Back to Bullshit

I know some readers don't like reading my wonderful stories about losing money. Listen, it's just the truth of the situation. I don't ever write about the times I win (except for yesterday) because that's boring. Remember, I only lose $23.20 on average when I play poker. Which actually is down to $21.80 after what I won the other night. I'm not losing $10000000 out here.

So I went to Suncoast last night with Matt and his girlfriend and Matt's friend, who was very weird. Played some blackjack. I lost about half what I had put in (it wasn't very much), and then figured what the heck, and bet the rest of it all on one bet. I got a 97 (total 16) and the dealer showed an 8. I hit.

These were my odds before I hit:

--Player Hand: 6,10, Dealer upcard: 8 Decision: Hit
Hit:-0.44217 Stand:-0.51885 Double:-0.88434 Split:0.00000

Julie says this means I had a 29.8% chance of winning if I hit the 16, and a 24.5% chance to win if I didn't. I correctly chose to hit.

I got a 3, so I now had a 19 against the dealers 8. Man was I psyched!

---Player Hand: 9,10, Dealer upcard: 8 Decision: Stay
Hit:-0.70573 Stand:0.58548 Double:-1.41146 Split:0.00000

I just went from a 29.8% chance of winning, to 79.5% I also had a 13% chance of tying. So an 83% chance of not losing.

Anyhow, the dealer's downcard was a 3, and the next card was a king of course, so she got 21.

If I had stayed on the 16 (totally the wrong move) I would have won. The abyssmal beauty of the situation though, is that 2 days ago at Harrahs the exact same situation presented itself when I had a big bet on the line ($100) and I stayed with my 16 against a dealer's 7. The dealer downcard turned out to be a 9, giving her 16, and then hit... and got a 5. I would have had 21 had I hit.

So after losing at Suncoast we went to grab a drink, I put $100 into a video blackjack machine (In Vegas, they give you free food and drinks at bars if you are playing the machines, so a lot of people just stick money in there and play really slow, so they can eat and drink for free). I brought my total up to $162.50 and cashed out. We were on our way out, but we bumped into Matt's girlfriend's sister, and she was playing slots, so we hung out for a little while and I put the $162.50 into the machine. At $5 per hand, I figured I could easily pass the 30 minutes we'd be hanging out. Well, I played for about 20 minutes, and was down a little, to $152.50. I decided I'd just get back to $162.50 and cash out and go home, it was like 3am.

I lost 33 out of the next 34 hands. Poof. $162.50 gone.

Now, I complain a lot about having bad luck. Most people think that in gambling and gaming there is no luck, there is just odds. As a highly logical person (I try to be at least) this should be my opinion as well, but years of continually coming in last in situations that I am the heavy favorite for have convinced me otherwise. But, scientific in nature, I want to prove it.

I've been playing a lot of backgammon on MSN. MSN has a great article about how incredibly random their die-rolling algorithm is. I have terrible luck during the games (someone just rolled 55 55 66 66 55 55 against me this morning, a 1 in 2176782336 chance, for example) but that's not really something one can prove. However, at the beginning of every game, you each roll one die, and the highest roll goes first. Ah, now, here is something I can test.

So far, I've played 267 games. Here is the breakdown of who wins the starting roll:

me	92	35.9375%
him	128	50%
tie	36	14.0625%

I'll keep this log for the next year or so. SHould be interesting to see what happens.