Anybody here ever make money gambling?

[MossRoad]

Gambling quiz: if a flipped coin is heads 10 times in a row, what are the chances of it coming up heads on the 11th time?

I'd think the chances are 50/50 if you take each coin flip as an individual event, but the probability is much less that it will occur the same way time after time.

The words chance and probability are chance being a guess and the probability being an actual number.

We play heads or tails at church events. Everyone puts in $1. Then you put your hands on your head or on your butt. The MC flips a coin. Everyone who guessed incorrectly sits down. The remaining choose again and again until there is only one person left. That person gets half the pot, the church gets the other half. Kinda fun. We were at one that came up the same about 7 times in a row. Finally switched on the 8th.

 

[MossRoad]

My in-laws left for the casino about 8:00pm the other night. The both lost $50 each. So they moved to another room in the casino. FIL won $150. MIL won over $300. They got home about 1:30am. She's 79 and he's 91. They do this a couple times a week. It's nuts. But she keeps winning. We know no one else that wins that often.

 

[Jstpssng]

My in-laws left for the casino about 8:00pm the other night. The both lost $50 each. So they moved to another room in the casino. FIL won $150. MIL won over $300. They got home about 1:30am. She's 79 and he's 91. They do this a couple times a week. It's nuts. But she keeps winning. We know no one else that wins that often.

If they're doing it for recreation and it's just your wife's inheritance they're spending, more power to them! :thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

If they're doing it for recreation and it's just your wife's inheritance they're spending, more power to them! :thumbsup:

Here's something my folks taught me a long time ago....

It's not your inheritance, it's our retirement.

I got no problem with that.

Not many of us do want to leave something to our children when we're gone. We've found that when the kids are young, you want to make sure they're provided for if something happens to you. By the time they start earning their own way, and you see that they could make it on their own if you were gone, it starts getting easier to spend your money on enjoyment/entertainment VS saving it in case the kids need it. It's a good feeling to watch them grow up and fend for themselves successfully. :thumbsup:

 

[California]

Our shop of Internal Auditors (like Inspector General etc) in a Big Public Agency had a minimum qualification of 20 units of Accounting and Statistics just to get on the hiring list. When I started (Management Auditor, not financial) there was a paycheck pool. Whoever had the closest serial number on their paystub to some arbitrary number, won the pool. Over time anyone's odds were breakeven.

Then the California Lottery opened. This paycheck pool now 'invested' the money collected for a pot, into buying multiple lottery tickets for the pool winner. WTH??? One's chance of winning, over time, went from breakeven to less than 50%. Then to get one step stupider, whoever won the pot nearly always 'invested' their lottery wins in buying more lottery tickets. You can see where this is going. Gambling against bad odds, multiple times, has a net expected outcome of zero. I sat back and watched this, couldn't convince the enthusiasts they were acting foolish. These were people responsible for evaluating effectiveness of government programs! California government is pretty efficient, it has fewer employees per population than many other states and few scandals. But the standards we applied objectively in our studies, didn't seem to be meaningful to some of the individuals in this branch.

 

[jmc]

How does this parlor game work?

5 bored guys:

first guy challenges the other 4 to fool him in a series of coin tosses.

3 guys IMAGINE tossing a coin 10 times and write down heads or tails for each IMAGINARY toss.

4th guy actually tosses the coin 10 times and records the results of each toss.

1st guy reviews all 4 results and correctly declares 4th guy having the authentic results.

I haven't tried this yet but the theory is that the guys who "imagine" each coin toss will likely base their "result" on the 50/50 distribution after 10 tosses. So their results might cluster between say, 60/40 and 50/50. The other tell on the imagined results are that the heads and tails are staggered somewhat regularly. So, no long streaks.

OTO, the guy who actually tosses the coin won't necessarily cluster around 50/50 on such a small number of tosses. And long streaks are very possible.

So the challenger picks the most erratic result as the real deal. They say it works most of the time.

 

[hawkeye08]

Growing up, Mom and Pa went to Reno for a week without us kids. Pa was very sharp at cards and won often. They always said the vacation was free, everything paid for including gas money by the winnings. Pa was very disciplined, no emotion, he had limits for losing and limits for winning, never got greedy. A neighbor couple was just the opposite, they always lost.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

When you lose three times in a row, and walk away, when is the right time to return?

1 day, 1 hour? one minute? or one second? Are you playing games with logic, statistics or emotion?

I go to another table if available or another casino. Third base is my preferred spot as you see what everyone else is doing. We set a goal for each session with a quit point. As long as the winnings are occurring we stay where we are but 3 losses and we move. Not winning is boring anyway. As long as the daily limit has not occurred we will move around. The casino is not the primary object of our trip. if winnings continue we move up from $5 to $10, then to $25 minimum bet. I have been known to hit the $100 tables also. Once we start betting more than $5 is always on their money not ours.

Ron

 

[lman]

I remember when I was young and helping my Dad plant corn, he said that he was gambling. He usually broke even. I don't think he ever made much money farming. I thought I should share this since it is a tractor forum.

 

[DerbyRunner]

Years ago, when I had a lot of disposable income, my wife and I practiced BJ at home heavily ... We had a lot of fun and only spent 3-4 hours/day

Well now I am quite jealous!