Gambling and Winning Most Days

by Tom Peters

A statistics professor I had in grad school spent the first week discussing odds in gambling. I recall his advice, “The 'safest' bets happen in roulette. Play either odds/even, red/black, or high/low with almost a 50% chance of winning”. A steelworker acquaintance I knew complained that his wife dragged him off to Las Vegas every year. He hated gambling but loved food and the shows. He’d set aside $1,000 each year, actually he said $2,000 but most steelworker stories I heard contained some exaggeration. Anyway, the couple would walk into his wife heeded to the slots and he would go right up to a roulette table and lay down a $1,000 bet on red. The payout was one-to-one or $2,000. He told me after some 12 years he had broken even. The years he’d win, he and his wife went to a couple expensive shows and dined at the best restaurants. Years he lost, consisted of cheap all-you-can-eat buffets, one or two inexpensive shows and laying around the pool, a lot.

My rare trips to Vegas are always for a weekend, except the year I attended a reunion of Vietnam rea vets. In Vegas, I’ll eat fine food, play a couple of rounds of golf, and as many hours on the roulette table my $200 limit allows. The shows never seem to highlight anyone I’d want to see. Steely Dan, Pink Floyd or Miles Davis never played Vegas when I was there.

I have no discipline at that table for the safe bets my professor talked about. There are many ways to place your bets in roulette and random is my theme. The ‘house’ loves me for my donation. I did have some luck the weekend of my daughter Jeanne’s Vegas wedding. Most of my money was in a congratulations card but I couldn’t help stalking the roulette tables the morning I arrived. I finally decided to place one bet in the afternoon. It was July 31st so I bet 5 one-dollar chips on 31. The ball bounced twice and rolled around and cradled into the 31 nest. I won. The folks around the table were impressed as I took my $175 in chips and left to cash them in. This was 1998, so it paid for a pretty nice dinner for my dear daughter, her new husband and I that evening.

Here at home, for the last 6 years, I’ve played the same two four-digit numbers every Sunday and Wednesday on the Daily Four. These are played straight which pays out around $4,000. Here’s my pretzel logic. I check the Daily Four results every day. Every Sunday and Wednesday I lose. But, every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, if my number do not come in….I WIN and feel a day closer to cashing in on a Sunday or Wednesday. If my number was to hit on these days (which it has not for 6 years) I would probably pick a new set of four numbers. I don’t mind because for 15 years, I wrote grants in my faculty position at Santa Monica College. The grants would pay for computers, software, and other valuable equipment for the Center for Students with Disabilities. Often if the grantors failed to come through the CA state lottery funds would cover the costs. So, now retired I figure even if I lose, monies go to CA schools and students across our state win.