If a gambler and the casino keep going forever, how come the casino is always the winner?
In: Mathematics
The odds are set that way.
Look at roulette, there are the numbers 1 to 36, and a 0 and 00. Which is 38 numbers (or 37 if there’s only one 0). But the payout is still based on the 1:36 as if the 0’s weren’t there.
So you have a 1:38 chance to win a 35:1 payout. That is, of course, not equal. It favors the house.
That’s why the house always wins.
So the games themselves are actually rigged with a “house edge”, its a small % in their favour.. This small %, when played out over infinite time, means that the house will always win, however in the short term its easily possible for players to win.
Think Roulette. There are 37 numbers, a 1 in 37 chance to win, yet the payout is 35-1. That small payout difference is the house edge. In BlackJack, the players play first and going bust is an automatic loss, when in a purely fair game player bust/dealer bust would be a draw. Thats the house edge.
The term “the house always wins” doesn’t mean it wins EVERY hand or game every time it’s plays. What it means is that it has a slight statistical edge every time someone plays.
Becuase the house plays hundreds of hands per minute or second, they will ALWAYS come out on top to due to the law of large numbers.
So for a single individual, what that means is the longer or more times that person plays, the greater the chance of that person loses overall.
because payouts are never the true odds. if flipping a coin were a casino game you’d probably only win $99 for a $100 bet which would make the expected winnings for the player $49.50 per flip and the EV of every flip is $50 for the casino.
because they ban or trespass anyone from the property or casino that becomes a long term positive expected value bettor
Even if I win $100,000 playing cards, there’s hundreds if not thousands of people at that same moment losing money at other table games, slot machines and other machines.
The odds are ever so slightly in their favor, and they will be here tomorrow while you will not. If you look at roulette for example, there are 38 slots on the wheel. So if the game was fair, it would pay out 37:1. It pays out 35:1. Even if you go on a hot streak, over the long term, the house will come out ahead. In poker, the house has zero risk, because the players are betting against each other. The house just takes 10% off the top, and just sits back and watches.
There is a >50% chance for them to win at every step of the way.
They don’t need YOU to lose, they will beat someone else. There’s always more losers than winners at the casino, and because of this, the house always wins.
They have rigged the deck before you set foot on the property. It was rigged at its inception, it has always been rigged against the average man, and it will stay this way for as long as casinos exist.
What happens if this is not true? The casino will ban you for winning too much, literally. This is why counting cards in BJ gets you thrown out. There is a way to win using probabilities, but using this method is will earn you a ban, it’s INSANE.
In a fair game, you can do whatever you need to win. Imagine telling Lebron he isn’t allowed to wear shoes anymore because he’s winning too much basketball.
If the game starts losing the casino money? They can always just scrap the whole thing. They’re not there to provide you a fair chance at winning, they’re there to trick you into playing a losing game so that they can make money
They make the rules! Plan and simple.
Keep in mind when you think of the gambler winning vs the house, you usually thinking of one gambler vs the house. IRL that is never the case. It is 1000s of gambler against the house. So even if 1, 2 ,10, 100 gamblers won this round, 1000’s more lost the same round.
Even if you take a very basic game of Blackjack, with none of the typical house rules. This is one of the most “even” odds game you can play. However, ff a player get a blackjack, he and only he wins. But if the house gets a blackjack, everyone player loses. So the house loves it if one lucky person is winning, so long as they attracts more people to come loose at the same time.
Simple statistics. The house is the one in charge of setting all the rules of the games. They control the payouts, and they are going to naturally adjust things so that it will be favorable to them. You win a 1 in 36 odds dice roll? Your payout is going to be 30:1. Playing roulette? You may notice that the odds of hitting red or black is slightly less than 50/50, despite it being a 2:1 payout.
This means in the long run, the House will always make more than they lose, because the odds are in their favor. And so long they make more than they lose, the house is doing well.
Which is ultimately where the phrase comes from. The idea that even if you are on a hotstreak, over time things will normalize and it will be in the houses favor in the long term
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