Wife Won’t Let Husband Help With Her Gambling Problem

Straight Up With a Twist

By Edwin Decker

Dear Ed, Me and the wife like to play blackjack at the casino from time to time. The problem is that she is a terrible player. It’s not the money I care about but the groans and eyerolls (sometimes even outbursts) she receives from players who are seated after her. As a blackjack player yourself, you know how much it sucks playing behind a bad player. Especially when they hit when they should be standing and end up taking the card YOU were waiting for.

I hate to say it, but I understand where they are coming from and cringe when she does that. But she refuses to listen. Every time I try to give strategy advice, she gets annoyed and says, “Let me play my game!” Any suggestions?

Sincerely, A Friend Who’s Been Reading You Since the CityBeat Days

Hi Friend, I do have a suggestion. “Let the woman play her game fer crissake!”

You said she gets annoyed “every time” you give her advice? I can only imagine how many times that has been. It’s one thing to offer blackjack tips to someone who is open to receiving them. It’s another thing to keep doing it when they aren’t. I call it game-splaining and the only thing more annoying than a game-splainer is being game-splained by someone who doesn’t understand the game which, my friend, you arguably do not. Or at least not the probability part of it.

Nor do the groaners and eye-roller types understand probability either. Yes, it can be unnerving to be at the receiving end of their contempt. I have seen plenty of crabby, overly-serious, sourpusses wig out on less skilled players for taking what they believed was their card. But that’s absurd. First of all, they have no claim to that card. More to the point, there is nothing another player can do – no ill-advised card they can take, no bad hand on which they might stand – that will change the odds of anyone else’s game on the table.

Now, for my readers who don’t play 21, you might want to breeze through the next paragraph because it meanders into pedantic, nerdish, mathy and – worst of all – mundane blackjack minutiae.

For those who do play, you have probably seen similar scenarios unfold a hundred times: Let’s say the dealer is showing a six and Player A has 14. The proper action for Player A is to stand. However he injudiciously hits for a ten and busts. Ok, well that’s to be expected. But it’s also a bummer for Player B who has an eleven and needed that ten for the almighty 21. Instead, he draws an utterly disappointing four and ends up losing the hand. If he’s a groany, rolley-eyed crybaby type he will blame Player A by issuing said groans and/or eye-rolls. Sometimes he will even make snotty comments like, “You cost me 25 bucks, dumbass!” or, “Go play slots, willya?”

But there is a huge problem with this thinking. Sure, Player B got screwed – this hand. But maybe not the next, or the next, or the next, ad infinitum. Indeed, over time (which is how probability works) the likelihood of Player A “stealing” a card that would have helped Player B is equal to Player A taking a card that would have hurt Player B. There are a myriad of studies that bear this out. Such as the digital simulation performed by Michael Shackleford of the Wizard of Odds website.

Shackleford created a computer program that simulated billions of hands of blackjack. He ran two scenarios with two “players.” In the first scenario both Player A and Player B were programmed to play all 1.6 billion hands using sound blackjack strategy. This resulted in both players suffering the expected, approximate 0.3 percent in losses. In the second scenario, Player B played the same, sound strategy but Player A was reprogrammed to play badly – hitting on 16, splitting all pairs and so on. The results? Player B enjoyed .0007 increase in wins.

Of course, .0007 is a statistical tie but the point is, after over a billion simulated hands, the bad player’s bad plays had virtually no effect on the odds of the player who followed.

So why does this myth prevail?

Well, because of a biological foible called Confirmation Bias. You know, the psychological dissonance that allows people to continue to believe what we already believe and the number one reason why this planet is as fucked as it is. We do this by remembering the instances that reinforce a belief and forget those that diminish it. So, if a blackjacker already thinks that being behind a bad player will mostly hurt them, they only remember the instances when that turned out to be true and forget the times it wasn’t. How convenient.

So, no, Friend, I do not agree that it sucks to be behind an unskilled player. I would rather that than be anywhere near one of these over-serious blackjack crabs blaming others for their losses. And If they ever lipped off to my beloved, I’d tell ‘em to watch their mouths if they don’t want a seven-deck blackjack shoe shoved into it. She’s your wife. Have her back, not theirs. Let her play her game, not yours. And if you really don’t have the sack to ignore their tantrums, then take a walk over to the roulette wheel to cool off. Be sure to check the history board for the list of hot and cold numbers because everyone knows, the cold ones are due!