Quote:
Originally Posted by ikestoys
So I have to take an intro to prob and stats class for my major, and the professor described a dice game where your expected value was $40/roll.
She then said, you can not roll for and win 28.50, no matter what. You could play the game as much as you wanted. She then asked the class if you would play the game. About half the class said no. She asked one girl why she wouldn't play and she said, "I don't gamble"
I just sat in the back reading this thread and found it amusing
Just started reading this thread but this one stands out at me. People's reactions to gambling and probability are so weird. Economists have done experiments where they offered people a coin flip for $1 and most refused, then offered $1.10 to $1 on a coin flip, and still most people refused. They kept upping it and upping it until most people accepted (I forget where - I think it was somewhere around 3 to 1!), but there were still people turning down $100 to $1 on a coin flip because they don't gamble. On the other hand, lots of people are happy to go to a casino and take $0.95 to $1 on a slot machine all day. For some reason when you throw probability at the human brain it seems like the vast majority of people just blow a fuse and have no concept of things like expected value, variance, and standard deviation.
Which of course is why poker is so profitable - I went to a really good college and my friends I played against then still have absolutely no idea how to play, yet they claim to be good when they play a home game once a month and go to the casino a few times a year. I don't understand how you can play a game as intricate and potentially profitable/costly as poker and not want to learn as much as you can about it. I don't even consider myself a top level player, but I've studied and practiced and learned to the point where I am a solidly winning player. I wasn't any better than anyone else when I started, I just realized that there was definitely a lot more to know about this game, and I wasn't about to sit down and play for money without knowing what I was doing. Yet it seems most people are content to make no effort beyond, at most, simply playing premium starting hands and counting pot odds when calling draws. Smart people can't grasp the variance enough to get past that and see how this game really works.