Frommer's Las Vegas 2004

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CHAPTER 8 . ABOUT CASINO GAMBLING
The reasoning of the mathematician is quite correct, that of the gambler
is quite wrong (in either one of his scenarios), but just as long as that isn’t a
double-tailed coin. The point of view taken by the magician is highly specialized,
but human nature being what it is, that view is probably the correct one.
In professional gambling centers such as Las Vegas, great care is taken to
ensure that there are no two-tailed quarters or other purposeful anomalies that
enable cheating to take place. The casinos make their percentages on the builtin
mathematical advantage, which is clearly stated and available to any who ask,
and though that is a very tiny “edge,” it’s enough to pay for the razzle-dazzle that
lures in the customers. It’s volume that supports the business. The scrutiny that
is applied to each and every procedure in Vegas is evident everywhere.
So, Fallacy Number One is: Cheating of some sort is necessary for an operation
to prosper. It isn’t.
Fallacy Number Two: Some people just have “hunches” and “visions” that
enable them to win at the slots and tables. Sorry folks, it just ain’t so. The science
of parapsychology, which has studied such claims for many decades now,
has never come up with evidence that any form of clairvoyance (“clear-seeing,”
the supposed ability to know hidden data, such as the next card to come up in
a deal or the next face on the dice) or telepathy (“mind reading”) actually exists.
It’s remarkably easy for us to imagine that we have a hot streak going, or that the
cards are falling our way, but the inexorable laws of chance prevail and always will.
Fallacy Number Three: There are folks who can give us systems for winning.
Now, judicious bet placing is possible, and there are mathematical methods of
minimizing losses, it’s true. But the investment and base capital needed to follow
through with these methods makes them a rather poor investment. The
return percentage can be earned much more easily by almost any other form of
endeavor, at less risk and less expenditure of boring hours following complicated
charts and equations. The best observation we can make on the “systems” is: Why
would the inventors of the “systems” sell something that they themselves could
use to get rich, which is what they say you can do with it? Think about that!
Of course, the simplest of all the systems is bet doubling. It sounds great in
theory, but an hour spent tossing coins in your hotel room, or at the gaming
tables, will convince you that theory and practice are quite different matters. Bet
doubling, as applied to heads or tails (on a fair coin!), consists of placing a unit
bet on the first coin toss, then pocketing the proceeds if you win, but doubling
your bet on the next toss if you lose. If you get a lose, lose, win sequence, that
means you will have lost three units (one plus two) and won four. You’re up one
unit. You start again. If you get a lose, lose, lose, win sequence, you’ve put out
15 units and brought in 16. Again, you’re only up one unit. And no matter how
long your sequences go, you’ll always be up only one unit at the end of a
sequence. It requires you to make that “unit” somewhat sizable if you want to
have any significant winnings at all, and that may mean going bankrupt by simply
running out of capital before a sequence ends—and if you hang on, you’ll
only have been able to end up one unit ahead, in any case. Not a good investment
at all.
Fallacy Number Four: Studying the results of the roulette wheels will provide
the bettor with useful data. We’re peculiar animals in that we constantly
search for meaning in all sets of observations. That’s how subjects of Rorschach
tests find weird faces, figures, and creatures in inkblots that are actually random
patterns with single symmetry. Similarly, any sets of roulette results are, essentially,
random numbers; there are no patterns to be found there that can give