INTERESTING: Lessons Learned from watch gamblers lose (including me)

Friday, December 22, 2006

This week I formulated a theory about gambling. Gamblers lose for three reasons:

  • They don’t understand the game.
  • They have no limits.
  • They have no money management scheme.

Regardless if it is slots, table games, or something else, gamblers lose because they really don’t understand the “rules”. Both the published rules, the implied rules, and the common sense ones. For example, on slot machines, do you even know what the bonus that you (me) are chasing will pay. Dropping big bucks chasing what turns out to be a small bonus is a losing gamble. You have to understand what you can take away. I see hunch players at the Let It Ride game chasing everything, even low hands with no reasonable expectation. Pumping bills into a slot machine where the expectation is low is also demonstrating not understanding what you are doing.

People often have no limits other than when they are “tapped out”. Very early in my gambling career, I learned about limits. Lots of limits. I divide my trip limit stake into day, session, and game limits. We used to use envelopes, but they are NOT needed now. With the envelopes, I used to actually put all the change back into the envelope and total up at the end of the trip. Using that system, I was surprised at how it averaged out well.

Gamblers lose becasue they have no money management scheme. For example, yesterday, I met a lady who hit a straight flush earlier in the day with one five dollar bet (An example of flaw number one!) who won $1,000. She had played it ALL back. Did she think she was going to get another one? You have to play with a way to get YOUR money out of the game, off the table, back to your pocket, wallet, or envelope. I use a money management schme with Let It Ride that sets a game stake that will allow me to pay for six losing hands in a row. When my “front row” is full, any winnings go to my “back row”. Once in the back row, they are never risked again. Frau plays roulette with her game stake on the table. When she wins, she carves out her original stake. If she’s doing really well and they pay here in “real chips”, those go right into her pocket never to be seen again.

Comments?

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: Government happened

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

*** begin quote ***

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?

*** end quote ***

In yesterday’s post from my Luddite friend, his forward posed the question “what happened”.

Easy, the people stopped watching the politicians. They thought they could get something for nothing. Beginning with FDR and the Great Depression, which was caused by the Smoot Hawley Tariffs, the country adopted socialism. And, like the Pilgrim story, socialism leads to death by starvation. The Communists demonstrated in a 70 years “lab experiment” that “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” is a recipe for disaster! We even had side by side comparison in East and West Germany. And, we demonstrated in Katrina that anyone, who depends on government, dies. And, we demonstrate in Waco, that the government kills people.

So we need honest money, an end to making the nation stupid with “public education”, and an end to the dole (welfare in all its forms).

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: Old age is not for sissies.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/
oped/articles/2006/12/08/the_abiding_legacy_of_my_
mother____the_listener/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+–+
Op-ed+columns

http://tinyurl.com/y42gdk

The abiding legacy of my mother — the listener
By Ellen Goodman | December 8, 2006

*** begin quote ***

Old age is not for sissies. My mother’s long slow terrible decline lasted over a decade. There was the television she could no longer work and then the telephone. There were the small spiral notebooks whose pages were covered with names from a past she struggled to retain. One page listed her favorite movie star: Cary Grant. Another listed my father’s best friend: Lou Novins.

*** end quote ***

This really rang true as I am traveling down that road with my Mom. Dementia is a terrible thing. Slowly turning her from a “mom” into a shell of her former self. It saddens me. And, I’m not kidding when I tell people “when I get old, just shoot me!”

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: Women are encouraged towards divorce because the system profits when their families implode.

Thursday, December 7, 2006

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/54/the-deadbeat-dad-myth

The Deadbeat Dad Myth
December 6th, 2006

*** begin quote ***

In the end, it’s all about money. Over two thirds of the divorces are initiated by women who were promised that they can have it all: The kids, the house, and a nice paycheck every week to ease the agony of their oftentimes flippant decision to destroy their families. What they don’t know is the only reason they are so often encouraged down this path has nothing to do with what’s ‘best for her family.’ The family concept could be repaired if more people were willing to work on it instead of cutting and running the second things got a little rough. Divorce, on the other hand, is a business that is keeping thousands of people in a new Lexus every year.

Let me say that again in case anyone missed it: Women are encouraged towards divorce because the system profits when their families implode.

Your divorce keeps the judges, the lawyers, the file clerks and the security guards all in jobs. Court appointed therapists and counselors benefit financially when you’re forced into programs with little substance designed to make you feel better about being in a broken home. The main benefactor is the child support agency who takes a 2% cut out of every child support check for as long as the child is in the system.

*** end quote ***

Now that’s an interesting assertion. I think it’s interesting that the State doesn’t “insure” the judgment. I know for a fact that in New Jersey, that you may have a judgment, but if the State collects zero, you get zero. No skin off their nose. No stats on how they help or hurt the process. Now you can be sure if it was their money from taxes, they’d move heaven and earth to get it. If they were concerned about the children, they’d cut the family a check and assume the role of guarantor. So I tend to suspect that this fellow has it pegged — fees, employment, and contracts are probably the prime mover.

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: The Acton site emphasizes the personal component of charity

Saturday, November 25, 2006

http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003614.shtml

***Begin Quote***

A German friend this afternoon was recounting this story to me — he too is obsessed with how to reduce Iraqi anger. But the part he emphasized that I had missed originally was how significant it was to Germans to know that these packages were sent by ordinary Americans. It wasn’t the government sending government aid; it was American volunteers taking time to personalize an act of giving.

CARE has given up the CARE Package. So too has it moved far from the individual-driven model of giving that marked its birth. But I wonder how current victims of war would react to a repeat of 1945-giving. A related idea has been taken up by a 10-year old from New Jersey. But what if every city in America selected sister cities throughout Afghanistan and Iraq, and individual volunteers from the US repeated what our parents and grandparents did 60 years ago?

***End Quote***

I found this interesting in that it echos that there HAS to be a personal element of charity for that charity to be effective.

So, what does it make one do?

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: Capitalist Manefesto

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

The Capitalist Manifesto: Managing the Rise of Citizen Investors
28.01
07-November-2006
Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, David Pitt-Watson

http://changethis.com/pdf/28.01.CapitalistManifesto.pdf

***Begin Quote***

The citizen investor is you.

***End Quote***

I’m so not sure I believe this. The mutual fund managers have the big stick! I’d suggest that they are not immune to pressure. CEOs that tick of the general public and / or the investing public, like the Home Depot example, are doing so at their own peril. But, a underlying change in the corporate structure, nah! AND, certainly government regulation is probably the proverbial thumb on the butcher’s scale. Businesses disciplined by markets appeal to the government to save them from themselves, the stockholders, and consumers. With out of control government, businesses have little power. We need a different paradigm. True, but this isn’t it. imho

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: Fire alarm tone not as effective as Mom

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9410

New Breed of ‘Mom’ Alarms
Posted on Monday, October 02 @ 23:43:28 CDT

***Begin Quote***

The recorded sound of a parent’s voice urging their child to wake up and get out of bed is a better smoke alarm than conventional tone alarms, a study shows.

***End Quote***

Hmmm, sounds like a great idea. I could have my Mom record a wake up message to get me out of bed and off to work. Instead of my daily “fire drill”?

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Posted by reinkefj

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