If the house is favored in the long run how do pro gamblers make money?
In: Mathematics
Mostly it’s by playing ‘multiplayer’ games such as stud poker, where most of the money they win is coming from other players, not from the house.
You may have heard of games, such as blackjack, where some pro players can use techniques like card-counting to give themselves an edge over the house. That’s increasingly a thing of the past. Nowadays, most casinos use techniques to defeat the statistical advantages of card-counting, such as using many decks of cards in one shoe, and reshuffling the deck ‘early’, before the cards run out. Some very skilled and dedicated players still manage to eke out an advantage despite these measures, partly by colluding in secret, and partly by being very conservative and only playing at tables whose card count is *very* lopsided… but playing this way demands a lot of work and patience. It’s not exactly easy money.
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