The Wall Street Journal has an inexplicably fascinating story about gambling in Las Vegas today. I've long been accustomed to hearing about microscopic changes in gambling rules to favor either the house or (via negotiation) high rollers, but now casinos have thrown all their subtlety out the window. For example, if you hit 21 on your first two cards in blackjack, it used to pay $15 on a $10 bet. Now it pays only $12. Roulette wheels used to have two green slots, zero and double-zero, that paid out nothing. Now they have a third slot, triple-zero, that also pays out nothing.
In the delicately balanced world of big-time gambling these are huge changes—and they're obviously right out in the open. How can casinos get away with fleecing regular customers like this?
The answer appears to be simple: they don't care. Gambling in Vegas is up a whopping 25% since the pandemic ended and casinos are stuffed to the gills. They can reduce payouts as much as they want and they'll still have thousands of punters jockeying for a place at the tables.
Life is good when you have so much business you can barely handle it. And when it comes to blowing off steam after the pandemic, apparently Vegas was firstest with the mostest.
Sheer greed. The ever-increasing size of the shoe in blackjack was in part a response to increasing knowledge about, and practice of, card-counting. But these two changes -- no such justification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_(cards)#:~:text=(Top)-,History,-Usage
I always thought that if I had one super power it would be the ability to always know the next card before it is dealt in a game of blackjack and bet accordingly. After winning some amount of money I would quit before the casino became suspicious of me or the dealer. With this change I'd have to play more hands and risk being thrown out.
If I never visit Las Vegas again before I die, I shall not be disappointed.
Agree. It is one of the most depressing places I've ever been. Although I love the Beatles "Love" show - incredible!
I first saw the strip in the 1980s. I was appalled at the combination of vast amounts of money and truly terrible esthetics.
And of course, while they are raking it in at the tables, they raise room rates and do away with freebies and discounted restaurants and shows. Vegas used to be a deal, now it's a rip off.
Raising the question of why they can pull this off. Back in the days of Frank and Dean and Sammy, Nevada had a monopoly on legal gambling. You would think this would mean Vegas could charge a premium. The current situation seems backwards. Do most visitors go to gamble? Maybe the answer is that Vegan has so successfully marketed itself as party city that the gambling is no longer the big draw.
I have better luck and just as much fun flippin' quarters at a trash can. And, I get 'em all back.
I have never once understood the interest in gambling, unless you're just playing games, with friends, and not putting money on the line you're a fool. People with addiction issues is a whole nuther issue of course, but it's all just legalized theft from the gullible. Maybe we can't outlaw it, but I'd tax about 80% of the profits to put the money to better uses and therefore offset the damage it otherwise does to people and society.
So...odds were better when it was completely illegal.
"[Casinos] can reduce payouts as much as they want and they'll still have thousands of punters jockeying for a place at the tables"
After decades of state and media promoted lotteries with an expected payout of 50%, a casino changing payouts from 95% to 92% isn't going to seem all that bad.
Actually it is not as simple as that. Black Jack is a low return game that you play multiple times in a short period of time. These odds multiple quickly to something much less. And lotteries pay huge payouts to very few people, which is psychologically completely different. People have insurance AND play lotteries which is odd if you think about it.
I think people buying insurance and playing the lottery is because they don't understand probability correctly (over eastimate the likelyhood of unlikely events) and regret aversion (being more worried about losing than happy about winning).
People have insurance for the following reason. Given an event that occurs with an average interval T (e.g., once per century). The time between occurrences of this event has an exponential distribution. Let's say that the cost of the event is C. So the person naively saves C/T per unit time.
This is great, except that there exists a 50% probability that the event occurs within 70 years. And if it does, then the person is wiped out. In general, a person is willing to pay C/T + delta to ensure that (even if the event occurs unexpectedly frequently) the person is not wiped out.
As everyone here already knows, discrete events occuring independently within a continuum is a Poisson distribution, you dimwitted troll. Now FOAD.
You're a moron. A exponential distribution is the distribution of inter-event intervals for a Poisson process.
I truly, sincerely hope that you are not a teacher. Because you are an embarrassment.
Sigh. Yes, yes, that's the definition. And we know how good you are at applying them. Now look up the PDF's of both. _Not_ the same, are they? You really don't have any idea of the level of most expertise of the regular commentors, do you?
I'll add that in addition to your other dumbfuckery, the reason people have insurance is because of something we who know what we're talking about call 'expectation value'. Rather than explain it, I'll just say that now that you know the term, look it up.
If you were one of my students you'd be in D- territory already.
What? Even after looking up the definition you couldn't find something, anything to quibble with? I am surprised.
Las Vegas and Reno used to attract a more sophisticated level of gambler, which is why the casinos had to keep the expected returns only a percentage point or two below parity. Now, with the mobs of naïve gamblers just out for what they think is a good time, the casinos can increase their cut with impunity. (Is losing money really a good time?)
These seemingly little rule changes can have a huge impact on your expected return. I remember one time I was at a legal blackjack game at a bar in Oregon making two-dollar bets. I learned as the game went on the there was a house rule - a tie with the dealer on 17 was not a push but was a win for the dealer. I thought, well, that can't happen very often. I played for about two hours, and it happened FOUR TIMES!! At the end, I was down exactly eight dollars, the losses from those four bets. With normal rules, I would have broken even.
Years ago A&W wanted to compete with McDonald's quarter pounder by introducing a 1/3 pound burger.
Didn't do very well because not enough people realized that 1/3 was larger than 1/4.
And that's the Vegas demo.
https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractions
I'd like to see the paper on how Las Vegas contributes to spreading coronavirus.
Like alcohol, tobacco, and guns, a disproportionate amount of money is made in gambling by a small number of people who spend A LOT of money. And, like those other vices, they do so because they are, at best, problem gamblers, and at worst, addicted. And like those other vices, no matter how poorly those companies treat them and no matter how damaging those products are to their health, lives, happiness, and prosperity they will ALWAYS come back for more and fight like hell for their rights to do so no matter what.
And those companies are fully aware of this and will make billions exploiting it.