If a gambler and the casino keep going forever, how come the casino is always the winner?
In: Mathematics
Let’s say that you and I decide to play a game. I’m going to put 51 red balls and 49 green balls into a bag. You draw a ball out without looking, then you look at it and put it back in the bag. If it’s a red ball, you give me a dollar. If it’s a green ball, I give you a dollar.
That means that after we play 100 times, on average, I’m going to win 2 more times than you did, so you’re going to have $2 less.
Now let’s stretch that out into 100,000 games. On average, you’re going to lose $2000 to me. Now, you’re going to hit lucky streaks here and there, and at certain times you’ll probably have more money than you started with. But if you don’t have the good sense to stop playing at that point and walk away with your winnings, eventually, odds dictate that you’re going to continually lose money over time until you eventually run out of money and can’t play anymore.
That’s how casinos work. Pretty much every game at the casino (where you play against the casino, we’re not talking about games where you compete against other players like poker) is designed to give the house (the casino) a very slight advantage. In slots, it’s because the machines are programmed that way. In roulette, it’s the 0 (and often 00) spaces on the wheel. In blackjack, it’s that the players are forced to play first (and possibly bust) before they see what the dealer does, including losing their bets even if the dealer busts as well (there are a few other things as well, like insurance bets and the dealer automatically winning if they deal themselves blackjack).
It’s absolutely possible to walk out of a casino with more money than you went in with. If it wasn’t, people would never play. The problem is that when you play long enough, eventually statistics dictate that you’ll lose all of your money (which is something that the casino can’t really do). That’s why it’s so important to stop while you’re ahead.
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