Keno in Reno
I don't care for gambling that much, but when I do gamble I'm well aware of the odds of the games, and I certainly don't have any "lucky feelings" come over me when I'm trying to roll a hard six. Last month, we were in Reno sitting at a cafe, and Isa wanted to pick Keno numbers and I said yes, all the while explaining to her that Keno has some really dismal odds of winning. After each round of numbers was chosen, the Keno lady would come around the table, and I'd hand her a fresh sheet of numbers that Isa had chosen. She sighed and said, "You need to keep the same numbers! You will never win doing it this way!"I smiled and didn't say anything and she left with our new numbers.
I looked over at Isa and asked,"Do you think if an 11 was chosen this time around, it has any bearing on whether or not an 11 is chosen the next game?"
"No," she replied.
"Do you think if we keep using the same numbers it increases our chances of winning?"
"I don't think it makes a difference," she said.
"Nice," I said, and then we promptly lost again. It's important to me that everyone knows the Keno lady is wrong.
posted by Bernie at
3:06 PM
5 Comments:
It's weird to me that the Keno lady works in Keno but hasn't figured that out yet. Maybe that's why people keep on playing Keno...
James (Tinker's James) swears that you can win in craps. It took a long time to get him to say that the theory is all about how you roll the dice. And I'm not sure that there aren't other parts of his theory that he wasn't willing to say. I'm here to tell him, in case he's reading, that craps is just as random as Keno or Roulette.
(Sorry I haven't said that in person, James - blogging seems to bring out my vicious side.)
IF you can roll what you want to roll, well then sure, craps can be in your favor. There are a whole bunch of people rolling as well, and they all need to be rolling what they want to roll as well. Is this possible? Sure. I've never seen it but I sure would like to gamble with James.
I'm not sure if it's really possible. There's a lot online about this; as I remember it, when they recorded "controlled" rolls, there was an effect, but it was small enough that you couldn't win money at it.
It's also true, I think, that the casinos love it when people buy into systems that don't work, and Vegas will change the rules the minute there's a system that does work (e.g, blackjack card counting). I have a hard time believing that the casinos wouldn't have changed craps in some way if controlling the dice actually did anything. And as long as people believe it does, Vegas is happy.
I like to buy a lottery ticket every ten years, and I always think I will win because it's on the day when there are the most people buying lottery tickets.
You can't win at craps, but it's possible the house won't win, either. For the most conservative bets, which I believe are a 6 or 8, the house takes only 1%, which is the lowest in the entire casino. But craps is labor-intensive - it takes five employees to manage a table, and croupiers are reasonably well-paid. That is why they give away free drinks, in the hope that once you're drunk you'll stop making safe bets and start making the kind of exotic bets where the house takes 20%.
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