Children in school should be taught to calculate probabilities as a part of their course in elementary arithmetic. Then they would know better than to play slot machines or buy prize packages. And when they grew up they would shun the bookmaker, the lottery, and the roulette wheel.
The ordinary gambler speculates partly because he loves the excitement and thrill of the game, but mainly, he will assure you, as he assures himself, he is buoyed up by the hope of winning. He does not stop to figure out his chances. If he sees a hundred to one shot he will play it, seeing only that by risking a dollar he has a chance to win a hundred. If he had been taught in school to see that really the chances were 200 to 1 against him, and that he was betting a dollar against fifty cents, he would keep his money in his pockets. Of course the man who plays the races knows the odds of the book are against him. He prides himself, however, that he is a wise reader of the "dope sheet," and that can overcome the odds by a superior cunning.
He knows that he can't win on his luck, for this "breaks even" in the long run.
Fate's Cards Always Stacked.
But the man who plays against a machine, if he has taken the elementary course in the law of probabilities, can suffer under no delusions and cannot give himself any reasonable excuse. He is bound to lose. The odds on the machine are against him. And even if they were not, it is entirely likely that the machine would win. An old gambler contends that if a man matched pennies all day every day for a month against a purely mechanical device he would quit a heavy loser. The only way he could keep even would be to start out with "heads" or "tails," and then go away and leave the machine at work, never changing his bet. If he remained to watch the operation he would, be sure to lose his head and begin to "guess" against the relentless mechanism, and then he would lose.
In the ordinary coin-paying slot machine, the dial shows alternate reds and blacks, interspersed here and there with quarters, halves and, perhaps, $1. The player wins 5 cents on the black, 20 cents on the quarter, 45 cents on the half, and 95 cents on the dollar. The dials differ, but suppose there are thirty reds, thirty blacks, ten quarters, five halves, and one dollar. The chances are against you, then, on the red or black, 46 to 30; on the quarter, 66 to 24; on the half, 71 to 24, and on the dollar, 75 to 19. Most players, it is said, prefer the larger sums as a hazard in the coin machines, although the probabilities against them are much greater. Again, they are dazzled by the chance of winning a large sum at a small risk. Really, they are betting their nickel against 3 cents on the red or black, and against 2 cents or less on the larger sums.
Children Throw Away Money.
If the children knew this they would not fool away their money in the machines when they go for a boat ride on the lake, and it is reasonable to suppose that grown men and women would beware of them if they had learned to figure chances when they were in school. In the penny machines in the cigar stores the probabilities are harder to figure. You play a cent in the machine, and if you get two pairs from a revolving pack of cards, always exposing the faces of five, you win a 5-cent cigar. In most of the machines you must get "jacks up or better" in order to win. Any poker player will bet you a chip on any deal that you will not have as good as a pair of trays, and the chances that you will have two pairs as good as jacks up must be at least twenty to one.
Some of the machines consist of wheels of fortune which revolve from the weight of the penny dropped in the slot. In any event the child gets a penny's worth of goods, and there are chances to get two or five cents' worth. Gum machines give an alleged cent's worth of gum, with a chance for a coupon, which is good for a nickel's worth without extra charge.
