{"id":70578,"date":"2018-08-21T09:48:05","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T17:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=70578"},"modified":"2023-08-24T15:01:34","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T23:01:34","slug":"certain-kind-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/certain-kind-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"A Certain Kind of Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month or two ago, I mentioned on the <\/span>Gambling with an Edge <\/span><\/i>podcast that I have a buddy with two kids — \u201cJack,\u201d 12 years old and \u201cMary Ann,\u201d 10 years old — who are becoming fascinated with the game of backgammon. I\u2019ve agreed to provide them with some backgammon instructions, and I\u2019m enjoying the process of teaching them. I\u2019ve taught adults for years but have had limited experience with teaching children. <\/span><\/p>\n

The lesson on this particular day was about the doubling cube.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s say,\u201d I began, \u201cthat from a certain position, your opponent will win 26 times out of 36 and you will win 10 times out of 36.\u201d Backgammon players will have no trouble constructing one or more positions that meet this criterion, but I want today\u2019s column to be understood by those readers who do not understand backgammon as well as those who do.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s say that you are playing for $1 and your opponent,\u201d I continued, \u201coffers you the doubling cube. \u00a0What this means is that you have the choice of accepting the cube and playing out the game for $2 or passing the cube and conceding $1 right now. What would you do?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Both kids are pretty bright and are in STEM schools, which specialize in science and math, but the boy is two years older. \u00a0When it comes to figuring out mathematical problems (which is what I thought this was), those extra two years make a difference.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point in time, neither knew how to figure this out (I hoped that this would be different by the end of the lesson), so both went with instinct. Jack could see that he was a big underdog to win, and he\u2019d much prefer to lose $1 rather than $2, so he announced that he would pass the double.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mary Ann wasn\u2019t interested in the math at all. Her goal was to beat her brother. Since she knew she couldn\u2019t beat him by going with the same answer he gave, she announced she was going to take the double.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then I went through the math so they would know how to solve these \u201ctake-or-pass\u201d backgammon problems in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

If they passed the double, like Jack wanted to do, they would lose $1. That much was clear to everybody.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if they took the double, how do you figure that out?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, 10 times out of 36 you win, which would put you ahead $20 on those rolls. Twenty-six times out of 36 you lose, which would put you down $52 on those rolls. Your net loss in 36 rolls is $32, so the average loss is $32\/$36 which comes out to 89\u00a2. Since 89\u00a2 is smaller than $1, the correct play is to take the double.<\/span><\/p>\n

The acronym \u201cQED\u201d comes from the Latin <\/span>quod erat demonstrandum <\/span><\/i>and means I have shown that which was to be demonstrated — or, basically, this math proves my case. Neither child, however, was impressed by what I had done.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack assured me he understood the math, but he would still pass the double. He simply didn\u2019t want to risk losing the extra dollar most of the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mary Ann cared even less for the math. The important thing to her was she got it right and her brother got it wrong! What could possibly be a better result than that? \u201cThat was fun! Do you have another puzzle for us, Bob?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There was nothing more for me to say. In my opinion, playing games successfully depends on understanding and following the math. They both rejected the math. I was out of ammunition.<\/span><\/p>\n

I spoke to their father, a successful gambler, a few days later about this. I think he took the right approach. He said, \u201cI really don\u2019t care if they become professional gamblers or not. But if they do, I want them to know the math backwards and forwards. They certainly don\u2019t need to know this math when they are pre-teenagers — and who knows what their aptitudes will be in a decade or more? Later, if and when they decide that playing games competently is what they want to do, that\u2019s when it\u2019s important that they learn this stuff.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A month or two ago, I mentioned on the Gambling with an Edge podcast that I have a buddy with two kids — \u201cJack,\u201d 12 years old and \u201cMary Ann,\u201d 10 years old — who are becoming fascinated with the game of backgammon. I\u2019ve agreed to provide them with some backgammon instructions, and I\u2019m enjoying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601,558,643,557],"tags":[731,561,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}