{"id":4927,"date":"2016-12-20T09:19:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T17:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamblingwithanedge.com\/?p=4927"},"modified":"2016-12-20T09:19:59","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T17:19:59","slug":"learning-wrong-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/learning-wrong-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning the Wrong Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of us continue to learn as we progress through life. A 70-year-old man has many more life experiences than a 20-year-old. Most 20-year-olds have more recently been a student and have a more flexible mind than their grandparents, but their grandparents have been in many more situations and have learned from them. That learning experience is very valuable.<\/p>\n

Unless they\u2019re a football fan.<\/p>\n

On a kickoff in the National Football League, a \u201ctouchback\u201d — meaning the kick goes into the end zone or beyond and the receiving team makes no attempt to run it out — results in the ball being placed on the 25-yard line.<\/p>\n

If the receiving team runs the ball out and gets \u201conly\u201d to the 20-yard line, the typical announcer says that running it out was a \u201cbad decision.\u201d The reason he says this is obvious. Had the kick returner given up and taken a knee, the ball would have been at the 25-yard line. Since he only got to the 20-yard line, any fool can see that it was a bad decision.<\/p>\n

Conversely, had the runner gotten to the 30-yard line, this would have been pronounced a \u201cgood decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seventy-year-olds have heard this kind of football-announcer logic hundreds or thousands of times. And they sometimes believe this kind of thinking because it makes sense.<\/p>\n

Except it\u2019s dead wrong — at least to my way of thinking.<\/p>\n

Whether or not you have made a good decision or a bad decision should be determined at the time you make the decision — NOT sometime down the road. In the case of football, the player needs to consider how deep the ball is kicked, his speed, the score of the game, the placement of the players on both teams, and a variety of other factors. Sometimes another player has the responsibility of determining whether or not the kick should be run out because the guy who is catching the ball needs to concentrate on that and not on where everybody else is.<\/p>\n

When the player catches the ball and runs it out, he cannot know exactly where he will be tackled or run out of bounds. He can have a good idea — but he doesn\u2019t know exactly. Over time he learns that on average, if the ball is kicked nine yards deep, he doesn\u2019t get as far as when the kick comes down right on the goal line. This is an important factor in his decision. He learns that balls kicked really high take longer to come down so he\u2019s more likely to be tackled earlier than if it were a low kick. This is also an important factor in his decision. There are many other such factors and eventually he becomes better at this — or is replaced by somebody else.<\/p>\n

In gambling, many people use the same type of illogic — namely if they win they were playing well and if they lose they were playing poorly. Again, this is dead wrong to my way of thinking.<\/p>\n

A good bet, or a good decision, should be evaluated as good or bad when you make the bet <\/em>— not afterwards. With the hand Q\u2660 J\u2660 T\u2660 9\u2660 8\u2666, discarding the 8 and seeing if you connect on a flush or straight flush this time<\/em> is definitely not the way to evaluate what the correct play is. (Generally speaking, in games without wild cards, when the straight flush pays 250 you keep the straight and when it pays 400 or more you go for the straight flush.)<\/p>\n

People who listen to a lot of football games and learn to accept the kind of logic presented there have a tough time accepting this \u201ctruth.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes \u201cmy\u201d truth better than the truth told by football announcers? (It\u2019s not \u201cmy\u201d truth at all, but merely the truth I\u2019m presenting here. It was discovered long before I came along.) The most successful gamblers from a variety of disciplines accept it.<\/p>\n

Poker players talk about pot odds. If the pot is offering 3-1 odds and the actual odds are only 2-1 against you, poker teachers tell you that you should make the bet even though you are going to lose it two-thirds of the time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Michael Shackleford, the head guy at the Wizard of Odds series of websites, who is arguably more of a theoretician than a gambler (although clearly, he is both), phrases it as, \u201cIt\u2019s not whether you win or lose; it\u2019s whether you had a good bet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The basic strategy in blackjack says you should splits 8s against a ten (as well as all other up cards.) Doing this, you\u2019re frequently going to lose twice as much as if you either stood on the 16 or took another card. This decision is made because on average, you\u2019ll lose less money splitting the 8s than you will making either of the other two plays. And \u201con average\u201d means over several times, not just this time in particular.<\/p>\n

In sports betting, you might see -150 on one side of a bet and +125 on the other — meaning you have to bet $150 to win $100 if you lay the favorite, and you win $125 for your $100 bet if you take the underdog. Either side might be the smart bet — depending on a bunch of factors. Waiting until after the game is over and THEN saying \u201cI should have bet on . . .\u201d is not the way it\u2019s done — but that\u2019s the way football announcers tell it.<\/p>\n

Experience is a great teacher. But sometimes it teaches us the wrong lesson.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of us continue to learn as we progress through life. A 70-year-old man has many more life experiences than a 20-year-old. Most 20-year-olds have more recently been a student and have a more flexible mind than their grandparents, but their grandparents have been in many more situations and have learned from them. That learning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,19],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nLearning the Wrong Lesson - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/learning-wrong-lesson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Learning the Wrong Lesson - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most of us continue to learn as we progress through life. 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