Gambling

2 Pages 401 Words

The casino operators know the laws of probability very well. They know, for example, the odds against getting any one of four possible Royal Flushes in a hand of poker are 649,739 to 1; they are aware that the odds of drawing any one of 624 possible hands of - four of a kind, that is four 2’s, four 10’s, etc., are 4,164 to 1; that in a roll of two die, the odds against a single roll of 2, are 36 to 1. They know if you throw a six faced die once, the chance of getting a 1 or 6 is 1/3, getting an even number is ½, getting a number less than three is 1/3 and getting a number less than 5 is 2/3.
In terms of gambling is the more money you have to wager, and if you pace yourself in betting, the longer you can stay in the game and thus the greater your odds for winning. The less money you have, and the larger your bets, the shorter the length of time you can play and thus the greater your odds for losing. All professional gamblers know this, but I’m not certain they all know why they know it. The lesson to be
learned being that if you must gamble, and have a small amount of money, wager small amounts so you can stay in the game longer and thereby improve your odds of winning.
Mathematical probability can therefore be said to be proportionate possibility. The mathematician’s definition of what is probable is concerned with what may happen, and is relevant to calculations of practical value only in so far as circumstances warrant the belief that events occur with corresponding frequency in real life. For example, in the
game of roulette, the odds of a bet on black winning as opposed to red is 50 - 50. This leads to a paradox in the theory of probability resulting from the fact that the outcome of a croupier’s throw is not causally related to the outcome of previous throws. The longest series of black coming up was 28 straight times in a row. Never-the-less the chances of
black turning up on the 29th roll was still 50 - 50. A...