>>> Or any game, really, that's rigged so the house wins most of the time.
>> Same thing applies, tho. I win most of the time.  I lose bigger, but I
>> win most of the time.
> 
> Depends on the game.  I can manage to win pretty consistently at 
> blackjack regardless of whether I win individual hands or not - with 
> enough money, that's easy to do using a simple geometric progression and 
> some restraint to "stick to the plan".  But if I put the idea into 
> practice in Las Vegas, I'd probably end up banned from the casinos if I 
> won too much.  The house doesn't like to lose, and they don't like when 
> people who understand how to turn the odds in their favour show up and 
> provide a real-world demonstration that it is in fact possible.
> 
> Even still, if you're careful, you can manage to do this and not get 
> caught at it - changing tables or casinos frequently makes it very 
> difficult for them to track a pattern.  Not following the geometric 
> progression exactly also helps make it less obvious.
> 
> Some games are rigged closely enough to 50/50 odds that most people don't 
> think about the fact that they're not.  Roulette is one like that; IIRC, 
> your odds of winning are not 50% but 47%.

I love the way people say "rigged". I mean, you walk up to a towering 
casino that's using 200 kW to light up half the Vegas night sky, and you 
wonder how they pay for this? Well *obviously* the dice are stacked in 
their favour - if it weren't, they'd go out of business pretty damned 
fast. ;-) It's their *job* to take your money way... They just do a good 
job of making it look like "luck".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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