How do they get these writing jobs?

Gaming Today/Slots Today is a dual-named publication because they print the two parts on opposite ends of each issue, each upside down with respect to the other. I don't pick it up or read it regularly, but once in a while I'm bored and take a look, because occasionally it has some interesting tidbit of news of the gaming industry that I had missed elsewhere--mostly (1) stuff about regulatory and licensing issues, and (2) casino promotions. A previous time that I read it prompted a lengthy two-part screed against one of its columnists (see here and here).

In the issue of GT/ST that I have in front of me (May 27-June 2, 2008), I find evidence that other columnists are just as stupid and/or willing to deceive their readers as the one I wrote about previously, Ms. L.J. Zahm.

But let's start with her, since she remains the paradigm of how unbelievably moronic you can be and write a column for this rag.


Zahm again

I covered all of this in my previous posts, but as a quick refresher, Ms. Zahm's columns--and even a book she published--always center around her two primary theories about video keno: (1) You have to pick numbers in groups or clusters, because that's how they tend to hit--in fact, her column is called "Cluster Keno." (2) The machines tend to hit big soon after starting a session, so she advocates frequently "resetting" the machine by taking your card out, then reinserting it and re-entering your numbers, even if you are going to pick the same ones you were previously using. Of course, she has zero meaningful evidence that either of these things actually turns a -EV game into a +EV game (or even into a slightly less negative one). But she writes about the same two things, week after week after week. Easy work if you can get it, I guess.

But in this issue she outdoes herself in stupidity. Here's her gem of insight: "I've always believed that gambling is based in large part on luck."

Wow! Quick, write that down before you forget it!

She again reviews her machine-resetting theory (I suppose by now she has a macro on her word processor that lets her spit out those oft-repeated paragraphs with just a couple of keystrokes). She concludes this week's column with this brilliant advice: "By following your system, whatever that happens to be, you give yourself a chance to overcome, the odds of the game." (Yes, there really is an extraneous comma in there. I didn't make that up.)

I see. So if you don't follow your system, then you don't give yourself a chance to overcome the odds of the game. And apparently it doesn't matter what your system is, as long as you have one. Every system is as good as every other, I suppose. Each one gives you "a chance" to overcome the odds. She doesn't specify how big your chance is. I have never seen even a shred of mathematical analysis in any of her columns--for example, estimating how much she thinks you improve your odds or reduce the house edge by employing one or both of her theories. My guess is that numbers make her head hurt too much to fiddle around with them.


Larry Edell

Speaking of systems, this guy Larry Edell has a column in this issue about a betting system for craps. It has nothing to do with selecting which bets to make--only about the quantities.

His system is based on the famous Fibonacci sequence, in which each number in the series is the sum of the two previous ones: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. He translates this into a system for altering one's bet sizes depending on the number of consecutive wins or losses one has incurred.

He says that "craps professionals use the Fibonacci to increase their profits." Yeah, right. First off, I don't believe for a second that there are any "craps professionals." You can't make a sustained living from a game that has a fixed house edge. Naturally, he produces no actual evidence that that this system makes the game profitable. That might be because it doesn't. It can't.

Over a lifetime, the only thing that determines the predicted amount of loss from playing craps is (1) the total amount bet, and (2) the odds for each kind of bet made.

One of my favorite David Sklansky books is Fighting Fuzzy Thinking in Poker, Gaming, and Life. In the first chapter of the book, he presents the story of three imaginary brothers who each have a system for playing craps, changing bet sizes depending on wins and losses. He then asks the reader to determine which of the three brothers will have the smallest or biggest expected loss or win over many years of playing every day.

I have to admit that the first time I read this I couldn't guess the answer. But it's painfully simple, once you have your eyes opened. The system that results in the fewest number of total dollars being wagered is the one that will have the lowest expected long-term loss. (In his story, they all bet on the pass line, so the odds were the same on every bet.)

For purposes of long-term results, it makes no difference whatsoever whether you bet the same amount every time, use a Martingale type of system (which involves doubling bets), this idiotic (and way more complicated than necessary) Fibonacci-based method, or use a random number generator to size your bets. Your lifetime EV is still based purely on the total amount you wagered over the years, and the odds offered on each of the dollars bet. A bet-sizing system can help control the range of wins or losses for a session (though any reduction in possible loss is necessarily offset by a reduction in possible gains, and vice versa), but it cannot change the long-term outcome. It cannot turn an intrinsically -EV game into a +EV one. It is just a fancy way of implementing a stop-loss measure.

Mr. Edell says that "The Fibonacci can be very profitable to a crapshooter." Well, sure. But it would be equally true to say, "The Fibonacci can be very costly to a crapshooter." His assertion is no more meaningful than saying that "gambling can be very profitable." Of course it can. But it usually isn't in the short run, and never is in the long run, if you're playing against a mathematically irreducible house edge.

Mr. Edell never quite tells the lie that his system will make the game profitable, but it certainly appears to this critical reader that that's the message he wants to convey, without saying so explicitly. In other words, he depends on his readers not being bright enough to see through his careful language. He also apparently assumes that they won't care that he provides not an iota of mathematical or real-world proof that this works.

It would be a pretty simple thing to rig up a computer simulation, run it through a few million iterations, and see what the net profit or loss would have been from using his Fibonacci system. I think we all know why Mr. Edell doesn't do that: he would have to report that the loss was pretty close to what would have been predicted for the total amount wagered at the odds of whatever type of craps bet he was testing. That's not the kind of fact he would want to have to give his readers. And, slightly in his defense, it's probably not the kind of hard, ugly truth that his readers want to hear. They want hope, the fantasy that they have a system that can beat the casino, and Larry Edell is selling it. He's the modern equivalent of a snake-oil salesman, but he presumably has an audience that positively adores snake oil.


Rob Singer

This is another puzzling column. It is ostensibly about video poker, but on each of the few occasions that I've read it, the guy doesn't actually describe what to do in particular situations to optimize gains. (Clearly there are better and worse strategies for playing; a source I deem reasonably reliable asserts that the optimal strategy gets approximately 99% payback, and can actually be slightly profitable, once you take into account the incentives and bonuses offered by casinos on players' club cards. The casinos are relying on the fact that only a small percentage of players deploy a strategy anywhere near optimal. If all players did so, they would probably have to lower the payout schedule to keep the machines profitable to the house.) Rather, all he does is brag about the fact that he is a long-term winner at the game.

In this week's column, as with the other couple I've read from him, he says that he is always being attacked by critics he disparagingly refers to as "the math people," who don't believe he could be as successful as he claims to be. He says that he has records to back up his claims, and, of course, the critics can't prove him wrong. He claims to be a "professional video poker player."

To be sure, I haven't examined Mr. Singer's personal win/loss records, nor am I interested in doing so. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that he could upon request produce records showing a substantial profit over many years of playing in quantities approaching the hours of a full-time job. Would that convince me that he has found a system of play that turns video poker into a +EV game (neglecting here any points-based incentives offered by the casinos)?

Nope. I would consider it far more likely that his record-keeping was deficient, either through intentional misrepresentation or the kind of selective neglect that is a temptation to any record-keeping gambler: Faithfully record every win, but leave out losses now and then, with a whole litany of excuses why they shouldn't be counted. (I am proud to report that although my poker playing has plenty of faults and holes, my poker record-keeping has been scrupulous. I have not even once yielded to the temptation to omit the results of a session on the excuse that it was an atypically bad or unlucky day, or that I wasn't really trying that day, or whatever. I have definitely felt such pulls, but have managed to force myself to include every painful loss.)

The problem is much like trying to disprove alien abduction. Of course, for any individual story of such, it is possible that the alleged victim really was paralyzed and taken by a tractor beam up into an alien spaceship and given anal probes. (I saw it on the very first episode of "South Park," so it must be true!) I can't prove that it didn't happen. But the alternative explanations are, in my opinion, just a whole lot more plausible. They include, variously, people seeking attention and/or financial gain, delusions and hallucinations, and manifestations of poorly understood but natural physiologic states of sleep, influenced in their subjective interpretation by cultural norms and the experiences reported previously by others. (In other words, the same phenomenon that in previous generations would have been reported as a visitation from a succubus, say.)

In Mr. Singer's case, I find it just as implausible that video poker game manufacturers have designed the games in a way that can turn them into your own personal ATM if you just follow the simple strategy (whatever it is; he doesn't seem to talk much about it) claimed by Mr. Singer to be a winning one, as that every night thousands upon thousands of people are being abducted and experimented upon by aliens.

Look at it like this: If you were a casino owner or manager, would you purchase for your casino a machine that the manufacturer told you could be easily exploited by players to be profitable? I sure wouldn't. That would kind of defeat the basic idea on which casinos are built.

That consideration leaves us with only four possibilities: (1) The machine designers and casinos are knowingly building, purchasing, and installing games that they know can be beaten by anybody who follows the Singer strategy. (2) He has stumbled upon a loophole that has not been noticed by anybody in any of the various manufacturing companies, nor by any of the casinos that install the machines and monitor their profitability performance. (3) He is either intentionally lying or somehow unintentionally deceiving himself about his actual long-term results. (4) He is the luckiest S.O.B. ever to walk the planet, with results many standard deviations from the mean.

I find #1 and #2 impossible to accept, absent extraordinarily strong evidence (which no one person's results could provide). I have no objective way of distinguishing between #3 and #4, the only other remaining possibilities. But #3 strikes me as by far the less improbable one.


I am, in a sense, envious that these hacks can get paid for writing complete bullshit and passing it off as helpful gaming advice.

I'll leave you with this thought: If winning at gambling were as easy as these worthless columnists portray it, the casinos would all go bankrupt overnight. Casinos love players who are convinced they have a system that reverses the odds--because they're all wrong, no matter what some lying or self-deluded GT/ST columnist has written.