Anybody who goes to a casino expecting to win is making a sucker’s bet.
That’s why, when my boyfriend, Ray, dragged me to the Mohegan Sun on Saturday, I resigned myself to losing the $500 I brought with me, and then some. It’s not that my boyfriend and I are compulsive gamblers–we don’t gamble very often and, when we do, we generally stick to blackjack, where at least we’ve got a shot. It’s just that there are more ways to lose money at the Mohegan Sun than just the slots and the tables. Before we walked in the door, the Connecticut casino had already dinged my Amex card for $529. The Mohegan Sun also boasts dozens of restaurants and shops.
After settling into our room, we took the escalator down to the casino around 4 p.m. to check out the action at the blackjack tables. Ray likes the $25 tables because he can stay and play all night. I prefer the $100 tables because I can find out within minutes whether I’ve won or lost.
At the first table we picked, I won three hands and $200. Not bad–a 40 percent return for five minutes’ work. After that, we headed over to the $25 tables, where Ray immediately lost the $200 I’d just won. After a few more hands with less than stellar results (Ray had thrown $700 of his own money into the pot), we headed off to dinner to lick our wounds.
Over dinner, we talked about the many reasons why gamblers stay at the table long past the point at which any sane and rational person would have cut his or her losses and walked away.
1. My luck has got to change.
This kind of magical thinking violates the first rule of statistics. The reality is that you have exactly the same chance of winning or losing each time you roll the dice or draw a card.
2. I’m going to battle back until I win.
While everybody likes a happy ending, comeback victories are more common in movies and novels than they are in real life. If only George Bush would confine his battling to the Mohegan Sun!
3. The dealer’s just getting lucky.
There’s a reason the house generally wins, and it’s because the odds are stacked in the casino’s favor. (Even with blackjack, where the dealer and the players are on an equal footing, you won’t win for long unless you know how to count cards–yet another Hollywood fantasy.) The longer you stay at the casino, the greater the odds that you’re going to lose.
4. I’ve lost so much money already, I may as well go for broke.
This is another statistical fallacy. If you wouldn’t risk all your chips in the beginning, what sense does it make to bet them all now? Your chances of winning aren’t any greater and, if you decide to double down or bet your remaining chips on one hand, you may find yourself taking the walk of shame to the ATM machine.
5. What’s the difference? It’s all random anyway.
Actually, that’s true. But if you really believed it, you should’ve stayed home and saved yourself the trip.
Now at this point, you’re probably thinking we headed upstairs and called it a night. After all, we were only down $200. But that’s not how our story ended. After I went back to the room to watch a movie, Ray took our $1,000 chip and headed back to the blackjack tables to try his luck again.
When I came downstairs two hours later to check how he was doing, he greeted me with a big smile and a hug. Not a good sign. Turned out our $1,000 chip had shrunk to $600, which meant that we were now down 50 percent from where we started.
Therefore, Ray said, it was up to me to make up the money he’d lost. Now I know how irrational that must sound, but when you’re standing in the middle of a bustling casino surrounded by the lights, the crowds, the music and everything else that’s going on, it’s hard to resist the temptation to go for it.
The next thing I knew I was sitting at a $50 table with $600 in chips, two Asian guys to my right and a big, brassy blonde telling me to try the “perfect match” that paid 4-to-1 if I matched the dealer’s card with one of my own.
“Why not?” I said, putting a $100 chip inside the Perfect Match circle, violating all five of my rules simultaneously. “You never know what might happen.”
When the dealer pulled an ace, my tablemates gasped in amazement. There was an ace in front of me as well. On my first try, I had won the Perfect Match. Clearly, this was a sign that we should keep going. Several hands later, I hit blackjack on a $100 bet and then, at my boyfriend’s urging, I decided to let it ride, betting $250 on the next hand.
I’m ashamed to admit what happened next–because the gamble that I took flew in the face of logic, statistics and any proven theory of risk management (except perhaps the one employed by Bear Stearns when it bet big on subprime mortgages). After getting a nine and a two, I decided to double down, risking $500 on the next card.
The table went silent as the dealer drew his card. He had a six showing and, according to the house rules, had to keep drawing until he hit 17. He turned over his bottom card–a face card–which gave him 16. Then he drew a seven and busted with 23. He pushed $500 in chips in my direction.
“Let’s get out of here!” I told Ray as I pocketed our chips and tossed the dealer a $50 tip.
By that time, it was around 10 p.m. We returned to our room triumphant, prepared to call it a night (Though I had a sneaking suspicion that Ray would hit the tables again before we left).
The next morning, as I was preparing to write about our adventure in this week’s newsletter, Ray told me he was going back downstairs with the $700 he’d brought with him plus his $200 in winnings from the night before. My money, by contrast, was stored safely in my wallet.
When he returned to the room half an hour later, he was sporting a sheepish grin. “Did you lose it all?” I asked him. “Every last dollar,” he told me. “Yeah, right,” I said. “Show me the money.”
And then he did–all $1,600 of it–a $1,000 gain, which pretty much paid for our weekend in Connecticut. Then we showered, dressed and got the heck out of there.
The moral of the story: It’s better to be lucky than good!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 7:12 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “Better to Be Lucky Than Good?”
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July 6th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I have been to both Casinos…both are very nice! It is true however….you do always expect to win. Its a little upsetting when you dont! lol
Rgds,
Muvar
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:08 am
Super-Duper site! Will come back again - taking you feeds also, Thanks.