href="#fb3_img_img_404dce5d-2711-51f8-ab63-62c8013a6f04.png" alt="Bullet"/> Coming to terms with the concept of luck
When Kevin told a friend he was writing this book, his friend laughed and said the title was appropriate because “only dummies would ever gamble.” Although it’s true that most people who gamble do lose, the real dummies are the ones who take on the casinos without first educating themselves — especially on concepts about probability and odds, understanding the house edge, and identifying which games offer the best chance for success.
Sounds like the intro to a lecture in higher mathematics? Don’t worry; this chapter is brief — just enough to prepare you to walk through those casino doors, make sound gambling choices, and get wise to certain myths and superstitions.
Defining Luck: A Temporary Fluctuation
Unfortunately, too many newbie gamblers rely on luck to guide their experiences. Casinos can be an easy place to burn through money, so your best chance for hanging on to that hard-earned cash is through a little dose of knowledge. But, you wonder, when it comes to striking it rich in the casino, isn’t there such a thing as luck? Technically, the answer is yes — but don’t count on your rabbit’s foot to keep you on the path to riches over the long haul. The term luck can describe many situations, especially in gambling. Someone may have a lucky run at the baccarat table, or maybe your Aunt Rosemary plays a lucky slot machine that never loses.
For example, in three-card poker, for every $100 you wager, you can expect to lose a little over two bucks. But remember, that’s an average loss over an infinite number of games. Over the short run, anything can happen. You may get lucky and finish the day ahead — or you may get unlucky and lose far more than $2.
In a purely mathematical sense, neither of these results has anything to do with luck. They are simply the normal consequences of fluctuation. For example, try flipping a coin. Half the time, it should be tails, and half the time, it will be heads. Flip it 1,000 times, and you’ll get close to 500 each. Now zoom in on any consecutive sequence of 20 coin flips out of that 1,000, and you’ll find sets of 20 that veer way off the path from 50 percent.
Understanding the Role of Probability
Millions of merry gamblers frequent casinos all over the world every day without a clear understanding of one important concept — probability. Mastering one of the more complex branches of mathematics isn’t necessary for successful gambling. But an elementary understanding of probability is certainly helpful in making sound gambling choices.
Ratio — 1 in 2 times
Fraction — ½ or half the time
Percentage — 50 percent
Decimal — .50, which is the same as 50 percent
Odds — 1-to-1Odds is an overloaded word in casino gambling. In this case, it’s an expression of the number of times something won’t happen next to the number of times it will happen. So, 1-to-1 odds means an event is an even-money event; it has an equal chance of occurring or not occurring. But odds has another meaning: The amount of money you win compared to the money you risk. If a bet payoff is concerned, we’ll refer to it as the payout odds.
(If you’re champing at the bit to find out more in-depth info about probability, there’s a 100 percent chance you’ll love reading Probability For Dummies by Deborah Rumsey, PhD, [Wiley].) This section looks a bit closer at probability’s role in casino gambling.
Identifying independent events
Another important term to understand here is independent outcomes. Being independent has nothing to do with successfully ditching your loser boyfriend in the casino bar. In gambling, independent events are those where the probability of the outcome doesn’t change from one event to the next. Dice throws and roulette wheel spins are good examples of independent events; they aren’t affected by any previous results. Craps dice, roulette balls, and fair coins have no memory. Each new throw, spin, or flip is independent of all previous turns. In other words, the dice or ball doesn’t know what numbers are running hot or cold, so the probability of the outcome for each and every spin is exactly the same.
Slot games and other forms of automated and digital gambling inside a casino are also independent. Recent jackpots do not change the likelihood of the same combination coming up again. If your chances of lining up three cherries are 5,000-to-1, and you just hit the jackpot, the three cherries have exactly the same chances of appearing on the very next spin.
Recognizing dependent events
So, you may be asking yourself, what constitutes a nonindependent or dependent event? Dependent events are occurrences that are more or less likely based on the previous occurrences. Imagine a bag of five black balls and five red balls. Before you pull a ball out, you know you have a 50 percent chance of pulling out a black ball and the same odds of pulling out a red ball. Then you reach in and pull out one red ball and toss it aside. Now the odds have changed — you no longer have a 50 percent chance of pulling either ball. Because you’ve removed a red ball, your chances of pulling out a black ball are now greater (56 percent). In other words, the probability of a single pull is dependent on previous events.
So, in some situations, the past does affect the future. Another classic example is the game of blackjack, in which the composition of the remaining deck changes as cards are dealt out to players. As we’ll discuss in Chapter 7, your chances for getting a natural 21 get lower as more aces are dealt from the deck.
