| PERCENTAGE PROPOSITIONS WITH CARDS |
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| Written by rouger | |
| Friday, 07 September 2007 | |
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Anybody who gambles at cards will sooner or later be invited to bet on some card proposition. More proposition bets have been cooked up with 52 playing cards than with any other gambling device. The biggest bundle lost on a card proposition was the $25,000 lost by a Midwestern banker client of mine who suspected he had been cheated out of his $25,000 and hired me to investigate. The banker had attended a party given by a friend in a New York City hotel suite. Near the end of the evening, a doctor, loaded with a handful of $100 bills and apparently as many drinks, began cutting a deck of cards into three packets and shouting, "I'll bet anybody a hundred bucks at even money that there is no ace, deuce or jack on the bottom of any these packets." He turned the packets face up. If anyone had taken the bet, the doctor would have won: none of the named cards showed. The watchers began to work out the odds mentally. They figured that 12 cards out of 52 gave the drunk a 3 to 1 edge, and it was my banker client who made the mistake of believing he had it figured right. "What do you take us for?" he asked. "A bunch of idiots? You should be offering three to one on that bet." The doctor wobbed drunkenly. "Okay, you're so smart, you take the cards and cut three piles and I'll bet that an ace, deuce or jack does show on the bottom:' The banker eyed the handful of $100 bills and decided to teach this character a lesson. He accepted the offer. This was the start of a 12-hour session. At noon the following day the banker quit, a $25,000 loser. The doctor, who was much soberer than he appeared, never bet less than a hundred or more than three hundred on any single decision. The reason for this was that he wanted to give the 10 10/17% edge which is what he actually had-a chance to grind away. Figuring the percentage on this isn't quite as simple as it seems, a fact the doctor had counted on. You must first find the total number of possible three- Then the total number of possible combinations that are "misses" (combinations which do not include an ace, deuce or jack), like this: Subtract the 9,880 misses from the 22,100 total of three-card combinations for an answer of 12,220 hits. Then subtract the 9,880 misses from the 12,220 hits and you find that there are 2,340 more hits than misses, an advantage of 10 10/17% in the doctor's favor, which is quite a lot different from the 3 to 1 odds the banker thought he had going for him.
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 05 December 2007 ) |
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