low frequency, high payout slots
In the first type, there is no huge (progressive) jackpot on offer, just your average selection of prizes that don't go up to crazy amounts.
This will result in a player having many more spins resulting in a win. The amounts that you win on the bigger prizes, will be smaller, but they do come around more often. This type of slot machine has a lower variance, which means that your money should last you longer, winning many smaller prizes along the way to keep you going.
The second type of slot machine lures you in with the temptation of a huge jackpot prize. Even though the long-term expected return on these machines is the same as the previous type, the prize distribution is hugely different. The large jackpot prize weighs heavily on the scale of expected return, but the chance of it hitting is extremely small. This results in a much higher variance on this type of machine. Usually your money will go down very fast, because the smaller prizes are less rewarding than on the other type of machine.
At the Diamond, the info screen says the player return at slots is set at 98.7%. This means that, on average, for every maximum bet of 2,500 chips, you expect to lose 32.5 chips.
This might not seem like a lot, but the danger of slots is that the game is extremely fast. You can spin about once every 6 seconds, which would result in an expected LOSS of about 20,000 chips per hour of playing.
But again, in this long-term expected number, the large jackpot awards are also factored in, and as long as you don't hit those big prizes, you'll see your money go down a lot faster.
In any case, thank heavens the max bet is only set at 2,500, or else we would see more players go bankrupt at alarming rates.
Optimal strategy for slots:
There is none. Because after betting, you have no more influence over the outcome. The only choices you have, is what type of machine you want to play at, and how much money you are going to risk. And those are all personal preference. As long as you stick to your loss limits, as discussed above, there's no harm in having a go every once in a while, hoping to get a lucky hit. Just realize that you don't have a high chance of scoring a big win, so as soon as you do, get up and walk away.
5) Roulette
Roulette is also a game where you have no influence over the outcome. There is zero skill involved. You place your bet, and that's it.
In traditional French roulette, a table has only the single-zero, but of course, for American casinos that wasn't enough of a house edge, so they simply doubled their profits by adding a second zero. The house edge was increased from 1/37 to 1/19, which is huge.
This makes playing on a double-zero roulette table by definition a sucker's play.
The payouts scale evenly, which means that a bet on a single number, and a bet on half of the numbers, and everything in between, yields the same expected return. The only difference, again, being the variance that you are willing to subject yourself to.
The player return for double-zero Roulette for all bets is 94.74%.
Except for the 5-number bet, which can only be made by placing a bet on the two top rows that contain 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3. The expected return on this bet is lower: 92.1%. This is because it only pays out 6-1. Why? Well, the number 36 isn't divisible by 5, so the greedy people that came up with double-zero Roulette had to round it off someway, and as expected, it wasn't going to be in the players' favor.Just remember that that 5-number bet is the worst bet at the table, and should be avoided. All other possible bets have the same expected return.
So it really doesn't matter how you spread your bets, if you bet only one chip, or if you litter the entire table with a bucketload of chips. Each chip you put out there, has the same expected return, so there is no strategy that will improve your long-term results.
Assuming that you're betting the maximum table amount of 50,000 chips, you will be looking at an expected loss of about 2,630 chips per spin. Considering that a round takes about 45 seconds to complete, your expected LOSS at the GTA Roulette tables will be around 200,000 chips per hour of playing.
Optimal strategy for double-zero roulette:
Stay away. Stay far away.
4) Three Card Poker
With Three Card Poker, we come across the first game where there is actually some strategy involved. You get to look at your cards, and then decide if you want to fold, and surrender your ante, or double your bet.
Additionally, you can choose to place a side bet on "Pair Plus", which offers progressive payouts.
There are some websites out there that ran all the numbers with computer simulations, and even though I would like to quote the source here, these websites are understandably littered to the max with online casino ads, so that's why I have decided against doing that.
Optimal strategy for Three Card Poker:
For this game you only have to remember one strategy rule: Always bet on any high card queen-six-four or better, and fold any high card queen-six-three or lower. That's it. Just don't forget to double check if you're not folding a straight or a flush, and you'll be fine.
This strategy will result in an expected return of 96.63%.
The Pair Plus sidebet, with the payout table that is used at the Diamond casino, gives you an expected return of 97.68%, which is actually a bit better than the main ante bet.
So by playing both wagers, you're reducing your expected losses per bet, but since you're betting more, you're also increasing your expected loss per hour.
My advice would obviously be to not play this game at all, but if you do, put as much of your bet as possible on the Pair Plus, while making our Ante bet as small as you can.
To be able to compare it to the other games at the Diamond, let's stay on that 50,000 maximum wager, meaning making your ante bet 35,000, and your pair plus bet 15,000, if the table would allow it.
This results in an expected loss of about 1,525 chips per hand, and with a round taking about 45 seconds, this adds up to an expected LOSS of around 120,000 chips per hour of playing. In comparison, if you would only play the ante bet for 50,000 per hand, you expect to lose 1,685 chips per hand, which means an expected LOSS of about 135,000 chips per hour. So the more out of that 50,000 wager you can put on the "Pair Plus" sidebet, the better.
Even though it may be fun to try out this game for a bit, since there's only one simple strategy rule to follow, you'll soon find yourself robotically grinding down your bankroll until it has vaporized. You're not missing out on anything if you skip these tables, there is no real challenge.
Just like with Roulette and Slots, if you want to try it out nonetheless, you can just bet the minimum amounts and only play for fun, so it won't matter if you win or lose.
3) Blackjack
Blackjack is the most complicated game by far. Simply because the player has to make a series of decisions, which will largely decide the outcome. Luckily, there is such a thing as an optimal strategy, which will be outlined below.
However, the strategy is also dependent on the house rules. These not only affect your expected return, but in some places also your decisions.
Here are the house rules at the Diamond casino:
-The game uses 4 standard decks, and a continuous shuffle.
-Blackjack pays 3 to 2, dealer checks for early blackjack.
-No insurance offered, no surrender.
-Dealer stands on soft 17.
-Double down on any two cards.
-Player can split only once, but doubling after split is allowed.
-Seven-Card Charlie.
Under these rules, and following the "basic strategy" chart, your expected return at Blackjack is a shade under 99.6%, which is extremely good for a casino game, that's why Blackjack should be your table game of choice.
But it comes at a price: you are going to have to memorize the relatively complicated strategy chart, or at least stick it to your monitor until you have it in your head. But in case you ever stumble into a real-life casino, you won't regret having this table memorized, so I would definitely advise you to work on that.
The strategy chart might look complicated at first, but you will be able to notice certain patterns. Your decisions are mainly based on the dealer's upcard, which is basically divided into a weak card (2 to 6), and a strong card (7 to ace).
When a dealer shows a strong card, you will be hitting more often with the risk of going bust, but when a dealer shows a weak card, you're not taking that risk, and you will be standing more, but also doubling and splitting more. You want to increase your bets when the odds are in your favor, and get out cheap when they're not.
But it also helps to take some time to think about why a certain advice is given. For example, why does it say that you always have to split two eights, even against an ace. Well, that's because two eights equals 16, which is the worst total you can have. It's better to split them up, and give yourself a chance of finding a 17, 18 or 19 with the next card. Once you see the logic in that, you'll have one less thing to memorize.
The playing advice in the basic strategy chart is a result of computer simulations that ran all possible outcomes against each other, and produced the most profitable decision for each situation. So you can't go wrong following it.
Optimal strategy for Blackjack with Seven-Card Charlie
The added house rule of Seven-Card Charlie, adds a small advantage for the player, and it does influence a few strategy decisions. For example, you might have a 14 with 6 cards, against the dealer's 5 upcard.
Normally this would be an automatic stand, but if you're only one card away from the Seven-Card Charlie, meaning an instant win for the player, regardless of the dealer's hand, it turns it into a hit.
Here's the most optimal strategy chart to follow for the Diamond Casino house rules:https://prnt.sc/olct6g
You'll see that two fives are missing from the chart, and that's because you never split them. You treat them as a regular 10. You also never split tens. Just stand on 20.
If you follow this strategy religiously, even with a maximum wager of 50,000 chips, you only expect to lose about 215 chips per hand, and with rounds taking about 30 seconds, that amounts to an expected LOSS of 26,000 chips per hour, which is only half a bet. A small price to pay for an hour of entertainment.
But since the expected return is so extremely close to 100%, you will see more positive short-term results than with other games. But obviously it can also swing the other way. Again, this is supposed to be the game where your money lasts you the longest, but always set your loss and win limits before you sit down. That rule simply always applies.
Still, even with optimal strategies applied, all these games are expected to lose you money in the long run. So betting any kind of large amounts is not advised. If you simply want to enjoy playing these games, there's nothing wrong with betting a minimal amount. Playing these games for a longer period of time will already cost you money anyway, since your daily property fees will still be charged while you're playing in the GTA casino. As long as you can play for fun, there's nothing wrong, but when you see yourself betting insane chunks of your entire bank balance to try to recoup some unfortunate losses, you're doing it wrong.
As the commercials in Britain all correctly say: when the fun stops, stop.
2) Virtual Horse Racing
Now onto the good stuff. I ran some numbers, and I believe Rockstar has made a mistake with the horse racing game. Because as it stands, and if I read the numbers correctly, this game is actually profitable for the player. You can actually make money with this, at least, until Rockstar figures out their mistake and patches it.
If anyone wants to jump into the math and double check this to make sure, please do so. I will add any corrections to this post. This is one of those "to good to be true" things, so I keep thinking that I might have overlooked something. So please verify it if you can.
The setup is this. There is a pool of 100 horses, each with their own attached payout. These are divided into 3 groups, ranked by their odds. From each group, 2 horses are randomly selected to provide a pool of six runners for you to bet on.
Now it's not an actual race you're looking at. You are looking at a raffle. This is important to realize.
Each horse gets awarded a certain number of raffle tickets. The favorites get awarded more tickets than the underdogs, and therefore, have a higher chance of winning.
If this distribution works like it does in the real-life casinos, then the raffle tickets are awarded according to the betting odds.
Example 1: imagine a race with 3 runners, all have 2/1 odds, representing a 33.3% chance of winning. (Because 2/1 means 2 AGAINST 1, so 3 total.) In this case, each horse gets one third of the raffle tickets, giving them an equal chance to win.
Example 2: imagine a race with 3 runners, one has 1/1 odds (or EVENS), representing a 50% chance of winning, and the other two horses are marked up as 3/1, with a 25% chance of winning. The favorite gets half the tickets, the other two get a quarter of the tickets each.
A ticket is drawn, and you'll have a winner.
It doesn't matter in this game which horse you bet on, because the expected return is always the same: 100% or break-even, for the above examples.
Now, what happens if the percentages don't exactly add up to 100%?
They must add up to 100%, because there will always be a winner. And only one winner.
So when this is the case, the actual winning chances of the horses are adjusted to meet the 100% requirement, using their payout odds to determine the scale.
So, if the represented percentages add up to more than 100%, the actual winning chances of the runners will be DECREASED, resulting in all bets becoming losing propositions for the players.
Example: In a 6-horse race, all runners are listed at 4/1, representing a 20% chance. Only with six runners that amounts to 120%. So all chances are scaled down by 1/6th, to end up at 100%.
This means your horse's chances are reduced from 20% to 16.67%, turning it into a losing bet: 5 times you will lose your bet, and 1 time you will win, but only get 4 bets back in this instance, instead of 5. A losing bet in the long run.
This is the type of odds that you find in regular casinos, with fields as large as 15 runners to bet on, where the assumed winning chances always add up to more than 100%, therefore are decreased for all runners, resulting in a house edge.
But in GTA Online's Inside Track, there are other scenarios, because of the small field, and the way that they are put together.
In some cases, the represented percentages when added up, are LESS than 100%, meaning that the actual winning chances of all runners, are INCREASED.
This creates profitable bets for the players, because in the long run, you're expecting to win more money than you lose. This is a gambler's dream, pure and simple.
So, according to the in-game information, the three groups of horses are divided as follows:
-Favorites: EVENS to 5-1
-Outsiders: 6-1 to 15-1
-Underdogs: 16-1 to 30-1
Let's take the two most extreme examples to show what's happening.
The worst possible field to bet on: two runners at EVENS, two runners at 6-1, and two runners at 16-1.
EVENS represents a 50% chance, 6-1 is 14.29%, and 16-1 is 5.88%. Add those up and you land on a total of 140.34%.
This means that the actual winning chances of the horses are decreased by 28.75% (to get that 140% down to 100%), which makes betting on this field extremely unwise.
A horse at EVENS will only come in as a winner 35.63% of the time, instead of 50%,
a horse at 6-1 will only win 10.18% of the time,
and an underdog at 16-1 will only win 4.19% of the time.
The expected return on a bet on any of the horses in this field is only 71.26%, so a maximum bet of 10,000 chips on any of these horses holds an expected LOSS of 2,875 chips.
These returns are the same, because the winning chances are scaled equally, according to the payout numbers. So it really doesn't matter which horse you bet on, in the long run, you expect the same results.
But as explained before, it does influence variance, and therefore your short-term result, which can swing both ways.
But now, the best possible field to bet on: two runners at 5-1, two runners at 15-1, and two runners at 30-1.
Odds at 5-1 represents a winning chance of 16.67%, 15-1 odds means 6.25% chance, and 30-1 odds means a 3.23% chance of winning. Add these six horses together, and you only get 52.285%.
This means that, to get from 52% to 100%, the actual winning chances of these horses will be almost doubled! Multiplied by 1.91 to be exact.
So the 5-1 favorites will now win 31.88% of the time, instead of 16.67%,
the 15-1 runners will win 11.95% of the time,
and the underdogs at 30-1 odds will still win 6.17% of the time.
When betting on this field, the expected return on your bet is 191.25%!
This means that a max bet of 10,000 chips will result in an expected PROFIT of 9,125 chips.
This is printing money, if there ever was such a thing.
Optimal strategy for Virtual Horse racing
So all you have to do, is only bet high on the games where you have an expected positive return, and bet the absolute minimum on the games where your expected return is negative. Or back out of the racing game to refresh the field.
If you don't have a way to quickly add up all the percentages, and until somebody shows up here with a neatly formatted table, just use a few general rules of thumb:
-Always bet the maximum on a race with favorites at 2/1 and 3/1 or higher in it.
-Simply skip all races with two favorites at EVENS in it, and at EVENS and 2/1. Or bet the minimum, if you can't skip or refresh the field.
-To decide if you should play races with other favorite combinations EVENS and 3/1, EVENS and 4/1, EVENS and 5/1, or two favorites at 2/1, the payouts on the other four runners determine whether or not it's profitable to play them. The results of betting on these fields vary from an expected 1,330 chip loss (worst-case) to an expected 1,680 chip win (best-case), with a max bet of 10,000 chips.
But if you're not looking for another strategy chart, you might just want to skip these borderline cases, and just cherry pick the best ones, which are easy to recognize, and with which you can never go wrong.
It's difficult to put a number on an expected win-rate, because it all depends on which fields you get presented with, but it's not unreasonable to state that you can maintain a steady win-rate of around 200,000 chips per hour, with about 50 seconds per race.
Remember, you're not trying to win every race. You're trying to win the most money per hour. So don't sweat it when you bet on a 4/1 favorite, and lose a couple of races in a row. It will still be more profitable in the long run. You have the math on your side.
To reduce negative variance, always bet on the favorite, when betting on profitable fields. We're not gambling anymore, we're grinding out a steady profit. We want to keep the swings to a minimum.
I contacted Rockstar support to verify if this is indeed how it works, but the only reply I got after 6 weeks is that they were "looking into it".
User u/Garsant made a useful Excel-worksheet, available for you to download, where you can quickly type in the payouts on the horses, to see if it produces a profitable bet or not. You can find it in his post here: https://www.reddit.com/gtaonline/comments/ekp8na/gta_online_inside_track_odd_calculato
1) Wheel of Fortune
The number one profitable casino game in GTA Online is obviously the Wheel of Fortune, because it costs you nothing to play.
Unfortunately, you only get one free spin per day, but it holds great value, so make sure you do it.
With a chance to win a super car, vehicle discounts, expensive mystery prizes (which also can be vehicles), and a lot of cash and chips, the expected return on a single spin is around $100,000 in value.
So don't forget your daily spin, it's definitely worth your time.
2020 Update:
As of the Diamond Casino Heist update, the Inside Track horse racing is confirmed to still be as profitable as outlined above.The only thing that seems to be changed, is that you can't refresh the field anymore by backing out of the screen. This does affect your hourly rate in a negative way, but does not change the fact that this game has a huge positive expected return, and should be your go-to when you're trying to take money from the house, without having Lester's nagging voice in your ear. That should also be worth something.
And with that, I conclude my 5,000 word essay on gambling in GTA. Questions, comments, feel free to add your input to this guide.
Cliffs:
-Gambling games should only be played for fun, not for big money. You should expect to lose in the long run. The house always wins.
-A casino game doesn't have a memory, and betting systems don't work.
-Set your limits before you start, how much you are willing to lose or win, and then walk away when you get there.
-Don't play slots, roulette, or three card poker.
-Only play blackjack following a basic strategy chart (https://prnt.sc/olct6g).
-Inside Track betting can be played profitably, if you only bet on fields WITHOUT a heavy favorite.
-Wheel of Fortune is always your best bet, because it's a free bet.

Based on Beginners guide: Properties ranked by Necessity by CretaceousFossil. Related: GTA Online property location guide, if you are wondering what the difference is between locations. For moneymaking specifics see /gtaonline's pinned weekly Mega Guide thread.

1. An Apartment, Stilthouse, or Penthouse: The #1 property every player should have by Level 30 is an apartment. While they may be less effective property for earning money, they definitely have advantages. You can spawn there safely, not having to worry about spawn killing by griefers. If another player is relentlessly chasing you down, even if you own no other properties, you can evade them. And finally, its nice to feel like an actual resident of Los Santos. Also its the only way to do the regular heists as a host.
   
2. CEO Office or Biker Clubhouse: It mainly comes down to what you like. You might like the clean, authoritative, high-rise feel of being a CEO, or you might like the gritty, street-level, rock'n'roll style of an MC president. However one or the other, is the second property you should invest in or at least prioritize. With the CEO Office, you won't need to make sure you have your 50,000 dollars every-time you join the game. Although the missions that come with the CEO are monotonous and underwhelming, so many of the other properties on this list require you to be a CEO or MC President to operate. As an MC president you have the ability to spawn in any bike you own, next to you with, no cooldown (except for the Oppressor Mk2); and as a CEO you have the ability to spawn in Organization vehicles (see #Organization_Vehicles on how to unlock them). You can also get free snacks at the Assistant in the Office.
   
3. Bunker: If you are beginner or someone who doesn't own a ton of Mk2 weapons or weaponized vehicles, the money is definitely the best part. The resupply missions are fairly easy (but once you have both production upgrades, you should buy supplies), and most of the sell missions without rival players are a breeze. Whenever you are online and you have supplies in the Bunker, it is passively producing. This allows you to do other activities in the meantime. However besides the money, if you wish to own a lot of Mk2 Weapons and maybe a weaponized vehicle, the research does pay off. Also this property allows you to buy an MOC. While the interior may seem like a bunch of gray, drab, ugly, concrete tunnels at first, once you get the golf carts, sleeping quarters, shooting range, upgrades, and the yellow paint job its gives a nice industrial/laboratory feel.
   
4. Vehicle Warehouse: Import/Export is one of the best solo money-making methods. There is no upfront cost as with Special Cargo but if done correctly it can still net a good $200k per hour (or more, combined with VIP jobs). The Specialized Vehicles stored in the basement are rather lackluster though, Rockstar introduced much more powerful weaponized vehicles since then, most of them even cheaper and customizable.
   
5. (Special Cargo) Warehouse or MC Business: The warehouse's drop-shipping style buy & sell formula makes it the most straightforward and it's a good way to introduce beginners to selling. However, there are definitely some flaws with this option. While the selling yields good profits, if you lose your cargo, your losing time and money. Open-Road Businesses are similar in idea to gunrunning. Steal or buy supplies and wait for your stock to build up. However they don't pay that well, and are obsolete compared to other businesses.
   
6. Nightclub: The nightclub definitely has some very good benefits. You get a free Speedo Custom right off the bat, which at first is a "so-so" vehicle, but once you have all the vehicle upgrades, the armor plating, the minigun, and mines, it's a very fun and effective vehicle. While the cargo accrues quite slowly, if you are patient and play the business battle missions, you will have some considerable stock. Plus you can purchase the Terrorbyte, more info on it below. For the Nightclub to be most effective you should own (and run, that is not have it shut down) other businesses, as the stock is generated from linked businesses. Keeping the Nightclub at higher levels of popularity will put more money every 24 ingame hours (48 minutes IRL) into your safe. Every ingame day decreases the popularity by 5% (1/4 of a popularity bar), changing DJs for $10k (once you unlocked them for $100k - this maxes out popularity) will up your popularity by 10% (half of a bar). Or you may wait a couple ingame days and do a popularity mission which increases popularity by 1.5 bar. You can see how much cash gets added into your safe (capacity: $70k) every day: https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Nightclubs#Cash
   
7. Terrorbyte (requires Nightclub): The Terrorbyte is a really great vehicle. Besides having a literal base inside in a truck, which is sweet, it is incredibly functional. The missions have awesome pay considering the level of effort/hassle needed to complete them, plus you can remotely launch resupply missions for any of your businesses. If you decide to buy this truck, make sure you have over $1.2m extra, to get the drone station and missiles (though the latter is not very useful), and you if don't own a Mk2 weapon workshop, getting one with the terrorbyte is a good idea.
   
8. Arcade: The Arcade provides another passive income (max $5k per day) to the player while also giving the player the ability to host Casino Heists which pay really well if the player knows what they are doing. The passive income depends on how many games are placed, you may even just place the same games in every slot to achieve the highest possible payout, you don't have to buy all the machines. Owning a Terrorbyte makes you able to hire Paige as hacker, which is necessary for good Casino Heist runs to max out the time you can spend grabbing loot (or you may alternatively unlock Avi Schwartzman as a hacker).
   
9. Facility: The facility although one of the more expensive properties, can get you some serious cash and XP from the Doomsday Heists, plus the front desk has free snack. This is my favorite property just because of how expansive it is. With the wall designs, color scheme, fully upgraded quarters, and statues you get after the heists, its very aesthetically pleasing and is a good way to impress.
   
10. Garage (standalone property): If you are too broke to afford an apartment because you don't that much time to play or apartments are not your thing, put this at number 1 over the apartment as the first property to buy. However although being able to to store cars, garages are obsolete considering you can add garages and garage levels to nightclub, and apartments and the facilities include garages. Also you can't set your spawn location to standalone garages.
    
11. Mobile Operations Center (MOC) or Avenger): While both have a better bang for your buck than the warehouse, they aren't that crucial for beginning players. The MOC at first is very barebones and while there are missions that can be launched from it, they require multiple players and can't be launched in freemode. The Avenger can be a useful vehicle for freemode jobs (such as Hangar missions or Facility/Arcade preps) but it's definitely not necessary.
    
12. Hangar: If you love flying in GTA Online and want to spend all your money on planes, this is the property for you. However, if you want to make money, it's not a very good option. Crates are only worth $10k each and the missions require some flying skills, and only give 1 crate per player in the MC or Organization, with a maximum of 4. The sale missions also require flying skills, some even more than the sourcing missions and some of them can't really be done solo.
    
13. Arena Workshop: With the paint job, decals, and office, the Arena Workshop can be made to look very cool, and with the weapons workshop you can add weapons to vehicles and upgrade guns. You also have access to the Arena War career, which allows you to unlock discount prices for outfits and vehicle mods (albeit randomly, so it's not a very effective model), and the base prices for the upgardes are very steep. This property is over a million, so unless you are planning to buy a ton of discounted items or you just love Arena War, wait out on this one or skip it altogether.
    
14. Casino Master Penthouse: Basically a very expensive apartment, with very expensive modular upgrades and decorations. You can also add a 10-car garage for $900k. It also lets you do the Casino Missions (from Agatha Baker) as a host, which upon completion awards the player with the Paragon R (Armored)) car, which is exclusively available from here.
    
15. CEO Office Garage: Unless you are super rich and own more cars than you know what to do with, make this property dead last. It costs millions to add more levels. You can add a Custom Auto Shop (for even more money) with it to custom your cars straight from the garage though.
    
16. Yacht: Big floating apartment on water, gives you the option to play one extra type of VIP job. Not a priority.
    

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE
· Total budget (in local currency) and country of purchase. Please do not use USD unless purchasing in the US:
$450 - $650 USD – purchasing in USA
· Are you open to refurbs/used?
Yes
· How would you prioritize form factor (ultrabook, 2-in-1, etc.), build quality, performance, and battery life?
I’m leaning towards an ultra-book. Not really into the 2-in-1 machines. Build quality needs to be pretty decent, as I’ll be carrying it around in a bag full of heavy books. Battery life isn’t really a concern, but I’d prefer that the powecharge cable be on the smaller side.
· How important is weight and thinness to you?
Weight – not important at all, but I definitely prefer a very thin laptop.
· Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.
Definitely prefer a screensize that is, or is close to 15.6”
· Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run.
Photoshop is probably the highest demanding program I’m planning on using at this point in time. Gaming is not a top-priority, but I would like to have the ability to play games that are generally 5 or so years old. I'll also be running Guitar Pro 7.5, and I'd like to be able to run Fruity Loops and some other music-related software.
· If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want?
GTA V, Sea of Thieves, Half-Life 2
· Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)?
I don’t need an optical drive. I would like a full size keyboard with the numberpad. I do not see myself using a touch screen. I absolutely want an SSD – will not consider anything that isn’t equipped with an SSD.
· Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion.
I’m a law student and plan on using this computer for home and for school. I plan on using the computer for another two years at the very least.
Right now, I’m leaning very heavily toward the Asus Vivobook 15 with the Ryzen 5-3500u processor, but have read some mixed reviews about the device online. Right now its on sale for $479.00 on Amazon, which is perfect for my budget ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QQB7552/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1 )
The biggest concerned I have with this laptop is the build quality and the RAM. Most sources online say that this machine is equipped with 4GB DDR4 RAM onboard + SO-DIMM expansion slot, equipped with another 4GB stick. While there are many tutorials on YouTube describing the procedure for upgrading the RAM, I've been told that this machine performs best when the RAM is matched (4+4, 8+8, etc). Can anyone tell me if there is any truth to this, and how consequential it really is?
All this said, I’d really like some other recommendations for similar machines. Also, I’m not in a huge rush – that is, I don’t really need to buy it for another couple months, but I’m really tempted to go after this one because its on sale. So let me know if you think I should wait it out, and what I should be looking out for.
Thanks in advance!

PISTOLS
The AP Pistol is, pound for pound, the best-in-class weapon, purely based on its full-auto firing mode. Don’t underestimate this gun: with the extended clip it carries 36 rounds, and can produce a real mess against weaker AI. If you’re down on ammo and in a clinch, you could do far worse.
MACHINE GUNS
This category contains both SMGs and LMGs, but the SMGs are, unfortunately, a useless class. You’re almost always better off using an assault rifle. The only exception is the Micro SMG, which can be fired from cars. Apart from the AP pistol, it’s the only full-auto weapon capable of doing so. That aside, the best machine gun to have equipped in this slot is the Combat MG. It features slightly higher damage than the MG (3.2/10 compared to 3/10), but the real benefit comes from increased fire-rate (6.5/10 compared to 6/10), accuracy and clip-size (200 rounds compared to 100 rounds, both extended). Both guns have the same range at 6/10, but the Combat MG is a fine choice when attacking vehicles, and especially helicopters. There’s a reason the game gifts you one in the fourth round of a Survival. But, assuming you aren’t level 80, go for the normal MG. It doesn’t unlock until rank 50, unfortunately, so until then you’re going to be stuck with the Assault SMG and it’s 2.2/10 damage. Really, though, the only circumstances you should be using a machine gun over an assault rifle against human targets is either because you need full stopping power at the longer end of mid-range or you have an ammo problem.
There is an oddity in this class. The Gusenberg Sweeper came free with the Valentine’s Day Massacre Special DLC, and hasn’t been carried over into the new-gen versions, presumably because it’s so OP. It features a very high rate of fire (600 RPM) with significantly higher damage than the basic, AK-47-based assault rifle (5/10 compared to 3/10). It also has a slightly greater range. Did you get it? Lucky you.
ASSAULT GUNS
The assault rifle will likely be your default weapon for most combat situations, as they’re more powerful than SMGs and more accurate than machine guns. The Special Carbine is my go-to assault rifle. It was part of The Business Update DLC, and it’s unlocked from rank 1 in GTA Online. Fully tricked out it’s a devastating gun, a truly multi-role weapon capable of the toughest jobs that has no problem scoring head-shots at range. If you’re looking for an alternative, the Bullpup Rifle has exactly the same stats. Some higher level players prefer the Advanced Rifle because it has an increased fire-rate over the standard Carbine, but it’s less accurate and the extra rounds-per-minute don’t compensate for the drop-off in damage. The Advanced Rifle debate is an odd one, because many, illogically, see it as the preferred option. The Advanced Rifle was one of the original assault rifles in GTA 5 before DLC added more, so its relatively high fire-rate over the standard Carbine Rifle put it at the top of older tests. Now, though, the stats make the Special Carbine or Bullpup an easy choice, as they beat the Advanced Rifle on damage (5.7/10 over 3.4/10), accuracy (6/10 over 5/10) and fire-rate (7.3/10 over 7/10). Straight up: they’re better guns.
SNIPER GUNS
There isn’t much of a choice here. The basic Sniper Rifle unlocks at rank 21, but the Heavy Sniper doesn’t appear until a far distant rank 90. The Heavy is the superior weapon, with better range, damage and accuracy. More than one long-time player has claimed the Heavy is the best gun in the entire game, but you’re a long way off owning one if you only started with the new-gen GTA 5 release. The only alternative is the Marksman Rifle, a recent addition from the Last Man Standing Update. I actually use this a fair amount. It has the best fire-rate of any of the three sniper rifles (4/10 compared to the Heavy’s 2/10), the pay-off being a relatively short scope with no zoom. I don’t have the Heavy yet as I’m rank 65-ish, but I tend to find I use both the Marksman and Sniper Rifle in equal measure, depending on the distance to the target.
SHOTGUN
There are a two schools of thought in the shotgun class. The first is based on one-shot kills. This is normally used for a situation in which you’re looking to deliver as much damage as possible to a hard target (probably another player) at very close range. The second is willing to sacrifice the immediate take-down for an increased fire-rate and longer range. This is better for a more open scenario with mixed distances, such as a Deathmatch. The gun you’ll pick will depend on your play style and the situation in which you find yourself. GTA Online definitely has a “thing” for shotguns; whichever way you decide to go, there’s hardware to suit your needs. The obvious, correct overall choice in this category is the Assault Shotgun. This beast of a gun has a 32-round extended clip and fires full-auto, making it pretty difficult to argue with. Its fire-rate is off the chart at 5/10 compared to the Sawed Off, Bullpup and Pump, which all stand at 2/10. The Assault’s extremely powerful, but it’s not the only option. It’s fire-rate and range come at the expense of damage. The two hardest hitting shotguns in the game are the Bullpup Shotgun and the Sawed-Off Shotgun. Both suffer from glacial fire-rates but are seriously powerful, the Sawed-Off being the most potent. The Bullpup causes less damage, but is more accurate, has a higher range and carries more shells. I prefer the Bullpup: you really do have to be standing close to get the most from the Sawed-Off, and in a situation in which you need to take down more than two enemies there’s going to be a reload issue. As a final note, I’d count the Heavy Shotgun out. It was added with the Last Man Standing Update and looks good on paper as it causes more damage than the Assault Shotgun, but it suffers from significant damage drop-off at range and the mag only extends to 12 rounds. So yeah: Assault in general, Bullpup for “personal” work.
HEAVY GUNS
You won’t even get a heavy weapon until you buy the grenade launcher at rank 60. The only other two weapons in the same class are the RPG at rank 100 and the Minigun at rank 120. Even when you hit 100, you’re probably going to keep the grenade launcher equipped. The RPG’s only advantage is its ability to fire an explosive in a straight line, and is therefore useful for taking out choppers, but the grenade launcher carries ten rounds and fires semi-auto. It’s capable of turning even the most desperate situation into a total bloodbath (although it’ll cost you: Ammu-nation charges nearly $4,000 for a full clip), and even a single, well-placed shot can save any day. When you get to 120, it’ll be Minigun all the way. It’s the most powerful weapon in the game by so many miles, a gun in front of which police choppers turn into immediate matchsticks. All others transmute to pieces of exploding meat when you finally get your hands on one of these. That’s life, I guess.
That's all for today see you guys later. Oh wait forgot to mention Sticky bomb best C4 replacement

I’ve been playing WoW since mid-2005 and began my Warcraft journey in Tides of Darkness. I’ve been through many ups and downs throughout WoW’s history. For the first time during yesterdays Q&A, I felt completely disillusioned and disheartened with the direction the game is headed. I’ve been disappointed and frustrated before, but there is an overwhelming sense that the Dev’s just don’t get it. Every decision seems to be coming from a Developer mindset, not a Players mindset.
It became clear to me that the core fundamental issues of the game aren’t going to be addressed any time soon because they aren’t even on the Dev’s radar. I have my conjecture as to why that is, but it’s not really constructive to the discussion at hand. I intend for this post to be constructive feedback, not an assault on why the Dev’s seem to be disconnected.
So let me address the Q&A point-by-point from the perspective of a Player (the ones that effect gameplay design):(1) RNG. No one likes it. Not casuals. Not hardcore. Not moderates. We all know that RNG has been a part of the game since the beginning, however, it was not the bedrock that the loot system was based upon. Telling us that RNG has always been a part of the game is a partial truth, at best.
Its RNG if I get a gem socket. Its RNG if it has Leech or Indestructible. Its RNG if I warforge/titanforge. Its RNG from the boss drops. Its RNG from the weekly chest. Its RNG from the World Quests. Today, every single piece of loot is RNG based. RNG dictates everything.
It’s obvious to all of us that you are trying to trigger the dopamine receptor action(s) from random rewards just like a slot machine in a casino or a Hearthstone card pack. That is fine in regards to rare items (ie; mounts or the scythe off of Argus), but not when every single piece of gear in the game is subject to degrees (plural) of RNG. It makes the game obfuscated and confusing even to veterans. The goal should be to make the game more intuitive, not less.
When I look at a loot table, I want to know if an item has a gem slot (TBCs colored gem socket bonuses were awesome by the way - bring that back!), what it’s item level is, and what secondary stats or procs it triggers. I don’t want there to be any guesswork in the item. The only RNG should be whether the item dropped or not. Period. I’d rather run a dungeon a 100x with something I know that I need (see; Maw of Souls) then random dungeons a 100x with no guarantees that I will get what I want.
In regards to rewards we work towards, like World Quests or Weekly Mythic Cache, I’d rather get a known quantity of Residuum than any random items. When I open a chest 3 weeks in a row and get 3 belts in a row, it makes me want to quit this game forever. It is that frustrating. If I wanted WoW to be an RNG extravaganza, I wouldn’t have been playing WoW in the first place.
(2) Gear Reset. The power gap between tiers has become insane. People are doing more than double the DPS in regular BoD (20k+) than they were in regular Uldir (roughly 10k). This is unacceptable. That stat squish is a bandaid that covered the infection underneath without treating it. Not only that, but you completely made Uldir gear obsolete.
Uldir is now trivial in difficulty to most of us. We could carry our friends, who lack the skill level, through Uldir for gear if it wasn’t a complete waste of time because a World Quest chest over in Stormsong offers high ilvl than Heroic G’huun! It’s absolute madness. When raids become more trivial, its also a great training ground for players just not up to par for current content. In Cata, we used to do the old raids that were one tier behind for casuals so they could get the experience of the raid and the comradery of being part of a guild event. Now, if those people want that experience they get to do the current raid, but its in LFR with a bunch of random toxic strangers. Hardly a community experience. When I was a casual in WotLK, I had no problem running Ulduar to catch-up with gear while the serious people were in ToC. When did this become a problem for Devs? I never used to hear casuals complain about casuals not being able to set foot into the new raid on Day 1. For most of us, it was a month or two before we did and we were OK with it.
We, the players, have been telling you, the Devs, that we want all Tiers in the current expansion to be meaningful. If I’m coming into BFA today, I want to have a reason to progress through Uldir before I ship off right away to BoD. Its part of the story and the immersion. Anyone hitting 120 right now in BFA won’t see Uldir, and thats a shame. I loved having a reason to go back and raid Karazhan all expansion long. You’re trying to fill that void by having 4 difficulty levels in a single tier. Problem is, there is nothing exciting about defeating Jaina in Normal or Heroic if I’ve already beat her in LFR.
I understand that you don’t want us feeling like we need to go back and farm an old raid to progress in the current raid, but there are ways around this. You already experimented with it, perhaps unknowingly, with Reorigination Array that benefits it only in that new raid. If you’re worried about a particular piece of gear outperforming new loot, slap an incentive like Reorigination Array (ie; instance specific buff) on the new piece to discourage the old piece you’re worried about. You avert the problem Dragonspine Trophy caused if you put something like Reorigination Array on Madness of the Betrayer while you’re in the Black Temple instance.
You’re breaking the pacing of the game and the importance of GeaLoot in it. Gear is the fundamental cornerstone of any RPG. When the gearing in it is bad, the RPG is bad. It is why BFA is in the state it is (not good). When people say BFA is worse than WoD, they are being hyperbolic. BFA is a good expansion with a terrible gearing problem. There are a ton of great things in BFA (lore, story, zones, music, art, questing, raids), but none of it matters. Why? Gearing in BFA stinks. It is so incredibly clumsy and unintuitive. We literally need addons for our addons to understand Azerite traits and which secondary stat is on what piece. Imagine being a new player whose never touched WoW understanding this gearing system. Good luck! I struggle being a 14 year veteran.
There are too many difficulties per raid tier which is part of the cause of this problem. A normal and a mythic are all we need. In many cases in Uldir, I actually found normal groups faster in the new LFG tool and ran it faster, easier and with more community interaction than LFR. LFR has outlived its usefulness. Heroic is barely harder than Normal, so it really doesn’t fill a purpose. The new Normals difficulty should fall between current LFR and Normal for the first half of bosses, and between Normal and Heroic for the last half, with a transitional boss or 2 in the middle.
(3) Fun. Stop using engagement as a metric. Just because a lot of us are doing something does not mean that we are enjoying it (see; ilvl 400 Warfront loot). Just because we are logging in to do a specific piece of content doesn’t mean its fun to us. It means its the path of least resistance to get what we want.This is the main point where most of us feel the disconnect with the Dev’s. If they were actively playing the game and as passionate as we are about it, the problems the community has would be self-evident. They would never make it past Beta or the PTR. Being at the complete mercy of chance isn’t fun. Doing mindless activities (Islands and Warfronts) just because they have geatransmog isn’t fun.
Legendary items were fun. I loved them. I just didn’t like how I acquired them. There was no potential way to target them. They should have been all craftable through professions. They could have still been a low percentage RNG drop if we could just acquire them eventually over time through farming or by buying it on the AH from a crafter. It would have given an endgame progression to professions in this game (which are in an abysmal state, I might add, not that WoWs professions have ever been good compared to other MMOs). Instead of ironing out the one wrinkle of the system, you threw it in the bin instead. All it took was a little bit more iteration. The system was almost there, and now its gone. Blizzard has a long history of abandoning great systems that work to force new systems that don’t. Striving for streamlining and accessibility is coming at the cost of engagement and enjoyment. I have no clue why, but it’s very frustrating to me. The endless quest for streamlining and balance is just sucking the life out of the game for me.
(4) PvP Rewards. The very fact that you had to explain that the little bar you fill on the top of PvP LFG is a participation reward reveals its unintuitive. Many people that want the reward probably don’t even know that bar is there. Perhaps its time to give us a new button on the Micro Menu that tracks progress on Mythic Caches, PvP rewards, season rankings, etc. A one-stop-shop for everything we need to know and follow. Please include the Island Expedition weekly bar in there as well.
To be fair, most of the UI at this point is unintuitive. It’s stuck in 2004. The very fact that we have to mod it through AddOns just to make it palatable shows how much work needs to be done to it. It’s a bit like how Bethesda relies on its community to fix its bugs in Skyrim without patching it themselves. Blizzard has relied on its community to fix its lackluster UI through self-modding for too long. It’s time to bring the UI into 2019 and make it module without AddOns, like SWTOR does.
With all of that said, I’m sad that Random BGs hold almost no value now. At least in Legion I had a chance of getting a Legendary to drop in them. Now, it’s just a complete waste of time. It’s fun, but pointless. There is nothing I can get in it that I can’t get faster or easier somewhere else.
(5) Item Stats. Haste. Mastery. Crit. Versatility. Boring. All boring. I’m not excited when I get a specific stat. I don’t care what it does.Once upon a time I was excited to get a big Haste item for my Shadow Priest and Crit for my Fire Mage. The right or wrong stat compositions would result in a HUGE performance difference - anywhere from 25% to 150%. That time is long gone. There is no reason to care now unless your a Mythic Raider. Most of the time, I find myself just looking at item level because I can’t be bothered, because min-maxing optimization versus just selecting whatever is just a 10-15% difference. Ambivalence is not a great feeling in an RPG.
WoD was a major gaffe in many departments, but experimenting with Multistrike, Indestructible, Avoidance, Leech, Speed… those were good things. You should have continued iterating on that instead of scrapping half of it. We need more of this, not less. It makes gearing more interesting. This handholding that Blizzard is doing for the sake of the “average user” (since casual is a dirty word to Blizzard) is who this hurts most - the average user. The hardcore only care about min-maxing. Stats are just and end to a means for the hardcore. Its the average user who would get excited for hitting their Defense rating or Hit cap back in WotLK. I understand why things like Armor Penetration was removed for balance, but at the same time it made the game feel like a gutted RPG when it was taken out. It made the game lose its flavor.
Fun is more important than balance, and lets be honest - a game as vast and complex as WoW is never going to be truly balanced. Striving for perfection in balance leads to homogenization and uninteresting gameplay. I’d rather be lousy for a raid tier and be unique than to have my classes all feel the same. Every class has a builder and spender now. We’re all Rogue-lite. We all have some version of Combo Points. The classes and specs that aren’t Combo Points seem to be Proc based. Those are our two play styles now. It just feels bad. My Fire Mage feels like my Elemental Shaman. My Ret Paladin feels like my Rogue and my Death Knight (all specs).
(6) Portal Removal. This is going to be unpopular with many reading, but you made the right decision on removing most portals. This is an MMO world and instant traveling anywhere was a problem. With that said, this decision was premature. There was no need to implement it at a time when there is really nothing to do other than farm old raids in these areas. If we had current content in these areas that effected 110-120 gameplay. The fact we don’t have World Quests across Azeroth to me is a bit mind boggling to me. I believe that is why most were excited for World Quests when Legion was announced. I hoped it would reinvigorate old zones, not just replace Daily Quests.
(7) Allied Races. When you announced the Allied Race system, people were hoping for races like Jinyu, Ogres, Vrykul, High Elves… the races we’ve gotten to quest for and with over the years. Tom Chilton once said adding Draenei was a mistake because they weren’t built-up. He said that Blizzard learned their lesson and wouldn’t make that mistake with adding a new race again… and then we received Void Elves. I get that the creative-minded artists want to do crazy, new, interesting things, but I’m not going to get excited over adding races I’ve just found out about like Void Elves (which had no story before they were added) or Kul Tirans (which are a retcon to Warcraft 2 and 3) in the same way I was excited for Nightborne, who had story build-up before hand. I want to care about the race I’m playing, or it just feels like an empty shell I’m running around in. To be fair, you’ve done a decent job making up for it retroactively with Void Elves with the War Story in Zandalar.
(8) Leveling. While I would like a level squish, it doesn’t fix the underlying problem that leveling in WoW is not rewarding. This is just another band-aid solution. Making less levels doesn’t mean you can give us something more interesting. I think that is a false logic. Not only that, but now its going to take 2x as long for people to gain a single level. It will feel like walking through mud to people who’ve become used to speed at which they gain a level. Personally, this wouldn’t bother me, but I highly doubt the community would be thrilled with this.
The Dev’s really need to study what Elder Scrolls Online is doing in this department. While ESO isn’t perfect, I always feel rewarded for spending time and effort on my character. There are only 50 levels in the game, but there are another 810 levels once you hit 50 (ie; Paragon in Diablo 3) that give you small, incremental rewards. That’s all people need. It’s not about the size of the carrot-on-a-stick, it’s about having any carrot-on-a-stick. WoW currently doesn’t have one. It’s psychology 101.
I could write a book on all the things I would like to see improved in WoWs leveling, but I’ll refrain for another time. It used to be what attracted me most to WoW. Now it’s thing thing I like least about it. The entire process needs to be reworked. Creating a brand-new toon and running through an empty Kharanos and Ironforge makes the game feel dead to new and veteran players alike. It’s a bad experience. If I was a new player today, I would think the game is dead and promptly quit. One of the successes of Cataclysm is that new players felt like they were part of an alive world. Players of all levels were all around them as soon as they left Northshire Abbey. That’s important in the immersion and attraction of an MMO. I strongly believe this philosophy of concentrating players in a few select zones is outdated, especially with the new phasing technology. Its a philosophy stuck in a time when we were all relegated to one server. I think that needs to be rethought. I really believe spreading players out would be better for the game for immersion and interaction, but also server performance. These 20v20 WPvP battles in Kul Tiras/Zandalar shouldn’t be bringing the servers to their knees. No MMO should perform poorly in that scenario.
(9) Old Design Philosophies. I’ve been banging this drum since early-MoP. This game has completely streamlined almost every single element of an RPG out of it. The analogy I liked to use with my friends is that Classic WoW was this delicious loaf of Sourdough bread. In an effort to streamline and make it more digestible to a larger audience, it has been slowly flattened over time. Have you ever tasted a squished loaf of bread? How about pureed bread? I used to work at a Nursing Home. I’ve tasted it. It’s not bread anymore. It loses all of its character, flavor, texture and nuances. Its effectively not bread anymore. WoW is effectively not an RPG anymore in the same way.
Here is an example: Players liked the immersion of ammunition (or soul shards/relics), they just didn’t like the inconveniences that came with it. There are ways around that, however. Hunter ammunition was annoying because you couldn’t stack enough of it and you’d have to fill your bags with it before a raid (in Classic, my Mage was like a second quiver for one of our Hunters). Instead of scrapping quivers though, maybe it should have gotten a unique slot like a Paladins Relic where you could customize and augment the ammunition you used for extra range, procs, a larger quiver, longer trap durations, etc. It helps separate the Hunters from the fantasy of other classes. If Hunters could have held larger stacks of ammunition or have a way to acquire ammunition mid-raid (like collecting X% of arrows back off the boss/mob you just killed or summoning an ammo vendor [like a spotter for big game hunters - carries the ammo and binoculars]), this would have never been a change people would have cried for. The fantasy of crafting ammunition as an Engineer on my Hunter was a huge draw to playing the class and the profession together. It could also be an interesting way to differentiate guns from bows and cross bows (bullets/arrows/bolts). Heavens, it’s what made Thori’dal, the Stars’ Fury so awesome in TBC - partly the convenience, but also that it gave you something special if you acquired the weapon that made you unique compared to other Hunters. Again, instead of iterating on how to make Ammo work, it was scrapped.
(10) Guilds and Communities. When Ion said (paraphrasing) that guilds were the most important part of WoW, I’ll admit I laughed a bit. Everything Blizzard has done since Cataclysm has been to disempower and undermine Guilds and Guild Leaders in lieu of the single-player crowd. For Master Loot being scrapped, to convenience systems like LFR and LFD, to having a Guild Recruitment tool developed during the MySpace age… Blizzard has effectively let guilds and the importance of guilds wither and die. Many people who currently play Modern WoW like that guilds are irrelevant unless you Mythic Raid. There are also many people who quit the game when guilds and communities stopped being relevant. There are even quite a few of us who still linger in this game who want to have a Guild, but shrug and say to ourselves “What’s the point? Everyone is just going to PuG or instant queue everything solo anyways.”
During this Q&A when Ion states that community is the big thing they are taking away from Classic development, but they want people in Modern WoW to still be able to solo everything… that’s never going to work. That philosophy is trying to mix oil with water. You either want to make this a Co-op Online game or you want to make it an MMO. You can’t have both. The reason the games community is so toxic and floundering right now is that fact that every one can solo everything. I don’t need anyone else to kill a Rare mob, craft a flask or gem, or organize and lead a group. I can do it all myself. Convenience is the enemy of engagement and immersion. If you want to foster a strong community in WoW, people are going to have to interact with other people. That means forming groups organically, not through random matchmaking.
In regards to the Communities feature, lets be honest - it was a half-baked attempt at social media in WoW. It’s great for WoW content creators, but it does nothing that Discord doesn’t do better. If you want to make it relevant, find a way to let it interact with Discord, Wowhead and Raider .io
(11) Gold. If anything in this game needs a squish, its Gold and Golds value. When was the last time you thought about how much Copper or Silver you have? WotLK? They’ve become as important as a Penny. Can’t remember the last time I used one of those for a transaction. I think I only receive them as change now. When I’m repairing my gear now, I feel like I’m spending Japanese Yen. ¥700 for a Big Mac isn’t expensive, but it feels like it looking at it at a glance, although it’s really only $6 US dollars. That’s what buying things in WoW feels like right now.
I agree that Blizzard will never be able to control markets in WoW, all you can do is regulate them. Banning them just leads to sketchy underground markets. With that said, there is ton here to do. Gold making used to be a huge part of WoW that isn’t anymore. It used to be its own endgame progression for a lot of people. When professions ceased being relevant, the only thing that kept it afloat was Potions, Flasks, Transmog items and Pets.
With all the problems WoW currently has, I strongly believe that the state of professions is what is hurting this game the most. It hurts the games economy. It hurts character immersion. It hurts character progression. It hurts raiding. It hurts casuals. It hurts Gold Makers. While WoWs professions have never been as good as other MMOs (IMHO), it was a huge endgame draw for “average users” - more so than Raiding or Mythic Plus. If Blizzard gave each profession the same sort of love that Class Order Halls in Legion received, it would reinvigorate a huge portion of the game for most players. I miss being a Gnomish Engineer and it adding flavor to my gameplay. Being unique is what draws me to RPGs. I would hazard a guess that is true for most people playing MMOs as well.
Some additional feedback on the Q&A:
Lore, there is no need to (man, do I hate this term…) “mansplain” to the community watching. Please stop interpreting what the question is, rewording it, and paraphrasing it back to us. Sometimes you even do this to the answers Ion gives. We don’t need you to translate for us what is written or spoken in plain English. We don’t need it spelled out for us. Both you and Ion professed those who are watching are the more hardcore WoW audience. To be honest, most of us probably play the game far more than you right now. When you spend that much time streaming GTA 5 RP (which you’re very good by the way - love Legs MacCready) you can’t have time for WoW at the level most of us play. That’s fine, but you shouldn’t be scolding or preaching to us about your Shamans rotation or how it took you X long to get X item in Black Temple when you’re not actively engaged in the modern game. The points you make are irrelevant to the question and it’s nothing more than giving us a “whataboutism” answer. Moreover, it has nothing to do with BFA. These responses come off as nothing more than condescending and sometimes even snide. Smug tweets aren’t helpful to this image either.
Also, we understand how casuals experience the game, but just because they log in for an hour or two once-in-a-while does not mean the game needs to be tailored specifically to them. Just because they pay for a subscription doesn’t mean they are entitled to geamounts/titles/etc. This entitlement and socialism culture is not beneficial to an MMORPG. Ironically, I’m pseudo-socialist IRL, but it just doesn’t work in WoW. This is an MMORPG - a genre that is all about status symbols. Time and effort are a currency here. By its very concept MMORPGs are a hardcore gamer genre. Trying to appease the non-MMORPG audience means you appease no audience. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a space for casuals, but designing a hardcore game and genre to target a casual audience is akin to selling a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves (+1 point if you get the reference). It makes no sense. They aren’t your target demographic. They aren’t the group that stays loyally subbed for 15 years straight. Don’t try to sell Miley Cyrus to a Death Metal crowd.
Some quick-fire suggestions to improve BFA
Island Expeditions: Move all the RNG in BFA to IE, and take all the RNG out of everywhere else. Have Normal give 340 ilvl, Heroic 355 ilvl, Mythic 370 ilvl and PvP give 385 ilvl cache with chances of extra transmogs/mounts/toys/pets. Add a single IE “boss” that whoever defeats it, automatically wins. It gives it a catch-up mechanic, you can remove the Mario Kart rubber banding, and teams will have to pay attention to make sure the other team isn’t trying to kill the “boss”. For this to work, the boss will have to be very difficult to kill with 1-shot mechanics that will eliminate you if you mess up. If you have a weak team, it might be best to just avoid to boss and collect azerite off the smaller mobs in the IE. In other words, the boss is optional, but you need to at least defend it from being defeated.
Warfronts: Make it a story mode. Right now its LFR for the people who think LFR is too difficult (are there really any of those people out there?). That’s fine, but make it lore and story heavy, not light. I want random dynamic lore events that happen spontaneously, but don’t always trigger. I want to interact with Alliance soldier on the frontline and hear their stories. I want to follow Trollbane around the rebuilt city of his ancestors and talk to me about it. I want Warfronts to be an ingame novel covering the characters in it. Even the story of the land. Lets get some lore about the Troll Wars, for example.
Azerite: You’re already working on the necklace, so I’ll let this be until I see what you have in mind, Blizzard.
Professions: Make Expulsom and Breath of Bwonsamdi BoE. Making it BoP just funnels people into raiding who don’t want to raid. Not all crafters are raiders. Give Gold Makers a way to make gold in BFA. Let us use Residuum to upgrade our crafted items in steps of +5 ilvls. This will keep crafted items relevant against loot drops.
There is more I could add, but this is probably far too long as is. Thanks for reading. Throw your suggestions back at me. Happy to discuss and debate anyone being respectful.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/q-a-and-bfa-feedback-for-the-devs/132689