
The Phantom Gambler - rutenspitz
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/03/05/dice-roll-the-phantom-gambler/
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ericsoderstrom
For me, this was the most interesting line

> [Bergstrom] let Binion know that if he’d lost the bank’s money, he’d planned
> to kill himself by swallowing seventy pills.

I wonder how many people out there have done something similar, but had the
dice not land in their favor?

There are 50,000 suicides in the US each year. I imagine a not-insignificant
percentage of those are at least indirectly related to money. What if everyone
who was suicidal adopted the attitude "I may as well take out a loan and bet
it all on black. I was going to kill myself anyway so why not". There is
definitely a cold logic to it at least.

~~~
dontbenebby
>"I may as well take out a loan and bet it all on black. I was going to kill
myself anyway so why not". There is definitely a cold logic to it at least.

Ah yes, I believe this is known as Pascal's Roulette Wager.

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nikhizzle
On a related note, I always found it interesting that the number of people
broadly banned from Vegas casinos for cheating is on a small public list
currently numbered 35.

See
[https://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=72](https://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=72)

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dontbenebby
> _On September 24th, 1980, a man wearing cowboy boots and carrying two brown
> suitcases entered Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. One suitcase held
> $777,000 in cash; the other was empty. After converting the money into
> chips, the man approached a craps table on the casino floor and put
> everything on the backline. This meant he was betting against the woman
> rolling the dice. If she lost, he’d double his money. If she won, he’d lose
> everything. Scarcely aware of the amount riding on her dice, the woman
> rolled three times: 6, 9, 7... And just like that, the man won over $1.5
> million. He calmly filled the empty suitcase with his winnings, exited
> Binion’s into the desert afternoon, and drove off. It was the largest amount
> ever bet on a dice roll in America._

> _“Mystery Man Wins Fortune,” the Los Angeles Times reported. No one knew the
> identity of the fair-haired young Texan who’d just made history, and so he
> became known as the “Phantom Gambler.” “He was cool,” said Jack Binion,
> president of the Horseshoe. “He really had a lot of gamble in him.” But it
> would be years before the phantom would be seen in Vegas again._

I'm surprised there were no AML laws in 1980 requiring any sort of ID for a
win that large.

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burritofanatic
Read the story first, but here is the wiki on the gambler:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_Bergstrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_Bergstrom)

Great story.

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towaway1138
There's no real lesson, but that's a great story.

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mruts
I like to play poker (which isn’t gambling) so I walked in to a local casino
(I live in Tanzania, so it’s pretty small and run by some Russian gangster)
and tried to find a table. They only had house games (including house poker,
but it’s rigged) so I decided to play some roullette. I had walked in with
$500 USD and decided to just bet $50 on black and consume as many free drinks
as I could until I ran out of money.

Everyone was betting on different numbers and kept trying to determine what
was “lucky” It was kind of baffling actually. But I wasn’t having much fun,
but everyone else was because they thought they were making “choices” thinking
they were adding some value to the equation.

After losing all my money, I personally didn’t get much of a rush (maybe
because my strategy was to play until I lost it all), but I can see the appeal
if you think you have some sort of “skill” at it.

So now I understand. I love playing poker and get a big rush from putting a
couple hundred bucks on the line in a big hand, but only because I feel I’m
adding alpha or skill to the equation. In the same way, gamblers are getting
the same rush that I get from poker because they feel like they are adding
some alpha.

Admittedly, though, if I was wagering all of my net worth on the line, I would
probably have thought roullette was more exhilirating.

Slots, on the otherhand, I still don’t get. You essentially just sit there and
lose money.

~~~
Marazan
As a poker player: poker is gambling.

Pretending it isn't doesn't gain you anything.

It is different from slots or roullette because rather than the house you bet
against other people but it is totally gambling.

~~~
stone-monkey
It may still be gambling in the sense that there's a large element of chance
that dictates the game, but it's not the same as something like Baccarat or
poker which is strictly a game of chance. The element of skill can cause
variance in outcomes over the period of play. It's important to make that
distinction because you're getting into gray areas here.

Are actuaries and insurance companies engaging in gambling? They're
essentially betting on not needing to fulfill the terms of the contract for
unlikely outcomes by analyzing the "odds" over time. Often, they "lose" the
bet and have to pay out, but they reliably win more than they lose. Of course,
good poker players are probably not getting matched up with amateurs, so it's
not exactly identical.

~~~
Marazan
Insurance companies engage in a co-operative relationship with the people who
take out insurance products with them.

When you insure your house against fire neither you nor the insurance company
want your house to burn down.

In a gambling scenario the layer wishes the bet to lose and the backer wants
it to succeed.

