Researchers Create a Statistical Guide To Gambling

New submitter yukiloo writes "An early Christmas treat for the ordinary Joe who is stuck with a Christmas list that he cannot afford and is running out of time comes from two mathematicians (Evangelos Georgiadis, MIT, and Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers) and a computer scientist (Shalosh B. Ekhad). In their paper 'How to gamble if you're in a hurry,' they present algorithmic strategies and reclaim the world of gambling, which they say has up till recently flourished on the continuous Kolmogorov paradigm by some sugary discrete code that could make us hopefully richer, if not wiser. It's interesting since their work applies an advanced version of what seems to be the Kelly criterion."

Comments

Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[questioner]

Half this submission makes no sense, grammatically or otherwise.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[msauve]

That's OK. It's not really a paper, it's just a way to sell Maple software.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[jd]

Gramatically looks fine. I see subjects, objects and verbs in all the right places. There are commas where they're not needed and no commas where they are, but comma rules are regularly broken. Just as s's is now considered acceptable (I consider it gross and a sign of mental fragility), comma rules aren't considered important any more outside of formal writing. Unless you know something about Slashdot the rest of us don't, formal writing doesn't really fit the description.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's complaining about the grammar, punctuation, and the irrelevance of the opening Christmas nonsense. He's not complaining about the math. A better summary made without even reading the article:

Evangelos Georgiades of MIT and Doron Zeilberger and Shalosh Ekhad of Rutgers have published a paper entitled, "How to Gamble, If You're in a Hurry." They consider previous work on gambling flawed because of theoreticians' reliance on the continuous Kolmogorov paradigm. Instead, they propose that money is not infinitely divisible and that its use in gambling is therefore better described by different algorithmic strategies involving what seems to be an advanced version of the Kelly criterion.

Ideas are nice, and math is beautiful, but clear English is necessary to convey information. The summary did not do that well.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a bigot makes you an ass. No one said anything about America until you brought up this garbage. By the way, the research mentioned was done at MIT one of the finest universities in the entire world (which is located in America...).

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[AK Marc]

Are you an American, by any chance? I'm asking in all seriousness. Just because this submission makes no sense to you doesn't mean that it makes no sense to the rest of the world.

"Interesting since they their work applies an advanced version of what seems to be the Kelly criterion."

I think there was the mix of unusual concepts with the grammatically incorrect sentences that made it horrible editing. Usually, I'm annoyed that they link so many words to Wikipedia or such, but in this case, there was no linking anything to anything, other than the one article, and the description given in the submission is not proper English. So the complaints on editing are quite accurate. Or are you asserting that the quoted sentence above is proper English?

It's likely just that you were never exposed to what's actually pretty basic and common knowledge throughout the rest of the world.

You were too focused on being an ass that you missed the complaint about grammar being the primary one. Perhaps it would have been more approachable if it were properly edited. And no, they aren't "basic and common knowledge throughout the rest of the world." I'm in "the rest of the world" right now, and the first 5 people I asked about them never heard of any of them (couldn't even name the field they related to). So you are wrong on every point, and quite the ass about it as well.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

How else are those other commenters supposed to discuss this problem if they don't mention America? If Europeans know about these maths, and Asians know of them, and even Australians like me know of them, but Americans don't, then the problem lies with the Americans, no?

In case you weren't aware, many of MIT's researchers, like many of America's greatest minds in the past, were foreign-born and foreign-trained well into adulthood. It's difficult to consider people "Americans" in terms of education when most of their training happened in Hungary, or Germany, or Russia or the USSR, or in the UK.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Galestar]

He's complaining about the horrible grammar and punctuation, and the weird christmas reference. This submission was horribly written and obviously no attempt was made to edit or proof read it before just slapping it on the front page.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haters gonna hate. Where people reside and make their contributions is ultimately the most important factor. Look at Einstein and how he was driven away from Germany and made all his contributions in America. America provides a world class university system where sharing information and performing important research is paramount.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Interesting since they their work applies an..."

You yours reading skill not so good.

(my error intentional for irony)

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

He might be American, but you're either ignorant or an ass. READ:

"Interesting since they their work applies an advanced version of what seems to be the Kelly criterion."

In what dialect is "since they their work" a valid construct?

It's fun to bash Americans, but "yukiloo" should be ashamed to have submitted such unproofed tripe, and "samzenpus" should be further ashamed for putting it in the public view, unedited.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[antifoidulus]

Your self-righteousness about statistics while using an incredibly bad sample as proof proves that not only are you an ass, you are a dumbass.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Ravon Rodriguez]

So, let's clarify your point of view: Americans can't do math, and any American's who can do math aren't really Americans. Did I get the gist of it? Bigot.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[AK Marc]

What exactly is wrong with the sentence you've quoted?

You whine like a little bitch if someone doesn't know statistics as well as you, but can't recognize a non-sentence when you see one? You are the pedantic ass.

simply isn't a factor when submitting an article to blog.

You are an idiot. Nobody complained about the submission being flawed (other than the flaw carried through) but the complaint was about the editors not even editing a submission for basic English.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Ravon Rodriguez]

You can have the most brilliant ideas in the world, but if you convey them like an uneducated buffoon then that's exactly what you will appear to be. Proper grammar may be optional in casual conversation (LOL wuzzup d00d), but in a setting where the conveyance of knowledge is the primary goal you should strive to do your ideas justice by relating them in an intelligent way.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

"By the way, the research mentioned was done at MIT one of the finest universities in the entire world (which is located in America...)."

Yeah, the guy from MIT, Evangelos Georgiadis has a real cowboy name.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Ravon Rodriguez]

I think the confusion is in the meaning of the word applies; most people are reading it as a passive verb, but it is meant to be read as an active verb.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame there isn't a -1 Misinformed. Most of Einstein's best work was done in Switzerland.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Dogtanian]

Haters gonna hate.

Bad idea to start with this overused cliche, which makes anyone spouting it sound like a tedious, unimaginative, bandwagon-jumping, meme-spouting 14-year-old trying to put across an unconvincing display of dismissive confidence, as well as being an obviously lame attempt at not actually addressing the original criticism.

Frankly, we'd be quite justified in not bothering to read the rest of what you said on the basis of those first three words of cliched drivel. But anyway...

Where people reside and make their contributions is ultimately the most important factor. Look at Einstein and how he was driven away from Germany and made all his contributions in America.

If, by "made all his contributions in America" you're implying that we have America to thank for all his work (including his most important), then you're absolutely wrong. The theories of special and general relativity were all written decades before he emigrated to the US.

That aside, not saying that I entirely disagree with what you said in general; ths US *has* been a valuable incubator for the creativity of foreign academics during the 20th century, which has arguably been to its own significant benefit.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[questioner]

Read my comment again. It's the *submission* I was complaining about, not the paper. And no, I'm not American. Furthermore, I'm a statistician, which is partially why I was interested enough to click on the link in the first place; I have no issues with the content of the paper itself, or its readability.

Parse this sentence:

In their paper 'How to gamble if you're in a hurry,' they present algorithmic strategies and reclaim the world of gambling, which they say has up till recently flourished on the continuous Kolmogorov paradigm by some sugary discrete code that could make us hopefully richer, if not wiser.

Up until the "world of gambling", it's reasonable, but beyond there it ceases making any sense. If the submitter had broken the sentence down into a couple of discrete thoughts, they might have gotten their synopsis across.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, slow down and read his post word for word. If you can't spot the error, you may in fact not actually know English.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine. Publish in Dutch. See how far that gets you. Enjoy never being read.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[retchdog]

i'm an american & i've taken graduate-level measure theory and statistics. the phrase "continuous kolmogorov paradigm" is just wonky. the first thing one thinks of is the kolmogorov complexity, which is pretty much the opposite of "continuous," both in utility and intent. so, the phrase is probably referring instead to the standard modern sigma-field measure theoretic approach. however, this measure theory still has no problem (in principle, at least; actually proving things is of course another matter) dealing with discrete or finite outcomes!

now, i've read the paper, and i see that the authors in fact use (almost) this language in their emotional conclusion. that is their right, since they have done the work. moreover, they have a good point imho, that "hard core" proofs in probability theory are often sterile and irrelevant to the real world. however, this kind of thing should be cleaned up for a general audience.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point, forgivable as English isn't your native tongue. It could have read "clear language is necessary to convey information". It's the clarity that is needed, not English. Oh and American isn't a language, American English is a dialect of English.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

"clear English is necessary to convey information"
He said *clear* English, because that's the language the summary was written in. You pulled a portion of the sentence out and proceeded to attack based on that fragment. Don't be a twat.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, can I try?

Evangelos Georgiadis of MIT and Doron Zeilberger of Rutgers, along with Zeiberger's computer Shalosh B. Ekhad, have written a paper entitled, "How to Gamble If You're In a Hurry," in which they propose new ways of studying gambling from a mathematical perspective. They criticize previous scholarship following the Kolmogorov measure-theoretic paradigm, including Kelly (1956), Breiman (1961), and Dubins and Savage (1976), on the grounds that the mechanisms they provide for winning do not take into account real-life constraints such as the finite divisibility of money, the finite duration of the game, the finite resources of the opponents, and the possibility of uneven payoff in the game. Rather than proposing a single strategy that provides an optimal outcome to an unrealistic scenario, Georgiadis and Zeilberger provide a Maple package that calculates the best strategy given a set of real-world criteria, including the probability of winning a game, the amount of money you have, and the time within which you must complete your gambling. The paper thus represents a movement from using mathematics to derive single solutions to highly abstract problems to using algorithms that can generate optimal solutions for more concrete problems. Also, Zeiberger advances an attempt at cuteness by putting condescending words about humanity in his computer's mouth, the irony of which is heightened by the realization that Shalosh B. Ekhad is nothing more than Zeiberger's ventriloquist dummy.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[eugene ts wong]

Watching you guys defend bad English is painful.

In that sentence, "...they their..." is bad English.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[eugene ts wong]

I'm really disappointed in you. I recognize your user name around here. I expect better English out of you.

In that sentence, "...they their..." is bad English.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[fred911]

There are more non-native speakers of English in this world then there are native speakers. Probably a reason it conveys information better, if not the only one.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Actually, the grammar is pretty darn good. There are two compound, complex sentences. There is one compound sentence marred only by the lack of a comma between the words "interesting" and "since." There is no failure of subject-verb agreement. Pronouns are used correctly and with no confusion over attribution. Well above the usual standards here, I say.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[morethanapapercert]

I never thought I'd say this about an AC, but for the love of slide rules, how can we get you hired as a slashdot editor???

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[carnivore302]

I find anything related to the Kelly Criterion interesting. It made me a rich guy :-)

To clarify, try this experiment: sit down with a group of friends and pretend you all have 100 dollars. Ask everybody what their stake will be for the following game: you throw a coin and if it ends up heads, everybody gets 1.5 times his stake, plus the initial stake returned. Tails means the stake is lost. First of all: this game has a positive expectancy so you should play. But the question of how much you should bet is an interesting one. It is easy to see why: bet nothing and you will not profit. Bet everything and sooner or later you will be wiped out. Try the game with a couple of friends who haven't heard of Kelly and chances are everybody has lost his stake in a couple of rounds.

  Once you find a profitable strategy that works, and scales to large large amounts, Kelly is really useful to know.

Mark

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Just as s's is now considered acceptable (I consider it gross and a sign of mental fragility), comma rules aren't considered important any more outside of formal writing.

I am not sure who deems misuse of apostrophes and commas acceptable. I can safely say that if anything went out from the company I work for with sloppy incorrect punctuation then whoever wrote it would be slapped down pretty quick. I am not sure what you define as formal writing but the main job of punctuation is to make written text easier to read. I can't think of many places where ease of reading is more important than on a website, especially one as high profile as Slashdot.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

... would be slapped down pretty quickly.

FTFY.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are multiple settings that can produce the "s apostrophe s"-fragment, though. Using 's as a genetive-marking fragment after a noun that ends in an s is perhaps not pretty, but it's not clearly wrong: "Fabregas's second goal put them in the lead", and such.

In the same vein, using it as a contraction of "noun is/was" in written dialogue is also perfectly possible to defend technically, if not stylistically.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Bromskloss]

Once you find a profitable strategy that works, and scales to large large amounts, Kelly is really useful to know.

Did you find such a thing? Tell us more, please, as much as you are comfortable with!

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'll bite ... how did this make you a rich guy, and how can I do the same? :) I notice in the paper that if a game has an expected profit > 0 then you can make out with 99% probability using this tech, so where do I find that kind of game to play?

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's left to the commentators to correct the errors.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[blair1q]

You know what's more useful to know?

THE HOUSE ALWAYS HAS THE ADVANTAGE.

The Kelly Criterion only applies to games in which you have an advantage, even if you also have a risk of ruin.

Bayes' rule tells you how much to wager once you know your advantage, not just to keep from losing, but to maximize your statistical win rate. But if your advantage is 0 or negative, wagering anything is throwing money away.

That's why Vegas is the way it is. It can afford to be shiny and solicitious, because there are always people who think they can beat the odds.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[carnivore302]

Try betting exchanges like betfair.com. The way I do it has a positive expectancy, but doesn't scale well (but enough). There are people on the other hand that really know a lot about horses, and they can put in a huge amount of money using outright bets.

The stock market is another arena, and this one scales *really* well. Finding a profitable strategy with low volatility here is the trick.

If you have deep pockets you can set up your own HFT firm. Or perhaps you're smart enough to find some longer lasting arbitrages. Maybe you're really smart and can find a better option pricing formula than black & scholes. Competition is fierce here, unless you're part of an HFT firm, don't bother.

But... The great thing is that in all events where lots of people participate some of them are bound to don't give a shit about how much they're paying as long as they get what they want, now. Find those people and help them get their goods and you will profit handsomely. Everybody wins.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[carnivore302]

That's so narrow minded :-)

Who said you need to do this in a casino? Bet with other people, be smarter than them. I'd go so far as to say it's easy.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[mattack2]

I can safely say that if anything went out from the company I work for with sloppy incorrect punctuation then whoever wrote it would be slapped down pretty quick.

Don't you mean:
I can safely say that if anything went out from the company I work for with sloppy incorrect punctuation, whoever wrote it would be slapped down pretty quickly.

(Note I also removed the "then". I could be wrong on both of these, but your original sentence seemed wrong with the then. It sounds more correct after replacing it with a comma. Also, "sloppy incorrect" seems redundant. Maybe there should be a comma between them.)

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[thermowax]

Sigh. Not always. You have to look for positive expectation games in casinos, but they can be found. Google "positive expectation video poker" if you don't believe me.

Also, there's card counting at blackjack, of course, but you'll be detected quickly and summarily removed.

That said, if becoming a VP playing drone is your idea of fun, that's your business. I'm there for the free beer and to have fun, and I'm willing to pay a nominal fee to do so. Playing craps, getting loaded, and minimizing that fee are what I enjoy. Did you know that depending on how you play craps, you can make the house advantage asymtotically approach zero?

J-.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. All Americans are cowboys. I had forgotten about that axiom.

How does one /. post that someone didn't understand something become a place for you to start painting all Americans with a wide brush that they don't know Mathematics?

I have officially fed you your troll food for today.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Algae_94]

If you insist:

Ideas are nice, and math is beautiful, but clear language is necessary to convey information.

It doesn't have to be English, but it's probably safe to assume that posters on an English web site would prefer, if not require, English.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[MrAngryForNoReason]

While I understand the point you are trying to make you seem to have missed mine. I was making the distinction between a comment, which is informal speech, and the article summary, which as a news item on a very high profile website should surely be held to a higher standard.

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, that sounds like good advice :) No deep pockets here though, and I doubt I'm smart enough to beat black & scholes. Thanks for your reply though - food for thought!

Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore?

[Xest]

"That's why Vegas is the way it is. It can afford to be shiny and solicitious, because there are always people who think they can beat the odds."

Yes, and those who genuinely can, because they're capable of doing things like card counting and so forth get kicked out.

To me there's something basically wrong about that, casinos bill themselves as a place to play games for money, they make use of statistics to give themselves an advantage in those games, and yet, if someone also uses statistics to even the playing field, they can be kicked out. I guess it goes against my sense of fair play.

Casinos are like the kid at school that had to cheat at games, but threw the worlds biggest tantrum when someone cheated equally and beat him.

Well....

[jd]

The news story posted on Slashdot not that long ago on a casino successfully suing a gambler of all his winnings because the machine's system for preventing you from winning wasn't working tells me that the only paradigm in use is "give us your money... or else!"

Re:Well....

[SuricouRaven]

If there really were a system that allowed for consistantly making a profit, you can be sure it'd work for about a week before the casinos found a countermeasure. Otherwise they'd be broke: News would spread very quickly, and soon professional gamblers would drive them to ruin.

Re:Well....

[Hardhead_7]

Link?

Re:Well....

[PPH]

Countermeasure: Two big guys grab you by the arms and escort you to the front door.

Re:Well....

[Galestar]

Well, there's this one
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/1638213/casino-denies-man-166-million-jackpot
but I don't think that's the one he's talking about. Casinos claiming "malfunctions" when you win is more common than you think. What is not as common as them claiming the same "malfunctions" when you lose, and voluntarily handing out money.

Re:Well....

[jd]

You could run a search. Would be quicker. There've actually been a few stories. Here's what you get if you type "slot machine" into Slashdot's search engine (Ooooh! That's a complex thing to do!)

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/1638213/casino-denies-man-166-million-jackpot
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/05/1828218/malfunction-costs-couple-11-million-slot-machine-jackpot
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/06/2246234/man-arrested-for-exploiting-error-in-slot-machines

Re:Well....

[TheLink]

The smart ones go work in the fancy financial industry.

That's the way to legally cheat, consistently make a profit, and not have your bones broken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html

And the betting limits are really high.

Re:Well....

[Galestar]

Oh I found some more
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/05/1828218/malfunction-costs-couple-11-million-slot-machine-jackpot
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/06/2246234/man-arrested-for-exploiting-error-in-slot-machines

These casinos pay the politicians in their states a lot of money to allow them to continue ripping people off. It's the american way!

Re:Well....

[tomhudson]

If there really were a system that allowed for consistantly making a profit,

There it - it's called "open a casino."

There's also "become a lobbyist for some social evil (eg: big tobacco)."

But the number # 1 way is do as L. Ron Hubbard did with scientology - create your own religion.

Re:Well....

[sartin]

The amazing thing about the 30 millisecond advantage graphic is that has been on the NYT site since July, 24, 2009, depicting 30 milliseconds as being 0.3 seconds.

Re:Well....

[PopeRatzo]

The news story posted on Slashdot not that long ago on a casino successfully suing a gambler of all his winnings because the machine's system for preventing you from winning wasn't working tells me that the only paradigm in use is "give us your money... or else!"

That's why the only true statistical guide to casino gambling would be very short. One word, in fact: "Don't".

You want to gamble, look to parimutuel betting or at least a good sports book where you know you're going to pay a fixed percentage.

I find it simply astounding that American laws find casino gambling or lotteries (mis-named "gaming") acceptable, but refuse adamantly to legalize even a relatively harmless herb like marijuana because it has a mild euphoric affect. It shows a) the godlike powers of corporations in America and b) the ridiculous ongoing effect of stifling puritanism in American life. And not just regarding recreational drugs. You cannot show a nipple on broadcast television, yet Americans consume more pornography than the population of any other developed nation. I guess the fact that the heavily Christian "red" states consume the most pornography should not be surprising. The more you repress publicly, the more the pornographers (and abusers) go to work privately. You end up with football coaches who are revered as priest/kings while they rape children behind closed doors, leading to institutional protection of said child-rapists. Slavish devotion to "hard work=financial success" leading to the enormous profits of a "gaming" industry that is designed to defraud. An entire "free market" economy designed around institutionalized fraud.

Nobody should be surprised that the false front of this economic empire is starting to wear thin, showing the flimsy foundation underneath. It was never real.

Re:Well....

[mikael]

Was that the RNG (Random Number Generator) on an arcade unit which had shorted out, so that every time it was rebooted, it would deal the same set of cards like something out of Groundhog Day? He just memorized the order the cards were dealt and repeatedly played that machine.

Then there is card-counting at Poker which simply involves keeping track of the ratio of high-cards and low-cards which have been dealt.

More than two decades ago, Trivial Pursuit arcade units were extremely popular in bars and restaurants. Then over a period of months, owners were concerned by a decline in earnings despite the fact the machines were still extremely popular. Turns out punters were going to the libraries, reading up the encylopedias, and acquiring enough knowledge to win up to £100 each time.

Re:Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

You could run a search. If you were precognizant that the story involves a slot machine (which aren't exclusive to casinos, not usually considered gambling and almost never at the center of a lawsuit) you might even find it that way.

However, if you're trying to find the story because you don't know already know everything about it, you might search for:

"casino sues" -> no matches.

"gambler loses" -> no matches.

"casino gambler" -> two matches: "Is the Apple App Store a Casino?" and "Computer-Based System To Crack Down On Casino Card Counters"

"casino winnings" -> two matches: "Beating Roulette With Computers & Lasers" and "EverQuest: What You Really Get From an Online Game"

So kindly take your condescending attitude and shove it.

Re:Well....

[jd]

I thought it was "two big guys grab you by the arms, turn you upside-down and shake your wallet and change out of your pockets, then throw you out the front door into the oncoming traffic so you can't sue them".

Re:Well....

[jd]

Research says that that is a cognitive illusion, that the smart ones AVOID the financial industry like the plague.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/30/daniel-kahneman-cognitive-illusion-extract?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/apr/12/businessglossary110?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/feb/03/research.science1?INTCMP=SRCH

Re:Well....

[zippthorne]

You might want to take another look at the graphic. Specifically, the point about a third of the way between .0 and .1 seconds...

Re:Well....

[jd]

A search for casino works perfectly well, and since "machine" probably doesn't refer to blackjack, I think the average Slashdotter's intelligence is greater than you give credit for. (I happen to think readers here are competent and smart, if you don't then that would explain why you're AC.)

Re:Well....

[smellotron]

That's the way to legally cheat, consistently make a profit, and not have your bones broken.

One of the articles you referenced cites NASDAQ "flash orders" as a blatant mechanism for cheating. Fortunately for everyone, flash orders were shut down within months.

Re:Well....

[Rockoon]

Casinos do have blackjack machines. There are a group of popular machines that pack in a dozen games onto a single machine and the user selects which game they want to play. The video blackjack is usually accompanied by a selection of various video poker games.

Re:Well....

[Rockoon]

Then there is card-counting at Poker which simply involves keeping track of the ratio of high-cards and low-cards which have been dealt.

Nobody "card counts" in poker, which means that you have no clue what you are talking about. The closest thing in poker to card counting is when 7-card stud players memorize what cards have been discarded by other players.. the key term here is MEMORIZE.

Now I have to ask you.. why are you talking about this subject when both you and I know that you dont know what you are talking about? (hint: Blackjack players count cards, Poker players laugh at you.)

Re:Well....

[bronney]

Wait you mean that time I had ace-slick raised you pre-flop before the turn of the river after you pre-call my bet bet raise times two into the straight draw bluff? ;D

Re:Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

So close, but so far.

Electrical engineering and Kelly criteria has direct applications in Stock Market I don't think you need to "cheat" or front-run (flash quotes, in the nytimes article) to apply this to the stock market .

Claude Shannon himself gave a presentation about how to trade stocks using information theory (http://www.oaktree-research.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=230&Itemid=77 ). The website has a link to a bunch of papers from the "fathers" of information theory. Or another eg:http://www.edwardothorp.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/beatthemarket.pdf is an older book on using information theory in stocks.

This does not involve cheating, but it is unclear what value it adds to the society.

Actual article at ...

[fsckmnky]

http://www.maa.org/joma/Volume8/Siegrist/RedBlack.pdf

Re:Actual article at ...

[fsckmnky]

s/article/math paper ... gah

Re:Actual article at ...

[methamorph]

Actually the actual article is at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.1645v1.pdf

Re:Actual article at ...

[fsckmnky]

yeah ... sorry slashdotters .... i got lost in a link maze ... hang the guy who wrote the article. ;)

Re:Actual article at ...

[jd]

You are lost in a maze of twisty URLs, all the same.

Re:Actual article at ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are likely to be eaten by GNU.

Intresting but.

[Anonymous Coward]

But my Flux'DE'Capactdur concept that allows for fowrd and reverse insight really makes either the Kelly criterion or the Kolmogorov theories irrelevant anyway,

Conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

The three authors completely agree on the mathematics, but they have somewhat different views about the
significance of this project. Here they are.

Evangelos Georgiadis’ Conclusion
We provided a playful yet algorithmic glimpse to a field that has up till recently flourished on the Kolmogorov,
measure-theoretic paradigm [as evidenced by the work of Dubins and Savage [4] (see [7] for more recent
developments]. The advent and omnipresence of computers, however, ushered an era of symbol crunching
and number crunching, where a few lines of code can give rise to powerful algorithms. And it is the ouput
of algorithms that usually provides insight (and inspiration) for conjectures and theorems. Those, in turn,
can then be proven in their respective measure-theoretic settings. Additionally, a computational approach
lends itself easily to more complex scenarios that would otherwise be considered pathological phenomena
(and would be fiendishly time-consuming to prove – even for immortals like Kolmogorov and von Neumann).

Doron Zeilberger’s Conclusion
Traditional mathematicians like Dubins and Savage use traditional proof-based mathematics, and also work
in the framework of continuous probability theory using the pernicious Kolmogorov, measure-theoretic, par-
adigm. This approach was fine when we didn’t have computers, but we can do so much more with both
symbol-crunching and number-crunching, in addition to naive simulation, and develop algorithms and write
software, that ultimately is a much more useful (and rewarding) activity than “proving” yet-another-theorem
in an artificial and fictional continuous, measure-theoretic, world, that is furthermore utterly boring.

Shalosh B. Ekhad’s Conclusion
These humans, they are so emotional! That’s why they never went very far.

correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Shalosh B. Ekhad is a computer, not a computer scientist.

Re:correction

[jd]

That would depend on how good AI is these days.

Conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

For a choice of timid r bold play in an unfair case (most real-world),

With timid play, the gambler makes a small constant bet on each game until
she is ruined or reaches the target. This turns out to be a very bad strategy in
unfair games, but does have the advantage of a relatively large expected number
of games. If you play this strategy, you will almost certainly be ruined, but at
least you get to gamble for a while.

With bold play, the gambler bets her entire fortune or what she needs to
reach the target, whichever is smaller. This is an optimal strategy in the unfair
case; no strategy can do better. But it's very quick! If you play this strategy,
there's a good chance that your gambling will be over after just a few games
(often just one!).

Re:Conclusion

[fsckmnky]

Your summary accurately describes the definition of gambling as opposed to investing.

Gambling is placing money at risk with an expectation of loss.
Investing is placing money at risk with an expectation of gain.

I hope I'm not the only one who finds it odd that the state lotteries they sold the public by claiming "The funds will benefit education" would put themselves out of business if people were actually learning math. ;)

Re:Conclusion

[DreadPiratePizz]

You don't have to be bad at math to play the lottery. A buck for a ticket is a small price to pay for the entertainment you get when the numbers come up. Especially if your friends play, it can be a social event when the numbers are announced.

Re:Conclusion

[obarthelemy]

nope. Gambling is for an expectation of pleasure. And with an external locus of control.

Re:Conclusion

[AK Marc]

I hope I'm not the only one who finds it odd that the state lotteries they sold the public by claiming "The funds will benefit education" would put themselves out of business if people were actually learning math.

Or that anyone that knows the definition of "fungible" or "general fund" would already know the lotteries *can't* benefit education. But the lottery isn't only for bad at math. Where else do you have a non-zero chance of making millions from a $1 investment within a week's time?

Re:Conclusion

[fsckmnky]

If you derive pleasure from losing money, send me $20 and I'll respond with an email telling you whether or not you won $40. ;)

Re:Conclusion

[FunkSoulBrother]

Explain how people learning math would put the lottery out of business. People are gambling for an adrenaline rush, not to satisfy some mathematical equation. Guess what, some people posion their bodies with alcohol on occasion to enjoy the side effects. Some of them even have extensive education in biology and medicine.

Re:Conclusion

[NFN_NLN]

Explain how people learning math would put the lottery out of business. People are gambling for an adrenaline rush, not to satisfy some mathematical equation. Guess what, some people posion their bodies with alcohol on occasion to enjoy the side effects. Some of them even have extensive education in biology and medicine.

People who drink alcohol live longer than people who don't. It's a fact: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2017200,00.html

And this this study includes heavy drinkers that pull down the average life span of general alcohol consumers...

Re:Conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, the other people who've replied are all in agreement that you're a twat. I've got two degrees in maths and I play the lottery, not least because I know the difference between next to no chance, and no chance. There is a vanishingly small chance that my £1 will net me £5m. There is the likelihood that in reality I'll lose that £1. In between, there is the "reasonable" chance that it will get me £10. Given that the outlay is small and I'm happy to accept the most likely result - that I end up with nothing - I'm happy to play the lottery.

Re:Conclusion

[NFN_NLN]

Your summary accurately describes the definition of gambling as opposed to investing.

Gambling is placing money at risk with an expectation of loss.
Investing is placing money at risk with an expectation of gain.

So, pumping money into a [commodities|housing|internet|gold] bubble really is considered investing then? I guess this explains a lot (and yes, this is a slam on the sheeple not the parent).

Re:Conclusion

[NFN_NLN]

If you derive pleasure from losing money, send me $20 and I'll respond with an email telling you whether or not you won $40. ;)

Are you referring to the upcoming Facebook IPO, or is this a new scam of your own creation :)

Re:Conclusion

[TrekkieGod]

You don't have to be bad at math to play the lottery. A buck for a ticket is a small price to pay for the entertainment you get when the numbers come up. Especially if your friends play, it can be a social event when the numbers are announced.

Well, honestly, you play correctly. If you're not actually expecting to win, but you find some entertainment in sitting there with your friends waiting for the numbers to come up, more power to you. I don't think you represent the majority, though. I think most of the people playing the lottery are people who spend money that they could actually use for more practical things, in the hope of moving up from poverty. I don't have numbers to back this feeling up, but I do see those local news stories every time the jackpot goes up into the $200 million range with poor schmoes buying hundreds of dollars worth of tickets. Congratulations, dude: you just increased your odds of winning from nearly impossible to still nearly impossible.

The above is not an argument against the lottery, btw. I don't think the government should be in the business of protecting people from their own bad decisions. It is, however, an argument for better public education. People would make less bad decisions if they had the tools to analyze a situation better.

Re:Conclusion

[garyebickford]

Reminds me of a successful scam I read about, from back in the late 1950s or thereabouts. They put an ad in the classifieds of many papers, saying simply "Send your dollars to GEB, PO BOX 123". Lots of people thought this was some charity and sent money. The Postal Inspectors (US Postal Service police) came after the guy, charging him with mail fraud. His successful defense was that he made no promises, only asked people for money.

AFAIK this particular trick was quashed in the future, as newspapers refused to take ads like that.

Re:Conclusion

[garyebickford]

Considering that your chance of winning is somewhat less than that of being hit by lightning, I'd say there are lots of ways with similar odds. (Walking across the street and getting gently struck by a car driven by)|(Doing a good turn for)|(Some other event involving) a rich elderly person who makes you his/her sole heir is probably at least as likely.

Re:Conclusion

[fsckmnky]

So, pumping money into a [commodities|housing|internet|gold] bubble really is considered investing then? I guess this explains a lot (and yes, this is a slam on the sheeple not the parent).

This depends solely on the strategy you employ when investing in securities. If you sell the farm to buy shares in ABC co. because the neighbor, the guy at work, Bob the stock broker, etc said it was "a really hot stock, a can't miss oppourtunity." well, then I'd say you're an idiot, you are gambling, and it's probably going to bite you because you don't know how the market works. [This is especially true of the housing bubble. I was working construction at the time, and people were having brand new houses built for them, using no-doc loans, and putting them up for sale without ever moving in, in an attempt to earn 6% or so. Crazy. Houses are long term investments, not slot machines.]

That said, if you do some basic analysis, and all factors indicate the market is growing, and you buy into it, and you use stop-loss orders to limit your risk, and you sell when all analysis says the run up is over, then you are investing, because you are doing the work required to shift the otherwise close to 50/50 odds in your favor to the point where you gain a mathematical advantage.

Re:Conclusion

[icebraining]

If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man
You win some, lose some, it's - all - the same to me
The pleasure is to play, it makes no difference what you say
I don't share your greed, the only card I need is
The Ace Of Spades
The Ace Of Spades

Playing for the high one, dancing with the devil,
Going with the flow, it's all a game to me,
Seven or Eleven, snake eyes watching you,
Double up or quit, double stakes or split,
The Ace Of Spades
The Ace Of Spades

You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools,
But that's the way I like it baby,
I don't wanna live forever,
And don't forget the joker!

Pushing up the ante, I know you've got to see me,
Read 'em and weep, the dead man's hand again,
I see it in your eyes, take one look and die,
The only thing you see, you know it's gonna be,
The Ace Of Spades
The Ace Of Spades

Re:Conclusion

[AK Marc]

a rich elderly person who makes you his/her sole heir is probably at least as likely.

I think you are wrong. Unless by "doing a good turn for" you mean "giving lots of blowjobs to" and you are Anna Nicole Smith, it never happens. You'd be more likely to be hit by a movie director and cast in a new movie from that encounter, which, to my knowledge, has never happened either. At least someone wins the lottery every week or so, that's a "sure thing" in that *someone* will win it. So why not you? Jumping out in front of expensive cars as a retirement plan and giving blowjobs to whoever passes by doesn't sound as desirable.

Re:Conclusion

[Tormodular]

Plenty of people play a lottery, even knowing they can expect a loss (my mum is a maths teacher, yet still enjoys playing the lottery on occassion). Expectation is not always the best metric to use when thinking about games of chance (for example, see the St. Petersburg Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox). I'm perhaps playing devil's advocate a bit here, but consider a person who earns a low wage and has no possibility of ever increasing this wage except by winning a low probability game of chance that costs a very small nominal amount to play and entails an expected loss with each play (ie a lottery). If the cost of play is a small proportion of weekly earnings, it seems reasonable (to me at least) that from a utility perspective, the person would choose to play the lottery. The key point is that if the payout is large enough, then the person will stop playing if they win (hopefully), so the concept of expectation (ie, number of plays going to infinity) is not necessarily the right metric.

Re:Conclusion

[garyebickford]

Actually, I would argue that "giving blowjobs to whoever passes by", done in the right location, would arguably have a much higher chance of earning significant money. :P

Re:Conclusion

[AK Marc]

But that becomes an issue of work for hire, rather than a small effort massive payouts.

Re:Conclusion

[zippthorne]

I think your argument makes a lot of sense to be used against a lottery. At least.. against a state-run lottery. Government shouldn't be in the business of protecting people from their own decisions, but neither should it be in the business of encouraging people to make decisions that are harmful to themselves.

If we're not going to allow non state-run lotteries, then we shouldn't have any lotteries at all.

Re:Conclusion

[FunkSoulBrother]

This just enforces my point -- as pointed out in the article the social benefits of drinking from time to time, and the quality of life they ensure, outweighs the biological side effects of poisoning oneself with ethanol. (well, that, and the fact that abstainers in the study were much more likely to be poor, with all the life expectancy decreases that come with it.)

I bet if you control for socioeconomic status, the gamblers would also prove to live longer for the same reasons -- while it indeed shits on their wallets, it also means they aren't uptight puritans and can roll with some punches in life and blow off stress.

Re:Conclusion

[honkycat]

every time the jackpot goes up into the $200 million range with poor schmoes buying hundreds of dollars worth of tickets. Congratulations, dude: you just increased your odds of winning from nearly impossible to still nearly impossible.

That's the part I don't understand. Although I virtually never do it, I can understand buying one ticket. Your first ticket converts your odds of winning from exactly zero to almost zero. The second ticket is just degrees of almost zero.

And yes, of course each ticket has the same probability of winning, so you do get the same increase in odds for that second ticket. However, those odds are terrible, so doubling your near-zero odds of winning isn't a rational move. The first ticket provides that unquantifiable excitement / entertainment value. The second is just throwing money away.

Re:Conclusion

[ceoyoyo]

I hope you mean expectation in the statistical sense, rather than the emotional one.

Re:Conclusion

[TrekkieGod]

I think your argument makes a lot of sense to be used against a lottery. At least.. against a state-run lottery. Government shouldn't be in the business of protecting people from their own decisions, but neither should it be in the business of encouraging people to make decisions that are harmful to themselves.

Well, I like that it's a way for the government to raise money which is entirely voluntary. I'm not one of those guys who are completely anti-tax, but that doesn't mean I don't prefer a form of voluntary tax, which is what the lottery is, over the compulsory kind whenever possible. I also don't see it as encouraging bad behavior anymore than a government building a bridge is encouraging people to jump off it. It is possible to cross a bridge safely, and it's possible play the lottery responsibly, so if you don't it's your own fault. What's sad is that a lot of people don't know that they are playing irresponsibly, because they don't really understand the odds.

That said, I do agree with you that we should allow lotteries that not state-run as well. I don't like anti-gambling legislation. Gambling regulation is fine, and even necessary in order to prevent scams, but prohibiting gambling all together is the government trying to be your nanny.

Re:Conclusion

[Technician]

In gambling you don't get to wait for a better day before cashing in. In investing, you can "Buy low and Sell high" Very few stocks never return to and pass the purchase price unless you bought at a peak (buy high is bad) unless the stock goes bust. On average the market does well with it's ups and downs to enable buy low sell high. Lotto and casino games do not provide that option.

Re:Conclusion

[Rockoon]

I hope I'm not the only one who finds it odd that the state lotteries they sold the public by claiming "The funds will benefit education" would put themselves out of business if people were actually learning math. ;)

You do know that lotteries (and in fact and game that includes a progressive jackpot) can be wagered with positive expectation, right?

Just asking, because you go on about gambling being an expectation of loss and investing being an expectation of gain..

Re:Conclusion

[fsckmnky]

You do know that lotteries (and in fact and game that includes a progressive jackpot) can be wagered with positive expectation, right?

Yes. I am aware of a few instances where groups have gamed the lottery by purchasing enough combinations of numbers to guarantee a win. After which point, the various state entities operating the lotteries either passed regulation making it illegal to do so, or have changed the mathematics of the game to prevent it.

My comment about lotteries and math, wasn't intended to be taken as seriously as it has been. I attached a wink ;) to the end, in the hopes that people would interpret it as the tounge-in-cheek funny-ha-ha it was intended to be, but alas, this is slashdot, where serious is ridiculous and funny is serious.

That said, buying 1 ticket with a 1 in 20 million chance of a positive outcome, is gambling.

Planning and executing the logistics required to purchase 5 of 20 million tickets to guarantee a positive outcome, is investing and executing a business strategy like any other.

Disclaimer ... above numbers are purely hypothetical and plucked from thin air for the sole purpose of illustration. Any resemblance to an actual numbers used to execute a successful business strategy or wager on a game of chance is purely coincidental. Actual numbers have been changed to protect the innocent.

Re:Conclusion

[Hognoxious]

anyone that knows the definition of "fungible" or "general fund" would already know the lotteries *can't* benefit education.

I know what they are and yet I don't see how that leads to your conclusion. Care to enlighten me?

Re:Conclusion

[AK Marc]

The funds "earmarked" for education are "matched" by a reduction in funding from the general fund. So the net funding is not changed, but more money is left in the general fund to spend on other things not education related. Or, as happened in Texas, they got the lotto, then reduced the overall funding for schools, greatly reducing the burden on the general fund, but having the lotto coincide with a *decrease* in funding for schools.

Re:Conclusion

[makomk]

What proportion of people that don't drink alcohol are doing it because of a health condition that prevents them from doing so, though? Correlation is not the same as causation.

Re:Conclusion

[chrysrobyn]

You don't have to be bad at math to play the lottery.

I find that the state lottery significantly increases my happiness during low spots. The Arizona Lotto used to (and may still) have the slogan, "You can't win if you don't play." In fact, if I do play, I am able to daydream of what would happen in the exceptionally unlikely event that I won. How that day would go, how successive days would go, how I could be smart with the money, how I could avoid pitfalls, etc. Heck, I can replay the joke over in my head about the guy stuck on his roof in a flood, avoiding all driftwood, boats and even the helicopter because God would save him. He died and demanded of God why he was allowed to die. God wanted to know who he thought sent all the rescuers! During the times I'm dissatisfied with my job, I can really drag down if I can't daydream about that 1 in 5 million chance I'll win the million bucks -- if I never play, the odds get significantly worse.

For about 6 months, I played the lottery in Vermont weekly. I would gamble $2/week, and pretty much every other week, I would win $4. Against the odds, I broke even for about 4 months before hitting "a dry spell". I kept tossing the money in, and ended up winning $50. Not enough to make a profit, but enough to pay for the hobby and to continue to break even.

Re:Conclusion

[Bigby]

But there is a risk of being arrested.

Re:Conclusion

[dwpro]

Funny, I think just the opposite. Since people seem to find a way to gamble one way or another (case in point, the current state of online poker), the profits may as well go to something useful and be run by a group that is ostensibly accountable to the public. I think the government would be much better suited to take a holistic view of gambling and encourage it less than a private entity.

Re:Conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're really poor, your chance of becoming rich by spending a few hundred dollars a year on something other than the lottery are also very small, so if their goal is "get seriously rich by investing this money", lottery tickets might well be a comparable alternative...

Re:Conclusion

[L4t3r4lu5]

I play the opposite way; It's not that entertaining to me, and I play to win. However, I understand that my chances of winning are very slim, so I play only when the payout is (to me) worth the cost of lunch (Euromillions hitting â100m+ typically). I don't expect to win, but the possibility is worth the payout.

It should be noted that this means I've spent around £50 on the lottery since 2008.

Re:Conclusion

[mr_gorkajuice]

Chance to win the lottery if you play: Extremely small.
Chance to win the lottery if you don't play: Nill.

My math tells me that purchasing lottery tickets does not affect my financial situation in any significant way, but winning the grand prize would.

It's a win/loss situation with the odds of winning being roughly as small as the consequence of losing.

Re:Conclusion

[zippthorne]

I would do the same thing, but the possibility of multiple winners screws up the expectation value calculations. My gut feeling is that most people underestimate the risk:reward ratio, and therefore there is no jackpot level at which the expectation value is over unity - there will always be enough people playing that the risk of a split jackpot cuts the expectation value sufficiently to counter any increase in the pot.

The only winning move

[Hentes]

is not to play.

Re:The only winning move

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Be the bank.

Re:The only winning move

[jd]

That's a form of not playing.

Re:The only winning move

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's playing. You buy stock in the casinos/hotel operators in Vegas, and it's still gambling. The odds are better; but you can still lose.

Re:The only winning move

[jd]

How can you lose when you're legally entitled to not pay any winnings - ever?

Re:The only winning move

[ceoyoyo]

People finally figure it out and stop coming to your multi-billion dollar casino?

Re:The only winning move

[petermgreen]

It's true that the chances of the house losing overall on the betting is astronomically low and if it did happen they could probablly get out on a technicality (which is what I presume you are reffered to with being "legally entitled to not pay any winnings").

The thing is the casino has to pay for rent/mortgage (unless they own the property outright), property taxes, staff, energy and so on. There is a limit to how much cash they can separate from each punter so if they can't get enough punters through the door and/or those punters refuse to gamble (and hence lose) enough money the casino (and hence it's investers) will lose.

Plus remember that share prices are only loosely linked to current profitability. In theory they should be based on expected future profitability but there is a lot of emotion in there too. Just because a company makes a profit doesn't mean thier shareholders will.

Re:The only winning move

[jd]

There's actually a lot of technicalities they can use - not just to prevent paying out if it would mean losing overall. The links I gave elsewhere show that there only has to be a suspicion that a gaming machine (be it a slot machine, a roulette wheel or an automatic deck shuffler) has a fault, even if that fault leads to the machine being random rather than biased towards the house, then the house isn't obliged to pay the winnings. True, do that too much and people will stop gaming, but the lottery shows that even trillion to one odds against is just fine for many gamblers. Casinos can therefore be selective and merely stop a percentage of the payouts.

Which, of course, is what the devices are designed to do in the first place -- ensure that N out of M bets that would win are fixed to lose. A slight tweak on the friction on the roulette wheel is all it takes to make sure chance is not an element. And that, to me, is the thing. If the odds of a 36-number roulette wheel producing a given number was actually 1:36, that's one thing. If the odds suddenly depend on the size of the wager and how well the table is doing, that's very different. Likewise, if someone does win and that winning is redacted to safely control the number of winners, then whatever is going on, it's not gambling.

(Pubs in England were allowed to have darts games because it was shown in court that it was a game of skill, not a game of chance, so didn't violate gambling rules. So legal systems do consider that for a game to be gambling, it must be a game of chance. The mere fact that devices legally exist in casinos for the express purpose of preventing chance from operating means that casinos aren't involved in gambling.)

Re:The only winning move

[Rockoon]

How can you lose when you're legally entitled to not pay any winnings - ever?

Tell that to all the casinos that have gone bankrupt. You think I'm kidding? Even Donald Trump has had multiple casinos of his go bankrupt.

Not a Useful Guide

[Anonymous Coward]

The paper is about how much to bet (your strategy) on a given round if you have x dollars and want to win N dollars. This is problematic for two reasons.

First, their method only works when the probability of winning is >0.5, which never happens in any real casino.

Second, almost nobody really bets this way. Most people don't go to a casino looking to win N dollars. Instead, they go to the casino hoping to play for time T without losing more than N dollars (although people might not be up front about that goal).

Another problem is that they assume that the probabiilty is constant with each round. That's true for some games (roulette), but not for others (blackjack).

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[bcrowell]

Mod parent up.

First, their method only works when the probability of winning is >0.5, which never happens in any real casino.

This is not quite true. In blackjack, there are times when you have p>0.5. That's the point of counting cards. Some games, like poker, are really games of skill. Others, like horse racing, involve non-random aspects.

Another problem is that they assume that the probability is constant with each round. That's true for some games (roulette), but not for others (blackjack).

Another thing that makes the paper not really applicable to real life is that it assumes you can choose to bet any amount. In reality, if you're in a casino playing blackjack, one of the most common ways for the management to detect that you're counting cards and throw you out is that they notice that you're varying your bets according to a certain pattern.

It would be interesting to see a realistic plan for winning money by gambling. Poker is probably the best game, but there are some realistic issues with finding a game in which (a) the other players have large amounts of money, (b) the other players are worse than you are, (c) there is no money being raked off by the house, and (d) there is no possibility of collusion (which I believe is quite hard to guard against in online poker).

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[Tacvek]

Yeah. The title of the paper is a bit misleading.

They are studying the case of some betting game with a fixed probability of winning p (with p>1/2) and a fixed 1:1 payout, using a discrete model of money, with no maximum bet, a minimum bet of $1, and all bets being constrained to a multiple of $1.

It is already known that if you enter with x dollars and you have a target amount of N, your best strategy is to always bet the minimum. Needless to say always betting the minimum can take forever, so even under this very unlikely set of circumstances, you would not want to actually follow that strategy.

So instead they introduce a round limit T, and introduce software that solves the relevant dynamic programming recurrence determine what you should bet given the probability p, your current balance x', your desired amount N, and the remaining number of rounds until the loan shark kills you T'.

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[Kjella]

First, their method only works when the probability of winning is >0.5, which never happens in any real casino.

Against the house, no. Against other poker players for example, it's possible if you've identified weaknesses in the other players. But even if you've identified a 52% chance to win, how hard should you play to extract the most possible money while not getting yourself eliminated by bad hands? After all you still have a 48% chance of losing. The blinds going up means you have time pressure, you can't keep playing tiny bets forever. Not that I think poker players think this way, but it doesn't seem that useless.

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[martin-boundary]

You're looking at the constraints wrong. Most games can fit the assumptions quite easily. For example, if you think of the rounds not during a game, but as repeated iterations of the same game.

Take blackjack. Every time you play the game with a fresh set of cards, the ultimate probability of winning is the same, provided you use the same strategy each time. That counts as one round, with a winning probability p.

Also, you're wrong about p >0.5, there are strategies for p 0.5 .

Mathematics results are usually phrased in very general / simple terms that aren't necessarily intended to fit a particular situation. You're expected to look around and recognize when a situation you come across fits.

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[Anonymous Coward]

52% to win in tournament poker is insanely high, and basically no one is that good. Remember that when you win you don't win 1:1, it's more like 5:1 or better. 52% of $400 (a typical 1st place prize on $100 fee) = $108 profit per tournament played. If you meant 52% per hand that's even more crushing.

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[garyebickford]

Another thing that makes the paper not really applicable to real life is that it assumes you can choose to bet any amount. In reality, if you're in a casino playing blackjack, one of the most common ways for the management to detect that you're counting cards and throw you out is that they notice that you're varying your bets according to a certain pattern.

I don't frequent casinos (there are few places more boring to me), but my understanding is that they generally allow, if not encourage card counting because most folks do it badly, and lose. The _hope_ of winning brings people in with their latest 'guaranteed winning scheme'. Card counting is hard, and as I understand it casinos have mostly changed their shuffling schedule and other things to make it harder. If, despite all these impediments, you appear to be doing too well, I suspect that they start to wonder if you have a wire of some kind. Whether that is true or not, I think that they will generally just gently escort you out - and keep pictures for future reference, in case you show up repeatedly at several casinos and do the same thing. But it's important for the casinos to keep enough winners around to encourage people to come. I've read that one out of four visitors to Las Vegas leaves a winner. If there were no winners, there would be no visitors. Since big winners make more news, that draws more visitors. So even an occasional big winner is a good thing for them.

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[Derek Pomery]

http://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/
"Full-Pay Deuces Wild optimal strategy (return of 100.76%)"

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[drkstr1]

I'm sure he was referring to pot-odds. If i have a 5:1 chance of gaining 5x my investment, that is p=0.5.

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[N1AK]

This is not quite true. In blackjack, there are times when you have p>0.5. That's the point of counting cards.

Actually, it was as he specifically said he was talking about 'any real casino'. Blackjack as played in casinos is effectively impossible to game due to all the counter-measures in place now. If you gamble in a casino you are either part of an elaborate and complex attempt to cheat the house or like 99.99% of people playing chance is the only way you're coming away with a win.

Re:Not a Useful Guide

[Anonymous Coward]

This effect can be seen often in big poker tournaments. For example, Jerry Yang was the least skilled player at the final table of the championship. Everyone, including himself, understood that fact. To counter the lack of skill, Yang made ridiculously large bets early and often. The more skillful players knowing that they had more skill decided to play more timid and gradually chip up. They didn't want to risk their chips early all in one shot. Basically the skillful players where thinking in Kelly Criterion terms, while Yang was forcing them to eventually divert from the optimal small betting strategy. After getting the skillful players off their game and some crazy luck, Yang eventually won the tournament.

Just in Time for the Holidays!

[paleo2002]

How to lose all your money gambling during the holidays in a bad economy because you don't understand multivariate calculus. Accompanied by a Maple package on a separate site. Note: Do not attempt to eat the maple package after you've gambled away your grocery money.

Note about Ekhad

[werdnam]

I'm not sure if the original submitter had his tongue in cheek by describing the co-author Ekhad as a "computer scientist." Just in case he didn't, note that Shalosh B. Ekhad is actually Zeilberger's computer. Since most of Zeilberger's research depends heavily on computations, and (I think) as a nod to some of his philosophical positions, Zeilberger usually lists his computer as a coauthor on his papers. So I guess Ekhad is a computer scientist, but not quite in the way we usually mean. :)

Re:Note about Ekhad

[Anonymous Coward]

shalosh b. ekhad is Hebrew for 3-in-1

Re:Note about Ekhad

[Anonymous Coward]

its also drunkspeak for sloshed in the head

Re:Note about Ekhad

[ceoyoyo]

I wonder what he does when he gets a new computer.

casinos love people with systems

[frovingslosh]

These dolts seems to be presenting a "system" that they believe will give you a very high chance of winning if you play a lot of minimal bets. If they really believe that they should get out of academia and into the real world and do some "research" in actual casinos. If only I could bet on the casinos and against Cornell University math nerds.

Re:casinos love people with systems

[SuricouRaven]

Sounds like the powers-of-two system. It allows you to shift the odds to where you will almost certainly make a small amount of money... but run a small risk of losing a huge amount. The mean return is still the same as random betting, but the distribution can be to the advantage of some gamblers.

Re:casinos love people with systems

[AK Marc]

Worked for MIT students, for a while.

Guide for better than even odds?

[nzac]

According to the paper they are (initially) using a p=3/5 for an even return which to me is a hypothetical or illegal situation.

Am i missing something here or is this just a paper for if you find your self in lucky situation where the house is loss leading?

Re:Uncle diddles

[Anonymous Coward]

Whos tail do I have to pull to get some gay cock around here?

It's really hard t find gay cock because when farmer's find out their cock is gay, they kill it and eat it. At lest a gay hen will lay eggs so they don't kill those.

Or try this....

Gay cock? What is a *gay cock like - are they so happy that they crow all the time?

Gay: merry - cheerful - jolly - joyful - blithe - mirthful - as in the "gay" in Jingle Bells.

You didn't think that in Jingle Bells that "gay apparel" meant dressing up like a member of the Village People did you?

Shalosh B. Ekhad

[slasho81]

Shalosh B. Ekhad is not a person. From Wikipedia:

Zeilberger is known for crediting his computer "Shalosh B. Ekhad" as a co-author ("Shalosh" and "Ekhad" mean "Three" and "One" in Hebrew respectively, referring to the AT&T 3B1 model).

Max loss is usually full bankroll

[grimJester]

Second, almost nobody really bets this way. Most people don't go to a casino looking to win N dollars. Instead, they go to the casino hoping to play for time T without losing more than N dollars (although people might not be up front about that goal).

People usually go to a casino with as much money as they are willing to lose. I also think the idea of spending at least a given time wile losing a set amount is a bit absurd unless it involves the chance of winning.

You could make a case for a fun casino evening involving maximizing your chances of winning N dollars within time T1 while still not going broke before time T2. A strategy of proportional betting (I assume the paper does that) will limit your chances of going broke regardless.

But...

[jd]

Eating the software is probably better for you than running it.

Gambling explained

[cjeze]

A fool and his money are easily parted

How to gamble if you're in a hurry?

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Throw your money in the garbage.

Re:How to gamble if you're in a hurry?

[gatkinso]

Silly. The garbage pail has no hope of return.

Simply lay a large bet right off the bat.

While the end result will *probably* be the same, there is a small chance you will be kicking back in the penthouse that evening.

No kidding

[Sycraft-fu]

My guide to making the most money gambling: Don't.

In any casino the odds are always, ALWAYS stacked against you. They don't hide this fact, either. The odds are published and you can easily notice that the payout is less than the probability of getting something. They are in business to make money, it has to be this way or they'd go broke.

So don't gamble to make money. If you enjoy the thrill of it, if it entertains you, and you can afford it, then by all means. But don't try and find some way to gamble "quickly" that will make you money because it won't. Any money made is purely luck and your strategy of what you bet on will play very little in to it.

Play the game for enjoyment.

Re:No kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

How to make the most money gambling: Be the house.

Not going to work so well

[Sycraft-fu]

In terms of a machine that malfunctions and pays out more than it should, it'll be noticed quickly these days (they are all networked and watched) and you'll have to give the money back. Cheating isn't allowed. I don't mean that is a casino rule, I mean legally. If you find a way to game the system, the casino is in their legal rights to not pay you winnings.

In terms of counting cards they solve this problem by frequent reshuffling and using multiple decks of cards. Try effectively counting cards if there are 6 decks in use at once and the reshuffle after ever 4 game or something (remember there are machines to do it that make it efficient).

"Researchers Create Statistical Guide to Gambling"

[Dogtanian]

...namely, that (1) Statistically, the house always wins overall and (2) If you come up with a system that actually stands a chance of changing this they'll (a) change the rules, (b) break your legs (or kill you or whatever...) and/or kick you out, (c) accuse you of breaking *their* rules, such that the effect is that... statistically, the house always wins overall.

Get a blackjack app

[tepples]

If you want entertainment, get a blackjack app for your phone. It'll cost less than a lottery ticket.

How do I counted cards

[tepples]

In blackjack, watch the cards closely. Every time a 2-6 is dealt, add 1. Every time a 10, jack, queen, king, or ace is dealt, subtract 1. For example, if someone is dealt blackjack (A-10), subtract 2. If the running total since the last shuffle is at least four times the number of decks left in the shoe, the house is loss leading.

Re:How do I counted cards

[nzac]

That's not loss leading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

The model is far to simplistic to account for blackjack card counting that has its own set of maths models.

IG Nobel Prize for Revamping Gambling Math?

[Anonymous Coward]

One wonders , will they win the Ig Nobel Prize for such gambling research ? http://www.improbable.com/2011/12/10/how-to-gamble-if-youre-in-a-hurry-colorfully/ Also, the father of the mathematics of gambling is really Edward O. Thorp.

entertainmenty and nonproportional value of money

[KingAlanI]

Yes, it's fun to bet a small amount of money now and then (the more you're losing, the less fun it is)
Also, a large amount of money may be proportionally more useful to someone than a smaller amount of money, in which case it may make sense for that person to bet seemingly against the odds

some entertainment from thinking about winning

[KingAlanI]

yes, there can be entertainment value in the game itself, and even simple games can be more fun as a social activity, betting or not
yet the theoretical possibility of a payout helps because it's fun to think about what you'd do with the prize money.

A Useful Guide

[Anonymous Coward]

because it deals with superfair games as you correctly pointed out .... super fair games have been well-studied and exploited until recently. Yes, they are games in which p>.5. Now if p=.5, you are dealing with a martingale. and if p .5.

Continuous vs Discrete

[yukiloo]

After having read the paper it becomes evident that both authors have a liking for analyzing the problem in a discrete light. My degree is in mathematics, number theory so I am slightly biased myself. For that matter, I got intrigued by the fact that when dealing with the continuous version of gambling one does deal with unrealistic assumptions. One of which is ... money is indefinitely divisible which of course this is a bonkers assumption. Now assuming money has finite integral values, the analysis becomes much more difficult, particularly in the light of edge effects. So, that is why the authors seem to resort to heavy computer simulation.

Abstract + IG Nobel Prize worthy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How to gamble if you are in a hurry," represents a computational and algorithmic effort towards reconciling unrealistic assumptions of (continuous) gambling theory with the real world gambling. Money as we know it, is not infinitely divisible, neither is the life of a gambler, nor does the betting game continue indefinitely. All is finite and discrete as the authors claim. Now will they claim the Ig Nobel prize too as shown in Improbably Research (http://bit.ly/uBnvQD ) ? Far more intriguing is the question, how can we cash out of the more realistic ideas presented in their paper ?

IG Nobel Prize ripe Research ?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.improbable.com/2011/12/10/how-to-gamble-if-youre-in-a-hurry-colorfully/ Also, I would really want to know where they submitted this paper to ....

All that work...

[AlienSexist]

All of this effort and brainpower to produce a guide that might as well say "Don't gamble"

Re:All that work...

[gl4ss]

it's to create publicity. the other thing is obvious. unless of course if you like it.

OMG funny

[axlr8or]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2564466&cid=38311516

Unless you can teach teh bluff

[aoeu]

there is no hope. My grandfathers both made a point of it.

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To summarize....

[Anonymous Coward]

Always bet on black.

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