Frommer's Las Vegas 2004

THE FOUR MOST PERVASIVE MYTHS ABOUT GAMBLING 205
Impressions
Stilled forever is the click of the roulette wheel, the rattle of dice, and
the swish of cards.
—Shortsighted editorial in the Nevada State Journal
after gambling was outlawed in 1910
addition to the instructions below,
you’ll find dozens of books on how to
gamble at all casino hotel gift shops,
and many casinos offer free gaming
lessons on the premises.
The third part of this chapter
describes all the major casinos in
town. Remember that gambling is
supposed to be entertainment. Picking
a gaming table where the other players
are laughing, slapping each other on
the back, and generally enjoying
themselves tends to make for considerable
more fun than a table where
everyone is sitting around in stony
silence, morosely staring at their cards.
Unless you really need to concentrate,
pick a table where everyone seems to
be enjoying themselves, and you will
too, even if you don’t win. Maybe.
1 The Four Most Pervasive Myths About Gambling
by James Randi
James Randi is a world-class magician (the Amazing Randi), now
involved in examining supernatural, paranormal, and occult claims. He is
the author of 11 books on these subjects, and is the president of the
James Randi Educational Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The
JREF offers a prize of $1.1 million to any person who can produce a
demonstration of any paranormal activity. His website is www.randi.org,
where details of the offer can be found.
Most of us know little, if anything, about statistics. It’s a never-never land we can
live without, something for those guys in white coats and thick glasses to mumble
over. And because we don’t bother to learn the basics of this rather interesting
field of study, we sometimes find ourselves unable to deal with the realities
that the gambling process produces.
I often present my audiences with a puzzle. Suppose that a mathematician, a
gambler, and a magician are walking together on Broadway and come upon a
small cluster of people who are observing a chap standing at a small table set up
on the sidewalk. They are told that this fellow has just tossed a quarter into the air
and allowed it to fall onto the table, nine times. And that has produced nine “tails”
in a row. Now the crowd is being asked to bet on what the next toss of the coin
will bring. The question: How will each of these three observers place their bets?
The mathematician will reason that each toss of the coin is independent of the
last toss, so the chances are still exactly 50/50 for heads or tails. He’ll say that either
bet is okay, and that it doesn’t make any difference which decision is made.
The gambler will go one of two ways; either he’ll reason that there’s a “run”
taking place here—and that a bet on another tail will be the better choice—or
he’ll opine that it’s time for the head to come up, and he’ll put his wager on that
likelihood.
The magician? He has the best chance of winning, because he knows that
there is only 1 chance in 512 that a coin will come up tails nine times in a row—
unless there’s something wrong with that coin! He’ll bet tails and he’ll win!