poker articles

Another history about me, my friend Jack and the online casinos took place when in the sunny evening. Makes me wanna give up the poker and the slot machines, and settle down with a bottle or two to enjoy my retirement. Anyways, the young fellah just called. Caught me in a mellow mood for once. He thinks - well, we can suspend judgement on that for so long as he keeps paying me - he thinks I should explain myself. In one piece I’m saying there’s, “a proper mathematical playing strategy for video poker.” In the next, I’m saying there’s a gambler’s fallacy and you can’t predict the cards. He thinks they doesn’t fit right together. So here’s a few words to make it all crystal. If you’ve ever seen at least one gangster movie you should noticed that they are always robbing casinos. There was never a hint of walking through the door with a system for winning at the tables or on the slot machines. Hollywood got it right for once. The only way you guarantee a big score at a casino is as a thief - and you’ve to be lucky to enjoy your “takings” and avoid the hail of bullets if you get caught by wrong people. Look around online. You’ll see a small army of people touting their systems for beating all casino games with a house advantage.

Mind you. It’s not my money - you wanna fool yourself you can shade the odds in your favor on video poker, then feel free. So, how do these systems work? You’re supposed to base your bets on the most recent outcomes. Take roulette as an example. Wait for a run of blacks, then bet on red - the longer the run, the bigger the bets on red. If you see a pattern emerging, you’re supposed to think that the probabilities of the game itself have changed. When I worked for casinos, we always nodded wisely when someone cautiously asked if they could play a system. Another little chicken ripe for the plucking.
Play slot machines, win big. Win at blackjack without counting. When I was growing up, my mother used to play 78s all the time. She loved the musicals of the 1920s. She’d never been on the chorus line, but she’d a hankering for it. Her parents disapproved of theatrical folk and that was an end of that. Anyways, one of my favorites was Banana Oil - kinda like snake oil but always applied to lounge-lizard lines. “When he tells you, ‘I adore you,’ that’s banana oil.” In other words, everything he said to get his mark into bed was bullshit. Well, the same goes for all these salesmen pushing betting systems for slot machines. They’re trying to scam you outa your money. Take it from me. There ain’t no system around that even dents the House edge on games where the probabilities are set in the House’s favor. Math is math.

My father was counting deaths by the million over decades for the life companies. Probabilities and statistics only make sense in the long view. Which means that any small winnings you picked up on the good days will all get given back to the casinos on the bad days. It’s just the way the House edge works. Like I say, you can’t beat the math. Which leaves me with my strategy, which I’ll get back to when I’m good and ready.

In any moment of my life, I got no time for them as thinks they know better unless they’re buying me drinks. Then I reckon they’re buying my time - anyways, people in bars always seem more interesting when free alcohol kicks in.
The most important thing my father told me before his death was that the life without math is similar to life in eternal fog. Peopke in that fog have got no idea what they’re doing. An’ you never see this more often than in a casino watching how people play the slot machines. So, just for a moment, I’m going to slip into their mindset - give you a quick tour of how a gambler can fall into a trap. Need a drink first, though, to dull the pain.

So, here I am, playing video poker. I’m feeding the machine and keeping count of the number of times I do and don’t get winning combinations in the pay table. Got me some serious scientific study going on here! There is nothing less random than random occurence. The probability of any one thing happening is set by what went before. So, if I got me a winning hand, the law of averages says the odds of that happening again is poorer for the hands that come just after it. An’ that’s true for the reverse as well.

These guys really live in a dream world. You ever watch a Poker Dealer wash and shuffle a deck of 52 cards fairly. Then the dealer put five cards from that deck to each player’s hand. The first card dealt comes with a 1 in 52 chance, the second with a 1 in 51 chance, and so on as the cards are dealt in turn. No country wants to kill the golden goose that’s laying all them tax eggs so they all want to see fair games. Players vote with their feet if they think a game’s crooked. So all casinos must watch all the card games that are played with real dealer. You might be thinking these casinos’ll still be out to cheat you in some way - after all, wouldn’t nothing be easier than to tweak the software - and those countries’re probably corrupt, take a backhander and look the other way. But there’s no need to cheat. No matter how you cut it, the games make more’n enough money when played fairly. The House has an edge, even when serious professionals come out to play.

So, on a video poker machine, the Random Number Generator (RNG for short) is used to give you five random cards. Now sometimes, the slot machines sit with that randomized deck and deal the next cards off the top when you press draw. In others, that ol’ RNG don’t know when to quit. It keeps on notionally shuffling the deck while you’re busy trying to decide what to do with your hand. The longer you take, the more times the RNG has cycled. You get whatever’s on top of the deck at that precise moment. Wait a fraction of a second longer, and you get different cards. It don’t matter which wy the machines’re set up.

What these dreamers in a fog never see clearly is the principle of statistical independence. Our mathematical model is based on the assumption that every event is independent on other.

When events are random?
So when is a sequence of cards random? When the odds of you predicting the next card are no better than chance. It’s like tossing a coin. Every time you toss a coin, the chances of getting one of two sides is always 1 in 2. It never changes from one toss to the next.

So I’ll be getting back to the free online video poker - I’m looking over a new game. Ain’t no reason to pay to play. Just browsing for right now!