Maybe it's useful to describe how I think about risk. I don't care about volatility. I care about potential life consequences. Let's say that losing a million dollars affects my life in some way, depending on the timing of the loss.I'm not an expert in gambling, but I find your second sentence interesting. I would think the house(casino) would never put a game out for their customers where they don't have an edge, so at worst, the odds would be 51% casino and 49% gambler I would think. I bet they prefer better odds than that.It wouldn't be gambling if I always won. It's less risky than the stock market, though.I imagine you pay for the food one way or another.Y'all pay for food in a casino? Weird.
Unless you're winning, of course.
Let's test my assumptions. I just did a quick web search, and this is what was returned:
* Blackjack Odds of Winning: 49%
* Craps Odds of Winning: Nearly 50%
* Roulette Odds of Winning: Nearly 50%
* Big Six Wheel/Wheel of Fortune Odds of Winning: 26% to 39%
* Slots Odds of Winning: About 1 in 49,836,032 (i.e. practically never)
I tried to find the odds for poker, but didn't have a lot of success. The best odds I could find was a 54% chance winning, but you have to be in the flop or something. My understanding is, the casino doesn't actually gamble with poker, they just take a % fee off the top for providing the game. So their odds of winning are 100%
Anyways, assuming my numbers are roughly correct above, I'm quite surprised that they have 50/50 odds for some of their games, that seems like a terrible business to be in if the best you can do is break even. Must be why those games tend to have much smaller footprints than the slots and wheel games where the house odds are so much better.
From what I understand the stock market is roughly 60% in favor of the investor, using Bogleheads, passive market index fund methods.
Do you have better information that explains your 2nd sentence? I'm not saying you are wrong, since clearly I'm quite ignorant of gambling, but I couldn't find any quick evidence online that supported your claim.
My game is poker. I just need to be better than the people I am playing against, by enough to beat the rake. I would realize I no longer have an edge and stop playing long before I lose a million, so I think the probability of that is zero.
Could I lose a million in the stock market? Yep. I would even call that likely. If the posts here are genuine, a lot of us are taking that risk.
Statistics: Posted by whodidntante — Fri Sep 20, 2024 11:23 pm — Replies 27 — Views 2072