you’ll win it
all back and get his graduate school tuition to
boot.
Assumption #3:
The casino always wins.
No it doesn’t. On any given night, there are
plenty of people who are ahead of the game at any
given time. There are also plenty of people who
are ahead when their day or evening of gambling
is over. In fact, I once read a statistic (I can’t
remember the source), based on a survey of people
at the airport in Las Vegas, that approximately
10 percent of the folks leaving were ahead for their
trip. If there were never any winners, the casinos
would go out of business. Who would ever play if
hand after hand, roll after roll, spin after spin,
time after time you lost? No one. In the long run,
the casino will beat almost every player owing to
three variables: the casino edge on almost all games
(that’s the big one), the casino bankroll that
can weather hot streaks by the players, and the
poor play of many players. But the casino does not
always win.
Assumption #4: New
machines just put on the floor are always loose
to encourage people to play them.
Maybe. Maybe not. Often new machines are so novel,
so spellbinding, that people will take a crack at
them whether they are loose or not. Why give the
players who would play these machines simply because
they are new a break? Why not just wait until the
first wave of interest starts to subside and then
jack up the payouts a bit more? In fact, there is
no evidence that new machines are any more or less
loose, or tight, than the old machines. It is an
individual decision made by individual casinos as
to how loose or tight their new (and old) machines
will be.
Assumption #5: All casino games are just dumb luck.
Not true. Some games are a delightful combination
of dumb luck (short run results) and smart skill
(long run results). Games such as blackjack, poker,
video poker, Caribbean Stud, Spanish 21, Let It
Ride, Pai Gow poker, and even Three Card Poker require
the best choices to be made on each and every hand
you’re dealt in order to cut the casino edge
to its minimum and, in some cases, to turn the edge
in favor of the players. On a given hand, on a given
night, luck is the key factor, that is true, but
in the long run how skillfully you play your cards
will determine just what the casino wins from you
-- or what you win from it!
Assumption #6: You
have to be a genius to count cards at blackjack.
Really? Do this. Add one plus one. You got two,
right? Now, add another one to the total of two.
Did you get three? Fine. Now, subtract two from
three. Did you get one? Great. You can learn how
to count cards at blackjack. The discoverers of
card counting, guys such as Edward O. Thorp, were
(are!) geniuses, but the folks who learned how to
count are just you and me. One plus one is two minus
one is one plus two is three plus two is five minus
one is four. Card counting does take a little discipline,
and some concentration when doing it in a casino,
but the rudiments are as easy as one, two, three.
Good
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