So Sam Stone how do you KNOW they don’t like you to play blackjack? Did they try to make you a bit uncomfortable when you play? Hmmm? Or does everyone just stop what they are doing when you enter the casino and say, “Hey there’s the great Sam Stone, don’t let him play blackjack”? Just wondering how you KNOW they don’t like you to play blackjack. No anecdotes now, we want facts.
It was also featured on “MathNet” (SquareOne). Remember that show? It illustrates the problem with using naive probablities.
Note to Haj, odds only work in a vacuum. Odds can be made to work in your favor, though noy usually. Example, I watch (not betting) a roulette table for 20 minutes, eventually the wheel gives 14 red in a row. If I don’t bet black, I’m a fool, each time the result is red, the more likely the result will be black when I bet on it. Same thing with sports, kind of, over-under is tricky. One can certainly make a living by making accurate predictions and knowing when the line is enough in his favor to bet. You are right though, “house games” will always lose in the end. But isn’t every game funded by the house a “house game” and one is not required to bet on scenarios that do not seem lucrative to the better.
Odds are constant, betting is sporadic, if you know what you’re doing. That’s how people win. Argue your “house always wins” position to the people who make their livings from casinos.
BTW, if you win more money than the house would like in any given sitting, you’re a “counter”, and you’re probably banned. Businesses reserve the right to serve whom they choose. There is no law anywhere that says that you are entitled to access to gambling, in fact in most states it is contrary to that.
Very good OP though, everyone hears about the cheaters, but not the legitimately lucky guys.
No. No. No. My God in Heaven, No. You, Sir, are a casino owner’s wet dream. You can’t be more incorrect.
Spins of a roulette wheel are independent events. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Each time the odds of red hitting are exactly the same, a bit less than 1:1. What does it pay? 1:1. Get it?
Haj
Gee, I wonder why I have such a high win percentage? When was the last time you saw a wheel have 3000 red in a row? It could happen. I’ll keep the money, you keep the theory. Good luck.
P.S. don’t try stocks, they’re really tricky.
You’re deluded. It is not possible for previous events on a roulette wheel to affect future events. You should keep careful records of your gambling. You might be suprised at the results.
Haj
You lost me there, CC. What are you looking for? No anecdotes, just facts?
I’ve never been barred from a casino. I had a guy barred sitting next to me once. I’ve had to leave early on many occasions after it seemed like the pit was paying a bit too much attention to my play. I’ve known many people who were kicked out of casinos for counting.
I never got barred for several reasons - one, I was pretty good at counting while making it look like I wasn’t counting. Two, I was extremely friendly and generally tried to make myself an asset to the casino. Everyone liked me. And three, I was a fairly small time counter, rarely playing more than $25-$150 a hand. That gets you a lot of leeway with the house.
If I had played bigger limits, I would probably have been barred. When that happens, they snap a photo of your face from the ‘eye in the sky’, and it makes its way into the Griffin book, which is a list of casino ‘undesirables’ maintained by the Griffin detective agency. That list includes cheaters, violent types, people who cop feels from women at the table, etc. And card counters.
As for ‘The Great Sam Stone’… Nah. I was strictly a journeyman type. I never had the bankroll or the balls to play the really big games. Anyone can do what I did. All it takes is discipline and a modicum of mathematical understanding.
Not to be an ass, but your math and reality do not coincide. You neglected my 3000 red scenario because you cannot say that that is a likely possibility. Betting is based on likelyhood, that’s why people bet their money! They believe, based on past and current information, that they will win money. Of course this is not a reliable way to make money, but people can and do, make use of this information and make money.
As for my records, I am plus $300, and am relatively new to the game. Go to Vegas, and when the wheel is at 10 reds and counting, there will be a frenzy of people that know that “black is money”.
Put your money where your mouth is, you say every roll is independent of the previous one. Bet me, money. According to your theory, 3000 reds is just as likely as an even mix. After 10 reds, if you’re not betting on black, you’re a poor idealist.
Roll the dice all you want, but anyone that knows anything about probability will tell you that at some point, it is very likely that another number (or color) will come up.
I’ll never play the lottery, but I’ll gladly take a mathematician’s money.
I have a MS in Engineering and have studied probability and statistics at the graduate level. Have you studied probability? Ever heard of the Gambler’s Fallacy?
First of all, anyone can make money in the short term. If you play for enough hours, you will lose money.
Yes, 3000 reds in a row are very unlikely. It is just as unlikely as any other ordered combination of 3000. In 3000 spins there are exactly 3000 possible ordered combinations. There is only one way to get 3000 reds but there are lots of ways of getting 1500 reds and 1500 blacks in any combination. (I am excluding green for simplicity.)
Let me illustrate with a smaller number though. Let’s take four spins and assume that we only have red and black (no green.) Here are all of the possibilities:
BBBB,
BBBR, BBRB, BRBB, RBBB
BBRR, BRBR, RBBR, RRBB, RBRB, BRRB
RRRB, RRBR, RBRR, BRRR,
RRRR.
There are 4^2 or 16 possible combinations. There are 6 ways to get two reds and two blacks and only one way to get four reds. Yes, two reds and two blacks is much more likely but each individual combination of two reds and two blacks is just as likely as four reds.
If the wheel spins four reds in a row, there are two things that can happen, RRRRB or RRRRR. Each one is equally likely.
In the unlikely event of 3000 straight reds there are two equally likely things that can happen: 3000 straight reds and then a black or 3001 straight reds.
Here’s a thought experiment for you. Suppose you see the 14 straight reds that you mentioned in the first post. You then bet black, I suppose. If you lose, I guess you bet black again. What happens if you get your 3000 reds in a row? You’ve blown the mortgage. How do you know when the streak has come to an end?
Haj
This is a counter-intuitive approach. Why not wait for 10 (which happens way more frequently than friggin 14) and bet the same color until it changes? Your system requires you to progress your losses until the color changes. My suggestion lets you bet the same increment each time. I of course don’t use either system…I don’t subscribe to the gambler’s fallacy.
Regarding the over-under, I heard a system last year that makes logical sense and seemed to have a miniscule (but > 0) expectation. NFL over/unders: Calculate the average total points of all games played in the season. (Or just the last n weeks, if you like.) Let’s say the number is 39. Bet all the games that week, assuming that every game will end in 39 points. (e.g: If the over/under is 45/43, take the under.) I think last season it won more than it lost just enough to pay the vig and maybe a little bit extra, but not enough to consider it viable. But if you can find a pool (or sheets) with over/under bets, it’s a decent strategy.
I’ll take that bet. But then, of course, I already said you should jump into the 11th spin on red anyway.
But here’s the real question: Assuming your theory is correct, what odds are you willing to give? Your whole theory is that you’ve got better than a 50/50 chance, so tell me your true odds. I’ll happily wager $75 against your $100 that the color will be the same as the previous 10 in a row. Since black is so heavily favored, you should still be making out like a bandit.
Last time I went to a casino, I played a modified Labouchere system on the Don’t Pass line, straight up with no odds, starting each train with 2 3. (First bet is 5.) Things went swimmingly for hours. I did get some strange looks, as I don’t think anyone at the table had ever seen a craps player use pencil and paper before. All the dealers made fun of me. I must have heard “You know what betting a system does? It makes you systematically lose.” a hundred times from those punks.
Anyway, I was up $150, $50 shy of my goal on my $400 buy-in. I went to the bar. The bartender, very wisely, told me to take my winnings and go home. But I decided to press my luck for that last $50. Within 15 minutes I ran across a streak of 14 passes in a row. (That friggin’ shooter was the anti-christ.) Around 9 passes into the streak I was down to $120. (-$450 to that point, or -$280 overall.) So I switched to my favorite strategy: the aggressive progression.
Typically this is a $300 system, but I was desperate. You bet $10 on whichever line just paid. Let all winnings ride, adding $10 each time. Pull down and walk away after 4 wins in a row. Therefore, you bet $10, $30, $70, $150, and if the $150 wins, you take the $300 home. (Technically, I bring $1,000 and play 3 different $300 strategies, plus $100 for booze and slots, but that’s neither here nor there.) That friggin anti-christ of a shooter sevened out when I had $150 on the pass. ARRRGH!!! But I kept at it. Next guy sevened out immediately. The next guy passed seven times in a row, paying me out $300 ($260 profit), leaving me down like $30 for the day.
Here’s my question: How do you explain the following series based on your philosophy?
14 passes in a row
1 don’t pass
1 pass
1 don’t pass
7 passes in a row
Would you have been able to play the pass line knowing full well that the don’t was “due”?
Incidentally, when I hit that $300 at the end, all the dealers gave me props, saying “good job, now go home.” The pit boss even walked over and said “congratulations, I was getting worried about you.” hehheh, damn I love to gamble. 
Start a new thread and ask away.
The thing about this way of thinking is that people think that they are betting against an event happening x number of times in a row and say 11 reds in row is very unlikely. Whilst it is true that 11 reds in a row is very unlikely, all you are betting on is that the next spin is red or black, rather than all 11 spins being red.
It has already been discussed that each spin is independent and if you accept that then you must accept that regardless what the previous sequence of spins were, it does not change the probabilities in the next spin. If you do not accept that they are independent, then ask yourself this:
How does the wheel remember what numbers/colours have come up before and how exactly does it make that little ball more likely to land on a particular number or colours?
Typo. This should read:
Haj
If you are interested in how to cheat in roulette (and do it the hard way) I can strongly recommend the book The Eudaemonic Pie (The Newtonian Casino, Br. ed.) by Thomas Bass. It is very entertaining and has a profound geek value:
So it sounds to me like maybe you were … uh … badgered by the pit boss? Or maybe not badgered, maybe just a synonym of badgered. But then again, we all know that pit bosses don’t badger players now don’t we? So perhaps my original drivel wasn’t that far fetched after all?
About gambling, I know less than nothing. However
[nitpick]
Typo. This should read
That’s 2 to the power of 3000. Think binary numbers - an 8-bit binary number (well, unsigned…) can represent 0-127 - 128 or 2^8 possibilities. If it were 8^2, a binary BYTE could only express 64 values. A 3000-bit binary number (Each “bit” is R or B) can express 2^3000 “possibilities”.
[/nitpick]
Anecdotal stuff about roulette: I have a friend who plays regularly in Vegas, and enjoys playing. He bets on two of the three columns of numbers, each paying 3:1. So, he would be pretty much guaranteed to break even over the long run if it wasn’t for the double zeros at the top. Regardless, he can sit at a roulette table for quite a while. Since he enjoys it, it’s OK. And if he gets out when he’s ahead, he can pick up some money. Those dang double zeros, though, make it a losing proposition in the long run…
I’ll make you a deal. You pick any even mix you want. We’ll look at 10 rolls, and if your mix comes up, I’ll give you $90. If they’re all red, you’ll give me $100. Deal?
Necros:
There are some bets at the craps table that pay out fair odds (that is, there is no house advantage to the bet). You’re not allowed to make these bets unless you make an unfair bet first. So if you want your expected losses to be as small a fraction of your betting amount as possible, the second best strategy is to bet the least unfair bet (ie, that the player will lose) and then take as much of the fair bets that they allow you. The best strategy, of course, being to not bet at all.
Tell your friend to go to Europe and find a single-zero wheel, if they still exist.