Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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Splishak wrote:Most dealers and other casino workers have the misconception that The Field is not an even money bet.

But there are only 36 ways a pair of dice can come up and there are 18 ways to win on the field - 14 ways that pay single and 2 that pay double. So, for every $100 you bet, you expect to win zero.

That is my definition of an even money game.
I think our definitions are a little screwy. An even money game is one that pays $1 for every $1 dollar you bet and win. An even odds game is flipping a coin in the air and choosing heads or tails, it's an even 50:50 split. I interpreted you as claiming the field as an even odds game, which it isn't. It IS an even money game with the exception of the 2 rolls that pay double.

Let me break it down, there are 16 ways to win in the field and 20 ways to lose. Even though you get paid double every 2/36 times, the house comensates for that amount in the extra 4 ways that it can win. Its edge is defined by those 4 ways minus 2 to account for the player's double money wins, leaving it with an edge of 2/36 or 5.55%.

Trust me, if you spend all day betting the field with a set amount of money a little over 5% of it will be gone by the end of the day.

Hope that clears things up.

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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Trust me, if you spend all day betting the field with a set amount of money a little over 5% of it will be gone by the end of the day.
Well, maybe a little longer than a day.. I don't have my math book handy, but I think you'd be looking at something more like a couple years (or a couple hundred years?). Either way, eventually, you'll wind up missing 5%. :)

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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Glad to help Splishak. I don't know about you, but the next time I'm in a casino I'm gonna go ahead and put $10 on 24 just for the hell of it. Minus the peyote. I've never actually played Roulette simply because of its horrible odds, but one time to toast the best story put to film in my lifetime seems appropriate. Who's with me?

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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Hah Hah Hah!

I do the same thing occasionally. But I always bet on Red. It's just my subconscious mind's response to Wesley Snipes. Remember that movie where he made that line famous, "Always bet on black"?

Actually, I have written some very comprehensive Blackjack software and studied the game for years. It took me that long to realize that no matter what kind of card counting system you use and no matter what kind of wagering system you use, you just can't get any winning advantage. The best I could ever do was get a very small (like 0.3 percent) losing edge. I'm convinced the only reason casinos ban card counters is to propogate the myth that people can actually beat the house by counting cards.

But the interesting thing about Blackjack is that anyone who plays for an extended period of time is bound to make a few mistakes. And every time you make a mistake, you are losing money.

If I owned a casino, I think my favorite players would be the ones who play Blackjack without having taken the time (at least a few days) to study the game. They are bound to lose their shirts.

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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At a casino your favorite player is a slot player, they make over 90% anywhere up to 99% of the casino's profitys depending on the casino. Your best gambling odds are playing blackjack, find a two deck pitch game and watch the high cards, play two hands and iff you know the game oyu can pull in some cash.

"If you have ever seen some of James Garner's Western movies (Support Your Local Sherrif and the sequel), he has some very memorable lines in those films about Roulette. Basically, he says, "Roulette is a game for suckers" and "Roulette is the worst game in the casino". Both of these are true. On each spin of the roulette wheel, the house odds are 2 / 38 or 5.3 percent. In other words, you expect to lose 5.3 cents out of every dollar you wager in Roulette. The only game that is worse for the player are slots and there were no slot machines at the time depicted in those James Garner movies."

Your odds in roulette depend on what you bet. If you are betting a number your odds are 1 in 35 or 2.8%. That means the odds are your favorite number will NOT come in 97% of the time you bet on it.

I manage a casino and if I gamble I would play blackjack or roulette....but I don't gamble.

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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This has been very informative.

I went to a casino once, and on $20, won over $100 at the slots. Then I quit. One experience, won, done.

My son is at a wedding in Atlantic City this weekend. Called to say he was thinking about playing roulette. Based on Sopranos, I suggested he might find something else to do. He did.

When he gets back I'll show him this thread. Great info here for someone who figured it best to avoid gambling a long time ago.

Getting back to the show, it does seem that Chase is making a statement with Tony being so drawn to roulette. Especially when it is taken with his view that roulette is a miniature version of the workings of the universe. That, along with his statements to Carmela about him being "up" because he had lived after being shot, indicates that he really has no belief basis.

The universe is not watched over by God, nor is there an intelligent system over life, nor is it understandable, it is worse than a crap shoot, it is more like the losing odds of roulette. Yet sometimes you get lucky and win.

Tony's vision of the universe up until the end of the show, where he cries out "I get it", seems to imply a total reversal of thought.

One of the things so evident after Tony awoke from his coma is that he had no idea about religion at all. He told Janice's friend and the evangelical minister that he had salvation all worked out with his parish priest. (yeah, right). He was interested in what the professor thought about cosmic chaos and individuals. He was interested in dinosaurs and beginnings of life on earth. But there was nothing in him that stuck or adhered to any belief.

During the coma he is plagued by Buddhist monks who are after him. After the coma he is also visited by Hesh and his daughter who communicate with him about their Jewish beliefs. During the coma and after coma scenes, there are numerous references to other cultures. ("we just need some Irish Spring")

Meadow is dealing with Muslims in "Live Free or Die" while Vito goes for a whole new life as a gay man. Tony doesn't like either but is not really shown to have any knowledge beyond simple prejudice. Yet he is not totally knocking them either.

The Islamic guys who are doing business with Chris. Tony asks Chrissy about them, and seems satisfied that they are not dangerous because one of them has a dog. Apparently that makes them non-threatening.

We saw the big St. Elzear festival (The Ride) connected to the church, which was really just another money making scam for the mafia.

Tony doesn't really have any beliefs at all. He pretty much responds to life as it happens. One thing he does know is that he went someplace that he doesn't want to go to again. But he doesn't have any path to lead him away from that other than smelling the roses etc. And that doesn't seem to be working for him at all.

As in the Godfather, there is no real sense that an actual God might exist in connection with the church. The church is just a place to pacify the women, it's rules are used to keep order as they see fit to use them (telling Melfi that he can't condone homosexuality because he is a practicing Catholic, he doesn't believe in divorce because he is a Catholic etc.), and it can be a convenient place to take care of business while other life markers, birth, baptism, death, take place.

Hopefully, we will find out more about his new viewpoint in the next show. Or we might just find out that he was experiencing a drugged view of life at that moment while chemicals were exploding in his brain.

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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Your odds in roulette depend on what you bet. If you are betting a number your odds are 1 in 35 or 2.8%. That means the odds are your favorite number will NOT come in 97% of the time you bet on it.

I feel the need to reply to this in case anyone might believe it to be true and actually wager their money according to information in the above post. If you bet a single number in roulette, your odds are actually 36 in 38 (because there are 36 numbers and two green zeros on the wheel) or approx 94.7 percent. In other words, for every dollar you bet, you expect to win back 94.7 percent - which is the same as saying that for every dollar bet, you expect to lose 5.3 percent.

To the best of my understanding, your odds in roulette do not depend in any way on what you wager. They are always fixed, static and terrible. For every dollar you bet in roulette, the odds are that you will lose approximately 5 percent. There is only one thing that affects your odds in roulette and that is whether you play in North America or in Europe. If you play in North America you expect to lose approx 5 per cent of every dollar you bet (because they have two gree zeros on the wheel). But if you play in Europe, you expect to lose only about half that much because they have only one green zero spot instead of the two like in North America.

If I am wrong about this and anyone would like to post an explanation that explains why I am wrong, I'll be happy to retract it.

But there is a good question as to what is the best game to play. If you study the game of Blackjack and perhaps employ card counting and make close to zero mistakes, the odds are that you expect to lose only about 0.5 percent of every dollar bet (which is about ten times better than Roulette). I don't know if craps are any better. But I'd be very interested if anyone who knows would offer an opinion.

P.S. I have written a Blackjack simulation that proves my contention of the 1.5 percent expected loss rate and if anyone would like to see it, I'll be happy to send the program to you so you can see for yourself. I am a professional software engineer, by the way and spent about three weeks writing and perfecting this software, so you should have a reasonable expectation that it is not just some toy or hastily constructed amateurish stab at the problem. By the same token, it is only fair to say that you can probably find more than a hundred other people on the net who have written similar simulations and offer them for free (as freeware or shareware).

The only other issue that I'd like to raise is why would Tony Soprano (who makes a part of his living with gambling) be playing casino Roulette in North America? Surely David Chase has people to advise him that is just completely stupid and unrealistic.

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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The odds on craps (with a back odds bet) are similar to blackjack with perfect playing strategy in other words less that 1%. Assuming a true wheel, Roulette has the same odds every spin of the reel. Theoretically, slot machines have the same possibility of winning with every spin assuming you use the same number of coins. Their payout varies by machine and their denomination. Some slots return up to 99% of the amount bet although some of that is in an extremely unlikely progressive jackpot.

Re: Does anyone know roulette?

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Splishak wrote:I feel the need to reply to this in case anyone might believe it to be true and actually wager their money according to information in the above post. If you bet a single number in roulette, your odds are actually 36 in 38 (because there are 36 numbers and two green zeros on the wheel) or approx 94.7 percent. In other words, for every dollar you bet, you expect to win back 94.7 percent - which is the same as saying that for every dollar bet, you expect to lose 5.3 percent.

To the best of my understanding, your odds in roulette do not depend in any way on what you wager. They are always fixed, static and terrible. For every dollar you bet in roulette, the odds are that you will lose approximately 5 percent. There is only one thing that affects your odds in roulette and that is whether you play in North America or in Europe. If you play in North America you expect to lose approx 5 per cent of every dollar you bet (because they have two gree zeros on the wheel). But if you play in Europe, you expect to lose only about half that much because they have only one green zero spot instead of the two like in North America.

If I am wrong about this and anyone would like to post an explanation that explains why I am wrong, I'll be happy to retract it.

But there is a good question as to what is the best game to play. If you study the game of Blackjack and perhaps employ card counting and make close to zero mistakes, the odds are that you expect to lose only about 0.5 percent of every dollar bet (which is about ten times better than Roulette). I don't know if craps are any better. But I'd be very interested if anyone who knows would offer an opinion.

P.S. I have written a Blackjack simulation that proves my contention of the 1.5 percent expected loss rate and if anyone would like to see it, I'll be happy to send the program to you so you can see for yourself. I am a professional software engineer, by the way and spent about three weeks writing and perfecting this software, so you should have a reasonable expectation that it is not just some toy or hastily constructed amateurish stab at the problem. By the same token, it is only fair to say that you can probably find more than a hundred other people on the net who have written similar simulations and offer them for free (as freeware or shareware).

The only other issue that I'd like to raise is why would Tony Soprano (who makes a part of his living with gambling) be playing casino Roulette in North America? Surely David Chase has people to advise him that is just completely stupid and unrealistic.

Here is a link that explains the odds of winning at roulette. http://wizardofodds.com/roulette
The reason I say it depends on what you are betting is because if you are betting on a single number you have lower odds than if you are betting red or black for instance. your odds do not increase with each spin of the wheel, so I hate to say that you lose 5 cents to the dollar because you really have to look at each bet individually. you either lose the dollar or you win.

i appreciate that you have a different opinion on the odds of roulette but I don't appreciate your tone in reply to my post, you say my information is not true and then go on to try and debunk my information. I do this for a living and I take offense that you insinuate that I don't know my business.
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