Roulette
Posted by Daniel Lyons Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:03:00 GMT
About a week ago I volunteered for the synagogue at Casino Night. I was basically a gopher bringing people coffee, moving ice and plasticware from point A to point B. It felt good though, the antithesis of my work.
I did take two breaks, one to play roulette for a few minutes. I like roulette because it’s very raw. There aren’t a lot of arbitrary rules to remember while you’re trying to compute the probability. In my opinion, one of the best bets in the whole casino can be found there, the color bet: red or black. Of course you can see with your eyes that you’re still a sucker; there are two uncolored slots. You know the odds are close to 50% but just not quite. You’re still a fool if you bet on it, and over time you’re probably going to go broke.
While I was playing and thinking about this I was thinking about what the curriculum for being a casino worker is. They have schools for this stuff; surely they have curricula. I supposed it would include all the rules, plus a bunch of social things like how to suppress your “tells,” how to encourage someone to keep betting, how to be cute or handsome and perhaps even politeness. The dealer (name another industry with this profession, quick) was certainly cute and polite. I lost a couple chips and she said “better luck next time.” I was betting on red, like any wannabe mathematician.
I wonder if they teach any probability? I wonder if they talk about luck. It seems to me if I wanted to hire a bunch of casino workers, I’d like them to know as little about probability as possible. If they know probability, they might admit something they shouldn’t, like discourage a sucker bet. Or they might not be able to pretend to be “fun” if that’s something they’re supposed to do. Do they teach how to spot, say, card counting? If they do, how can they avoid probability? Or is the whole luck thing a charade, false affect to induce irrational behavior by luring customers into safe-feeling but false frames of mind? Or do they even think this far into the game?
My friends think my bets are weird. I like to arrange negative bets, bets against myself, so that if something bad happens, someone will pay me. I recently made a bet that someone on Craigslist wouldn’t write me back after seeing my picture. The wager was that, if she wrote me, I would pay these friends $20; if she did not, they would pay me $1. So I’ve got $2 coming in and the assurance that I’m really good at making predictions. If I had lost, then I would have paid $40 out but presumably had the pleasure of going on a date. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about using small wagers like these to smooth over the bumps in life. (Normally it would have been a meal for a meal kind of bet, but this was the only way to get Jenny to make a bet with me since she’s broke. Sucker bet!)
I could have wagered $100 against $5 and that probably would have been just as safe. At any rate, I lack the devotion to gambling to learn the correct terminology for these kinds of bets.
My favorite roulette bet was to bet on first third and second third. You have a two in three chance (discounting 0 and 00) of increasing your money by a third.
Casino workers know probability very well, I think. A roulette spinner watched me bet first and second third a few times and then he leaned over and said, “Smart bet.”
Blackjack dealers operate on a very simple house rule. Hit to 18. They will be fired if they don’t stand on 18. They’re very up-front about telling you this rule and will even advise you to follow it.
They can give this kind of advice because they know no one will follow it. Or enough people won’t that the house still has nothing to worry about. And even if everyone did follow it, I suspect the house would still win in the end.
Roulette tables have LED boards next to them showing the last 50 numbers hit. Players will watch this and try to work out patterns. The easiest pattern to spot is a run of red or black. When you see 20 reds in a row, it’s almost impossible not to imagine that black HAS to come up soon. Everyone knows this is nonsense, including the spinners, but it serves its purpose: it keeps you engrossed and playing.
You must know the famous story of Stephen Hawking’s bet about the black hole in Cygnus? He bet against himself, just like you do. The stakes were a magazine subscription.
I did hear once that roulette had the best odds, at just under 50%. That means, of course, that everything else is worse and that anyone who gambles seriously is betting that they are either “lucky” (whatever that means) or can count cards or in some other way outthink or outguess the house. Bad idea. Casinos think this stuff through to a deeper level than we know, both mathematically and psychologically. They pump oxygen into the floor to keep people awake long enough to induce sleep deprivation and serve free drinks to lower inhibitions and worsen judgement. There’s a reason they can spend billions to build a new casino.
I worked in the casino industry for a while, albeit not as a dealer. My office was close to the training rooms, so I heard a bit of what was going on.
In casino world, they do talk about probability in a very simplified way. It more about each game and the vigorish it has in relation to other games. Blackjack is your best chance, because if you play it right, you can bring down the houses advantage to almost 0, at which point luck takes over.
As it turns out, most dealers are taught the basics of good gambling for each game, and are encouraged to share that information with their players. While this may seem counter intuitive, it works out well for the house.
Gambling is like any other addiction, you are always chasing something. In gambling its the big win. The more a customer wins, the more they come back. So if they know basic game strategy, then they will win, say, every 7 trips instead of every 20 trips. They feel better about winning, so they come more often. They still lose more than they win, but they come more often. Thats good news for the house.