USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20011102.2006 (Crew, this is the Captain): Well, I'm back a day early. For the third straight time, I caught a virus in Vegas; this time, at least. it seems to be a cold instead of the flu I got there last February. Anyway, I felt pretty wretched yesterday and I was afraid I was going to feel worse tomorrow, and didn't want to drive home while really ill. And the way I felt, I wasn't enjoying myself there anyway; yesterday I spent most of the day in my room reading and sleeping.

While I was gone I never once read a newspaper or watched the news on TV, so I really have no idea what might have happened while I was gone (except that I saw in passing a headline which delivered the sad news that we had another anthrax death). But I did do some writing while I was gone, recording thoughts about my experiences. Thought I'd share those with you, since on my first posting Greymatter is going to roll everything else off the front page for being more than 3 days past.

Captain's log, stardate 20011028.1530: Every time I come to Vegas, I try one new form of gambling. Sometimes it's turned into a long term interest (i.e. Pai Gow Poker) and sometimes it's something I have
no urge at all to try again (i.e. Let it Ride). This time I decided to try sports betting. Tonight is the second game of the World Series (the grandfather of all sports championships). Last night Arizona completely embarrassed the Yankees. Not that this matters; given a choice I'll always bet on the National League team, so as to punish the American League for polluting the game with the travesty they call the designated hitter. (Ugh.) So I wanted to bet on Arizona in any case, but it turns out they're favored tonight. I had heard tell of "point spreads" and so on, and I figured that what I'd be given was an opportunity to win if Arizona ended the game with more than a certain lead, with that being a slightly-less-than-even-money bet. That's not how they do it at this casino; though I have no idea how it's handled anywhere else. All the other sports have point spreads, but on baseball they let you bet on the straight outcome of the game, win/lose, but they change the payoff on the bet. The board in the sports-betting salon listed Arizona as "-150" and NYY as "+140". I asked someone what that meant, and here's how to read it. "+140" for New York means that if you bet $100 and win, they'll give you your money back plus an additional $140 for a total of $240. "-150" on Arizona means that you have to bet $150 to get a chance to win $100; if Arizona wins you get $250 back. With a point spread, I was wondering where the house edge was. With this, it's not a problem. (The house always has odds; they don't offer any even-money bets anywhere in Vegas.) Suppose I bet both sides. I'd spend $150 for the Arizona bet, and another $100 for the NYY bet. If Arizona wins, I'd get $250 back, breaking even. If NY wins, I'd get $240 back and be behind $10.

It's an interesting fact not well known that the house could make money on even-money games. Suppose you had a game which was totally fair, where the house didn't have an edge in play. The model for that in game theory is called a "drunk walk". The most primitive game is simply to bet on the flip of a coin; on heads you win and on tails you lose. If you start on a line and on each "heads" you move one pace to the right, and on each "tails" you move one pace to the left, then the plot over the course of an infinite number of coin flips of the probability of you being in a certain location on the line is a bell curve, balanced over the origin.

Let's change the game slightly. Steps to the right mean that the house loses money. Steps to the left mean that you lose money. 20 steps to the left of the origin is a hole in the ground, and if you fall into it the game ends because you went broke. 100,000 steps to the right is another hole in the ground; if you step into it then you broke the bank and the house went broke. Which hole are you likely to encounter first?

That's the hidden house edge. The house is infinitely patient; the house never goes broke; the house never quits the game. Players generally quit when their losses become intolerable, but on a winning streak they're liable to increase the sizes of bets and start taking chances. Eventually the run of luck in the game will turn against them. Even people who have a winning streak usually lose the money again. Of course, the house doesn't need to offer an even money bet because no-one expects them to, and with odds the game is even more heavily stacked against you.

So why do I gamble? Not because I expect to win; I know better. I gamble because I enjoy gambling; I even enjoy myself when I'm losing. I budget myself a certain amount of money each day and when I reach that I stop. That's why I don't play Craps; the money moves too fast. I can hit my daily limit in Craps in half an hour, and then there's nothing to keep me entertained for the rest of the day. On the other hand, I can watch Craps and not risk my own cash; and I do very much enjoy watching Craps. There's no contact high like it in Vegas.

They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot. They shut down my favorite strip joint! What a bummer. Here I was, all ready to go over there on Tuesday on my birthday to spend mumble dollars paying beautiful young things to pay attention to me, and the damned thing is closed. It's within walking distance of the Rio, and I was over at the Rio this morning because I wanted to get a ticket t