Is somewhat of a generalization that the life of poker players is full of gambling. Depending of your definition of gambling I will have to agree to some extent.
Besides poker there are some “gambles” that are more or less common in the poker world. Such as: Credit Card Roulette, Flipping coins and playing Rock, Paper, Scissors for money (don’t judge).
Since I am not a math wiz and chances are neither are you, I will try to explain each game and the expected value of each in a simple way.
Credit Card Roulette
A game of chance to decide which person pays for a restaurant meal. Every party contributes a credit/debit card into a hat and the waiter/waitress removes one card at time. The last card removed pays the entire bill.
This is my favorite game since I don’t like paying, although I probably have the worst record among my friends.
Let’s explain it:
Let’s say that there are four friends on the restaurant. Everyone puts their credit card out and give it to the waitress. Before, you see the bill is $100.
Let’s suppose one of the friends it’s called Bill. the expected value of Bill in the long run is going to be equal as the expected value of everyone else. Everyone has one card and one chance of losing hence the equality of the game.
Let’s review the possible outcomes. Bill don’t pay for the meal 3 times out of 4 and pays 1 time out of 4.
The same can be said for everyone. In that case, when Bill pays he pays $100 and when he doesn’t pay he pays $0. In simple math terms we can put it like this
BILL= Amount of money loser pays / Number of possible outcomes.
BILL= $100/4
BILL = $25
As you can see in the long run if this game is played over and over everyone will pay $25. There are some tricks and angles though.
If the bill is $100 and you got a $50 dollar meal is a hustle if you decide to gamble for it. Although most of the times this is an ongoing thing which arguably in the long run could even out itself unless of course you are always the one picking the most expensive meal. This bring some game theory problems but if this game is being played by friends I think they are not worth discussing.
Flipping Coins
The title itself is self explanatory, “flipping” doesn’t necessarily means that you should use a coin, it implies however that a game must be this form: (A, B) outcomes being (A, B) equally possible.
That’s it, flipping a coin is a “fair” game. There is no edge (assuming the game is not rigged) and over the long run if you flip a coin no matter what, results are going to converge closely.
In itself this game has to be one of the less interesting games and is a good way to decide for things that nobody wants do to. For the sake of joy, it can be done in settings of extreme boredom. I have some semi-funny stories, once we were bored and I asked a friend if he wanted to flip for the sake of it, only ten times… I won ten times in a row and decided to do ten more, if my memory is not failing me I am sure I won 7/10 the second time.Total 17/20. Variance is a bitch, sometimes.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
This is a very famous game I will not bother in explaining the game itself.
This game could be treated in the same way as flipping a coin. Rock, Paper, Scissors is particularly fun if you are drinking and feeling a bit retarded. There can be speculations that game theory wise you could have an edge over your opponent but in reality I doubt that’s true although sometimes it might feel like you are inside other’s people head I would argue that the Gambler Fallacy would explain that.
As you can see, when professional poker players (in general) gamble they probably look for neutral games where edges are not bend way one or an other.
For what is worth all casino games are designed in such way that you always lose x% of your money for every wage. To be more concrete in a double-zero roulette the house has a 5.25% edge. A simple way to understand that would be to understand that for every $100 you gamble they are winning $5.25 of every $100. In other words, you are losing $5.25 for every $100.
One of the general rules that I would use in any case, either equal fairly games and casino games is:
If losing money won’t bring any emotional pain but winning would bring joy then gambling makes sense.
On the other hand if losing money brings pain gambling is nonsense.
Gambling by definition:
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value (referred to as “the stakes”) on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods.
My stoic advice would be: Gamble on things that you don’t care if you lose and things that will bring joy if you win. That’s why I don’t think that buying the lottery is particularly foolish even though it’s clearly a game with negative expectation.
I think the majority of people don’t particularly care about the money they spend on the lottery ticket, on the other hand they are buying a potential what if that ultimately brings joy to them therefore their gamble make complete sense in a semi-crazy way.
Personally every time I “gambled” playing Credit Card Roulette/Flipping/Rock Paper, Scissors I was following the same logic and at the same time in the long run the games are equally fair.
Irrationally it made me happy not to pay for every time I didn’t pay and it didn’t hurt when I had to.
Disclaimer: If my math is wrong don’t hesitate to call me out on it, please.
