When playing $5 per spin roulette and betting red, our price-for-fun formula looks like this:
$5 = (18/38 x $10) + $.26
$5 is the wager. You have 18 chances (desired outcome) out of 38 (all possibilities) to win $5, for a total of $10. Every possible outcome has an equal chance of happening. Assuming average luck, you should get at least $.26 worth of fun from every spin. That's the casino's expected profit, the house edge. If you're not receiving at least that amount of fun on average per spin, then you're paying too much and losing money. It's that simple.
Of course, you don't give the dealer a quarter and a penny. You either get $5 or the dealer takes $5. As the decisions multiply you'll either pull ahead or (more likely) fall behind. It's up to you to watch the chips and do the arithmetic over time to determine if your fun is worth the price. Let's say you play three hours at fifty spins per hour and your luck is absolutely average (you win 18 times in 38 spins). Here are the numbers for our hypothetical lows takes roulette play.
$.26 x 50 decisions per hour x 3 hours = $39.the average player will be down $39. Now consider what you have received in that three hours. Remember to include the thrill of the contest, the free drinks, and the pleasure of flirting with the player next to you. If it wasn't worth at least $39 then you need to lower your bets. Was it worth more? Then you're winning!
As we said previously, casinos use this formula to calculate how much they expect to earn. The beauty of using the same formula for our purposes is that upping the bets corresponds to a sobering or perhaps stimulating) requirement of upping the fun. $50 bets require the value of your fun to be $2.60 per spin, $390 for three hours. Are $50 bets that much fun? You now have a sure-fire way of figuring it out.
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