Natural Science Forum / Physics / Relativity / August 2006

Roulette is a 50/50 game if you are playing black vs red, except for
the one green slip of the wheel, but the odds of hitting that are very
remote.

So here is a scam you can test out at home.

Get 21 pennies, and a quarter.

Now get 3 pennies and the quarter ready.  Put 2 pennies in a pile, and
one by itself.

If the quarter comes up heads move the penny by itself into the pile of
2, and tails you do the opposite.

The odds are 50% higher that you will win at roulette if you have the
pile of 2 pennies.  And here is why.  Because the extra pennie is a
freebie that your pretty girlfriend scored from some stooge playing
poker who was probably on a winning streak.

Now you can keep playing this game by adding a penny to each pile, and
the odds of you taking the whole pot continue to go down logically.
When you are playing 3 on 2, the odds of winning aren't 50% higher,
they are only 25% higher.  And with each penny you add the odds go down
by half.  Or something like that.  You do the math.

But the more money your girlfriend hustles the greater your odds of
winning at roulette are.  Or you could bring in fake chips yourself.
But the great thing is the more free chips your playing with, the more
of the casinos pot you have a good chance of raking in.

It doesn't matter, just always bet on black.

There are lots of other ways to get that "free penny" as well. Being
able to read good body language at a poker table gets you a free penny,
being a pretty girl gets you that extra, I'm going to overbet my bad
hand penny.  You know

But the idea is that if you play the 50/50 game, and you always trying
to win just half of what you are willing to gamble, your odds improve
greatly.

2 against 1 , you have a 75% chance of winning

You win that pot

3 against 1, you have better than 75% chance of winning

4 against 2, you have a 75% chance of winning.

So every time you win a pot you get a free penny!

And once you go up on a streak of luck like this, even when you start
to come down, you can continue going back up, and find a happy medium.
You just have to know when to quit, and know how to score those free
pennies. Just look at the whole pot that you have at the time as
something you are willing to risk to get whatever 'goal' you have at
the time.

Can you imagine what the odds would look like if you only went after
one penny at a time?  As your pools of free pennies grew, your odds
would increase exponentialy.