“You can lose faith in everything, religion and God, women and love, good and evil, war and peace. You name it. But the percentage will always stand fast.”
I have always been interested in casino games and the chances of winning. Very few of the games actually require skill, leaving you to rely on a press of a button or a lucky number getting called. Many people believe that a trip to Las Vegas is going to make them rich, but instead the promise of winning makes you forget that the odds are clearly not in your favor. Math doesn’t lie.
The percentages mentioned in the quotation above is the reason why casinos are so profitable. There is always a house advantage that owners have studied to ensure that they are making money at the end of the day.
So consider the scenario where you are placing $5 bets in a game of roulette.
The expected value (EV) of a game is the amount expected to win or lose long term if the same bet is made repeatedly. Betting $5 for every play on the color red would yield an EV of -$0.263. With this strategy, the player would expect to lose about a quarter if this same play is made every time.
What does that mean for the house? The house advantage is the negative of the player’s expectation. So if the player expects to lose a quarter, the house expects to gain $0.263/$5.
The calculation for the player’s expected value is as follows:
EV = (5)(18/38) + (-5)(20/38) = -0.263
Therefore the house advantage is:
0.263/5 = 5.26%
Although we know that the odds of winning are slim, this is precisely why people find the games so fun. If you bet enough money and win just once, the pay out can be huge. So much so that if a few players win big, the casino will start to sweat. But since everything is based on math and logic, they really have nothing to fear.
A few months ago I went to Las Vegas and played roulette fully knowing that I was not going to win. It was an interesting experience because while you know math dictates, you need luck to win. Since the casinos know that you are more likely to rely on luck than logic, they put up a screen that displays the “hot numbers” and “cold numbers” as well as the last five numbers that were picked. They try to rope you into thinking that since 3/5 of the last numbers picked were odd, choosing an odd number should increase your chances of success. You tend to forget that previous draws don’t matter. The odds each time the ball is put into the wheel stay exactly the same. However, remembering this fact makes the game significantly less fun. I guess the value of fun outweighs the value of money lost?
Sources:
Hannum, Robert. “UNLV Center for Gaming Research: Casino Mathematics.”UNLV Center for Gaming Research: Casino Mathematics. N.p., 5 June 2012. Web. 13 Jan. 2017. <http://gaming.unlv.edu/casinomath.html>.
I do not understand the allure of casino games as most times they may even be rigged against the player. It is literally throwing money away for the slim chance of winning. There is not much skill involved in things like this and you are better off playing RNG heavy video games which don’t involve the real money risk.
I, personally, have never been to a casino yet but I have always interrogated the idea of why someone would want to play a game such as roulette or a slots that requires no skill with the odds not in your favor. In a study shown by PBS, 29.6 million people traveled to Las Vegas in 1996 where the average stay was about 3.7 days. Out that number, 87% of people who visited Las Vegas had gambled (PBS.org). According to what David Oldman writes, he describes several people who he had interviewed in Las Vegas that had essentially went bankrupt by being addicted to games such as slots and roulette (Oldman). Like Audra had asked, “I guess the value of fun outweighs the value of money lost?”
Though I personally am not a fan of casino-style games, the knowledge created by the enormous user base of these style of games and principles of gambling, especially luck and house advantage, can easily be leveraged into video games and, in particular, mobile games. Regarding mobile games, these statistics can help determine what kind of gambling games can be made to where the company or individual who had developed it can make massive profit and still keep up good ratings and a giant crowd of users. Some ideas, such as, “the value of fun outweighs the value of money lost”, can even be used to leverage non casino-style games too using specific in-app purchasable items.
References:
Oldman, David. (1974). CHANCE AND SKILL: A STUDY OF ROULETTE. Sage Publications, Ltd.
PBS.org. retrieved from: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gamble/etc/facts.html
Hi trh5227: I definitely agree with everything you’ve pointed out. Also, I think you make a really good parallel into regular computer games. Your point about casino games only lasting about 60 seconds is completely accurate. When you take a step back it really seems like a waste of time and money. The slot machines can eat up $20 in 3 button presses. In my opinion, I’d rather hand the $20 over to some random stranger, buy food, or donate it than watch it get eaten up by the casino like pocket change. I honestly think it’d be more fun to just throw the money out of a moving car!
I’ve thought a lot about why people find casino games so fun, especially ones like slot machines or roulette where there is absolutely no skill involved whatsoever. I’ve been to casinos before but have not gambled (I fear that my love of games may translate too well into gambling), and have seen people win and lose against the house. I’ve considered the idea that the value of the experience may be worth more than the value of the money, but what keeps me from agreeing with this notion is the amount of money generally lost than playing casino games is usually a lot, at least compared to the cost of something that I would think is a more fun experience, such as buying a game or going to the movies.
What I’ve surmised is that the experience of playing a game like roulette is not enough to warrant such popularity, but rather it is the idea of the experience of being the “big winner”, and winning a lot of money. Between the betting, actual playing of the game, and the payouts, a casino game doesn’t actually last more than sixty seconds. I find it akin to the process of farming or loot grinding in certain types of video games: you’re not really interested in repeatedly killing that boss over and over again, you’re interested in getting that one item that’s got such a low drop rate.