How dose the house always win? Are they simply cheating?
In: Mathematics
remember that most casino games are not games of skill, but games of chance, and that there is a chance element even in the games that can be influenced by some skill, like blackjack or poker. Blackjack is more-or-less a solved game; depending on the particular rules, there are charts out for the ideal action (hit, stay, double, split) for any given hand you have versus the dealer’s up-card, but in the end the odds of ending up with a hand that is greater than the dealer’s is still not greater than the odds of losing to the dealer even with perfect play by just the odds of what information you have from the current board-state; to push the odds in your favor, you have to also take into account information about the games before, and what cards are currently not in the deck (this is card counting), and know when you have an overall better chance of getting a winning hand, and thus should bet more, to come out overall ahead.
This is also why casinos will absolutely kick you out if you’re counting cards.
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