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Odds, averages and the online casino
Since people began gambling, the science of probability has been used - and more frequently abused - by gamblers looking for an edge in games of chance. The most commonly held belief that regularly crops up in one form or another is that of the law of averages.
The law of averages has been expressed as: ‘a belief that outcomes of a random event shall “even out” within a small sample’. A simple way to illustrate this point is by taking the example of a coin toss. The rules are: the coin is true – and so there is a 50 percent chance that the coin will land heads up, just as there is a 50% chance that the coin will land tails up - each time the coin is tossed. We will come back to bit in bold, as really this holds the key to this issue. Assuming a fair toss - with no attempt to influence the outcome by the person throwing the coin – the coin is tossed 10 times. The law of averages is commonly held as predicting that you will probably see the coin land heads up five times, and tails up five times.
As anyone who has ever tossed a coin a few times will know, the law of averages prediction often does not work out. The problem lies in assuming that some overarching law of the universe will influence the outcome of a series of random events. With one random event, like the coin toss above, the mathematical probability of one of the two outcomes (heads or tails) is indeed 50/ 50. However, when the next coin toss occurs, the odds are still 50/50. That is to say, if the previous result was heads, the probability of the next result being heads is still 50 percent. The law of averages is in fact no law at all.
The fact is that the coin has no memory, and so nine heads in a row is no less likely than nine tails in a row. The confusion probably comes from a misunderstood dilution of the law of large numbers, which is a mathematically proven phenomenon regarding average outcomes with the repetition of a random event in a large number of trials. It is the law of large numbers that produces the average that means that in the end, the casino always wins.
The law of large numbers states that, given an infinite number of rolls of a six sided dice, the average score resulting will be 3.5. As the number of trials - or repetitions of the dice throw - approaches infinity, the closer the average value will come to 3.5. The number 3.5 is the result of adding together all the possible scores (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and dividing by 6 (as it is equally probable that the dice will land on any of the six sides, every time the dice is rolled).
If the maths involved is not your thing, fair enough – all you need to be able to remember is not to succumb to the gambler’s fallacy, which is a belief in the law of averages to even out the results of a series of random events like the throw of the ball in roulette. When you play roulette at an online casino like 32 Red, believe in luck, trust your instincts and have fun. Don’t place ever larger bets on red after a series of blacks comes up – you just don’t have a near infinite number of spins (or trials) for the fallacious law of averages to turn into the solid maths of the law of large numbers; more importantly, you don’t have an infinite wallet!
