MathExtremist's Blog

By popular demand, this is cribbed from a post I made recently:

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When you're walking down the sidewalk, your money is in your pocket. You're neither winning nor losing, and there is no suspense around what's going to happen with that money. But when you place a wager, three factors come into play
a = The chance of you winning, the feeling you get from winning, and the extra money you get from winning
b = The chance of you losing, the feeling you get from losing, and the loss of your wager
c = The suspense of waiting for a or b
For lack of a better phrase, I'll use "Entertainment Value" and co-opt "EV" for this discussion.
a is obviously +EV.
b is obviously -EV.
c is very personal and will vary widely among people for many reasons.
Therefore, if the sum of all the EV (a, b, c) is positive, you like gambling. If it's negative, you don't.

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Now I admit this is a simplification, but on the whole it captures the fact that some people like making a bet and some don't. Look up Prospect Theory for a much more in-depth discussion of risk preferences in chance scenarios.

Today was light - only one meeting. I met with an operator today who said "I like your game (Bad Beat Blackjack) but the owners here will never put in a blackjack side bet." Fair enough - he was actually the most enthusiastic of the casino managers I've met so far, and "ownership won't do it" gave him no reason to hold back on his true opinion. He even told me that he's sure someone will take it. Of course, someone has - just not in Las Vegas.

No dice tonight. I'm still basking in yesterday's win.

Meetings 3, installs 0.

You may be asking "Where's day 1?" I didn't get into Vegas until yesterday at around 2pm so Monday doesn't count. Mostly that was shopping and going to Fedex Office to print out collateral. The office on Flamingo and Paradise has this new machine where you can put in your thumbdrive and print out PDFs and Word docs without standing in line. That was helpful.

Today was my first full day here (this trip, anyway). I saw two operators who expressed moderate to high interest in some games. One said he'd definitely put at least two of them on for a trial (Bad Beat and Hard Pass) were it not for his lack of staff levels and open tables. Apparently the market is so bad for some of the smaller casinos that they can't keep the games running - he's lost 2/3 of his workforce. As a result, he only has some tables open a few days a week, and that wouldn't be a fair test of a new game. I understand where he's coming from, but I'm still looking for any local data I can get before G2E.

The other operator said he prefers to be behind the cutting edge when it comes to new games. I got good feedback from him anyway (and he liked some of what he saw) but for him it was basically a non-starter until I have tables elsewhere. That gets me wondering about what the % breakdown is on operators and their floor mix "adventurousness".

I'm staying in one of those long-term hotels, basically a furnished apartment. It reminds me a lot of my first apartment after college, which isn't saying much. There's no 24-hour coffeeshop and no option to wander downstairs and shoot dice, but it's much quieter -- and the transit time to/from my car is about 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes. Plus, Internet access doesn't cost $15/day.

Speaking of dice, I had a 15+ minute hand earlier tonight at an almost-empty table (e.g. lots of rolls). Low stakes - $3 + $10 odds using my Four-Barrel Shotgun spread. Made about 5-6 passes but tons of inside numbers. And I had the bases loaded for about 5 minutes. "Easy 4. Off and on. Drop me $2 for $25." The best part was that the 7 came on a comeout, so I lost the $18 but kept the $60 in odds.

Running score: meetings 2, installs 0. I want that last figure to be > 0 by the end of next week...

edit: due to a strategy change, I am no longer doing the crowdsourcing experiment. I'll leave the list of games here for your reading pleasure:
New table games. I have playable demos of several games and you'll probably recognize who coded them. The games I plan on demonstrating are:
Bad Beat Blackjack^®
Hard Pass
Odd and Even Craps
Uppercut Roulette
Twist'em

The first four games are already approved in Nevada, and I'm looking to field-trial Twist'em. All are patented and many have follow-on patents pending.