The Stacked Odds in Casino Gaming

Nice of Guy Kawasaki to tweet this blog from onlineblackjack.com yesterday which explains in simple terms how casinos are guaranteed to make money. I’m not sure how they have estimated the slots house edge at 5-17% (I thought it was impossible to determine this as the events are unknown) but I’d be interested to see how many punters are aware of the average loss rates per game i.e. you are expected to lose 5x as much playing slots as blackjack over a 16 hour period. I think this raises again an interesting point about how operators best educate gamblers, a point discussed in my recent research paper. For anyone interested in knowing more about house edge and the properties of games I’d recommend reading In The Pursuit of Winning by Zangeneh, Blaszczynski and Turner, which in chapter 3 explains house edge in detail with some great examples. Does this kind of information change my approach to gambling? For me personally no, as I have never really been a slots man and will always like to play a bit of black jack.