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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

Probably because fantasy sports betting is not a 100% game of chance and that application of data science ostensibly increases your chances of winning.

As with poker versus slots, one may require more time/work to become a reliably winning player, but the payoff is larger. With slots, you pull the lever and you're done.

Ultimately, though, gamblers of all kinds find these sorts of things fun in some way, otherwise they wouldn't continue to throw away money. It's addictive because it triggers some sort of reward center in the brain, and simply participating provides not only fantasy but also a sense of drama and unknown in an otherwise very predictable life.

full disclosure: not a gambler and rarely play the lotto

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Lots of gambling isn't "100% a game of chance": Poker, Blackjack, Horse Racing, etc. That doesn't seem like a very good rationalization for fantasy sports over lottery... and I agree with GP: Lots of fantasy sports folks waste insane amounts of time tracking and updating their rosters. You could justify it as "more fun for the same $$", but that definitely wouldn't be true for me.

Blackjack is not like horse racing and poker -- in the latter, the player can use information that is available to them to have a positive expected outcome. In blackjack, no matter how good you are you cannot create a positive expected outcome, you can only minimize your negative expected outcome.

Actually you can in blackjack, it just involves playing outside the individual game of blackjack and employing card counting techniques across multiple tables. Although, at that point, I can understand if you distinguished between playing that "game" and playing a table of blackjack.

Yes, you can do that. In Nevada that's cheating and in New Jersey it isn't (but if they see you doing it they can make your life very difficult), but at that point you're operating outside the norms of the game so I didn't count it.

It's not against the law unless you're using a device, but you can bet your ass that Casinos will kick you to the curb if they figure out you've been doing it. They'll also tell all of the other Casinos to blacklist you too.

And they will figure it out, too. It's not that hard for me to spot card counters, and I'm not a pro.

Seems like over the years the way they've dealt with card counters is by tweaking the game, though. They've added decks, they shuffle sooner, they shuffle when you increase your bet or when a new player sits down and plays for nontrivial amounts, and lately with continuous shuffling machines.

It's not cheating in Nevada. But you can be bounced when they catch you.

It also depends very strongly on the rules of the game. There are variations where you can get a slightly better than 50% odds just by playing "correctly" if the rules are in your favor. (single deck, hit on 16, etc etc)

Actually the best casino game to play from an odds perspective is craps at a table that meets these conditions:

1. Field has 2 or 12 pay triple and the other pays double

2. 5x odds bets or better allowed.

3. Minimal / no restrictions on place bets. ( some table don't let you do place bets on 6 or 8 )

And then follow these rules:

1. Only do field, place, or come bets

2. Always have your place and odds bet "working" - you will have to tell the dealer

3. If a number is rolled that you have an existing place bet on convert it to a odds bet.

4. Limit the total amount of money on the table - one 7 will wipe everything.

5. If you feel nervous, take all the money off the table that you can. Let the last few remaining bets play out and then walk away.

6. Lastly, and most importantly limit yourself to a specific amount of time or rolls. This is especially important if you are winning.

> Field has 2 or 12 pay triple and the other pays double

> Only do field, place, or come bets

The house edge on the field with those rules is 2.78%, which isn't bad, but isn't great. Ideally you want one that pays triple on both 2 and 12 (good luck finding that!) because then the house edge is 0.00%

All the rest of your bets are either 0% or 1.4-1.6% house edge.

Also, if you're really worried about one seven wiping you off the table and don't mind being contrarian, play the don't. While the odds are basically the same (slightly better actually) in the long term, I find the short term odds much better (because of the aforementioned deadly seven).

However if you value the social aspect of the game or your casino player rating, don't play the don't. :)

Yeap on the odds. In other words, best game if you want to have a reasonable chance on being a lucky winner.

Also impossible for the casino to make a subtle rule or behavior change that negatively affects the odds.

I personally don't know why casinos bother worrying about card counting. All they really have to do is increase the number of decks and/or increase the reshuffle frequency.

Or if they really want to stop it but some house rules that say that the next bet can't be any more than 2x the previous bet.

Sure they might miss that person that is going to go all in on one last draw. But whatever. Besides gambling revenues are down and non-casino revenues (like shows) are up. So maybe Las Vegas will stop being a gambling mecca and just be an entertainment hub.

I would love it if Vegas started shifting the rules back into the player's favor so us degenerate gamblers could come back more.

I got so angry when I see a blackjack table with a 6 for 5 payout on a blackjack and the lack of surrender.

I heard if you play perfectly on a totally random round, the dealer has less than a 0.5% edge (depending on the rules) which is very good for the player, compared to other games.

If you count cards on a small hand shuffled shoe, even with a basic system it is relatively easy for a player to have a fraction of a percent edge. Good players can have a few percent edges.

However, most casinos nowadays use large shoes and frequently (or even constantly) machine shuffle the cards. This effectively almost completely negate card counting.

Large shoe is actually more advantageous to card counting, and mechanical shuffling doesn't make a difference (but the frequency of shuffling does).

It's perceived the smaller shoes are better since they are easier to county, but with a smaller shoes the count can't swing as far one way or another, so with a large shoes there is a high probability of getting better odds.

The main thing they do is not play through the whole shoe, i.e. they shuffle before they get all the way through. This prevents the count from being allowed to swing as far as possible.

It's not just that, though. They will also shuffle if you substantially increase your bet, or if you're a new player coming in with larger bets. So even if you get a good count you won't be able to exploit it.

Interesting. Counterintuitive but it makes sense.

I think the guy who explained it to me was talking about a combination of counting, pattern recognition and other such strategies, hence my confusion.

I don't see how you're disagreeing with me. I'm positing that HN may be more amenable to games that allow you to employ skill/knowledge to your benefit (racing/poker/blackjack/sports betting) over games that rely entirely on chance (lottery/slots).

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