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I am tempted to mention about Las Vegas, so I will <g> -- before my
first trip there, at the age of 30-something for a national conference, I
studied guides to casino games and their relative odds, memorized the blackjack
combinations and underlying frequencies, when to fold or double down, and why,
et cetera.

Fascinating stuff, a surreal world of
they-never-taught-me-this-in-school math wrapped in chandeliers, tuxedoes and the kind of magic and illusions
that both dreams and nightmares are made of. (I also studied how the casinos
operate psychologically, but that is for another thread!)

A big eye-opener for me was realizing that gambling games are math
magic and that math magic and illusions are just like all magic and illusions --
from tic-tac-toe to Houdini -- once you "get" the underlying structure and why
it works, it is less interesting to just see it or do it over and over the
same way. The fun is in the discovery of new tricks and then sharing them with
each other! <g> JJ



pamsoroosh@... writes:


>
> There are lots of ways to change game rules - sometimes a simple
> seemingly innocuous change can have major impacts on how the game plays
> out and what the outcome is. What if you let people have the option of
> skipping a turn, for example? Or - what if at the end of a turn they
> roll a die and call out a number - if they get a match with the number
> on the die, they get an extra turn.
>
> Oh - and when you make up games and they flop - be sure to examine why
> they flop - that is a big huge part of what mathematicians do, too.
>



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