[ceejay]

It's beyond belief that people spend money to gamble at casinos. It's one thing to know with 100% certainty that the house has the odds in their favor. But an entirely different beast to know that AND know that if you do find ways to win the casinos will still do everything in their power to prevent you from taking home the winnings.

[zild3d]

> It's beyond belief that people spend money to gamble at casinos.

You're looking at it wrong then. 1) Going to the casino isn't looked at as a profitable job, it's entertainment. You can pay to see a concert, go to a bar, or in this case (maybe) pay to have some excitement 2) Free rooms are very common 3) Free drinks are standard

Instead of going to a bar and paying $8/drink, the drinks are free while you are gambling. That alone makes it "beyond belief" that anyone would go to a bar no?

[wmeredith]

> Instead of going to a bar and paying $8/drink, the drinks are free while you are gambling.

This. I'd much rather sit at a cheapo blackjack table and chat with my friends for a couple hours than go scream at each other in a bar or dance club.

[RHSeeger]

I'll occasionally go to the casino with my wife, and put aside a couple hundred dollars for the night. I play at the low end blackjack tables and she generally enjoys slots. For a couple hundred dollars, we both get an entire night's worth of entertainment (we both enjoy the playing, we don't expect to win). Sometimes, we even win some (little) money, which adds to the fun.

At the end of the day, it works out to spending money for entertainment, the same as any other night out.

[SomeStupidPoint]

I play roulette as an adventure randomizer, and pay the casino a tiny sliver of the amount for making that more exciting than rolling dice in my hotel room.

Roulette is fantastic for answering questions like "Do I have a $50 meal or a $200 meal?" Simple: just place $50 on a column or dozen. Bam! Your cashflow is more or less randomly distributed instead of at a flat rate, for a 5% loss. Ignoring the casino's slight edge, you can see it's shifting money -- each of 3 days, you have $100, totalling $300; on a large number of games, you'll win 1 for every 2 you lose, so you'll have 2 days where you lose $50 and 1 day where you win $100. With the casino's edge factored in, you turn a consistent $300 in to a bursty $292.

Works for basically any time you're wanting to turn a flat, planned cashflow into a dramatic bursty cashflow.

Ed: maths is hard; fixed expected value. Accidentally applied casino's edge to total cash instead of just portion gambled.