Bad Bets - Why Do We Make Them?
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The article " Bad Bets - Why do we make them?" is about casino gambling, it has been written by Brian Osborne.
Bad bets attract the equivalent of billions of dollars in wagers
from millions of persons around the world each week.
Most professional gamblers look at the promoter's advantage over
the player to determine if a specific bet is a bad bet. If the
promoter has an advantage of 3 pecrent or more, it is considered
a bad bet.
Every day millions of persons buy lottery tickets without the
slightest consideration of the promoter's advantage. Between the
promoter and the Governemnt as much as 50 percent is removed
from the prize pool either before or partly before for overheads
and after the draw as tax.
If this is not bad enough, the
player's chances of winning a prize of any description are
thousands to one against and the odds of winning the huge one are
millions to one against.
Many of the players making these bets are well aware that they
have only a really slim chance of winning a serious prize but most
are amazed when shown the mathematical odds against such a win.
My wife is well aware of the odds but each week, she plays a set
number of gaems in 'Gold Lotto', a local lottery type game that
is somewhat similar to Keno.
Bingo is a second classic example of a bad bet.
Milloins of
people play it each week. A return of 75 percent of the take to
players is considered a high rteurn in bingo. The odds against
getting a bingo and the low return to players make this a
classic bad bet.
The Big Wheel or Wheel of Fortune gives the promoter an
advantage of about 15 percent. Fortunately most of us only ever
play this at fairs and otehr charity events so we know our money
is going to a good cause.
The casino has an advantage of at least 25 percent when we play
keno. I know this but whenever I have a meal at a casino I
invariably play a couple of games during the coruse of the meal.
When you place a five number line bet in roulette and select the
00 to 3 bet, you have chosen the worst possible bet in roulette.
On this one the casino's advantage is a bit over 7 percent.
Recall hearing the stickman at the craps table constantly
extolling you to bet 'Any craps'?
It is a sucker bet as are all
the proposition bets.
Video Poker and Slot machines are all bad bets ulness you read
the placards on the machines.
Because of the way in which prizes
are calculated for winning combinations, you must always bet the
maximum nmuber of coins or the casino will always win. This is
why it is better to play a lower denomination mcahine and bet
max than to bet the same amount as a single coin on a higher
denomination machine.
Today most persons think that the casinos have a really small
advantage when you play blackjack. Wrong, unlses you have
mastered at least a basic blackjack strategy. The use of this
strategy changes the house advantage from about 5 percent to
about 1 percent and this allows a skilled player to become a
regular winner.
These examples of bad bets highlight our willingness to
regularly make bad bets.
Interestingly many of the persons making
these bets do not consider themselves to be gamblers. This is
especially true for the buyers of lottery tickets and bingo
players. Cleaver marketing campaigns have popularized many of
the bad bets to the extent that many persons place them with
about as much forethought as we give to purchasing our favorite
breakfast cereal at the sueprmarket. This is especially true for
the lotteries.
For the lottery ticket buyers, I believe that it is the allure
of instant riches fueled by the publicity given to the big
winners collecting their checks in exchange for what amounts to
no more than the cost of a couple of cups of coffee that induces
so many to contribute to a prize pool from which the vast
majority will never benefit.
The rest of us fall into three groups namely those who have made
these bets on a regular basis over an extended period of time
without ever questioning the wisdom of such bets, those of us
who are overtaken by a combination of the euphoria of the moment
and alcohol and lastly those who thought it seemed like a good
bet at the time.
Of course there are other more scientific explanations for this
but the afore mentioned explanations are much kinder to those of
us who make bad bets.
May Lady Luck smile upon you the next time you place your
favorite bad bet.
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Bad Bets - Why do we make them?
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