Roulette
Posted by Daniel Lyons Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:03:00 GMT
About a week ago I volunteered for the synagogue at Casino Night. I was basically a gopher bringing people coffee, moving ice and plasticware from point A to point B. It felt good though, the antithesis of my work.
I did take two breaks, one to play roulette for a few minutes. I like roulette because it’s very raw. There aren’t a lot of arbitrary rules to remember while you’re trying to compute the probability. In my opinion, one of the best bets in the whole casino can be found there, the color bet: red or black. Of course you can see with your eyes that you’re still a sucker; there are two uncolored slots. You know the odds are close to 50% but just not quite. You’re still a fool if you bet on it, and over time you’re probably going to go broke.
While I was playing and thinking about this I was thinking about what the curriculum for being a casino worker is. They have schools for this stuff; surely they have curricula. I supposed it would include all the rules, plus a bunch of social things like how to suppress your “tells,” how to encourage someone to keep betting, how to be cute or handsome and perhaps even politeness. The dealer (name another industry with this profession, quick) was certainly cute and polite. I lost a couple chips and she said “better luck next time.” I was betting on red, like any wannabe mathematician.
I wonder if they teach any probability? I wonder if they talk about luck. It seems to me if I wanted to hire a bunch of casino workers, I’d like them to know as little about probability as possible. If they know probability, they might admit something they shouldn’t, like discourage a sucker bet. Or they might not be able to pretend to be “fun” if that’s something they’re supposed to do. Do they teach how to spot, say, card counting? If they do, how can they avoid probability? Or is the whole luck thing a charade, false affect to induce irrational behavior by luring customers into safe-feeling but false frames of mind? Or do they even think this far into the game?
My friends think my bets are weird. I like to arrange negative bets, bets against myself, so that if something bad happens, someone will pay me. I recently made a bet that someone on Craigslist wouldn’t write me back after seeing my picture. The wager was that, if she wrote me, I would pay these friends $20; if she did not, they would pay me $1. So I’ve got $2 coming in and the assurance that I’m really good at making predictions. If I had lost, then I would have paid $40 out but presumably had the pleasure of going on a date. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand about using small wagers like these to smooth over the bumps in life. (Normally it would have been a meal for a meal kind of bet, but this was the only way to get Jenny to make a bet with me since she’s broke. Sucker bet!)
I could have wagered $100 against $5 and that probably would have been just as safe. At any rate, I lack the devotion to gambling to learn the correct terminology for these kinds of bets.
