The Only Way to Win and the Unclimbable Mountain

I believe you mean 400 people clicked this on. I highly doubt a tenth of them got past the first paragraph.

Yes, well you don't have to look much further than our national pastime of watching men play with balls, whilst ignoring major developments in science to know that the American public's priorities are somewhat askew.

On January 14, 2005 I came into work at the New York casino and asked a coworker, "Did we make it?" They replied, "yeah I think we won by six points." The reason this is funny (sad) is because I was asking if the Huygens Probe had successfully landed on Titian, and instead got a local sports score. I moved on to ask another seven of my coworkers the same question. Four of them knew the local game score, but none of them even knew what the Huygens Probe was. Apparently, if given a choice between grown men playing with balls, and a first in the history of the human race (landing on the moon of an outer planet), ball handling skills are more interesting to the American public.

It's the kind of thing that if I think about it too long, makes me lose all hope for the human race.

I have not watched another ball related sporting event since, as my own personal form of conscientious objection. I'm sorry, when a person can make more money catching, hitting, or bouncing balls than they can as a medical researcher or scientists working on things that could save our race or planet, it goes well beyond being wrong, and deep into the realm of morally reprehensible.

Whoops...guess I went off on a rant there. Oh well, it's been a rough day.

~FK

I think the way I play VP may be an advantage play. I haven't done the math because I don't really care. Or is it a way of deluding myself? In either case it would not change my behavior.

I'll play quarter 99.5 JoB for a couple of hours. During that time I'll typically have four drinks. I negate the $4 in tips as I'd tip that wither I was buying the drinks or getting them comped. So if you take the .5 house edge, plus another couple of points due to my increasingly impaired play, times the number of hands played at my slow rate, I suspect that I'd come out theoretically loosing less than the cost of buying the four drinks.

I'll have to time my session and count the hands sometime so I can do the calculation as an interesting exercise. The results still won't change my behavior. Even if it costs me a couple of dollars more than buying the drinks outright, I'm still being entertained during my drinking session and that's worth a couple of dollars to me.

No, it does not sound to me like you are deluding yourself. I have been known to use the exact same tactic.

I add the step checking machine return, denom, and calculating the exact number of hands I can play to end up with a theoretical 75% discount on beverages. Naturally, this is rare for me because I never go to a casino or a bar to drink. I've used it when meeting friends and such.

~FK

I know and follow the math. But that's not why I play. For the same reason the OP doesn't get why people are fixated on "watching men play with balls, he doesn't get the risk-reward rush.
Sounds more like my brother-in-law the professor who disparages less educated folk who have more material comforts than he. And his idea of gambling is putting his meager savings in a 1.2% CD.

You are correct, I do not get the risk reward rush and I never will. Some studies into this phenomenon put the genetic inheritable accounts for percentage as high as 80% (Lowest studies are 41%). Some people's brains give them a dopamine and adrenalin (and others) surge when engaged in risky situations and when they are looking for and believe they have found patterns (real or perceived). Others receive no such neurochemical reward.

It might be an interesting forum debate to try to guess which group is more likely to be making sound decisions???

1. The poor folks that don't get any enjoyment?
2. The lucky folks that can duplicate the effects of cocaine legally, just by taking unnecessary risks?

One could make an argument either way...and I'm not being sarcastic.

I know from which category I'd like my president or the husband of my daughter to be from. I'm less sure about which category I'd like to be in. All this clear non-drug-addled thought can be a downer sometimes. I also lack most of the receptor sites for opiates and do not get pain relief from pain medication...no I'm not happy about it.

Please note: I enjoyed playing and watching sports most of my life. Only late in life (Since 2005 and the Huygens incident) did I begin to feel the time loss was unjustified, since no level of "ball handling skills" in another individual could, or can enrich my life in anyway that truly matters.

I think sports are great fun, I just don't see them as being more important than science, medicine, farming, etc...

Risk taking evolved as a survival strategy to outside threats. In modern culture, the threats come mostly from within, not from without. For some it is risk taking itself that is their only threat. What once saved us may become our epitaph. Here lies the human race after one risk too many. They had fun though. Great ball handling skills. ~FK

I feel like I'm watching The Big Bang Theory and FK is Sheldon.

I think the responses you received from your coworkers are most likely the way you aporoached them. The question sounded like a conversation around the water cooler.

I'm sorry I gave you the readers digest version. Only the first time I posed the question did I put it the way I phrased it in the post. After that I implicitly asked, "Did the Huygens probe land safely on Titian?". Only 2 of my coworkers knew what Titian was, and none of them knew about the Huygens probe or the Casini mission to Saturn. Then, just for curiosity's sake I asked if they knew the local sport's score, and this is where I got my results from.

Eight polled:
4 knew sports score
2 knew what Titian was
0 had heard of the Casini mission or the Huygens probe

Naturally, asking eight coworkers is not a random poll. I was still appalled.

Most folks pay attention to what matters to them and tend to absorb general knowledge outside of their own personal interests because that info is what they get on daily televising programming. They also need to spend most of the rest of their awake time working for a living and being with/raising their families. Their end results from doing everyday things are not as random as playing games in a casino. That's a good thing for most of us.

Some folks have a thirst for knowledge that will never be quenched. That thirst drives projects like space exploration that may or may not eventually benefit all of humanity in some way. Of course, that's a good thing, but don't expect it to be a point of general knowledge when it is happening.

I know that the casinos are supposed to win most of the time. I also know I get lucky sometimes and beat the casinos. I know how to maximize my chances of getting lucky. I go to casinos to have fun with the opportunity to go home with more money than I had in my pocket when I arrived. It's a vacation that can be profitable.

Your perspective is that of a professional gambler. I think that's why you look deeper into the human psyche to try to understand the reasons why people gamble in casinos when they are more likely to lose than win. Again, I go to a casino to have fun, and I can walk away with 1000 or more times the amount I put at risk while having that fun. If that doesn't happen, the losses are nothing more than an entertainment expense.