Althouse: "The mathematically proven winning strategy for 14 of the most popular games."

May 10, 2015

"The mathematically proven winning strategy for 14 of the most popular games."

A not-quite-accurate headline for an interesting article with plenty of math.

23 comments:

clint said...: This should be subtitled: Ways to make your favorite games a lot less fun.

Clicked through on "Scrabble" -- it's a list of "legal" two letter words to memorize. Joy.; 5/10/15, 10:08 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Reminds me a bit of when I first got involved professionally as a programmer, most of 40 years ago. Somehow I got into a talk with one of the senior people in the area, and we decided to compete on playing Fours, which is a 3D tic-tac-toe game. Turns out that his solution was statistical, while mine was recursive (I would try all the different moves, and then the counter-moves, until the end, finding the best moves). If I went first, my program would, ultimately win, and that meant win against any human either. But, with the computers of the era, the original moves took awhile (which I later optimized). His solution, using weighting derived from statistics, was blindingly fast, and would win most of the time, if he went first, except, sometimes against my program.

I have always enjoyed the sort of stuff that is covered in that article. A degree in mathematics, and an MBA with an emphasis in Operations Research may help. Not that I am good at any of those games, because I am not. Still, next time I play Monopoly, I will play accordingly.; 5/10/15, 10:26 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: As to the gambling - keep in mind that in a lot of states, poker (which, of course, includes Texas Hold 'em) is considered a game of skill, not a game of chance (when I was involved in this, it was quite contentious, and roughly 50/50 in the states that had made such a determination). At least in Nevada, the casinos cannot legally make money as a percentage of the pot, etc. on poker. Rather, they are limited to essentially just charging for the space and the buy in.

So, excluding poker, I would concur with the article - you aren't going to win at games of chance at the casinos. I mentioned my math and MBA degrees above. But, I have also worked as a patent attorney in this area a bit, representing both casinos, game creators, and game manufacturers. Over time, the odds guarantee that the house is going to win any game that the casinos provide their patrons. In Nevada, it is pretty straight forward - you have to register the odds with the state gaming commission, and there are mathematicians whose job it is to calculate those odds. You pretty much have to hire one of them to get a game approved.

Part of the skill (and art) in creating games is designing one where the odds look to be in the player's favor, but aren't. Back maybe 15 years ago, when I was first getting involved in this area, the big thing were slot games that had multiple levels of payout. You had the regular payout on the machine, but some of your money would go to fund larger pots spread across machines at the same casino, or even among multiple casinos. The challenge was in finding a sweet spot where there was enough action in the regular pot at the machine level, while making the payout on the multi-machine jackpots seem to suggest extremely large payouts. Which it did - just extremely rarely.

Oh, and one of the newer scams is that the odds in a lot of the slot machines can, and are, dynamically adjusted. You will often these days have better odds in the early mornings, say 3-4 a.m. and worst odds during the evening. And, they change at different times during the week. In reality, what is done legally is that a number of odds are registered with the gaming people, and one of those sets of odds is selected electronically from a central location, and then later, another set, etc. To keep things honest - you can always find the actual current payoffs (which translate into the odds) if you dig hard enough on the machine.

But, back to my original point - the casinos know the odds, and you mostly do not. They don't put games out that they are going to lose at.; 5/10/15, 10:46 AM
Fernandinande said...: Article: Whether you pick paper, scissors or rock, your chance of winning would always be one in three.

Hmmm, that doesn't sound right.

Since the other player has the same odds and one player wins each time, the chance of winning should be 50%.

Then there's "Rock Paper Scissors Robot Built In Japanese Lab Cannot Lose"; 5/10/15, 10:57 AM
campy said...: Since the other player has the same odds and one player wins each time, the chance of winning should be 50%.

You can also tie.; 5/10/15, 11:00 AM
Fernandinande said...: Bruce Hayden said...
But, back to my original point - the casinos know the odds, and you mostly do not. They don't put games out that they are going to lose at.

Bally's is in the midst of an impressive winning streak, coming out ahead an astonishing 6,753 nights in a row.
+
Indian Casino Uses Every Part Of The Dollar; 5/10/15, 11:02 AM
Fernandinande said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/10/15, 11:03 AM
Fernandinande said...: campy said...
You can also tie.

D'oh!

On the other hand, if the parties were to bet each time, they'd come out even.; 5/10/15, 11:09 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: It doesn't matter if you can also tie in rock, paper, scissors -- who just stops after a tie? The chances are 50/50.; 5/10/15, 11:09 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Assuming it's a one-on-one contest.; 5/10/15, 11:15 AM
rhhardin said...: Calvin Trillin tells the story of taking visitors to NYC to Chinatown to see the tic-tac-toe playing chicken.

The visitor looks over the situation and sometimes says, "The chicken always gets to go first."

Trillin says, "Yes, but he's a chicken and you're a human. Surely he ought to get some advantage."

Often later the visitor comes to say, "The chicken plays every day. I haven't played for years."; 5/10/15, 12:03 PM
Curious George said...: My only rule when I play Monopoly is that I get the car. Or I don't play. No exceptions.; 5/10/15, 12:09 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Me 'n' th' boys have been playing Dealer's Choice 20 Questions for years. The Dealer says something like, "It's a movie more than twenty years old, and you probably think it's awful. Go."

We also play Ghost and Number Ghost. Number ghost is incredibly difficult, because when enumerating numerals, you almost always spell out a number. It's considered cheating to shout "X!"; 5/10/15, 1:27 PM
Bob Ellison said...: In Number Ghost, shouting "i!" is an automatic win.; 5/10/15, 1:29 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Bruce Hayden,

Mark Twain has a lovely vignette in which it's litigated whether poker is a "game of skill" or a "game of chance." It culminates in an outright trial-by-experience between the "skill" and the "chance" forces, after which it's concluded that, as the "skill" people ended up with all the money, poker is obviously a game of skill.

I'm not sure it's impossible to make money gambling in Vegas. I had a cellist friend in college who regularly spent his summers in Vegas playing blackjack, and came back a good deal richer. I have a violinist friend who does the same, only with poker in the Bay Area. Whether the former's methods were kosher I don't know (card-counting is verboten); the latter's methods (whatever they are) are probably OK.; 5/10/15, 1:43 PM
Drago said...: Since this thread already appears to have petered out, here's an interesting little event that's occurring in Real Time:

Wisconsin comes to London

Anybody seen garage?; 5/10/15, 2:43 PM
Edmund said...: At least in Nevada, the casinos cannot legally make money as a percentage of the pot, etc. on poker. Rather, they are limited to essentially just charging for the space and the buy in.

Not correct. Low limit games are "raked" a percentage of the pot up to a cap. You might see "10% rake to $3" or "5% rake to $4", usually taken in $1 increments. So the first game will have a dollar taken from every $10 place in the pot, the second every $20.

Higher limit games usually charge a fee on the half-hour. I have never heard of a poker game in Nevada (or anywhere else) taking a percentage of your buy in.

In other states, the system can vary - a charge for time or a charge to you on every big blind are common.; 5/10/15, 5:41 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Rock paper scissors?
Curl your right fingers to make "rock." Then extend the first and second fingers as far as their first joint.
This is "tiger fist."
Tiger fist beats everything. When I used it in rock paper scissors with my seven year old niece, she looked at me as though I were a god.; 5/10/15, 6:02 PM
rhhardin said...: There's a Rock Paper Scissors strategy page. I favor the avalanche.; 5/10/15, 6:22 PM
Unknown said...: Every game of Free Cell played on a Windows computer can be won. Usually just knowing that the game can be won is inspiration enough to find the correct play (Hmmm why is that, I wonder?), but you can Google the winning play if you get stuck.
Note: this is not the same as saying that every game dealt with a deck of cards can be won, only that Windows only deals hands that can be won.; 5/10/15, 6:34 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: In the course of the recent twitter dust-up between Donald Trump and Jonah Goldberg, Goldberg noted that Trump had lost money running a casino, a business where people literally give you money.; 5/10/15, 6:50 PM
Unknown said...: I'll agree that poker and to some extent blackjack are different animals. In poker, you're not usually playing against the house, and in blackjack, the dealer is confined to rules that you are not. An engineer friend of mine routinely makes $60K a year in cards, mostly Texas Hold Em.; 5/10/15, 9:40 PM
Sigivald said...: In Soviet Russia, Rock Crush Paper.; 5/11/15, 3:26 PM