Originally Posted by coach belly View Post

Your explanation seems reasonable.

Singer has always claimed that the long term doesn't necessarily apply to the player,
the player can't play enough to reach or even approach the long term.
This is where one has to be careful to get into very precise language in order to avoid giving the wrong impression.

I would say that the long-term doesn't necessarily apply to a player, but it applies to, the player.

Basically, in any game in which there is a house edge, then you have players who are going to win and players who are going to lose. Craps is a great example because it has a nearly binary bet in terms of selection and result and that is Pass v. Don't Pass. More often than not, the Pass Line bet is going to win whereas the Don't Pass loses, or the opposite will happen. However, 1/36 Come Out rolls will be a 12 which causes the Pass Line bet to lose whereas the Don't Pass bet pushes. That's counterbalanced by a fundamentally lower probability for the Don't Pass bet of winning outright.

Anyway, if you and I each place a bet of $5 on the respective lines, then one of us will win $5 and one of us will lose $5 97.222222% of the time. Hell, we could just cut out the middleman and pass the red chips back and forth to one another!

So, half the players win and half the players lose, usually.

Anyway, the 12 has to come up sometime, which costs the Pass Line money and doesn't do anything to the Don't Pass either way. The Don't Pass still loses more than it wins, though.

If you imagine 50,000 Craps Tables each with 2 players one betting the Pass and the other the Don't Pass, then you will see a wide range of results. After five Come Out rolls on every single table, you have 43,430.79 tables (mean average, rounded) upon which either one player or another is ahead and the casino does not have any money from either player.

After fifty-one Come Out rolls, we are already down to 11885.371 (mean average, rounded) tables where the casino does not have any money from either player.

After 201 Come Out Rolls, there are still 173.72 tables (mean average, rounded) where the casino does not have money from either player.

After 501 Come Out Rolls, we are at the point where only 0.0371114 tables where the casino has yet to make anything. One player MUST be up while one is down (No CO 12's, Odd number of CO Rolls), but the casino has yet to make anything, the money of the two players still adds to what it starts with.

On and on it goes, and some variation of the same dynamic for every other game on the casino floor in which there is a House Edge, as well.

Anyway, it may not effect, a player, someone has won the Powerball, for example. However, it does effect the player which is to say, as the number of trials goes up, the less and less likely it is for the player to be ahead.

Singer talks about AP's and, "Luck." There is no luck. Only Variance, and eventually, the beautiful lack thereof.

But, if there were luck, the players bucking a negative expectation need to be lucky to be ahead. AP's need to be unlucky to be behind.