Thu 29 Jul 2004
Charles Soha ‘05 shows that math is money. He also notes that:
At the casinos in Sydney and Melbourne at least, I couldn’t find any tables that had low minimum bet and high max bet. They cap it off such that the player can’t reap the benefits of the law of large numbers so that the casino is ultimately at a long-run advantage. If someone who has travelled extensively knows where theres a 5 or 10 min bet with a 10,000 or higher max bet, let me know, I want to go there soon, I could use a new car.
I am no math major, but I can’t see how the law of large numbers applies here. Almost all casino games are, obviously, tilted to favor the house. The more that you play, the more likely you are to end up a loser. Bet size, or range of bet sizes, has nothing to do with it.
The only possible exception would be blackjack where minimal card counting skills will give you an edge that can be exploited by varying your bet size. But 1) Casinos know this and look out for customers who vary their bet sizes in this way and 2) You don’t need an excessively wide range of bet sizes for this to work.
But perhaps I am missing the point here . . .
July 29th, 2004 at 8:06 am
In his blog, he talks of two casinos - one is the online type, one is the bricks and mortar type. For the online one, he has a “scam” that is just a matter of getting very low amounts of money for what I would argue is too much work (considering the potential lack of payout).
That said, the part about physical casinos where he says that due to the min/max bet spreads a separate issue comes up in that he can’t win… that is very likely to be his way of saying that he wants to use a Martingale exploit on the roulette wheel.
These worked back in the day (well before the 1970s, but hard… for me at least, when exactly everyone got wise), but now no casino will allow your bet to go high enough.
Otherwise they would get entirely cleaned out immediately by a group of interested individuals who pool their money.
He is much better off looking into a place that can’t afford to rotate out the wheels, so that the roulette wheel and croupier are the same on a regular basis and then tracking the stats on that.
If/when Bermuda ever gets a casino, you can bet your ass I am going to hope that they skimp on the wheels and I am going to track the hell out of those things.
That said, as a resident, it is feasible that I won’t be allowed to gamble or even enter the casinos were they to even be built.
July 29th, 2004 at 8:11 am
My head is apparently empty after today’s run - up there I meant to convey that prior to 1970 you may have been able to do it - but it is hard for me to say exactly how long ago the system was put in place - other than “sometime around 1970″… although I wouldn’t be surprised if even in the ’40s it was limited.
You want a very low/small minimum bet amount so that you can slowly increment up - and then you want either a massively high cap, or no cap at all.