What NOT to do in a Casino

[EricKei]

If you don't play, you can't win.

A strange game. The only way to win is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

(Sorry, SS, I had to. It is a moral imperative )

[wolfie]

The only thing I ever found "works" with the pokie machines (and even this is incredibly unreliable) - A couple of times in the past I'd go for a wander in to have a look around, mostly out of curiosity, if I saw a machine that someone had pumped a lot of money into and gotten little to nothing out of it, chances were that it was not far off spitting out a big prize.

That's item #1 on the list of gamblers' fallacies - the belief that the dice have memory. A machine which has had a pile of money pumped into it is no more (and no less) likely to pay off than an identical machine which has just hit a jackpot.

[Headset Hellion]

On the financial side of things, please do not go to the casino and withdraw $10,000 (yes, I said TEN THOUSAND) dollars from your credit card as a cash advance...and then call your bank to complain that you cannot believe how much interest you're paying! Bonus suck if you also yell about the transaction fee.

[wolfie]

WTF? You'd think the credit card companies would automatically flag a large cash advance at a casino as suspicious - great way for a thief to gamble with someone else's money.

[Seshat]

Addiction is an illness. Self delusion is one of the symptoms.
<snip>
If you don't play, you can't win.

One of the common delusions of the gambler is that the chance of winning is significantly raised by playing.

Buy a ticket in the big lotto? You now have a 1 in 10-to-the-X chance of winning - where X is a ridiculously large number. Maybe 1 in 100000000000, maybe more or fewer 0s. I dunno. But it's not enough to give you a significant chance of winning.

[sms001]

...common delusions of the gambler is that the chance of winning is significantly raised by playing.

Mathematically, the difference between zero and any positive number is, indeed, significant.

'f course, I define "winning" as me having my money instead of Harrah's or the state of Wisconsin, so....

Maybe 1 in 100000000000, maybe more or fewer 0s. I dunno. But it's not enough to give you a significant chance of winning.

1:175,223,510 for Powerball.

But as I've mentioned in previous lotto threads, an overheard snippet from a custy is kind of how I view things too: I'm not really gambling, I'm paying two dollars to fantasize a bit.

[smileyeagle1021]

One thing that's always been true at casinos is that the House Always Wins.

Serious talk-- many gamblers have superstitions and believe very strongly that some machines are "luckier" than others. If you try to present them with evidence to the contrary, they won't care. It's their "lucky" machine. Or "lucky" table. Or "lucky" bracelet. Or "lucky" ring.

Etc.

Umm... raising my hand here... working in the finance office, I can tell you that there are most definitely "lucky tables" and "lucky machines"... seriously, we can't explain it, but we have tables that consistently lose money, and it's not that it's because it is a different game, we have 6 blackjack tables, 5 of them consistently turn a profit, the 6th will lose money two or three times a week. Not to mention we do have slot machines that consistently pay out more often than the others (still house advantage, let's not kid ourselves), but it gives you a better chance of being one of those lucky people who walks out ahead of the house (we actually love those people, they tend to bring more people back with them who will NOT leave with more money than they came in with). That is part of why people who work in finance aren't allowed to gamble in their own casino... the official stand of the gaming board is that all wins are determined by pure chance and that there is no such thing as lucky machines... but in case they do exist, it would create an unfair advantage for the finance employees who track the machine pays.

[sms001]

the official stand of the gaming board is that all wins are determined by pure chance and that there is no such thing as lucky machines... but in case they do exist, ...

Huh! Interesting tidbit smiley. Wonder if there's been any REALLY long range analysis of this.

[Seshat]

Side note and kind'a question here:

I've long been of the opinion that in the games of 'skill' - or rather, relative skill, such as poker and blackjack - the statistics end up roughly like this:

- house gets a portion
- most players lose
- some players (the most skilled, the luckiest) go home with a portion of what the losers lost.

So basically it ends up being: Losers' losses = house portion + winner's winnings.

At least over a long enough period of time. There might be times where the house loses for a while (or in one of six tables, perhaps); but not in the long run.

[Chromatix]

Continuing that line of thought, most likely the table that sometimes comes out ahead overall (from the players' point of view) is simply the one that is noticed least by the novice players when they enter the premises - so it has a higher proportion of experienced players.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I pawned her off on a slot attendant who later told me this customer blew a gasket when it was discovered her machine had been sent back to the vendor and thus permanently removed from the floor.

To quote Merida from "Brave"...

Aww, Wee lamb.

[Canarr]

I won, I won!! Oh wait.

Well yes sir, you did win $2500 on a slot machine congratulations. Unfortunately you're on our self exclusion list which means we take your winnings and send you out of here in a police car, but thanks for playing.

(A "self exclusion" list is for people with a gambling problem. They can basically ban themselves from area casinos, thus making them ineligible for winnings and subject to arrest for trespass if they come on property).

The casino gets to keep the guy's winnings? How exactly does that help the compulsive gambler?

[fireheart]

The casino gets to keep the guy's winnings? How exactly does that help the compulsive gambler?

Slot machines tend to work on the intermittent rewards scheme, the idea that you'll receive a reward after a while, but the time between rewards differs every time. That can lead some people to sit obsessively at the machine for hours, in the hopes that they'll receive something after a certain number of spins, then try again until they get more.
By breaking the cycle early enough and by removing the winnings, the theory that would be running through his head looks like "there's not much point playing if the house receives the reward instead of me."
That's in theory anyway.

For the record, i am not a psych, I did do some psych classes in high school.

[Seshat]

The key google phrases for those with more interest in this aspect of behavioural psychology would be 'operant conditioning', 'variable reinforcement' and 'skinner box'.

[Kagato]

That's item #1 on the list of gamblers' fallacies - the belief that the dice have memory. A machine which has had a pile of money pumped into it is no more (and no less) likely to pay off than an identical machine which has just hit a jackpot.

Maybe, but then again I play them maybe once a year if that, so maybe I am just lucky.