Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
This willful ignorance of basic mathematics is the reason the casinos are standing and doing brisk business (all mismanagement of resources, aside).

The long run is very important because it indicates the average of what you can expect to lose in a given session.

The higher the average, the more you will lose.

Vegas realized over time that most gamblers don't care about odds or averages, so they are progressively worsening the games year after year, and the public comes back for more.

People don't understand that they will lose 4 times as much at a 96% return than a 99% return machine. All they care is that they see that big hand hit every so often, and they think, "Wow, just a few more of these, and I'll really be kicking ass!"

I just had a similar argument with someone who was insisting that he liked playing 6:5 blackjack, because he has "better luck" at those tables.
This post is an excellent example of misguided bias. There is no relationship between the so-called long run and the average expected loss/session. It's nothing but a state of mind from someone who loses because they play bad games at CET casinos that lure him in with a promise of untold freebies that he can value himself in order to create a year-ending "feel good" so all was not lost.

The math favors the casinos. Always has. The success of the player, outside of extreme good luck, rests only in being able to perform exactly the opposite as the casinos want and expect players to perform. The AP concept of playing only +EV games (or more precisely, to concoct positive plays out of the many "reel 'em in" promos casinos continue to offer this group) and that you should approach expectation the more you play, has always been flawed in that, just as there are very, very few of the extremely lucky winners out there because they just happened upon machines at their most giving part of their timeline, it is just as rare for the machines to cooperate for any "grind it out" player that wants to get to any imaginary expectation point somewhere in the future. The idea makes sense in the classroom, but is practically impossible to duplicate in a real setting. Theory regularly gets destroyed by reality.