Tangentially: reading about the history of gambling theory (the “unfinished game” problem, etc.) is pretty interesting.
Imagine how weird it was when people basically didn’t understand expected value at all! Did casinos even know what they were doing, or did they somewhat routinely fail after picking the wrong game design? Did they only settle on profitable designs by accident? Are blackjack, roulette, and other very old games still with us because they happened not to bankrupt casinos that ran them, and were only later analyzed with tools capable of identifying whether the house had the edge?
because they happened not to bankrupt casinos that ran them,
1. Something like MVP. Don’t start by throwing a brand new game out there—even if you have the edge in the game, you have to get people to play it. Getting the stuff for a new game + advertising costs money. Test it out a little (small scale). If you lose money testing it*, you paid a little bit of money to find out you’d have lost a lot of money if you’d tried it out big. (More naturally—big companies are at times known for staying the same, with startups coming in with new ideas. If you copy ideas from other people that haven’t bankrupted them...)
2. It seems like it’s possible to make it by on “this is unlikely” or setting things up so you always win. (I notice snake eyes doesn’t come up a lot. (Perhaps I check this by rolling dice a bunch of times.))
Simplest case: you buy a place, and pool equipment, and you rent it out to people. If they make bets with each other on the outcome, you don’t care—they’re just paying you so they can play pool.
Slightly more complicated: you offer to handle the betting on the game. People pay you a little to be able to bet (and later, to win big), but the money all comes from them, and you don’t care who wins—you make money off people playing, people watching, and people betting!
Did casinos even know what they were doing, or did they somewhat routinely fail after picking the wrong game design?
3. Were casinos a thing before probability was understood?
*One game night with a few people, maybe you and your friends? If you have people who are happy to try out a new game, without real money, (For Free! perhaps?), that’s a place to start initially—and all you lose is the time to run it. If you have fun, then maybe that’s a small price to pay. And if people are willing to pay to play a game with fake money, then you can just print more monopoly money if you run out—no odds calculation needed for a sure bet.
1. Something like MVP. Don’t start by throwing a brand new game out there—even if you have the edge in the game, you have to get people to play it. Getting the stuff for a new game + advertising costs money. Test it out a little (small scale). If you lose money testing it*, you paid a little bit of money to find out you’d have lost a lot of money if you’d tried it out big. (More naturally—big companies are at times known for staying the same, with startups coming in with new ideas. If you copy ideas from other people that haven’t bankrupted them...)
This seems to assume the people who did the origination here were casinos or explicit entrepreneurs, instead of people who started gambling informally and then started with some sense of which games had which payoffs.
(Or rather, maybe you’re explicitly not assuming that and that’s your point. But the way I’d make the same point you seem to be making here is not “they operated like a startup” and more like “they operated like a group of friends/rivals/communities incrementally experimenting, and by the time someone considered starting an explicit business, good gamblers had some intuitive sense of how games worked.”)
This seems to assume the people who did the origination here were casinos or explicit entrepreneurs,
Yeah, there’s reverse causality in assuming purpose—I wrote to explain how the reader could make such a thing intentionally without resorting to “entrepreneurs gambled by starting casinos and pseudo-darwinian survival of the business whose games don’t lose them money led to the casinos of today”. This is probably a side effect of my constructionist tendencies. (I feel like the points I came up with in 5 minutes, which don’t reference odds, are within the imagination of a business owner whose livelihood is at stake.)
the way I’d make the same point you seem to be making here is not “they operated like a startup” and more like “they operated like a group of friends/rivals/communities incrementally experimenting, and by the time someone considered starting an explicit business, good gamblers had some intuitive sense of how games worked.”)
a) That was in the footnote, and point 2, respectively, though you put it way more clearly. b) I suggested the possibility that they could arise without doing odds at all, or even starting not with games of chance. c) I would further note that being a casino and “incrementally experimenting”/‘operating like a group of friends’ need not be incompatible—consider a game store. You buy a new game. If it’s not popular, you lose a little. If it’s really popular you buy a lot more.
[a] 2. It seems like it’s possible to make it by on “this is unlikely” or setting things up so you always win. (I notice snake eyes doesn’t come up a lot. (Perhaps I check this by rolling dice a bunch of times.))
*One game night with a few people, maybe you and your friends? If you have people who are happy to try out a new game, without real money, (For Free! perhaps?), that’s a place to start initially—and all you lose is the time to run it. If you have fun, then maybe that’s a small price to pay. And if people are willing to pay to play a game with fake money, then you can just print more monopoly money if you run out—no odds calculation needed for a sure bet.
[b] you buy a place, and pool equipment, and you rent it out to people. If they make bets with each other on the outcome, you don’t care—they’re just paying you so they can play pool.
Tangentially: reading about the history of gambling theory (the “unfinished game” problem, etc.) is pretty interesting.
Imagine how weird it was when people basically didn’t understand expected value at all! Did casinos even know what they were doing, or did they somewhat routinely fail after picking the wrong game design? Did they only settle on profitable designs by accident? Are blackjack, roulette, and other very old games still with us because they happened not to bankrupt casinos that ran them, and were only later analyzed with tools capable of identifying whether the house had the edge?
1. Something like MVP. Don’t start by throwing a brand new game out there—even if you have the edge in the game, you have to get people to play it. Getting the stuff for a new game + advertising costs money. Test it out a little (small scale). If you lose money testing it*, you paid a little bit of money to find out you’d have lost a lot of money if you’d tried it out big. (More naturally—big companies are at times known for staying the same, with startups coming in with new ideas. If you copy ideas from other people that haven’t bankrupted them...)
2. It seems like it’s possible to make it by on “this is unlikely” or setting things up so you always win. (I notice snake eyes doesn’t come up a lot. (Perhaps I check this by rolling dice a bunch of times.))
Simplest case: you buy a place, and pool equipment, and you rent it out to people. If they make bets with each other on the outcome, you don’t care—they’re just paying you so they can play pool.
Slightly more complicated: you offer to handle the betting on the game. People pay you a little to be able to bet (and later, to win big), but the money all comes from them, and you don’t care who wins—you make money off people playing, people watching, and people betting!
3. Were casinos a thing before probability was understood?
*One game night with a few people, maybe you and your friends? If you have people who are happy to try out a new game, without real money, (For Free! perhaps?), that’s a place to start initially—and all you lose is the time to run it. If you have fun, then maybe that’s a small price to pay. And if people are willing to pay to play a game with fake money, then you can just print more monopoly money if you run out—no odds calculation needed for a sure bet.
This seems to assume the people who did the origination here were casinos or explicit entrepreneurs, instead of people who started gambling informally and then started with some sense of which games had which payoffs.
(Or rather, maybe you’re explicitly not assuming that and that’s your point. But the way I’d make the same point you seem to be making here is not “they operated like a startup” and more like “they operated like a group of friends/rivals/communities incrementally experimenting, and by the time someone considered starting an explicit business, good gamblers had some intuitive sense of how games worked.”)
Yeah, there’s reverse causality in assuming purpose—I wrote to explain how the reader could make such a thing intentionally without resorting to “entrepreneurs gambled by starting casinos and pseudo-darwinian survival of the business whose games don’t lose them money led to the casinos of today”. This is probably a side effect of my constructionist tendencies. (I feel like the points I came up with in 5 minutes, which don’t reference odds, are within the imagination of a business owner whose livelihood is at stake.)
a) That was in the footnote, and point 2, respectively, though you put it way more clearly. b) I suggested the possibility that they could arise without doing odds at all, or even starting not with games of chance. c) I would further note that being a casino and “incrementally experimenting”/‘operating like a group of friends’ need not be incompatible—consider a game store. You buy a new game. If it’s not popular, you lose a little. If it’s really popular you buy a lot more.