1. Put Expensive Parking Meters on Some Handicapped Parking Spaces. Most of the money goes to help the handicapped. Perhaps a dollar a minute. Perhaps only a portion of them. Perhaps only at certain times.
2. Criteria to Use When Two Experts Disagree. Expertise, experience, overall intelligence, personal gain bias, how much would they bet (assuming equal bankrolls and equal gambling proclivities), are they the type who will only offer an opinion they are sure of. Those last two are rarely considered.
3. Why Can’t You Pump Your Own Gas In New Jersey? When discrepancies in state laws are obviously for no good reason, legislatures should revisit those laws. (I am not talking about silly laws or laws that should reasonably be different depending on the state. The best examples are those that force commercials to say something like “not available in Florida, North Dakota or Kansas.)
4. Make “Sliver of Doubt” An Official Reason to Commute a Death Sentence. It’s already been done a few times unofficially. Both pro and con capital punishment advocates as well as probability phobics have objections, but they will be refuted when I write lengthier explanations. Basically, it’s a pot odds problem.
5. Close the Gap Between Drunk Driving and Drunk Driving Manslaughter Punishments. Assuming similar blood alcohol levels and degree of reckless driving. Why should luck play such a big part? There are many other examples.
6. Passing Up a Good Bet for a Better One. Not a good idea if winning the first allows you to bet it all on the second. Or if the second bet is only a little better. But sometimes it is a good idea. If your $100 bankroll is temporarily not replenishable, and you can bet up to that amount both today and tomorrow, wait for the 80% shot if today’s bet is 60%, but don’t wait if tomorrow’s bet is only 70%.
7. Equip Cars With a “SORRY” Light. Push a button to light it up when you inadvertently cut someone off, stop too short, etc. Some percentage of road rage incidents will be nipped in the bud. (You can buy something like this right now.)
8. Don’t Confuse Clearcut Errors with Bad Errors. Don’t underestimate someone who, perhaps purposely, does something known to be wrong but actually is barely worse than its alternative. Making the two point with 6-4. Reraising early with 55. Other stuff from real life. They may be trying to lull you into making your own much worse mistakes.
9. The Decision Favored to Be Wrong May Be Right. That can happen if that alternative has a much larger upside, a much smaller downside, or if it can be reversed if going poorly while the other decision(s) can’t.
10. Standardize End Game Decisions on Bettable Games Out of Reach. Now that legal sports betting is widespread, decisions such as whether to “take a knee” on their one-yard line as a 20-point favorite, when winning by 18, with seconds to go, should not be up to the coach. He can’t pretend not to know the spread.
11. The Fundamental Theorem of Investing. A name I made up to express an important idea that many people kind of sort of know intuitively. Don’t risk a lot of money on an investment, bet, or purchase, that appears to be a great deal, unless you can figure out why the people taking the other side are doing it, and why their reasons shouldn’t concern you.
12. Let the (mainly) Efficient Market Work for You. Related to the previous idea, since the efficient market hypothesis is rarely wrong, it means that if you find a very little-known important fact or idea about a company or sports event, it barely hurts to be ignorant about all the other facts pertaining to them. If your info points to a good bet, you will rarely regret that ignorance since the other aspects will almost always be properly baked into the price or point spread.
13. Don’t Allow Murder Freerolls. Kidnappers, escaped murderers, hostage takers, and others, sometimes find themselves in a situation where there is no difference in punishment whether or not they kill someone. That clearly should not be. Thus, the law should offer some non-trivial incentive for not killing as distasteful as that policy might be.
14. “First Do No Harm” Can Be Harmful. Those readers who are advantage gamblers certainly realize where I am going with this. If the “expected value” of a medical procedure is significantly higher than doing nothing, it is malpractice to settle on doing nothing just because doing something occasionally does harm. Undoubtedly most doctors know this. Unfortunately, lawyers pretend like they don’t.
15. Fake Cameras and More Lawyer Nonsense. There was a car break in, in the parking garage of the smallish casino I consulted for. There were no cameras since it wasn’t deemed worth the cost. But fake cameras would undoubtedly deter most future break ins. Our attorney nixed the idea. Though they would stop most crimes they would be an admission that we considered the garage dangerous, yet we didn’t take full precautions. We risked a lawsuit that we wouldn’t get if we did nothing. That makes sense?
16. Allow Some Businesses to Buy Out of Disability Rules. As in my handicapped parking idea, most of the money would be used to help the disabled. The general idea would be that some public businesses that have few disabled customers and are facing large expenses to retrofit, should be allowed to contribute perhaps half that amount to disabled causes to avoid that retrofit. Probably that would come with a large sign explaining their decision.
17. Math Questions That Need Almost No Math. Two Examples: #1. We flip coins for a dollar a flip. I start with $2, and you start with one. Algebra tells us that I will bust you twice as often as you bust me. Pure logic points out that this must be so since fair bets must break even if we do this every day. #2. I flip then you then me until one of us gets a head. Since I’m going first, math types make me 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/32……Smarter people realize that on the first round I’m 1/2 and your’e 1/4 and that ratio remains on all rounds until there is a winner. We both get 2/3.
18. People as Presents. Twice in my life I arranged for a close relative who my (different) partners had not seen in years, to secretly fly in as a birthday present. I hid them both in the closet and told the recipients that their present was in there. Easily the two best gift reactions I ever experienced. I highly recommend it to you if you are in a position to pull it off.
19. Pawnshop Principle. Can’t claim this as my idea but I include this because it’s important. When it comes time to sell something that you previously bought you should barely consider what you paid for it. Pretend that you don’t even remember and charge what the traffic will bear. If that means selling it for a loss, so be it.
20. Allow Institutionalized Ex-Prisoners to Stipulate to Committing a Crime to Get Back In. Maybe that policy will mean more people will avail of that option. But that’s not a good enough reason to not allow it. Stipulators will not harm others, rather than of being forced to without this policy. Secondly if they come to their senses, probably with the aid of counseling in jail, they can be quickly released. Not an option to those who committed real crimes to get back in. (But if you try this more than once you can’t get out early. Prisons aren’t motels.)
21. Offer Amnesty to Actual Perpetrator If He Confesses in Order to Spring Unjustly Convicted Prisoner Facing Many More Years in Jail. Faking a confession would of course be a major felony. There are several decent arguments against this idea, (which would have some strict criteria attached to it) but they all pale in comparison to the principle that it is a much graver sin to punish innocents than to fail to punish someone guilty. My forthcoming list of lengthier explanations will include my counter arguments that will probably convince most to accept this admittedly hard to swallow policy.
22. Translate Mild and Moderate Annoyances Into Money. In most cases when something irritating happens to people, their emotional reaction is quite a bit greater than it would be if they lost an amount of money that coincided with the amount that it would take to fix things (or the amount that they would take in return for enduring the mishap.) Next time think in money terms and you will probably feel better.
23. If You Know the Dealer Has 17 Don’t Double Down on 11. Even though that decision will cost you a bet seven times out of 12. Because the other decision is sometimes three bets better than doubling and thus even more profitable. The general principle is that in both gambling and real life, it is not enough to see if a certain decision is “plus EV”. (Similar to #19 above.)
24. Giving Him Two Tens Which He Must Split Against Your Nine Showing. If you think this blackjack proposition favors you, read #23 again. Splitting tens against a nine is a terrible play. But only compared to the alternative of standing. To quickly realize this, you need only remember that Basic Strategy says to double down with ten against a nine even though you can’t take another card.
25. Commercials That Depend on the Placebo Effect. Why else do you think your TV is infested with ads for ED pills, memory enhancements, and other vitamin type pills that that the FDA is not allowed to comment on? At least 30% of buyers will give them a good review because of the strange tendency of the brain to produce real physical effects for no discernable reason.
26. Getting Past Middle Manager Roadblocks Whose Self Interest Don’t Coincide with Their Company’s. Poker’s best-selling book (Theory of Poker) was originally published by Prentice Hall but almost wasn’t. The low level editor assigned to approving it, worried what would happen if it flopped. I told him that I would shop it around, it was a big favorite to succeed, and I changed his unethical personal equation by telling him that during interviews after that success, I won’t fail to mention that Mr H prevented Prentice Hall from publishing it. His reply was “Let me reconsider”. I will elaborate in the longer explanations section.
27. The Game Theory Solution to the Game of “Chicken”. Not my original idea but worth repeating. Two cars drive towards each other and the first one to swerve loses. In this obviously hypothetical game, the obviously hypothetical solution is to throw your steering wheel out the window, making sure the other guy sees it. There are lots of real-world analogies.
28. Well Thought Out Hypotheticals Can Be Useful. They don’t have to coincide exactly with the real-world scenario they are shining a light on. Especially if the differences between the hypothetical and what it is modelling are recognized and adjusted for.
29. Billionaire ex Poker Pro, Asks Me 8 Card Stud Question. Even though there is no such game. It helped Jeff Yass zero in on regular stud in the days before he became an options trader superstar. This and #27 are just two examples of the point I make in #28. Jeff apparently agrees and his subsequent financial success could well be partially due to that.
30. It’s Worth Going to Some Lengths to Prevent Bluffs from Those Who Would Normally Play Close to Game Theory Strategy in Big Bet Poker Games. That often means making a play on the next to last round that would normally be wrong but becomes clearly right if it switches his last round bluffing frequency to a negligible percentage. Obviously, I will elaborate in the forthcoming elaboration section.
31. If 95% Repayors Are Profitable It’s Still Wrong to Relax Requirements If Your Results Are 97%. Not my original idea but an important one. A loan officer who is getting paid back 97% of the time can probably assume that the more risky customers are already 95% or less. Bank officers usually know this, but others to whom this concept applies, often don’t.
32. Those Who Would Give Up Liberty for Safety Deserve Neither? Not my original idea but an important one. A loan officer who is getting paid back 97% of the time can probably assume that the more risky customers are already 95% or less. Bank officers usually know this, but others to whom this concept applies, often don’t. .
33. If You Don’t Believe in Equality for All, I Don’t Want Your Vote? I have heard versions of this spoken many times by many candidates, including our present president. Maybe the reason no one calls them on it is that it is such a blatant lie that it’s not worth the time or ink.
34. When Are You So Old That You Can’t Bet You Will Live Another Year? Most people guess about 90. So here is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that for typical Americans, the answer is about 111. The bad news is that 90 is not only a horribly wrong answer but also a horribly dumb one. If 90 years old is even money than the number of 100 year olds would be way smaller than 1/1024 of the 90 years old number which is clearly not true.
35. Is “We Will Match Competitor’s Price” Sometimes Surreptitious Price Fixing? In a small town, why would I lower a price below yours if you automatically match it?
36. My Technique to Develop Willpower. I thought this was so important that I asked that the chapter in my book Poker Gaming and Life, that gives the details, appear twice in two different places! The gist is to consider a promise to yourself so important that you stick to it even if new circumstances strongly argue to change your mind. And an easy way to practice that, is something like denying yourself dessert if you don’t score high enough on a video game.
37. Is Solipsism Ridiculous? Clearly, I am not a solipsist, or I wouldn’t be wasting my time writing this list for others to read. However, one simple adjustment would change everything. Suppose I am dreaming. And interacting with “others”. Are we not all solipsists in our dreams? (Note: After writing this, I found that I wasn’t the first to think of the idea.)
38. A Way to Tell If You Are Dreaming. If #37 worries you, I thought up a way. Do a physics experiment where the result can be both measured and also predicted by a formula you know, but is too complex to calculate in your head. Measure your result and see if it coincides with the answer you get with pen and paper. I realize it’s not foolproof. But at least it partially refutes the statement that there is nothing you can do to verify whether you are dreaming or not.
39. Do Criminals Calculate EV? If the “reward” of a crime is money, and the punishment is purely financial, the crime is positive EV if the reward times the chances of getting away with it is higher than the punishment times the chances of getting caught. If the punishment or reward is not purely financial, one must instead use “utils” in the calculation. Most criminals are either ignoring that or incorrectly calculating, since most crimes are negative EV. See #40 for more on this subject.
40. Can Leniency Create a New Category of Criminal? Those who are already committing negative EV crimes are not likely to increase their output much if the EV turns positive due to the fact that the punishments, or the probability of getting caught, are diminished. However, there is no way of knowing how many immoral people are waiting in the wings for plus EV opportunities. Unfortunately, my personal experience tells me that there are more of these people than most realize. Eliminating changes toward leniency would be one way to fix this. A better solution would be to somehow identify the newly created calculating criminals and find ways to thwart them.
41. Ill Conceived Market Research. Our hotel gave its guests a choice of one of five gifts. One became unavailable. Two new possibilities were tested for guest preference. But they were erroneously tested against each other. That procedure might pick a gift that was almost always 2nd choice among the five while the other prospective gift might be usually fifth but sometimes first. There are many analogies including elections.
42. The Simple Math That Proves “Crapless” Craps is Worse. 2,3, and 12 are no longer automatic losers. Eleven is no longer an automatic winner. They are all “points”. Many think that a pass line bettor is given more than is taken away. But 2 and 12 only move up from zero to 1/7. 3 goes from 0 to 25%. Meanwhile 11 moves down from 100% to only 25%. Be on the lookout for analogies.
43. Big Favorites Are Big Underdogs to Go on Long Streaks. For instance, it’s five times easier for an 80% shot to go 19 for 20 than 20 for 20. That’s why John Wooden is probably the best coach of all time despite having the best talent. And why no one will ever top Joe Dimaggio’s hitting streak.
44. Paying for Info. Whether it be actual money or perhaps a normally negative EV play early in a poker hand that will make your opponent give away his hand, you should have an idea of the correct price. It is the weighted average of the various gains you achieve compared to your EV had you not known anything. Including the times it is zero because the info doesn’t change your decision.
45. A Positive Test for a Very Rare Disease is Probably Wrong. Not my original thought plus there are exceptions. Still, it’s something that should be more well known as are many other real-world facts that are deducible with the help of something called Bayes’ Theorem.
46. Best Use of Floorspace, Misunderstanding. Several casinos decided against poker rooms when their research showed that slot machines make more money on the same number of square feet. But in non super crowded casinos, the poker revenue is simply extra money since it’s easy for someone to move their slot play to other spots. Plus, the poker room may bring customers through the door who would otherwise go elsewhere. The error is probably made by other businesses as well.
47. Passing 95% Confidence Criteria Doesn’t Make You 95%. An extremely serious error made even by “experts”, that a few people are trying to explain to the world. If a drug on trial beats the 95% criteria, it means the older drug or placebo tested against it did so much worse that there is only a 5% probability that the trial would come out this way if in fact the tested drug was no better. But that is NOT AT ALL the same thing as saying that there is only a 5% chance that the tested drug doesn’t work. On average its chances are much worse.
48. An Interesting Way to Beat A “No Skill No Edge” Lottery Type Game. Say I conduct a lottery where tomorrow I randomly choose a number between 1 and 100 and split the money from the one dollar tickets I sold among those who chose the winning number (refunds if no winner). Random tickets break even. But someone who pays $100 for 100 different numbers has an edge (unless everyone else does)! To see why suppose only one other player plays and buys one ticket. You win one dollar 99 times and lose $49.50 one time. The explanation is that you making sure you don’t duplicate, makes your tickets not random.
49. #48 Means More Horse Race Pick Sixes Than Expected Are Beatable. But only if you have a few hundred thousand dollars to invest in different reasonable combinations. (This was another piece of good advice I gave Jeff Yass years after he asked about 8 card stud.) Unfortunately, the opposite is true if you only are betting a few grand and you know a syndicate is betting also. (Stanford Wong got this wrong in his book.)
50. Seek Advice from One Notch Below the Famous Experts. My experience has been that they will be extremely helpful since they normally labor in the shadows and welcome the opportunity to help people get adept at their specialty, in order to be better appreciated.
51. Allow Verdicts of “Probably Guilty” For Serious and “Me Too” Accusations. Presently most countries want their juries to completely acquit defendants who they think are as little as 10% or less in their mind, to be actually innocent. Because it is much worse to convict an innocent person than acquit a guilty one. But I think it is wrong to completely act as if someone is innocent if the crime is serious and the jury thinks he probably did it. The probably guilty verdict would allow the government to put more constraints on that person than normally allowed. Or, in the case of sexual assault allegations, that verdict prevents the accuser of being considered a liar.
52. The Odd Connection Between Placebos, Peeping Toms and Babe Ruth Autographed Baseballs. Do you see it? If you are the victim of a dishonest doctor who takes advantage of your susceptibility, a pervert outside your window, or a thief/forger who steals the baseball and replaces it with a counterfeit, you are only harmed if someone tells you it happened. Should they?
53. Call in The Next Ten Minutes/ Denying the Antecedent. Hopefully you get that those TV commercials that promise that you will receive something extra if you call within ten minutes, will still give it to you even if you call later. One reason is that there is usually no way they know which ad you’re responding to. And if you reply that it’s illegal to lie in commercials, I’m forced to tell you that you don’t understand fallacies as you don’t get that if “x implies y” it doesn’t mean that “not x implies not y”. So, they are technically not lying.
54. Insane EV Ignorance/Risk Aversion in Average People. We had a year-long cheap buy-in slot tournament that culminated in four finalists shooting for prizes of 10K, 20K, 50K and a million dollars on the final round. They agreed to settle for 60K each even though playing gave them an EV of 270K! The fact that the settlement was slightly better than 2nd prize swamped everything else in their minds. I will leave it to the reader to come up with ways to take advantage of this syndrome.
55. Interesting Evidence That I am a Control Freak. I always kind of knew it since I could never stand depending on people, even “experts”, since I know how many screw up. That even included airline pilots, which was why I was never comfortable flying even though I knew the odds. Thus, when it became necessary to fly in a small private jet. I was even more nervous than usual, since I didn’t think those pilots are quite as good as commercial. But once in the air I wasn’t nervous at all and tried to figure out why. I realized it was because I sat right behind the open cockpit and could both talk to the pilots and see out the front window!
56. Don’t Overestimate the Intelligence or Expertise of Those in Fields That Require Them to Know Complicated Rules or a Lot of Jargon. This is doubly true if that person is teaching you something about his field and unnecessarily brings up these rules or jargon. People who really know the subject don’t do that as they have no need to show off.
57. Periodically Review Important 5-4 Supreme Court Decisions. My main reason to suggest this is purely mathematical. Put simply, if nine different justices had ruled, there is almost a 50% chance it would go the other way. The details regarding this suggestion would have to be worked out.
58. Keno, Roulette, And Even Lotteries Can Sometimes Be Better Bets than the Craps Pass Line. Even though the house edge on craps is 1.4% while its 5.5% on roulette, 25% on keno and 50% on lotteries. The basic reason is that the “worse” bets can instantly turn your one dollar into $36, $10,000, or mega millions. For craps to do that means you have parlayed a win many times and put out far more than one dollar from which 1.4% is taken.
59. Internet Poker Idea #1. After about 80% of the tournament entries are eliminated, the computer distributes half of the total prize money to the remaining players in proportion to their stacks. The tournament then continues as normal for the rest of the money. A tournament of that nature has the advantage of discouraging “nitty” survival strategies.
60. Internet Poker Idea #2 This idea and the previous one are distinguished by the fact that live poker would be hard pressed to duplicate them. (And I have several more that I am withholding for the time being.) Hi-Lo split games that award 60% to the best high hand. No longer would the admonition “Don’t play purely high hands” be generally good advice. This game, whether it be stud or Omaha, would likely result in a lot of action.
61. The Two Kinds of Probability. To be expounded upon later. For now, think about the difference between calling a baseball team 60% to win their game and calling a weightlifter 60% to lift more weight than his opponent. That 60% comes from two different kinds of uncertainty. In the case of baseball, it comes from the luck of the bouncing ball and quarters of an inch on the bat. And if the underdog wins, the original favorite will still be favored if they play again. In the case of the weightlifter uncertainty stems from your lack of complete information. And if that underdog wins today, you would make him the favorite tomorrow.
62. Deviate from Poker Early Round Game Theory Recommendations If You Are Unwilling to Carry Them Through to the End. Again, to be expounded upon later. Basically, it means that you should call fewer preflop raises than “GTO” says if you don’t want to make big bluffs as often as GTO will require you to do later on.
63. Lemons to Lemonade Anecdote. We had just built a 20 story addition to the casino/hotel I consulted for. We desperately needed more rooms so Bob Stupak was disappointed that each floor contained a room about 60% of normal size and thus wasn’t big enough to use as a guest room. Until I pointed out that that you could in fact fit a circular bed in it and get some customers to be OK with it by putting a mirror on the ceiling, plus some other stuff. It worked.
64. Even Better Lemons to Lemonade Story. We also desperately needed a third restaurant but required several weeks to build one from scratch. The vacant room near the back door (which opened to a seedy neighborhood) had no kitchen. I came up with a crazy idea, probably illegal, but actually somehow not. Across the street from the back door was a Chinese take-out joint. We built a fancy restaurant and no one knew that their food orders were called in and wheeled up the street through that door.
65. Soak the Rich for Little Perks. Stuff like avoiding lines, using car-pool lanes by themselves, or the handicapped parking idea that is #1 on this list. The key to making this work without a major backlash would be that the price charged would be high enough so that the average person would not feel bad that he couldn’t afford it himself, but rather that the rich person is making a fool of himself by spending so much on trivialities. Also, the money collected should at least partially clearly benefit those normal people in some manner.
66. Don’t Fall For “Fiduciary, No Commission, Only Make Money When You Do” Commercials. Do I really have to explain that this method of charging you for investment advice, in no way implies that their recommendations have a positive EV, except for them?
67. Might There Be Genes That Control How Likely Other Genes Tend to Mutate? Since I first wrote this, scientists have discovered a syndrome similar to my speculation. I originally thought of this because some biological changes seem to occur faster than standard evolution would appear to predict. But if there was a sort of “second derivative genes” that kicked in when the environment was quickly changing, that could explain why evolution is sometimes speedier than expected.
68. NFL and College Football Teams that Score a Touchdown with Little Time Left Should Go for Two When Down by Eight. Even if their kicker is 100%, it’s still the right play if they are 40% to succeed with the two-point conversion attempt. You assume you will score another touchdown (and that you are even money in overtime) and go for one the second time if and only if the two-point try worked. I’ll show the calculation in the lengthier explanation, but you should try to work it out for yourself.
69. People Who Resist Adding Math to Their Decision Making Invariably Can’t Do the Required Math. #68 above is just one of a myriad of situations where an endeavor that doesn’t usually require math sometimes does. But if the person in charge of that endeavor (e.g. a football coach) isn’t good at math, it is my experience that he or she tries to find a reason why the mathematical conclusion is wrong. You should take their argument with a grain of salt.
70. A Dumb Analogy Between Poker and Stock Trading. I sometimes see an article talking about how pro poker players can make good stock traders because they can take losses when they realize the game was tougher than they thought. They don’t try to “get even”. But that strategy does not extend to buying stocks because your losses, while similarly implying that your initial assessment was wrong, also means that the stock is cheaper and now often worth holding.
71. Emotions Depend More on “Acceleration” Than “Speed”. Another way of saying it is that what makes you feel good is usually not so much how things are going but rather how they are going compared to what you were expecting. Sometimes that can even mean mere normalcy if you were worried about something bad happening. Badly stuck poker players who get most of their money back know what I mean.
72. Don’t Blame Lack of Opportunity If it Wouldn’t Have Mattered. I recently read an article that stated something like “children of rich people are 6% to acquire a patent but only 1% of poor children are”. That’s a shame. However, those poor people who claim that it is this fact that is the reason they have no patent, need to acknowledge that poor people in general have a 94/99 chance of owning no patent for reasons unrelated to inequality of opportunity. And, of course, there are many other examples unrelated to patents.
73. Lay Me 11-10 on Ten Football Games and You Can Beat Me for 100 While I Cap Your Loss at 55. If your picks are coin flips my expected profit is $2.50 if you bet five games and 5 if you bet ten games with no forgiveness. But capping your losses at 55 (rather than the normal 110) still results in an EV of about 4 for me. In other words if you planned to bet five games with me, I substantially increase my “earn” if I let you bet five more for the same amount without increasing your maximum loss. Do you see why?
74. When Should Profiling Be Reluctantly Tolerated? When most members of the group are in favor of it. But even then, I would suggest that the procedure be ameliorated by giving a nice gift and an apologetic note to those stopped who just happen to share a physical characteristic with some bad people.
75. Chinese Children Help Calculate 1/2 + 2/4 +3/8 + 4/16 + 5/32 + ……..n/ (2 to the nth). A billion Chinese childless couples are told to have a boy and stop having children once they do. How many total children do they have? Half the couples have one. A quarter have two. An eighth have three etc. Analogous to the math problem. Except this time, we know the answer. Two billion (don’t nitpick). So, the series total “2”. There are lots of similar problems that can be done in similar ways.
76. When Coincidences Probably Aren’t. Two things just might be connected but the experts say that is farfetched. Problem is that most experts are not properly adjusting to how unlikely a parlay event will occur. The Challenger explodes on an exceedingly rare sub-freezing day in southern Florida. The first Covid case is walking distance from a lab. An airliner goes down in Iran during the time they are retaliating to an airstrike. These parlays are even less likely than the connection hypothesis. Thus, the hypothesis becomes the favorite without implying that the experts are incompetent in their field.
77. Nevada Representative Dina Titus Owes Her Stature to My Decision to Print Scandalous Story About Her Opponent. Other newspapers wouldn’t print it though they knew it was true. But they also knew it would change votes and give the election to Titus who otherwise had little chance. I think it’s pretty hard to make a case that it was me that was wrong.
78. Did You “River” the Flush in Your Dream? This thought of mine applies to everyone but is probably most easily seen in dreams of poker players. You are playing hold em and need a spade on the river. In your dream, you are hoping for that spade, not “knowing” whether it will come. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. But wait! You are not actually at a casino or internet site that determines whether you make that flush. Your brain does. The same brain that is hoping that the outcome is to your liking. So, what is going on here?
79. Casinos Should Revamp Their Baccarat Rebate Policy. Presently they give high rollers a small percentage refund on their losses. Instead, they should give back a much higher percentage but only on losses that exceed a high amount. The principle is the same as #73 above. (And there are many other examples.) I contend that both the customer and the casino would like this better as it saves the casino EV (mathematicians have actually exploited the present rebate technique for big money) while doing a better job of ameliorating the pain of those who are feeling it.
80. Two Ideas for Slot Machines. I am withholding most of my ideas for casinos in case one of them wants to pay me what I’m worth to consult for them. But two simple examples would be: 1. Those triple hand draw poker machines pay a big jackpot for three Royals at once. But they could pay an even bigger one for exactly two out of three. Do you see why? 2. Slots and poker machines should add payoffs based on what is obtained over the course of several outcomes in a row. Three pat hands in a row, Ten bars in five pulls. Things like that.
81. Spending Ten Million to Eliminate Skepticism Brings In 300 Mil. Stupak needed 50 million to build his tower but only had ten. He needed investors but couldn’t get any because they were skeptical that he could get the tower built. I asked him how much it cost to build it 80% of the way up to the bottom of the “pod”. When he said “ten million” I persuaded him to spend it without having the rest. Sure enough, once it could be seen rising into the air someone (Lyle Berman) came along not only with the 40 million but also another 260 or so to build an adjoining hotel. Perhaps you can think of similar (smaller) situations in your own life.
82. Prescription Drug TV Commercials Have Concerning Implications. Since they are targeted to patients rather than doctors, and are as numerous as they are, it must mean that they sometimes succeed in getting a patient to persuade their doctor to prescribe it when they otherwise would not have. But that means either that the doctor is incompetent or is unethical enough to prescribe a drug he wouldn’t normally, to keep someone’s business.