VoiceOfReasonPast wrote: ↑Wed Jan 23, 2019 6:46 pm
It's unlikely to happen when seen from the
start of this coin toss orgy, but once you're already down this rare branch of the propability tree, it doesn't really matter. All the
much more likely outcomes just didn't happen to you this time.
Again, that's not how chances work. The mistake gamblers make is that they overestimate their chance to win to begin with.
If you look at it as "win:lose" then it's a 50:50 and, naturally, one would expect to eventually win. That's the mistake. As you can see and calculate for yourself, even only losing ten times in a row would be a chance of 1 to 1024. One surely can't keep losing forever, right?
That's not how slot machines or any other gambling game operates, though. Let's say you play a 75% payout slot. You'll win fairly frequently but less often than 75% of the time still. Because that's it's payout rate, not it's chance to win. It'll slowly bleed you dry with most wins being chump change, some being mediocre and some pretty damn alright. Those alright wins will come along every 100-200 plays, usually. That's just enough to keep somebody playing. The big wins come every half a million plays or thereabout.
So the chance of the big win the player cares about can easily be something like 1 to 700k. Winning jack shit hundreds of times in a row changes from unlikely to expected.
Essentially, gambling targets people that don't know anything about statistics. They don't fully understand how shit their chances to win big are to begin with.