Question

“Abed is an avid gambler. On a trip to Las Vegas, he bets $1 on the roulette, and wins big: $1,000! His best friend, Troy, who’s sitting next to him, says:
“You should bet all your winnings on the next spin! If you win, you could end up with one million dollars. And
anyway, it’s the casino’s money you’re playing with, not yours, so no big deal if you lose.”
What do you think of the logic of Troy’s argument, in relation to ideas we have covered in this course? A graph may help but is not strictly necessary.”

Answer 1

In gambling, there's one certainty—one thing not left to chance: The house always comes out the winner in the end. A casino is a business, not a charitable organization throwing free money away. Like any other business, it has a business model in place designed to ensure its profitability.

No matter what game you choose to play, the odds of the casino winning your money are greater than the odds of you winning the casino's money. That's because all casino games are designed to provide the house with a built-in edge, diminishing the chances and the size of potential payouts.

For example, in roulette, the highest payout for a single number bet is 36 to 1. However, roulette wheels, besides having the numbers 1 to 36, also have a 0 and sometimes a 00 as well. The true odds of winning are 37 to 1 or 38 to 1, not the 36 to 1 that is the most the player can get paid on a winning bet.

The house edge, the odds advantage in its favor, represents the average gross profit the casino can reliably expect to make from each game. On the games with the lowest house edge, the smallest advantage, a casino might only be generating about a 1% to 2% profit. On other games, it may make profits of up to 15 %to 25% or more.

The house edge on a 00 roulette wheel is 5.26%. For every $1 million that's bet at the roulette tables in a casino, the management expects to pocket a profit of slightly more than $50,000. The other approximately $950,000 is returned to the bettors. The casino isn't aiming to bankrupt a player in one sitting – it just wants to make sure that in the long run, the players walk out with a little less money than they came in with, leaving money in the casino's pocket.

The longer you play, the greater the odds are that the result of your play will match up with the house edge. In the short term, a player may well be ahead; over the long haul, the house edge will eventually grind the player down into unprofitability.