Iacta alea est!
24 February 2003
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
My buddy put $20 in a video poker machine,
playing $5 a hand to get the maximum payout. He
lost the first three hands, but on the fourth
was dealt a natural royal flush. Number one,
what are the odds of a natural royal flush
happening in video poker? Number two, what would
happen if he got nervous, and pressed the wrong
button discarding all the cards instead of
standing? I suspect in that case he is out of
luck, and there is no payout. Keith A.
There are a total of 2,598,960 different hands
that can be dealt to you in video poker, or
649,760 for each of four suits. Odds for a
natural flush on the hand as dealt: one to
649,760. Luckily, the casino allows us mortals
to discard some cussed cards before we cross the
Rubicon (See below.) By drawing, simultaneously
with using your noggin, your chances of hitting
a royal flush rise to approximately one in
40,000 -- sixteen times better than the odds on
a natural. As to the second part of your
question, -- nervous buddy, wrong button, etc. -
-NOTTA thing would have happened. Why? Because,
realizing most players do have nerves on edge
passing through what they see as a jungle of
hungry lions, slavering tigers, and grizzly
bears, all casinos (OK, if not 100% of them,
just a twitch fewer.) idiot-proof the machines
so as to lock in the jackpot, thus blocking any
suicidal tendency among those of us who get
nervous among undomesticated beasts.
Dear Mark,
Besides your common sense answers to gambling
questions, I also enjoy at the end of your
column the gambling quote of the week. Do you
happen to know who is attributed with the quote
"the die is cast?" I vaguely remember it being
George Washington credited with it when he
crossed the Delaware River. Alice P.
Credit instead the owners of Caesar's Palace in
Las Vegas with coming up with the phrase "the
die is cast." Yeah, Alice, I'm exaggerating a
bit, but linguistically not far off. In 49 BC, a
different Caesar crossed the Rubicon, a small
river forming the boundary between Cisalpine
Gaul and Italy. On crossing the river into
Italy, he shouted, "iacta alea est," which means
the die is cast. The significance of Caesar
exclaiming "iacta alea est" was that by crossing
the Rubicon, he was at the point of no return;
he was declaring war on Pompey. Today, when an
action marks a situation where there is no going
back, we can say the Rubicon has been crossed,
or, the die is cast. George was certainly up on
his Roman history.
Dear Mark,
Isn't there the same amount of ways to roll a
seven, as there are six and eight? Am I
mistaken? Steve J.
Here's a secret: the casino isn't in the
business of giving away money. For that reason,
the payoff on a six or eight is 7:6 though the
true odds are 6.2 to one, giving the casino an
advantage over you of 1.52%. As has been pointed
out to me, Steve, dice have six sides, each with
a different number of spots from one to six.
With two dice, there are 36 possible results
when rolling them (six ways one die can fall
times six ways the other can fall, 6X6=36).
Result: six ways to roll a seven (1+6, 6+1, 2+5,
5+2, 3+4 and 4+3). Considering the 6 or 8, there
are only five ways that either can appear: for
the six (5+1, 1+5, 4+2, 2+4 and 3+3) and for the
eight (6+2, 2+6, 5+3, 3+5, and 4+4). Therefore,
you are more likely to roll a seven than a six
or eight. Etc., etc. down to 2 -- only one way
to roll it. Now for those of you who didn't know
that dice has six sides, honestly, I wouldn't
know where to begin.
Gambling quote of the week: "Don't gamble. Take
all your savings and buy some good stock and
hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it
don't go up, don't buy it." Will Rogers
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