Why the Mathematics of Gambling can Lure Even the Most Brilliant Minds to the Game
Online Gambling. To the naked eye, you might believe this to be one of the many past times that will end up losing you a lot more than just money. But, the famous saying ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ applies here, as if you take a second glance you will realize the sport – or game, depending on how seriously you take it – can be extremely fruitful in both a social and economical sense. In fact, if you are skilled in mathematics and have a quick mind, you could find yourself earning more money than you know how to spend in no time at all.
players back in their pre-Microsoft days. – Pando.com
Take Bill Gates for example, who was a well-known poker player in his college days. In fact, his dorm mate at Harvard, Steve Ballmer, credits these ‘all-night poker games’ as providing a substantial amount of the start-up funds for Microsoft, whilst the business plans were effectively an extension of their poker playing strategies. Now, it is hard to speculate whether Gates and Ballmer their brains to the task of mathematics when it came to gambling in poker, but given their successes that sparked the funding for Microsoft, it is impossible to rule out.
It is also unlikely that both Gates and Ballmer were poker geeks, so-to-speak and this is where the average poker player comes in. If they too can master the strategy of maths in poker – whether it be the probability model or standard deviation – then a tidy profit is in the offing. These strategies are also non-illegal, as they fall under the strategy of gaming theory, rather than the illegal betting strategies such as card-counting among other systems.
In statistics and probability theory, the standard deviation (SD) (represented by the Greek letter sigma, σ) measures the amount of variation or dispersion from the average. A low standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be very close to the mean (also called expected value); a high standard deviation indicates that the data points are spread out over a large range of values.
With these systems, you only work out the percentage of you winning a particular hand, or spin, or throw of the dice, but nothing is ever certain. You could have a 99% chance of losing and the roulette wheel could still land on the number of your choosing. Another method of use for these sorts of mathematics is for players to work out the house advantage and whether it is worth playing at the table. Games of Keno, for example, can have a house advantage of as much as 25%.
Steven Hawking has also been caught enjoying a game of cards at the tables, in a Star Trek episode, playing alongside fellow genius Albert Einstein amongst others. Although this was for a television spot only, it is a safe bet to think that Hawking has put his brain to use at the poker tables once or twice over the years and has likely deduced many formulas as to how to leave the table in winning fashion.
Whether it’s through strategy or luck, poker is a card game that keeps on giving for the intelligent. If you have the ability to work out your limitations or alternatively work out how to win, then this is the game for you. Who knows, you could find yourself becoming a high roller sooner than first thought!
[Top Image Source: Wikipedia.org]
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