Baccarat True Believers vs. Con-Artists

The casinos have a closed mind to. They use the math of the game to make money.

 

That fact linked to the abysmal ignorance of 98% of the players is a potent combination. The math only works if you play the way the casino wants you to play, which most people do. If you don't play that way the casino will hate your guts and try to get rid of you.

 

Mickey has one foot in the grave ... on oxygen, in a wheelchair, lost his marbles. All talk but no cattle. Not a lot of fun. "Runs" from one casino to the the other for quarters out of slots left by other players. Rattles on to himself at Vegas CasinoTalk. Spike should know all he needs to about math, he has a mathematician for a daughter.

 

But Punkcity is capable of reading a corporate balance sheet. That without the math buulsheet ( sic)

 

You'd be welcome in my casino 24/7/365!

 

For about a week, then you kick me out for never losing..

 

You couldn't pay me to set foot in "your" casino. Lol.

 

@ Spike,

There are more people out there who are walking as winners out of a casino.


Not so unique ,

 

I do not have and do not want a casino. I don't even know who you are.

 

It's a good question. My primary reason for renting a room is I don't like to live alone. My roommates are people I've known for 25+ years and in the absence of family (all dead) they are like my new family. My primary reason for getting out of active gambling was the strain it was putting on my body. I was starting to have back pain and hand pain, so I saw the hand writing on the wall (or lack there of) and decided to switch professions.

In my prime I was living large. My average income was at least 65K but with all the comps I lived like someone with a 6 figure income and then some. One year I got over 100K in food alone not counting the shows. As recently as 4 years ago I got a suite at the Red rock they rent out for $8,000 a night for my 50th b-day.

As far as my advice to gamble or not I think that's too personal a decision. If you're leaving a bad job to gamble and you make more money with less hours then I'd say, gambling could be a good option for you. I knew one independent wanabe pro we called the "Weekend Warrior" he left a 400K a year job to come to Vegas and Laughlin to make only about 120K a year and he worked twice the hours he'd had before. I think that would be a good example of gambling having been a terrible idea. Not to mention he gave up medical insurance and his pension.

If you're the type that simply doesn't like working for other people and you can't start your own business of some sort, pro gambling is a decent business where you can set your own hours and CASH is the only inventory you need to have. It is also quite enervating to make money by your own hand. In other words it makes you happy and excited to earn money doing something you figured out how to do yourself, not something someone told you how to do. It's a bit like the difference between being a truck driver or the guy that invented trucks. I think ego plays a big factor in pro gambling. Even if you're making less than you could in a normal job you get a HUGE ego boost knowing that you're earning a living on an activity where most people lose money. There is a strong sense pride that comes with the job that is lacking in most other professions. (not all)

One note: the joke in my branch of pro gambling was that it was great job where you could set your own hours, so long as it was ALL OF THEM. Pretty much all my partners worked 7 days a week from dawn to dawn, not dawn to dusk.

Lastly, I will tell you that almost every-single successful pro I know that worked the job for more than twenty years went though an existential where they suddenly realized that while they were making a good living they were creating nothing, building nothing, and entertaining no one. They realized that their job was irrelevant and no one really needed them to do it. It takes the starch out of your shirt and the wind out of your sails. Most of them soldiered on as gambling was by this time the only thing they were qualified to do.

So is my advice don't gamble? Not exactly, but I think the parameters where it would be the best choice for a young person to choose as a career are pretty darned narrow.

I am Frank Kneeland and I approve this message.

 

Oh as a retirement profession for elderly people I think gambling is a great choice. Keeps their bodies and minds active and makes them extra cash. Our team employed almost exclusively retired couples in their 60's.

 

Doesn't this describe a huge number of jobs? When I was in college I loaded trucks at Amway. Creating nothing, building nothing, I was moving product from a skid into a truck. I owned a bar for 3 years selling drinks to alcoholics. Irrelevant jobs.

 

Well one could argue that moving product is something someone has to do. Perhaps your boxes contained food. As a bar-tender I'm sure you entertained people and while giving alcoholics alcohol is not quite so important they'd get it somewhere and drinking alone rather than at a bar has been shown to be much worse for them. At least in a bar there is socialization and companionship.

In gambling you really are just making money to make more money with the money you made making money.

 

In fact it's a negative impact job. You are contributing to a problem, not improving it. The show Cheers wason TV at the same time I had the bar and it really pissed me off because any person who goes to a bar on a regular basis like they did on that show is an alcoholic. There's no way around it. And they treated it like it was a good thing. I got out of the business after 3 years because after the third or fourth of my regular patrons was killed in a car accident drunk driving, I'd had enough. Thank God they'd been drinking at somebody else's bar not mine.

 

Great winning 1 unit per day brings about $ 14,000.-- per month . ( 28 days )

Not bad .

 

Well I certainly understand you better now. I did adapt Einsteins riddle, but my reason for not mentioning that was only because if I did someone could google it. In order for the puzzle to work I had to keep silent on the origin. It was actually not my intent to engage in plagiarism.

I actually think my puzzle "Cut it Down to 3:05" is much better and that is totally and completely original. It grew out of my Father telling me about the stupid practice in the recording industry to try to get artists to hold their songs to a magical time limit for #1 hits.

An additional puzzle I made recently is simply called "How many people?" and it's as simple as it is insidious. You simply ask the question, "How many people were required for you to read and understand this question?" It's deceptively tricky.

So far as my lack of usefulness in a baccarat forum I would disagree, but I certainly understand from your POV why you'd think that. It's a reasonable statement. My contribution is often (or always) non-obvious.

Even if baccarat is beatable and spotting patterns and trends is a learnable skill, can we agree that not everyone sees true patterns that can be exploited? Some people (not all) see illusory patterns that don't predict the future?

I feel my skill in this area is useful and it is for those people I post. Just don't think I'm directing my posts at you and we should be cool.

 

I will take your word for it. I have no experience as a bartender. I did date a girl that worked as one and she seemed to feel she was helping people some days, especially those that had no one else. I'd be inclined to believe you over her. I think cognitive dissonance and sunk-cost bias were in play where she was concerned. She'd been doing it so long she couldn't accept that she never should have.

 

Oh here's the origin of that quote:

The true mystery lies at the heart of the ever closing circle that en-wraps the boundary between that which we would see and that which is. To go beyond one must journey within by looking without though eyes unencumbered. ~Frank Kneeland 2010

The origin of this quote is quite funny...I was engaged in a heated discourse with a troll on an Internet forum and was simply trying to write something unintelligible, to which he could not really reply. After I posted this he sent me a thank-you email and conceded our argument; it was only then that I realized that the intentional obfuscated jumble of words I tumbled together must have meant something to him.

This quote is therefore an epic fail!!! I was trying to be obtuse and made sense instead...ahhh the irony.)

And this time it failed again for completely different reasons. Actually quite funny.

 

Cut It Down to 3:05

IQ Test Question


QUESTION INTRO:

I am the entertainer,

I come to do my show.

You've heard my latest record,

It's been on the radio.

Ah, it took me years to write it,

They were the best years of my life.

It was a beautiful song.

But it ran too long.

If you're gonna have a hit,

You gotta make it fit--

So they cut it down to 3:05. ~Billy Joel The Entertainer



This was not merely a catchy lyric, this was Billy Joel’s personal dig at a recording industry policy in the 1970's. The industry decided that since the average length of #1 hits had been 3 minutes & five seconds in the previous decade, by extension it would be a good idea to keep all future songs to this magical musical time limit. The study done by the recording industry was actually inspired by the concept of the Golden Segment (discovered by Euclid) used in architecture. They thought that a similar magical formula for creating musical hits might exist in music.

Here was their methodology.

1.The average was a simple average calculated by taking the length of each song that had made it to #1 in the last decade, and dividing by the total number of #1 songs.

2.They got their stats from the billboard charts, which at that time based song popularity on radio show call in requests. The rules were simple: The most requested song during a particular week, was considered to be the #1 hit song for that week.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an up-and-coming executive in the music industry. You have a chance to be promoted in the company, if you can show where the current boss, that came up with this stupid “cut it down to 3.05” policy, has erred.

List each individual flaw or error separately in its own paragraph. Grading is on the number of flaws you find. More is better! The errors will broadly fall into four categories.

1. Premise (what they were trying to accomplish)

2. Methodology (how they were trying to accomplish it)

3. Statistical Sampling (bad math)

4. Conclusions (what they did with the information)

Good Luck!

P.S. To reiterate, there is no ONE right answer. Grading is on how many right answers you get. Thus far the most anyone has gotten is about 6 in 1 hour.

P.P.S. I originally made this for Dan Paymar as he loved puzzles. He recently passed away. He is sorely missed. A truly sweet man. I will never have a better editor...

 

While I think a sense of humor is a wonderful attribute, I don’t think it’s one of your strongest traits. I picture you laughing at the one-liners that you think are comedic, but it’s just your laughter over a bunch of crickets.

I think your strongest trait is your ability to dish out a bunch of lorem ipsum.