Casino Myths
カジノの神殿、Casino Godsへようこそ. 遡ること数千年前、Casino Godsは、ローマやエジプト、ギリシャを含む山々からなる王国、さらには遠く離れた神聖なる領域群を支配していました。. Myth: Casinos pump extra oxygen onto the gaming floors to make players gamble more and/or care.
By John Grochowski
Have you heard the one about the hot craps table, where you just couldn’t lose? Or the cold table where you just couldn’t win?
What about the one about the roulette dealer who could make the ball land wherever he wanted?
Casino lore can be a hit or myth propositon --- as in should the blackjack player seated at third base take one for the team, or is that just a myth?
Sometimes the things people believe about casinos and casino games myth by a mile. Let’s tackle a list of 10 casino myths and do a little busting.
1. Blackjack: The third baseman is a team player, and shouldn't take the dealer's bust card. Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew whether or not the next card in the deck would make the dealer’s handgo bust? When you’re sitting at third base --- the last position at the table to play before the dealer --- and you’re pondering whether to hit your 12 against a dealer’s deuce, or whether todouble down on your Ace-7 vs. a dealer’s 6, wouldn’t you like to be sure if you’re taking the dealer’s bust card?
Problem is, we don’t know what the dealer has face down, and we don’t know what the next card is. The proper basic strategy plays are to hit 12 against 2, and to double down on your soft 18against a 6. But third basemen sometimes get hassled over such plays by those who seem to think there’s something mystical about the order of the cards.
That happened recently to Al, an acquaintance of mine who was baffled by the reaction when he doubled on Ace-7 against a 6.
'I'd just doubled down, and a guy at the other end of the table said, 'You're not a team player,' he said. “And the woman next to him said, 'If you're going to make plays like that, wedon't want to play with you.' And they picked up their chips and left.'
They wanted him to make a bad play, to take one for the team, because they thought he was taking the dealer’s bust card. That’s silly on several levels. When the dealer has a 6 up, there's noguarantee he or she has a high enough card face down that it can be busted with a one-card draw. And even if the dealer does have a high card face down, there's no guarantee that the next cardwill be the bust card. A player who takes a hit at third base — or, in Al's case, doubles down — could just as easily be taking a low card that would make the dealer's hand. He’ll save thetable with that play as often as he hurts it.
Ultimately, the third baseman must make the best play for his own hand. Unless the rest of the table is subsidizing his play, satisfying other players is not his responsibility.
2. Craps: A hot table is likely to stay hot, a cold table is likely to stay cold. Craps players are always looking for hot tables, and avoiding cold ones. But unless you’re dealing withcontrolled rollers, a la Frank Scoblete and his Golden Touch Craps team, I’ve never really seen a reason why a hot table should stay hot, or a cold table stay cold. We are dealing with dice,after all, that don’t know what the previous results have been.
Several years ago, I put it to the test. For nearly a year, every time I was in a casino in the Midwest, South and in Nevada, I stopped by a craps table, waited until I saw twoconsecutive passes, then tracked the result of the next decision --- not as good a sample as a million-hand computer run, but a lot more time-consuming.
The result: Pass bettors won 489 wagers and lost 511 on the next sequence after two consecutive wins. That's close enough to the mathematical expectation of 493 wins and 507 losses that we cansay the percentages held up in this trial.
I also watched 1,000 trials that started with two don’t passes, then charted the next decision. The dice passed 496 times in those 1,000 trials --- just three more passes than the expectedaverage. There were only 28 rolls of 12 on this test, so don't players won 476 bets and lost 496, slightly below their expectation of 479 wins per 972 trials.
Now, a thousand trials each way isn’t enough to satisfy a statistician, but if hot tables stay hot and cold tables stay cold, well, you can’t prove it by me.
3. Roulette: An experienced dealer can make the ball land where he pleases. If a dealer has enough experience and practice, do you think he or she can hit numbers at will? An awful lot ofpeople do.
Dealers I know scoff at the notion. With the wheel spinning one way, the ball going in the opposite direction, bouncing on the surface and from fret to fret separating the numbers, there arefar too many physical variables for a dealer to control where the ball will land.
Dealers not only can't control where the ball is going, their employers don't want them to. As long as the results are random, the casino makes its money. With a random wheel, the house has a5.26 percent house edge on a double-zero game that is unchanging. However, if a dealer could control what numbers were coming up, there's a chance someone would be in on the secret and take alot of money from the casino. That's the last thing the owners want. Random games mean big profits for the operators. Taking the randomness out increases operator risk.
4. Video poker: On a one-card draw, you're likely to draw a card of the same denomination. Dave is a friend of mine who is a good, well-read, well-practiced video poker player. After a short,frustrating session in which he lost all the money he cared to risk for one day, he phoned me to rant.
“Every time I had a one-card draw, the card I drew was the same value as the card I discarded,” he complained.
I suggested there might be a little selective memory at work, and after he let off a little steam, he agreed. Maybe it wasn’t EVERY time.
On the average, one of every 15.67 one-card draws in video poker will bring a card of the same value. If it happened EVERY time, it would be a plus when we have four cards to a flush --- if wediscard a 4, for example, one of the remaining three 4s will complete our flush. That 1 in 3 chance is far better than the 1 in 5.2 chance we really have on a one-card flush draw. On thenegative side, if we were guaranteed a same-value card on every one-card draw, we’d never fill out a four-card straight or turn two pair into a full house.
In the short term, if we get two or three same-card draws close together, we start thinking the machine is doing it all the time. But when you keep careful track of results, the effectdisappears.
That’s what I do. In one session, when it seemed like I was getting a lot of same-card, one-card draws, I started counting results. When the next six one-card draws brought different valuecards, I stopped counting. I really knew the answer before I started. Coincidences sometimes seem like patterns, but machines aren’t really programmed to give you the same card when you drawone.
5. Baccarat: Just as in blackjack, counting cards can help you win. Baccarat is a card game decided by the totals of two or more cards, as is blackjack. So maybe, just maybe, counting the cardscan give the player an edge, just as blackjack card counters can get a mathematical edge on the house. Right?
Well, yes, but not in any practical way. Favorable situations are really rare. The late Peter Griffin wrote in “The Theory of Blackjack” that a baccarat player who doesn't bet unless hehas an advantage can squeeze an edge of about 0.7 percent of his maximum bets on banker and player. However, that player might play only about three hands per eight hours. That's watching, notplaying.
For bets on ties, it's theoretically possible to count down to a 24 percent edge with six cards remaining, provided all the cards are dealt out. In the real world, nobody deals out all thecards, and with one-half deck cut out of play, the bettor's potential edge on the last hand shrinks to just .08 percent. With just a small reservation, we can say the myth of the baccarat cardcounter is JUST a myth.
6. Slot machines: You're more likely to hit a jackpot in a busy casino. I once read a book in which the author advised slot players to play at peak times in busy casinos, because that's whenthe most jackpots are hit. And it's true. More jackpots are hit at peak times in busy casinos than when the casinos aren't so busy.
Why? Because slot machines are played more often at peak times. How does that affect my chances of winning? Not at all.
Let's say I'm in a casino with 1,000 slot machines, each programmed to pay off the top jackpot about once per 20,000 pulls. It's Saturday night, so every machine is busy, all with steadyplayers spinning the reels at about 500 pulls per hour. In two hours the reels spin a collective 1 million times, and, if the machines hit right on the average, 50 jackpots are paid. One inevery 20 players has a big payday. If I'm not one of them, I've at least seen a few jackpots paid.
Now let's say I return early Wednesday morning. Only 100 slot players are in the casino, playing the same 500 pulls per hour as those on the busier night. In two hours, the reels spin only100,000 times, only 10 percent as much as on the busy night. If the machines hit right on the average, only five jackpots are paid.
Fifty jackpots on the busy night. Five on the slow day.
But with only 100 players in the casino, those five jackpots mean one in every 20 players has a big payday --- the same as on the busy night. My chances of being one of those to hit the jackpotare the same on the calm day as on the busy night. I don’t really care how many jackpots are being hit around me. I care about what’s on my own machine. And the presence of a crowd doesn’tchange that one way or the other.
7. Poker: Changing seats can change your luck. There’s nothing any more magical about the order in which the cards come out in poker than there is in blackjack or any other card game. Ifyou’re changing seats because you’ve been getting bad cards and you think moving will bring you better hands, well, good luck to you.
Now, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to change seats. If you’re playing at home and a seat opens that’s closer to the refrigerator, by all means, grab it. If you’re next to a smoker andsee clearer air across the table, go for it.
There are legitimate poker reasons, too. If you see a player at the table who you think you can take advantage of from a different betting position, that’s a move-worthy reason. If you’re onthe other end of the stick, and a player betting before you has you on edge, change seats.
But if you think another seat will bring better cards ... well, there’s as much chance your old seat will get better cards as that your new one will. Past deals have no effect on those in thefuture.
8. Blackjack: It's impossible to count cards in a six-deck game; you'd have to be the Rain Man. On my radio show, I recently had a caller tell me he thought it was impossible to countcards. That showed mostly that he misunderstood what card counters do.
Counting cards does not mean memorizing every card in the deck that’s played. It’s keeping track of the balance of high cards vs. low cards remaining to be played. In a balanced count such asthe common Hi-Lo, if you see a 10 and a 6 come out, you’ve seen a high card and a low card. They cancel each out, you add nothing to your count, and you move on. You don’t have to remember thespecific cards that have been played.
Using a plus-and-minus system, it’s not difficult to count cards, no matter how many decks are in play. Applying the count to your bet size, estimating the number of decks remaining to beplayed, making the changes to basic strategy dictated by the count, keeping your bets appropriate to the size of your bankroll, coping with the distractions in a casino environment --- that canbe difficult. Few would-be counters can keep all that under control.
But just counting the cards --- is that impossible? No.
9. All table games: Money management systems can overcome the house's mathematical edge. A reader once sent me a system that he swore would beat craps. It involved managing his money byincreasing and decreasing his bets according to previous results. Nothing as drastic as a double-your-bet Martingale, but still calling for larger bets in losing streaks.
He provided a chart that showed a profit over a million trials on the computer. He said his minimum bet was $1, and he tried to keep his maximum to $10,000. Where he planned to find a realcasino that would let you spread bets from $1 to $10,000, I don’t know.
What he tried to downplay was that he exceeded his $10,000 “limit” four times, and outside those four trials, his system lost money.
Leaving aside the table minimums and maximums, money management systems fail to beat the casino because the house edge is the same on every roll of the dice, every spin of the roulette wheel.That you’re betting more money on this roll than the last makes no difference to the dice or the wheel. They have no memory and don’t know whether you’ve won or lost.
Money management systems can be useful ways to discipline yourself to stay within your bankroll. But to change the edge that is as solid as math can be?
That’s just a myth.
10. Any casino game: The longer you've gone without something happening, the more likely it is to happen. This is one roulette players love. If black numbers have come up six times in a row,then the next one has to be red, doesn’t it? If it’s been 100 spins since the last time the ball landed in 00, isn’t it time to start betting on 00?
No. In almost all cases, such results are just coincidences. Of the 38 numbers on a double-zero wheel, 18 are red, 18 are black, two are green. The chances of the ball landing on a red numberare 18 in 38 --- on every spin of the wheel. The chances of 00 or any other single number turning up are 1 in 38 --- on every spin of the wheel.
There’s an outside chance that there’s something wrong with the wheel, that it’s out of balance or the frets aren’t right, and that’s the reason certain numbers haven’t hit in a while. Suchsituations are rare, but if there’s a physical reason a number isn’t turning up, then it won’t start hitting now just because it seems to be due.
No matter whether you’re playing roulette, craps, slots, video poker, the Big Six wheel or nearly any other game, past results make no difference. And that’s no myth.
John is the author of six books on casino games, including 'The Slot Machine Answer Book.' You can find his weekly column at http://grochowski.casinocitytimes.com/
Casino gaming is exciting, but it’s also full of myths. That’s only logical if one looks at the stakes at play, which can be really high at times. But, what are the most common casino myths?
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Online Casinos Rig Their Games
The first common casino myth is that online USA casinos rig their games and they are crooks. It’s easy to see where this one comes from. When you don’t see the actual dealers and cards. It’s easy to think that things are working against you, especially if you had a few bad sessions at the casino.
The fact that computers do the shuffling instead of real people can make players suspicious.
The thing is casino sites with official licenses audit their casino games on a regular basis. The bodies that license casinos online will punish any irregularities. Therefore, gambling sites have to think twice before they even think of rigging their games.
Independent watchdogs exist too and they accept complaints from all players. They point out any issues as well. The bottom line? If you play at trustworthy online casinos and avoid suspicious ones. You won’t have to worry about the games not being safe.
Hot and Cold Casino Games Exist
One of the most popular casino myths suggests that there are hot and cold casino games. You should be on the lookout for the hot ones, as those will pay out so often that you won’t know when to stop. On the other hand, you should be avoiding the cold games no matter what.
There are, of course, games that pay out often and games that pay out rarely. This has nothing to do with them being hot or cold, however. Instead, it has something to do with stone cold mathematics and the settings of those games.
Games with low volatilities and high hit rates, for example, can pay out often, even once per two rounds on average. Games with high volatilities and low hit rates, on the other hand, can be way harder in that respect. They might even pay you once per ten rounds on average or so – no wonder that you’d call them cold!
There’s no point in looking for which games are hot or cold at any point in time. Instead, look at the hit rates RTPs, jackpots, and the bonus rounds – they are the ones that count.
3 Jackpots Occur Periodically
Another common casino myth that’s similar to the concept of hot and cold casino games is the casino jackpots. The saying goes that you shouldn’t play any jackpot games after a player won the jackpot. The reason being, jackpots don’t pay out in quick succession.
That’s not true and there are even rules that determine when a progressive slots jackpot pays. The odds of that happening are ridiculously low. The inclusion of this rule should be enough to dispel any notions of jackpots occurring periodically.
That said, don’t focus on a progressive jackpot right after someone hit it. Not because of the probabilities involved, but because the progressive’s jackpot will be significantly smaller. Then again if you like the game, play it. No one will stop you.
If you want to win an amount that will change your life. Play a progressive jackpot no player has won in ages. Doing so won’t increase your chances of winning, but it will give you a bigger reward to play for!
Casinos Boost New Players With Wins
When you join a new online casino and you have a few excellent sessions. After playing a bit more, your luck runs out and your bankroll is like water under a bridge.
Surely then, online casinos are boosting wins for new players to entice them to stay, right? No, they aren’t – your chances of winning are the same no matter how long you’ve been playing for. If you score a good run straight away it’s just luck. Though there might be a different explanation as well.
When you start out at a new casino, you’ll always have a bigger bankroll thanks to a welcome bonus. Therefore, you’ll have longer to get a good streak in before you get down to zero!
Gambler’s Fallacy
Gambler’s fallacy is such a popular myth that you’ve probably already heard about. It’s worth repeating again, though. It says that sooner than later you’ll win again after a losing streak. It also shows up in games like roulette – the more times a red number lands; the more willing players will bet on black.
History doesn’t influence the future of casino games. However, and the chances of a certain outcome happening are the same no matter what happened before.
Ten red numbers in a row can shop up at a roulette table at any point, but that doesn’t mean that a black number will be more likely on the next wheel spin.
Admittedly, it’s hard to come to terms with the cold world of mathematics. Therefore, it’s far easier to fall into the psychological trap of thinking that reds will follow blacks and vice versa. If you have a positive mindset; you’ll make better decisions at the table.
Card Counting Is Possible Online
Card counting in games like blackjack is incredibly famous thanks to movies like 21. There are many budding casino players learning the technique, hoping to win big. In theory, it’s possible to use it wherever casinos use cards, right?
Well, wrong. While online blackjack games seem ideal for card counting practice. There’s no point in attempting it. It doesn’t even matter how many decks the online blackjack table has. The thing is online casinos shuffle the cards as soon as a blackjack hand ends.
Essentially, this means that each blackjack hand you get to play online is new – there’s no history of cards and each card has the same chance of landing each hand. You can try remembering cards for fun, but you won’t be able to make any profits.
7 Online Casinos Don’t Pay Out
Look – there have been plenty of online scams and even rogue online casinos over the years. That doesn’t mean that online casinos don’t pay out, however. If you pick from one of the trustworthy online casinos, you’ll have no issues getting your money back safely.
Gambling Myths
You can even get it quickly if you choose the right payout method. The best US online casinos, for example, process cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, etc.) payouts so quickly that you’ll get your money back in a matter of hours at worst – how is that for not paying out!