You omitted my phrase, "The casino makes its money when people play games with negative expected payouts", and then spent a paragraph restating it.
Agreed.
If I challenge you to a bet (on whatever), will you still claim that you make your money when you lose? Why does that change when you call yourself "the House"?
It changes when I call myself "the house" because I am then participating in a large number of bets over a long period of time. The profit I make will be in how I handle the bets that I lose, not in the expectation of winning more bets.
I don't disagree with anything you said. When you refer to a winning bet paying less than odds as a "negative expected payout," then you are talking about the same principle that I addressed. When a dealer hands me money, it is only a loss when counted as a whole with my other wins and losses...after I have played enough that the odds should have made me even, but the house paid me less than those odds.
It's interesting to note that at the craps table I can bet on absolutely anything. I can bet "with the house", i.e., that the person rolling the dice will lose. I can make my bets so that when the house wins, I win. Using your theory, I should make money at the same rate as the house. Yet this is clearly not the case.
This makes the game attractive to the gambling addicts who don't understand probability...Gambling is as much a head game as it is about probabilities.
While we're at it, I can't help but mention the slot machines that are designed to dispense one coin at a time, as loudly as possible.
It's the presence of the "0" on the wheel, which never pays out,
That's a good old fashioned old wive's tale. You can bet on the zeros. No matter where the ball lands, the casino risks having to pay out if someone has bet on that spot (including, as I said, the '0' and '00'.) But they don't care, because they take more when you lose than they give you when you win.
You'll find that you never have a greater than 50% of winning per roll...
Not true. I can easily design a profitable game (for the house,) in which the player wins 5 out of 6 times. You put up a dollar and roll a die. If it's a six, I keep your dollar. If it's anything else I give you your dollar back plus a dime. Over time, you will give me a dollar for every 50 cents I give you. In fact, to reinforce my original point, I can figure how much I made at the end of the day by figuring 50 cents profit for every time I lost. Anything else I have on hand, due to winning more times than the odds indicate, should definitely be kept on hand to cover those inevitable times when I lose more than the odds indicate I should.
...at least if you define a win as making a net profit per bet.
Most people define "winning a bet" as achieving some objective in the game, and getting their money plus some extra back from the house. The rest of your analysis is right on the money, and supports my claim: even when you are "winning" you are really losing over the long run. The only way to leave with more money than you came with is to beat the odds over a finite period of time, and leave while you are ahead.
It's ridiculous to claim that someone makes money when they pay out, and not when they take in.
I disagree. Obviously, they don't make money by paying out money. But over time, they make money because they pay less than they "should" (which is to say, less than the odds indicate is appropriate) when they lose a bet.
Look at it this way: you are the "house" in a coin toss game. When a player throws heads, you give him a dollar. When he throws tails, he gives you a dollar. The key is that you are the house, and you can't walk away...you must keep playing as long as the player wants to. Now, a player walks up and throws 10 tails in a row, so you have brought in $10. Do you feel like you have earned $10? Do you feel confident that you will still have that $10 an hour from now? Probably not. But imagine that you change the rules slightly, so now you only have to pay 90 cents when heads are thrown, but you still take a dollar when tails are thrown. Every time a heads is thrown, you can pay out 90 cents and put a dime in your bank. Since the odds in this game indicate that you will will win as often as you lose, virtually every payout (for which you pay 90 cents) will be covered by a win (for which you take in a dollar.) How much do you earn after a period of time? One dime for every bet that you lost. Naturally, you may have some additional cash if you won significantly more than you lost, but you can be sure that somewhere down the road it will go the other way and you will lose that cash when you lose a bunch in a row. It's the same for any other game of odds...as long as the house pays you slightly less than the odds of the event happening, they will pocket the difference...within a range of error to account for the randomness of a long string of the events, of course.
I was amazed that there was any game at a casino that would give me more than a straight 50% chance of winning.
A friend once told me: the casino doesn't make money when they win a bet. They make money when they lose a bet.
And he was right. The casino doesn't make money because they win more often than they lose. They make money because they don't pay you as much as you deserve when you do win. So the 50% chance of winning is moot. It could be 70% or 90%, as long as they pay you something less than the odds say you deserve. Over time your losses will outweigh your gains.
As an aside, I once sat down at a roulette wheel and started playing the same method you described. I was doing so well that at one point I asked the dealer if it was legal. After a while, I started thinking about my chance of winning versus the payoff, and I realized that the casino still had a substantial advantage. At that moment, I started losing, and walked away empty handed.
And by the way, the best bet in the whole house is the "odds" bet on the craps table, because it pays you what the odds say you deserve, as I described above. The house has no advantage on the odds bet. But you can't make that bet without making another type of bet first, so you can't freeload.
Re:Multi-Channel motion control
on
Mirror, Mirror
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· Score: 1
And of course, 900 chrome-plated balls, which I'm not sure where to find.
The first thing I did when I came to this discussion was search for 'Bush' to find out how people were going to use this event as an excuse to do some Bush bashing. When none came up, I was a bit disappointed, but I started to wade through the posts. Yours was quite sensible...at first.
The real problem is people who substitute ideology for thinking about a problem.
Excellent!
The free market is not the solution to every problem. Get over it.
The state is not the solution to every problem either. Get over it.
Very well said, and balanced, too.
The solution to every domestic energy issue must be to drill oil wells in Alaska. The solution to every foreign policy problem must be to invade a country in the gulf with large oil reserves.
Oh, you lost me. You could have taken one of those, plus one of these: "The answer to every attempt at oil drilling is 'No!' The solution to every foreign policy problem, even those involving violent thugs who have no problems killing and torturing citizens and neighbors, is to talk and plead over decades," in order to sound as thoughtful as you began.
Can you give me details on the statute under which he was charged with "criticizing the system?"
I understand that some may disagree with charges stemming from passing along (or providing access to) information, but I maintain that the charges against him relate to encouraging violence. Please understand that I am not arguing for or against the wisdom of charging someone for providing access to information. I am simply saying that he was charged for providing that information, not for "criticizing the system." If I am wrong, which may well be, since I haven't read the court documents myself, I would sure like to hear the specific charges that relate to "criticizing the system."
Wrong. That's like saying a man was charged with "handing a note to a bank teller." The contents of the note make all the difference in the world.
He's being charged with "distributing information on explosives." Now, as I said, whether that distribution of information should be a crime or not is a perfectly legitimate debate (and by the way, I'm not sure anyone here knows the exact statute under which he was charged.) My original point stands: he was not punished for "criticizing the system," and hundreds of non-violent yet critical web sites are ample evidence for that.
The government has basically forbid this guy from criticizing the system.
No, they most certainly have not, and the suggestion that they have is a gross oversimplification that does not serve well the cause of privacy advocacy.
The story states that he "pleaded guilty in February to distributing information related to explosives." While I would be interested to hear the details of this charge, and while I would not necessarily support the prosecution of a person for simply distributing information, it is clear to me that the charges relate to the facilitation of violence, not to "complaining about the system," as you claim. There are plenty of web sites, groups, and publications that complain about the system and remain uninhibited by law enforcement agencies. Once these folks start encouraging violence (either explicitely or implicitely,) it's a different story. Again, the limits of culpability for such encouragement is a perfectly legitimate debate, but no one involved in that debate should kid themselves that the accused was simply "complaining about the system."
why the hell anyone would want to buy coffee that was so friggin' hot they couldn't drink it for twenty minutes. "Oh, our coffee is so good and hot!" Bullshit. McD's isn't the only one, either.
This sounds interesting, but I think the best overall solution would be a card that works by its proximity to Redmond, Washington. Proximity in this context means any distance that can be covered by a provately owned network of satellites. A bank of customer service reps and security experts there could approve/disapprove each transaction, as well as compute the substantial tariffs/licensing fees. The process could be streamlined by including reps from the MPAA/RIAA.
Hey wait! Gotta go...I'm off to see my patent attorney, who is on retainer.
Hey! Were you that guy who was working late at the ice cream shop when the two hot coeds came in? You know...and you never thought it would happen to you?
Thank you for the Ben Franklin quote, which I haven't seen in several hours.
My post was in response to comments such as 'guess they consider model rockets to be weapons of mass destruction now.' The fact is that the new legislation deals with the movement of hazardous materials, which happens to cover model rocket engines. If people are concerned about how the new restrictions affect model rocketry, it would be a worthwhile effort to influence the legislation, or to lobby the shippers to go through the extra trouble of certifying their personel. Fabricating ridiculous claims about the feds targeting model rocketry, on the other hand, is not a worthwhile effort.
Slashdot Mirror
You omitted my phrase, "The casino makes its money when people play games with negative expected payouts", and then spent a paragraph restating it.
Agreed.
If I challenge you to a bet (on whatever), will you still claim that you make your money when you lose? Why does that change when you call yourself "the House"?
It changes when I call myself "the house" because I am then participating in a large number of bets over a long period of time. The profit I make will be in how I handle the bets that I lose, not in the expectation of winning more bets.
I don't disagree with anything you said. When you refer to a winning bet paying less than odds as a "negative expected payout," then you are talking about the same principle that I addressed. When a dealer hands me money, it is only a loss when counted as a whole with my other wins and losses...after I have played enough that the odds should have made me even, but the house paid me less than those odds.
It's interesting to note that at the craps table I can bet on absolutely anything. I can bet "with the house", i.e., that the person rolling the dice will lose. I can make my bets so that when the house wins, I win. Using your theory, I should make money at the same rate as the house. Yet this is clearly not the case.
This makes the game attractive to the gambling addicts who don't understand probability...Gambling is as much a head game as it is about probabilities.
While we're at it, I can't help but mention the slot machines that are designed to dispense one coin at a time, as loudly as possible.
It's the presence of the "0" on the wheel, which never pays out,
That's a good old fashioned old wive's tale. You can bet on the zeros. No matter where the ball lands, the casino risks having to pay out if someone has bet on that spot (including, as I said, the '0' and '00'.) But they don't care, because they take more when you lose than they give you when you win.
You'll find that you never have a greater than 50% of winning per roll...
...at least if you define a win as making a net profit per bet.
Not true. I can easily design a profitable game (for the house,) in which the player wins 5 out of 6 times. You put up a dollar and roll a die. If it's a six, I keep your dollar. If it's anything else I give you your dollar back plus a dime. Over time, you will give me a dollar for every 50 cents I give you. In fact, to reinforce my original point, I can figure how much I made at the end of the day by figuring 50 cents profit for every time I lost. Anything else I have on hand, due to winning more times than the odds indicate, should definitely be kept on hand to cover those inevitable times when I lose more than the odds indicate I should.
Most people define "winning a bet" as achieving some objective in the game, and getting their money plus some extra back from the house. The rest of your analysis is right on the money, and supports my claim: even when you are "winning" you are really losing over the long run. The only way to leave with more money than you came with is to beat the odds over a finite period of time, and leave while you are ahead.
It's ridiculous to claim that someone makes money when they pay out, and not when they take in.
I disagree. Obviously, they don't make money by paying out money. But over time, they make money because they pay less than they "should" (which is to say, less than the odds indicate is appropriate) when they lose a bet.
Look at it this way: you are the "house" in a coin toss game. When a player throws heads, you give him a dollar. When he throws tails, he gives you a dollar. The key is that you are the house, and you can't walk away...you must keep playing as long as the player wants to. Now, a player walks up and throws 10 tails in a row, so you have brought in $10. Do you feel like you have earned $10? Do you feel confident that you will still have that $10 an hour from now? Probably not. But imagine that you change the rules slightly, so now you only have to pay 90 cents when heads are thrown, but you still take a dollar when tails are thrown. Every time a heads is thrown, you can pay out 90 cents and put a dime in your bank. Since the odds in this game indicate that you will will win as often as you lose, virtually every payout (for which you pay 90 cents) will be covered by a win (for which you take in a dollar.) How much do you earn after a period of time? One dime for every bet that you lost. Naturally, you may have some additional cash if you won significantly more than you lost, but you can be sure that somewhere down the road it will go the other way and you will lose that cash when you lose a bunch in a row. It's the same for any other game of odds...as long as the house pays you slightly less than the odds of the event happening, they will pocket the difference...within a range of error to account for the randomness of a long string of the events, of course.
I was amazed that there was any game at a casino that would give me more than a straight 50% chance of winning.
A friend once told me: the casino doesn't make money when they win a bet. They make money when they lose a bet.
And he was right. The casino doesn't make money because they win more often than they lose. They make money because they don't pay you as much as you deserve when you do win. So the 50% chance of winning is moot. It could be 70% or 90%, as long as they pay you something less than the odds say you deserve. Over time your losses will outweigh your gains.
As an aside, I once sat down at a roulette wheel and started playing the same method you described. I was doing so well that at one point I asked the dealer if it was legal. After a while, I started thinking about my chance of winning versus the payoff, and I realized that the casino still had a substantial advantage. At that moment, I started losing, and walked away empty handed.
And by the way, the best bet in the whole house is the "odds" bet on the craps table, because it pays you what the odds say you deserve, as I described above. The house has no advantage on the odds bet. But you can't make that bet without making another type of bet first, so you can't freeload.
And of course, 900 chrome-plated balls, which I'm not sure where to find.
Two words: Ben. Wa.
The first thing I did when I came to this discussion was search for 'Bush' to find out how people were going to use this event as an excuse to do some Bush bashing. When none came up, I was a bit disappointed, but I started to wade through the posts. Yours was quite sensible...at first.
The real problem is people who substitute ideology for thinking about a problem.
Excellent!
The free market is not the solution to every problem. Get over it.
The state is not the solution to every problem either. Get over it.
Very well said, and balanced, too.
The solution to every domestic energy issue must be to drill oil wells in Alaska. The solution to every foreign policy problem must be to invade a country in the gulf with large oil reserves.
Oh, you lost me. You could have taken one of those, plus one of these: "The answer to every attempt at oil drilling is 'No!' The solution to every foreign policy problem, even those involving violent thugs who have no problems killing and torturing citizens and neighbors, is to talk and plead over decades," in order to sound as thoughtful as you began.
Not everything is about Bush. Get over it.
Wrong game. What you really want to give them is the lead pipe. In the library.
Can you give me details on the statute under which he was charged with "criticizing the system?"
I understand that some may disagree with charges stemming from passing along (or providing access to) information, but I maintain that the charges against him relate to encouraging violence. Please understand that I am not arguing for or against the wisdom of charging someone for providing access to information. I am simply saying that he was charged for providing that information, not for "criticizing the system." If I am wrong, which may well be, since I haven't read the court documents myself, I would sure like to hear the specific charges that relate to "criticizing the system."
He's being charged with linking to a website.
Wrong. That's like saying a man was charged with "handing a note to a bank teller." The contents of the note make all the difference in the world.
He's being charged with "distributing information on explosives." Now, as I said, whether that distribution of information should be a crime or not is a perfectly legitimate debate (and by the way, I'm not sure anyone here knows the exact statute under which he was charged.) My original point stands: he was not punished for "criticizing the system," and hundreds of non-violent yet critical web sites are ample evidence for that.
The government has basically forbid this guy from criticizing the system.
No, they most certainly have not, and the suggestion that they have is a gross oversimplification that does not serve well the cause of privacy advocacy.
The story states that he "pleaded guilty in February to distributing information related to explosives." While I would be interested to hear the details of this charge, and while I would not necessarily support the prosecution of a person for simply distributing information, it is clear to me that the charges relate to the facilitation of violence, not to "complaining about the system," as you claim. There are plenty of web sites, groups, and publications that complain about the system and remain uninhibited by law enforcement agencies. Once these folks start encouraging violence (either explicitely or implicitely,) it's a different story. Again, the limits of culpability for such encouragement is a perfectly legitimate debate, but no one involved in that debate should kid themselves that the accused was simply "complaining about the system."
Dammit.
They said $10, you said $1,000,000.
Then you said that "splitting the difference" would be $500,005, when in fact it would be $499,995.
That magic '5' at the beginning is the psychological hump that caused them to resist.
why the hell anyone would want to buy coffee that was so friggin' hot they couldn't drink it for twenty minutes. "Oh, our coffee is so good and hot!" Bullshit. McD's isn't the only one, either.
Well, that's due to the Splashdot effect.
This sounds interesting, but I think the best overall solution would be a card that works by its proximity to Redmond, Washington. Proximity in this context means any distance that can be covered by a provately owned network of satellites. A bank of customer service reps and security experts there could approve/disapprove each transaction, as well as compute the substantial tariffs/licensing fees. The process could be streamlined by including reps from the MPAA/RIAA.
Hey wait! Gotta go...I'm off to see my patent attorney, who is on retainer.
at a respected liberal arts university.
Hey! Were you that guy who was working late at the ice cream shop when the two hot coeds came in? You know...and you never thought it would happen to you?
If somebody wants to sneak a quick drink one night, is he really going to share that with a group of semi-strangers at the next AA meeting?
It'll never work.
Patenting laser tag wouldn't get you hated. Patenting tag would.
Number of times one of my ideas becamed a patented product: 2.
What was the other one?
or does the Unix graphic on this story look like it was taken from that "flying words" screensaver that comes with Windows. Very disorienting.
this guy.
Listen to the whole thing...it goes critical at 20.3 seconds.
Thank you for the Ben Franklin quote, which I haven't seen in several hours.
My post was in response to comments such as 'guess they consider model rockets to be weapons of mass destruction now.' The fact is that the new legislation deals with the movement of hazardous materials, which happens to cover model rocket engines. If people are concerned about how the new restrictions affect model rocketry, it would be a worthwhile effort to influence the legislation, or to lobby the shippers to go through the extra trouble of certifying their personel. Fabricating ridiculous claims about the feds targeting model rocketry, on the other hand, is not a worthwhile effort.
Please people, I'm begging you. This article says NOTHING ABOUT BANNING MODEL ROCKETS. Read the article, or get a life, or both.