What Are the Odds?

I’m not a gambler. I don’t like to take unnecessary chances.

Here’s a little test to see if you’re a gambler:

I offer you $50, straight up, or you can flip a coin. If it lands on tails, you get $1000. If it lands on heads, you have to pay me $1000.

A gambler would take the coin toss, hoping for big bucks. I’d take the $50 every time. I can’t afford to lose a thousand bucks. The risk wouldn’t be worth it for me.

I took my very first business trip in April. It was in Las Vegas. I gambled once: I took $100 to a $10 blackjack table (the $5 tables were full).

The way to win at Blackjack is simple: you lay down the minimum bet. If you win, you smile and lay down the minimum bet again. If you lose, you lay down twice what you bet the first time. That way, if you win you get your money back plus the original bet. If you win the second time, you lay down the minimum again. If you lose, you double the doubled amount.

If you follow this method, you’re guaranteed to win, provided two things: you have a stake large enough to weather a losing streak; and you’re willing to walk away once you’ve gone ahead.

Here is a play-by-play of the hands:

MY BET ME DEALER

10.......... 16........ 20

20......... 18......... 20

40......... 12........ 18

At this point, as you can see, I had lost three straight hands. The dealer was hot and I was getting crap cards. To make things worse, I could no longer double my bet – I only had $100 to start with, and now I was down to $30. Here’s how the rest played out:

10....... 16...... 19

20....... 15...... 20

Five straight hands, five losses. A real gambler would have asked the dealer to add $200 to his hotel bill and kept up with the betting procedure, certain of winning at some point. I, however, had $100 to bet with, and when that was gone, my gambling was done.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, nothing really. It was just on my mind. Although I am beginning to wonder if my conservativeness is related to my extreme suckiness when it comes to fps computer games. Do I get killed because I was too afraid to attack? Do I try to be defensive when I should be ignoring the possible costs of the action and just (to borrow a now-cliched term) do it?

Possibly. I know that when I’m dueling in Jedi Knight, I tend to cut my attacks off when it looks like the opponent’s swing is coming toward me. Maybe if I ignored the opponent and finished my own attack, I’d end up winning.

Or maybe I’d just lose all the sooner. Who knows? It’s not worth the risk.