I would say the dope who hit on 19 did that more than I.
Someone making a bad play and taking the wrong card and it happens to negatively affect you is EXACTLY the same chance as making the wrong play and helping you. It’s completely neutral. But gamblers only notice when it hurts them and never when it helps, and so they’ve developed a mindset that making the wrong play somehow hurts everyone else at the table. It cannot possibly. How would that even work? Is there a gambling god punishing people for the wrong play?
Fun (at least to me) story: I was on the waiting list for a poker table and decided to play $5 blackjack in the meantime just to kill time. There was this Very Serious Gambler betting $500 at the same table being a massive asshole to the staff. So… I sat at third base and made the wrong play all day. I lost maybe $50 or $100. Totally worth it to see him absolutely melt down.
I wasn’t actually hurting him. I couldn’t have. But he thought I could and he was so pissed about it, ranting about me to everyone else at the table.
I do video games mostly (meaning like 1-2x a year) because they give you free beverages if you put in $10 or $20, be friendly to the bartender, and hit a button every once in awhile. I play blackjack mostly like you would at a table, they’re fundamentally different - table games favor the house the more decks that are in play, and single deck games are increasingly rare. While video does not always specify their assumptions, though is governed by strict gaming commission rules.
Video poker is a fundamentally different game than real poker, video games are mostly 5 card draw with some rule changes (Bonus Poker! Deuces Wild! Double Bonus Poker! Double Double Bonus Poker!!!) I haven’t learned the rules for all of them, but for the simplest you basically choose the option mostly likely to lose, which usually means stuff like chasing flushes or inside straights is a terrible idea unless you don’t have a better option.
True story: The American Math. Soc. has an annual meeting at different places and cities bid for that. One year, it was held in Vegas and when it was over, the city fathers had one thing to say to the AMS: Don’t come back.
I’ve heard the same about the American Physical Society.
Confirmation bias in action. You remember the six that would have given you a 21, you don’t remember the three that would have given you a 15, especially when the card you did get was an eight.
It’s the same apocryphal about every nerd or hard science group that has ever visited and it’s certainly not true (although the jokes probably went around). There wouldn’t be nearly enough of them to make a difference and the hotels, restaurants and adult entertainers were very happy to attend to them.
This following is not apocryphal: In 1966, we met in Chicago and a waitress complained to me (not my third cousin’s nephew, but me in person) that we didn’t drink enough hard liquor and her arms were falling off carrying beer.
I have a real story too. My buddy and his wife went on a science ocean cruise where they went out very far from land to the totality of an eclipse. It wasn’t like no one drank at all but they were told that it was the only cruise where they didn’t have to put anyone in the brig for being too drunk.
I think Neil Degrass Tyson told the same story about a physicists convention, too.
But it seems like an urban legend, and here’s my reasoning: how would the math work out?
We’re talking about casinos here, and casinos are all about statistics, right? So I wanna see the math!.
There just ain’t that many mathematicians or physicists in the world. About 40 million tourists visit Las Vegas every year. I don’t think the city fathers would notice a decline in revenue because of one smallish convention. Hotel occupancy rates are about 80%, so the mathematicians probably aren’t displacing other visitors.Any money they spend is extra income for the city.
C’mon Mr.Tyson, you’re a scientist! Let’s fight ignorance with facts. 
This is important. A crap game moves as quickly as the players and their wagers let it. A crowded table, with players playing all kinds of bets will take time between rolls, as dealers collect losing bets, and pay off winning ones. On the other hand, a game on a table with two or three players, all of whom are playing Pass/Come and Don’t Pass/Don’t Come will move fairly quickly.
The other thing about craps is the social aspect, which cannot be quantified. The game almost becomes a team endeavour, since most players are playing Pass/Come, and players cheer each other on, high-five when a point is made, and otherwise wish each other luck. Contrast this with the blackjack discussion above, where “He hit on a 19, and took the card I needed,” can cause resentment towards other players.
They look like this. Most of the Strip/Fremont casinos seem to have them these days. The dice are in a big bubble like Pop-a-Matic Trouble and the shooter presses a big button to roll. The betting board is on individual screens so nobody can judge you for how you bet.
That looks, in a word, BORING! Because…
True story, one night in Tahoe (ski trip), I got on a roll on a craps table. I made either 6 or 7 points in a row with lots of 7s and 11s (yo!) on the off. God knows how many 6/8s on with a decent sprinkling of higher odds numbers on. I rolled for close to an hour. About half-way through my streak, the table was packed and folks were waiting/watching 3 deep. The noise level was incredible. I won a total of about $3,500 on the $100 I started with (paid for the trip and then some). When I finally crapped out, a guy at the other end of the table threw me a $500 chip. He had made close to $30,000 since he joined early and was playing $100s.
I remember putting a $25 on the 7/11 “for the boys” and it hit. I also started second-stacking 6 and 8 on “for the boys”. We weren’t staying at the casino, but the dinner they comped me and my friends was top notch.
Fun times and impossible on any other table game. Not the money, the comradery. The game paused so people could come shake my hand when it finally ended.
And what the fuck are “city fathers” exactly? Why would these people have any say over who a random hotel gets to invite to stay there? This oft repeated bullshit is just various groups of dorks puffing themselves up, and I say this as a dork myself.
Except that most of the hospitality industry in Las Vegas is owned by the same companies as the casinos, and it used to be that the lodging, food, and entertainment was deliberately underpriced, to encourage people to come and gamble, which was where the real profit was. So non-gamblers visiting the city could actually be a net decrease in the casinos’ profits.
I think that those other things have since gotten enough more expensive to be profitable on their own.
I’m guessing that the big appeal for the casino is that they don’t need a human operator, so they don’t have to pay a croupier.
The “city fathers” would be the owners of the random hotel who’s inviting people.
Without a doubt. Just like self check out at the grocery store.
That’s a huge stretch. The original post implied that it was the people in charge of Las Vegas or whatever. Regardless, the story is nonsense and the “City Fathers” who run the hotel aren’t going to turn down business if it means that the hotel won’t be fully booked. Every group of academics of whatever needs to get over themselves and stop telling that story. You’re correct that the nature of LV has changed and, for example, the $1.99 prime rib dinner is a thing of the past but they still wouldn’t have turned down the business.
Well craps doesn’t have a croupier. Craps has two dealers, a stickman, and a boxman. So, a staff of four people is needed to run a crap table.
I’ve played those bubble crap games before, and the game works just like the table game. They can be less expensive to play (on one of my visits to Las Vegas, the crap table had a $15 minimum, bubble craps had a $5 minimum); and they are also great for those who don’t know what they’re doing, or aren’t sure, and don’t want to be intimidated by the other players at a real table. So these machines have their place.
…Huh, I thought that “croupier” was the word for “person who runs a craps game”. What is it, then?
So did I but I just looked it up and a croupier is anyone who assists with running the game so a card dealer and a craps stickman are both types of croupiers.
The roulette guy is also a croupier. What else would you call them? It has nothing to do with “craps”.