Originally Posted by RS__ View Post
Alan.....dealers, floor people, and pit bosses are generally not experts on probability. To say they are experts on dice is like saying the cooks at McDonalds are expert chefs.

Hell, one time my boss backed off our biggest bettor because he was winning.....he always played the same way: Hop hard ways, regular hard ways, horn bets, etc. for the max he could, and play until he was stuck $20k.....he could be up $40k but he'd still lose it all back, if it took 1 hour or 10 hours.

I asked the other dealers I was dealing with the same question, word for word. Three dealers total. One almost instantly said 1/6 because the other die had 6 sides. Another waited a few moments, his brain working, and said 1/36 because that's the chance of a 2-2 being rolled. The other was still thinking, said 1/12. I asked why 1/12 and he said because you could roll a 1-2, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2, 5-2, 6-2, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 2-6. Then thought about it for a second more and said no, it's 1/11 because he double counted 2-2.

I asked a boss and he just said "it's random, dice are random". I said yes they're random but what do you think the probability is or chance? Like flipping a coin and it landing on heads is 50% or 1/2. Again, he said its random.

I asked them if you are dealt a blackjack, what's the probability the first card is a ten or face card. The guy who said the dice prob was 1/6 said it was 4/13 for the BJ problem, because 4 of 13 cards are tens. The other dealer had some convoluted math and came up with an answer worse than Rob could come up with. The one who said the dice are 1/11, that there's a 1/2 chance your first card is a ten if you have a blackjack, because there are 2 combinations to get a BJ, either Ace+Ten or Ten+Ace. He was 2 for 2.

I asked a few other probability questions, riddles, etc. as did they. It became apparent the guy who said the dice probability is 1/11 actually knew how to do math, while the other two were a little slow, to say the least.

The fact you think dice dealers and floor people are considered "experts" is a bit telling.



I'd be careful about asking a group of math professors any question and accepting (sort of) the answer from just one. I had a computer science professor who gave us a homework assignment that was literally impossible in the language we were using. I don't remember the specifics now, but he wanted us to write a function which would use pass-by-reference which, done the way he wanted, was impossible (per the book and any expert or beginner). I asked for an example of code which would be sufficient, and the code he gave did not meet the criteria in the assignment (pass by reference). I ended up getting a 100% on the assignment, but only after many emails back and forth as well as getting the head of the department involved. The head of the department said something like, "This assignment was impossible. The language simply doesn't work that way."
During a dispute at the craps table I once made them call the gaming board agent on to the boat (in Illinois we originally had to have our casinos on big boats). After it became clear that he didn't have a clue and was just a typical government employee, I made a point to embarrass him by asking him to tell me what the proper payoff on a nine was. He was unable to do so.

I did used to take great pleasure in delaying the game for about 45 minutes over a minor amount of money. These casinos and their employees don't seem to understand that every roll, every spin, every deal is $$$ and that they should never let the game slow down. So they could argue with me for 45 minutes over a few dollars and it costs them hundreds.