On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:19:22 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>>> 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".

Yep, and they're very, very protective of making sure they *keep* winning 
and the patrons *keep* losing.

Jim

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