Fifteen years ago, when most of the AP discussion was consolidated on Stanford Wong’s Green Chip page, there was a recurring conjecture, posed by naïvely optimistic card counters: When a butterfly flaps its wings in China, penetration increases in Vegas. For example, one person would make a post saying that the US had just signed a treaty banning military research on biological weapons, and the next poster would say, “So penetration is going to increase!” The Rube Goldbergian logic would go something like this: If we ban bio research in the US, the virus labs will move to foreign countries, especially China; without proper ethical and safety regulations, a virus will escape a Chinese lab; the ensuing worldwide pandemic will shut down casinos throughout the US; after two months without revenue, the US casinos will be desperate for cash when they re-open; to entice Americans to travel to the petri dish that is the Strip, Vegas will have to offer something that locals casinos throughout the US cannot; previously, Vegas casinos would offer fabulous shows, nightclubs, restaurants, roller coasters, strippers, and delirious nights spent shoulder-to-shoulder at the crap table with other like-minded tourists; with social-distancing guidelines shutting down nightclubs, spas, restaurants, and debauchery, Vegas will have to find some other way to make the game attractive; ergo, they’ll increase the penetration!

You had me till “ergo”! The conjecture requires three assumptions: that casino executives know what penetration is, that gamblers care what penetration is, and that casinos will compete with each other using penetration. In my decades as a pro, I still haven’t figured out which of those three assumptions is the most ridiculous. For a few inexperienced players to share their daydreams online was less annoying than the silence of the experienced majority. By failing to call out misinformation online, knowledgeable players allow idiocy to fester online. Of course, sometimes that is our goal.