odiousgambit's Blog

A couple of days at the Greenbrier

We have decided that we want to take most of our vacations locally now, somewhere we can drive to without killing ourselves from the DC area, instead of putting up with the hassle of flying. If gambling is to be in the picture for that, I knew we might be fitting in Mohegan Sun in CT or Atlantic City in NJ. But the idea of hitting a more local gambling scene was ruled out for various reasons [as mentioned in other blog posts].

This was a bit of a dilemma for me when we planned to head west of DC for vacation. I finally remembered that the old resort in WV that people used to go to to "take the waters" [for 233 years they say] now had some kind of current manifestation that included gambling. So I suggested to my wife we try that, and to my surprise she was thrilled as she had wanted to stay at this 'The Greenbrier' for some time and hadn't mentioned it. She used to work for the hotel industry and likes to stay at the famous hotels. OK! off to a good start here!

It was hard to find good reviews on the casino itself. Most of the reviews I seem to be able to find on *any* casinos off the main track tend to disappoint, often written by someone who doesnt gamble. Worse, they seemingly most often otherwise are written by disgruntled slots players, grousing about the usual beating they are taking. Emailing them didn't help, although that has been a problem for me other places as well. So I was forced to show up not knowing what to expect for sure in the way of minimums and rules. From some of what I was able to glean, seemed like there would be a good chance the minimums would be too high for me, forcing me to just make a few bets and leave. As it turned out, the minimums for the two games I would play, $15 at BJ and $10 at craps, were less than I predicted. I was also predicting 2X odds for craps, but it was indeed 3X4X5X.

I was set to try BJ for the first time in a casino. I sat down where it was only me and the dealer, and I immediately told her how I learned to play only online. I was glad to see she wanted to be helpful and understood what I was saying. As it turned out, there weren't any real surprises; that helped but I was still nervous. She called out the totals on both hands [wasn't sure that was going to happen] and I attempted to follow Basic as best I could including having laminated cards handy. I astounded myself by making several errors, some of which she actually let me renege on [before flipping dealer cards] and some of which went as I called them. Over two days I had two rounds of BJ; the first round I couldnt get BlackJack dealt to me except when dealer had it too it seemed, but I only was down a little over $100. By the second day I think I played almost error free at Basic, got my fair share of BlackJacks, but got clobbered with doubling down, losing about the same amount. Overall it was pretty fun, I have to assume I'll have better luck once in a while.

The new thing I wanted to try at craps was setting the dice before throwing. Now I have set dice before, but was actually faking knowing what to do just to see how people would react. This time I learned a couple of sets, and wanted again just to see how people would react, not believing that it worked. All I did was get some basic info at the WoO site and go with that, no lessons or anything. Lo and Behold, it seemed to be working! The dealers and everybody were remarking on how long my hands were going without the 7-out. The way I was playing, I would usually just be trying to hit one number for myself, with a come bet sometimes setting up another number. I found couldnt hit my numbers before the 7-out too consistently, the other part of that equation, and by no means did I exactly set any records for rolling anyway. But I came away about $100 ahead, making me happy since the BJ earlier had set me back. Next night, I again had everyone remarking how long my hands were getting rolled without the 7; the difficulty of hitting my own numbers continued. As I was tiring and about even and not the roller, I put up some come bets with full odds so that I was going for 3 numbers; this roller 7'd-out, and I bagged it then, down over $100. Overall a lot of fun, but no cigar you might say.

It was definitely fun to set the dice. The crew was definitely immediately on notice to make sure my rolls suited them. The first toss I made didn't hit the back wall; the stickman announced "a soft roll" without actually asking me to toss harder. I knew I was on notice, though, so my thought was to try to have only one die hit the back wall with maybe getting away with neither going that far once in a blue moon. That definitely was accepted OK, both dice hitting the back wall many times anyway. I enjoyed the attention all this got, including the apparent effectiveness of it.

Did I believe I was really skewing the results? In a word, NO. I don't really believe it can be done at all in casino conditions, much less actually making the long sets of rolls I was getting without 7-out really happen like that from dice-setting! However, as opposed to some, I don't feel there is much need to speed the game up, so what the heck. And I will confess to getting the "Pascal's Wager" effect on this. You know, it seemed to work, so what does it hurt either? If someone gave me a rabbit's foot and told me it would improve my luck, and it did, you know I'd be keeping that rabbit's foot. I am definitely that way, forgetting while playing sometimes that it was hooey. As a matter of fact, I started feeling disdain for people who were just tossing the dice with no technique. I definitely kicked myself for making those last big bets of my visit when just such a person indeed went down in flames. For sure, I am hooked now, dice setting is going to be it for me!

up or down longterm now "down $1152"
below budget, $948 balance

 

Variant Field Bets Explored

The lack of symmetry on the Field bet, with '5' losing and '9' winning, does bug me. Of course, the come-out is not symmetrical either, as the '11' has the same chance of coming out as '3' does, but one wins and the other loses. I've gotten used to that it seems, and never think about it.

But the equally likely '5' and '9' having different field payoffs, grrrr. Probably it's 'just me', but I had to toy around with this; after all, different casinos have different field bets. And "how things came about" is of interest to me.

Here's what I have so far, and to make a stir, if I owned a casino, I'd use and promote #1 at least some of the time. The excitement factor I think is pretty good!

The desired HE aside, at this forum I realize I will be up against plenty of boos, hisses, and catcalls [g]. And I too would really like something more simple than #3, not sure I can.

Wincraps should have these right, although I sometimes seem to run into a glitch with "bet results". At first I thought it was kind of weird that zero HE would sometimes be what I got, toying around, but now I think I get it.

variant #1- house pays 3x on '2','3','11', & '12', while '5' and '9' loses [as well as the other inside numbers]. Zero HE. Because of the symmetry, but also excitement factor, I like this better for a zero HE promotion. I have to admit as casino owner I'd probably only have something like that on a low-max-bet table myself.

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variant #2 - house pays 3x on '2','11', &'12' but pays 2x on '3', while '5' and '9' etc. loses. This one is -5.56 HE. The "stingy casino" house edge with symmetry, except a lack of symmetry in what pays in multiples.

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variant #3 - house pays 4x on '12', 3x on '2' or '11' and 2x on '3' while 5 and 9 etc. loses. Has a -2.78 HE. The most standard HE, now with symmetry and same problem as #2.

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I havent been able to concoct a field bet that has -2.78 HE without a lack of symmetry at least in the unsymmetrical multiples pay. I think the problem is that one 36th is .0278. Thus that is the most fine tuning you can pull off one way or the other?

My guess on how the field bet got to its various current formations: All field bets with '7' paying are rejected, and inside numbers in general are rejected. Then having the '5,6,7,8,9' inner numbers losing, with no bet paid in multiples, was considered at the beginning? Finding no one to bet such a rip-off, the '9' was chosen to pay I think, why the '9' over the '5' I know not. Indeed a truly symmetrical way to give better odds perhaps cannot be found. Paying double on 2 and 12 and then triple on 2 or 12 surely came about in an effort to out-compete another casino by offering better odds yet, as also paying on the '5' sends it to player advantage. It took me a while to realize the outside numbers are for fine tuning, as the inside number diddling is big whacks.

Craps Question Was Eating At Me

This will strike many of you as a profoundly idiotic question, but it has been bugging me for some time. If taking free odds in Craps, you increase the variance to the point that the significance of winning or losing at the pass line [or don't pass] becomes smaller; at something like 100x odds the pass line bets are almost immaterial for a session. I also had noticed during a session that I seemed to win a pretty normal percentage of times when the bet was resolved by rolling 7, 11, or craps on the come-out, but that my luck varied wildly on whether I would make my points, the very time that I had my big bets up with the free odds.

I couldn’t figure out if somehow wincraps kept track automatically of how often a come-out got resolved immediately, or how to keep track of that using chipracks in wincraps.

But I thought it was possible that a fairly lengthy session might involve a situation where playing free odds meant a losing session could turn into a winning one, or vice versa. The question became, does betting free odds tend to emphasize winning or losing in a session? The intuitive answer would seem to be “yes” but I decided to use wincraps and do some trials.

So what we have below are the results for 20 sessions of 300 rolls, long sessions of approximately 3 hours in real time each. The *same set* of random numbers for each trial was duplicated to see how it turned out betting differently. It pretty much confirms that major winning or losing gets boosted, not reversed, with the free odds. In other words common intuition on the matter seems correct. If, however, a session was close to break-even, then the free odds seem to have an unpredictable influence.

Some sessions, like #4, turned out quite interesting.

PS: the betting is by one unit, with a bankroll of zero to start.
PS: if I get around to the other stats, it will be a chart below this chart

Session Number	Pass Line no odds 1	Pass line with 5x4x3 odds	Don't Pass no odds	Don't Pass lay 5x4x3 odds
#1	-13	-58	+10	+55
#2	- 20	- 93	+17	+90
#3	+8	+52	-11	-55
#4	-1	-45	-1	+43
#5	-2	0	-2	-4
#6	-8	-14	+6	+12
#7	+9	+57	-12	-60
#8	-5	-5	+2	+2
#9	-1	-18	-1	+16
#10	-6	-51	+2	+49
#11	+6	+33	-10	-37
#12	-2	+8	+2	-8
#13	-10	-70	+10	+58
#14	-14	-56	+10	+52
#15	-3	-3	+1	+1
#16	+8	+72	-10	-74
#17	-5	-45	+3	+43
#18	+1	+52	-4	+49
#19	+9	+80	-12	-83
#20	+6	+24	-7	-25

Boardless Diceless Clue

Christmas week is a very slow time for us at work, yet we are expected to show up and fill the days somehow. Gambling would be frowned upon, so after our recent discussion, I decided a game of Clue could be played. So here is the idea and how it went.

Boardless Diceless Clue. Some sequence of who goes first and who "is to the left" of who is modified from where people normally sit. I modified a deck of playing cards by writing names, weapons, and rooms on various and distributing them; the empty deck package held the 3 key cards determining whodunit etc.

A simple map of the board is provided to each player along with a piece of paper with the suspects, weapons, and rooms listed so that notes can be made. The map shows how you move from one room to the next, providing some manner in which you can cross the board as well as move from adjacent rooms and secret passages. There is no need to decide which suspect you are playing, each player is just himself.

Players could pick the room they would start in. To move, each player gets one move in one turn; in that move you may walk out of a room or into a secret passage. In the next move you may enter a room or continue to the next place on the map without entering. Rules about blocking a room and all that were not in effect. It was considered good if the game went pretty fast, as of course certain interruptions occur even on a slow day.

I anticipated a problem with people remembering where they were on the board, so the player "to the left" must help the current player remember. It turned out everybody started helping everybody remember. Otherwise it was standard Clue rules.

It went very well! For the second game players decided they wanted everybody to start in the same room, so I thought that was OK, if unnecessary. As is the nature of the game, sometimes it was over fast, and with moving so easy, it was really fast. But that was probably a good thing. I'm wondering now how well Boardless Diceless Clue would go as a parlor game at a party and might try it.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [again]

Making this movie review a blog post [was a forum post]. Now that I hear hollywood will be making a movie, and the books are getting more popular, I thought this might be a better place for it.

Recently saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". This has been one of the more popular foreign movies recently, you should be able to catch it if a theater near you tends to show foreign or art movies.

I highly recommend it with some qualifications.

A Swedish movie, it is very feminist, and as a matter of fact the author of the book, Stieg Larsson, was a Communist. His villains were Capitalists; in the movie, though, the villains are not just Capitalists but Nazi sympathizers. No kidding. And we are talking murderers, serial killers, to boot. Of course all this makes having them be the bad guys palatable even for anyone who might otherwise not like the idea of portraying businessmen as the guys wearing the black hats. For balance one minor bad character is a social worker.

You might think you have no feminist sympathies, but by the time you experience how rotten these men are you are rooting for their demise, believe me.

The movie is very brutal, and this applies not just to the creeps, but to the heroine as well. I want to focus on her to keep this review from being too long. She is a new type we are seeing a little more of these days, a woman with a ton of metal on her face perhaps, plenty of tattoos, and Goth or Punk themed clothing etc. There just was not such a character in the media of yesteryear; now we see them portrayed sometimes, and this certainly suggests we find them intriguing. I wound up looking up the character Abby Sciuto in the TV series NCIS to see if this character could have been based on the movie or vice versa. Sciuto is described as been distinguished by a "gothic style of dress and her interest in death and the supernatural" in a wikipedia article. I concluded that it was possible Larrson was influential in bringing this type of character forward, but I havent read his books so can't be sure. Quite coincidentally I just saw another movie, "My First Mister," a dvd I picked up cheap that featured a Goth/Punk type teenager. This was a fair movie, with flaws, but my point is not to review it too, but to point out that these characters are multiplying. And why not, plenty of these types do exist in the real world.

The Dragon Tattoo character, Lisbeth Salander, fits this profile; I don't exactly remember how much body piercing she has, but there is the Goth/Punk look, certainly tattoos, and with an emphasis for sure on being anti-social with a brutal if not sadistic side to her. I am also reminded of the character Felicia "Snoop" Pearson from the HBO series "The Wire". I promise you, even if you find this character type off-putting, that you will be totally won over to Salander and her cause . There is a distinct feminine appeal to her in spite of her efforts to have none. Truly fascinating, go see the movie if you get a chance.


links are all easily found in imdb dot com, and wikipedia.