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a random story as a break to A BASKIN ROBBINS SUMMER (which is a little slow right now, but will get pretty steamy soon!)
THE ATLANTIC CITY TRIP.
Sometime during our senior year in college, several of my friends decided to go to Atlantic City (AC), and asked me if I wanted to go. I had been to Las Vegas several times with my parents, but they've always played for entertainment, for $20-40 on the slot-machines, and never really gambled. All I knew were the arcades in Vegas. So, I thought, might as well see what it was really like, the gambling experience. I had no intention of ever gambling. I just wanted to go along and see.
So there were a total of five of us, and we drove in the late-evening, for 5 hrs, from baltimore to AC, NJ.
I have to say, I was rather disappointed. It was a sad, empty version of Las Vegas. I don't really like Vegas either, it's too artificial and showy. Fake glamour. But this was even worse. It was a sad, sad, imitation of an imitation.
We decided on one of the casinos, and went in.
The fellas played mostly blackjack, presumably b/c there is a way to come on top, or at least get better odds. I just watched, wandering around. This went on until they got tired, which was 6 in the morning. we had not even noticed the sun coming up, b/c it was lit so brightly inside. everyone shared how he did (all lost, to varying degrees), and then we left.
We pulled into a nearby McDonalds, and had a tired, nonsensical conversation, as we were wont to do in the wee hours. In the middle of a conversation, one of the guys, P, who had been unusually quiet and reserved for quite some time, slapped the table and said, "I got it!"
"What?"
"What did you get?"
"I figured out a way to beat the system, to win, guaranteed, at AC." he said. We all had a good laugh at him.
"Dude, there IS no guaranteed way. Don't you think someone would have figured it out if there were?"
He smiled, pulled out a pen, and started writing on a MickeyD napkin. "Look, suppose we wanted to win just $5. And let's take a simple game, like roulette, as an example. The odds on it are almost 50%, right? like 48% or something? Let's say we bet $5 on red. On the spin, if it comes red, we win, and we bet $5 again. If we lose, we bet $10 on the next spin. If we win on THAT spin, it covers the $5 we lost on the 1st round, and we still won $5 overall. If we lose the 2nd round, we bet $20. We keep doubling, and that will cover ALL the preceeding bets. If we win, we won the $5 dollars. You keep going, just to win $5." he looked up at us, with a smile. We were stunned. Our slow, tired brains were waking up, and working furiously, going through the motions of betting.
"Oh, man. Oh, man. I think you might be right."
"Just work it out," P said, "it'll work."
We scribbled furiously on the MickeyD napkins, working it out, thinking it through. We were getting more and more excited, and we were definitely wide awake by now.
The 5 hr ride back to baltimore flew by in a blink, we were that excited.
We crashed when we got back, but as soon as we woke up, we got together and got on the computer. we downloaded a simulation program of roulette, and played it again and again. we clicked like madmen, switching off when we got tired, and kept statistics of consecutive results. (a decidedly nerdy thing to do. however, we were only A&S students, not engineering students. if we were CS, we would have made a program to analyze the results) After a day and a half of missing classes and clicking on that mouse non-stop, we had the statistics and analysis down.
As we had anticipated, the % for any one color was a bit under 50%.
the average "long" streak ran to about 4-5 in a row. the longest streak we had was 7. a 7 loss streak in an enormous amount of clicks. and that happened once. if you plotted the occurence of such streaks, you would see a nice exponential curve. we decided that it would never come to 7. we only intended to play to get $300, and then we would stop. we gathered enough money to cover 9 consecutive losses, which was well outside of our statistics, to be safe. (this is actually an enormous amount of money. calculate the amount. 5*2*2*2, etc... it builds up rather quickly.) we had to pull some money out of our credit cards to come up with the right amount of money, but we did it, and we were ready. we were confident. I, who had never gambled to this point, who had always despised gambling, the throwing away of money, i was as excited if not more excited, than anyone else. my guard had completely disappeared. the one hard fast rule to the game that we were now playing. we could never, EVER, back out. the whole premise of this strategy was to double up, no matter how high the stakes were, knowing that we were guaranteed to win.
The day after, just 2 days after our first trip, we headed back to AC. We were pumped up, and ready to roll.
Our entrance to the same casino was calm, collected, but inside, we were jumping with excitement. ever careful, we observed the roulette tables for a while, and just took in the atmosphere.
Not all the guys were in the plan. They went off to play blackjack. At the end, it was just two of us. J and me. But we had enough money to roll, and we wanted to go thru with it. After a while, we rubbed our greedy hands, and sat down to play.
The plan was brilliant. there were small streaks of 2-3 loses, but the plan was perfect. In a little while, we were up $80. then the streak started.
red. red. red. red. we started to sweat. J and I looked at each other. we took a break, and walked around. after cooling down, we sat down again, and played. red. red. we couldn't believe what we were seeing. this sort of streak was practically impossible. we had played the simulation for hours, non-stop, switching off when tired, clicking, 100,000 times. a seven loss streak happened only once during that whole time. and here we were, having played less than a hundred times, and we had a seven streak on our hands. we had another conference.
"They have to be fixing this! They can see us doubling, and they fixed it, man."
"dude, are you ready to through with this?" J asked. "Let's think this through. if we keep going, maybe we win, and this probably won't happen again for the rest of the night. if we lose, we have enough to cover 2 more loses. but it is DOUBLING. if we lose again, it becomes $1,280. and if we lose again...." the thing about odds in a situation like this is that the next toss is completely independent of the toss before. even if you had 10 heads in a row, that didn't change the odds for the 11th throw. it was still 50%. thus, the chance that the next roll would be red was still significant. I thought. and thought. I looked up at J. the whole time, we had psyched each other and pounded the mantra into our heads, "can't ever get intimidated. you gotta have the nuts to go all the way. don't think about the AMOUNT. have confidence in the odds."
We looked at each other, for a moment. There was a lot of uncertainty in his eyes, probably reflecting mine. We looked away from each other, and the sounds around us became very loud. the clinking of the slot machines, the muffled shouts of win and loss, the clanking of quarters, and above it all, the roar of the roulette wheel. we looked at each other again. it was the moment of truth, the moment we had steeled and braced for. "screw it." The words came out of J's mouth before i was able to mouth similar words of my own. looong *sigh*
"you sure, man? we're gonna walk with $320 in losses each?"
"yeah."
"well, i guess it's better we cut it off now and consider it a lesson, instead of losing $640 each on the next roll and be in serious trouble."
we took some comfort in our cowardliness.
after some hours, we met the others, and we all shared our experiences.
"wheeeeeeeewww," P whistled. "tha't a BIG loss."
everyone had lost a little bit of money except P, who had won once or twice with blackjack and stopped immediately after winning. we made our way out of the casino, and walked around the beach and pier in the early dawn.
It was pretty quiet. No one was really in the mood to talk. We weren't mad or upset of anything. It was just a time of introspection for everone. I thought back to how I had been in the past few days. I wasn't exactly proud of myself. Not because the plan wasn't good. The plan still was true. We just didn't have the capital to back more losses
(actually, there was a fatal flaw in the plan that we had not anticipated. There is a betting limit on each roulette table. thus, after a while, you can not double your bet, and you would be in serious trouble. even if you won, at that point, you would not be able to recover all your previous losses. after returning, and searching more on the net, we discovered that P was not as original as we thought. the idea of doubling the bet was thousands of years old, introduced in ancient greek times. thus the betting limit. nonetheless, P was a genius to have come up with it himself. understand this flaw well, readers who would want to try this method for themselves!!)
after some time on the beach, and as the sun rose up, we gethered and went back to the same McDonalds from two days before.
"So, we ought to consider this a good lesson. We could have gone through life, doing our thing, making money, etc, and then we could have had a night like this, and blown some SERIOUS money. at least we had an experience like this NOW, so that we learn a lesson for life." indeed, it was a lesson i would never forget. and i will never gamble again. ever.
P, the only winner of the day, bought us all breakfast. we joked around a bit, mused over how foolish we had been, and generally had a light moment, though we had just lost an enormous amount of money. for nothing.
as we drove back to balitmore, we prayed. for God to forgive us. and we thanked Him. for a valuable lesson that none of us would forget. we were light-headed from the intense experience we had in the past two days. a bad heavy feeling hung over all of us, especially J and me, as we reflected on what we had just done, and how we had just thrown away money. In mere hours. Occasional bouts of laughter punctuated the silence. In a way, it was hilarious. We thought we were so smart. We were so proud of ourselves. For beating the system. But we were humbled, and we recognized the hand of the One who had humbled us. thus did my gambling experience in college end.
yakob at 1:02 AM
-----------------
THE ATLANTIC CITY TRIP.
Sometime during our senior year in college, several of my friends decided to go to Atlantic City (AC), and asked me if I wanted to go. I had been to Las Vegas several times with my parents, but they've always played for entertainment, for $20-40 on the slot-machines, and never really gambled. All I knew were the arcades in Vegas. So, I thought, might as well see what it was really like, the gambling experience. I had no intention of ever gambling. I just wanted to go along and see.
So there were a total of five of us, and we drove in the late-evening, for 5 hrs, from baltimore to AC, NJ.
I have to say, I was rather disappointed. It was a sad, empty version of Las Vegas. I don't really like Vegas either, it's too artificial and showy. Fake glamour. But this was even worse. It was a sad, sad, imitation of an imitation.
We decided on one of the casinos, and went in.
The fellas played mostly blackjack, presumably b/c there is a way to come on top, or at least get better odds. I just watched, wandering around. This went on until they got tired, which was 6 in the morning. we had not even noticed the sun coming up, b/c it was lit so brightly inside. everyone shared how he did (all lost, to varying degrees), and then we left.
We pulled into a nearby McDonalds, and had a tired, nonsensical conversation, as we were wont to do in the wee hours. In the middle of a conversation, one of the guys, P, who had been unusually quiet and reserved for quite some time, slapped the table and said, "I got it!"
"What?"
"What did you get?"
"I figured out a way to beat the system, to win, guaranteed, at AC." he said. We all had a good laugh at him.
"Dude, there IS no guaranteed way. Don't you think someone would have figured it out if there were?"
He smiled, pulled out a pen, and started writing on a MickeyD napkin. "Look, suppose we wanted to win just $5. And let's take a simple game, like roulette, as an example. The odds on it are almost 50%, right? like 48% or something? Let's say we bet $5 on red. On the spin, if it comes red, we win, and we bet $5 again. If we lose, we bet $10 on the next spin. If we win on THAT spin, it covers the $5 we lost on the 1st round, and we still won $5 overall. If we lose the 2nd round, we bet $20. We keep doubling, and that will cover ALL the preceeding bets. If we win, we won the $5 dollars. You keep going, just to win $5." he looked up at us, with a smile. We were stunned. Our slow, tired brains were waking up, and working furiously, going through the motions of betting.
"Oh, man. Oh, man. I think you might be right."
"Just work it out," P said, "it'll work."
We scribbled furiously on the MickeyD napkins, working it out, thinking it through. We were getting more and more excited, and we were definitely wide awake by now.
The 5 hr ride back to baltimore flew by in a blink, we were that excited.
We crashed when we got back, but as soon as we woke up, we got together and got on the computer. we downloaded a simulation program of roulette, and played it again and again. we clicked like madmen, switching off when we got tired, and kept statistics of consecutive results. (a decidedly nerdy thing to do. however, we were only A&S students, not engineering students. if we were CS, we would have made a program to analyze the results) After a day and a half of missing classes and clicking on that mouse non-stop, we had the statistics and analysis down.
As we had anticipated, the % for any one color was a bit under 50%.
the average "long" streak ran to about 4-5 in a row. the longest streak we had was 7. a 7 loss streak in an enormous amount of clicks. and that happened once. if you plotted the occurence of such streaks, you would see a nice exponential curve. we decided that it would never come to 7. we only intended to play to get $300, and then we would stop. we gathered enough money to cover 9 consecutive losses, which was well outside of our statistics, to be safe. (this is actually an enormous amount of money. calculate the amount. 5*2*2*2, etc... it builds up rather quickly.) we had to pull some money out of our credit cards to come up with the right amount of money, but we did it, and we were ready. we were confident. I, who had never gambled to this point, who had always despised gambling, the throwing away of money, i was as excited if not more excited, than anyone else. my guard had completely disappeared. the one hard fast rule to the game that we were now playing. we could never, EVER, back out. the whole premise of this strategy was to double up, no matter how high the stakes were, knowing that we were guaranteed to win.
The day after, just 2 days after our first trip, we headed back to AC. We were pumped up, and ready to roll.
Our entrance to the same casino was calm, collected, but inside, we were jumping with excitement. ever careful, we observed the roulette tables for a while, and just took in the atmosphere.
Not all the guys were in the plan. They went off to play blackjack. At the end, it was just two of us. J and me. But we had enough money to roll, and we wanted to go thru with it. After a while, we rubbed our greedy hands, and sat down to play.
The plan was brilliant. there were small streaks of 2-3 loses, but the plan was perfect. In a little while, we were up $80. then the streak started.
red. red. red. red. we started to sweat. J and I looked at each other. we took a break, and walked around. after cooling down, we sat down again, and played. red. red. we couldn't believe what we were seeing. this sort of streak was practically impossible. we had played the simulation for hours, non-stop, switching off when tired, clicking, 100,000 times. a seven loss streak happened only once during that whole time. and here we were, having played less than a hundred times, and we had a seven streak on our hands. we had another conference.
"They have to be fixing this! They can see us doubling, and they fixed it, man."
"dude, are you ready to through with this?" J asked. "Let's think this through. if we keep going, maybe we win, and this probably won't happen again for the rest of the night. if we lose, we have enough to cover 2 more loses. but it is DOUBLING. if we lose again, it becomes $1,280. and if we lose again...." the thing about odds in a situation like this is that the next toss is completely independent of the toss before. even if you had 10 heads in a row, that didn't change the odds for the 11th throw. it was still 50%. thus, the chance that the next roll would be red was still significant. I thought. and thought. I looked up at J. the whole time, we had psyched each other and pounded the mantra into our heads, "can't ever get intimidated. you gotta have the nuts to go all the way. don't think about the AMOUNT. have confidence in the odds."
We looked at each other, for a moment. There was a lot of uncertainty in his eyes, probably reflecting mine. We looked away from each other, and the sounds around us became very loud. the clinking of the slot machines, the muffled shouts of win and loss, the clanking of quarters, and above it all, the roar of the roulette wheel. we looked at each other again. it was the moment of truth, the moment we had steeled and braced for. "screw it." The words came out of J's mouth before i was able to mouth similar words of my own. looong *sigh*
"you sure, man? we're gonna walk with $320 in losses each?"
"yeah."
"well, i guess it's better we cut it off now and consider it a lesson, instead of losing $640 each on the next roll and be in serious trouble."
we took some comfort in our cowardliness.
after some hours, we met the others, and we all shared our experiences.
"wheeeeeeeewww," P whistled. "tha't a BIG loss."
everyone had lost a little bit of money except P, who had won once or twice with blackjack and stopped immediately after winning. we made our way out of the casino, and walked around the beach and pier in the early dawn.
It was pretty quiet. No one was really in the mood to talk. We weren't mad or upset of anything. It was just a time of introspection for everone. I thought back to how I had been in the past few days. I wasn't exactly proud of myself. Not because the plan wasn't good. The plan still was true. We just didn't have the capital to back more losses
(actually, there was a fatal flaw in the plan that we had not anticipated. There is a betting limit on each roulette table. thus, after a while, you can not double your bet, and you would be in serious trouble. even if you won, at that point, you would not be able to recover all your previous losses. after returning, and searching more on the net, we discovered that P was not as original as we thought. the idea of doubling the bet was thousands of years old, introduced in ancient greek times. thus the betting limit. nonetheless, P was a genius to have come up with it himself. understand this flaw well, readers who would want to try this method for themselves!!)
after some time on the beach, and as the sun rose up, we gethered and went back to the same McDonalds from two days before.
"So, we ought to consider this a good lesson. We could have gone through life, doing our thing, making money, etc, and then we could have had a night like this, and blown some SERIOUS money. at least we had an experience like this NOW, so that we learn a lesson for life." indeed, it was a lesson i would never forget. and i will never gamble again. ever.
P, the only winner of the day, bought us all breakfast. we joked around a bit, mused over how foolish we had been, and generally had a light moment, though we had just lost an enormous amount of money. for nothing.
as we drove back to balitmore, we prayed. for God to forgive us. and we thanked Him. for a valuable lesson that none of us would forget. we were light-headed from the intense experience we had in the past two days. a bad heavy feeling hung over all of us, especially J and me, as we reflected on what we had just done, and how we had just thrown away money. In mere hours. Occasional bouts of laughter punctuated the silence. In a way, it was hilarious. We thought we were so smart. We were so proud of ourselves. For beating the system. But we were humbled, and we recognized the hand of the One who had humbled us. thus did my gambling experience in college end.
yakob at 1:02 AM