How to break the jackpot and stay a millionaire.

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Gambling Jackpot

Dreams of wealth drive millions of people around the world to dedicate their lives to climbing up the career ladder or looking for fresh ideas for their own business. Such people know the price of money, and often, having achieved success, abandon the common attributes of luxury life. But sometimes big money falls on a person literally like snow on his head. Lottery winners do not know how to properly dispose of large jackpots, and make many mistakes.

Poor lucky man

Jack was the victim of his own naivety and short-sightedness
Jack was the victim of his own naivety and short-sightedness
  • Name: Jack Whittaker
  • Age: 55 years
  • Country: USA
  • Winning: $315 million
  • What I spent on: expensive gifts to relatives and charity.
  • Life after winning: addicted to alcohol and lost all his money as a result of thefts and ships.

At the end of 2012, the jackpot of the American PowerBall lottery reached $300 million. Newspapers trumpeted about the record winnings, and lottery tickets sold out like hotcakes even by people who had never been lucky enough to play for money before. One such participant was Virginia native Jack Whittaker. He was the one who managed to guess all 6 prize numbers and become the owner of $315 million.

Jack made his first mistake when he found out he’d won the big time. He chose to take all the money at once, which automatically reduced the amount of the prize. According to the rules of the largest U.S. lotteries, multi-millionth jackpots are paid out in equal installments over 30 years, and only then the lucky one can expect to get the full jackpot. In the event of a lump sum payment, interest is calculated and tax deducted. Thus, Whittaker’s winnings were “terrified” up to $112 million. For an ordinary Virginia resident, this amount still seemed incredible, and he literally began to shit money. Gave homes and expensive cars to their relatives and friends, rested at expensive resorts and did not deny himself any entertainment, sent a lot of money to charity. He donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for education of needy children and allocated $5 million for construction of churches in his native state.

Six months later, Jack was robbed for the first time, dragging a half-million-dollar case from the front seat. The police tracked down the kidnappers and returned the money to the lottery winner, but hundreds of crooks found out about the disorderly lifestyle of the lucky bastard. The sad experience has taught Whittaker nothing. Soon, 100 thousand dollars were stolen from the same car, and the new millionaire was dragged to the courts. Women demanded compensation for sexual harassment, men for attacks and threats. Jack started drinking a lot and soon left the family, leaving his wife a solid part of the winnings. In less than two years, he managed to wind up $112 million.

You shouldn’t joke about luck

The lucky ones who ripped off the jackpot are often passionate about gambling.
  • Name: Evelyn Adams
  • Country: USA
  • Winning: $5.4 million
  • What did you spend it on: playing at the casino.
  • Life after winning: lost all the money and lives on social security benefits.

New Yorker Evelyn Adams won big money prizes in the lottery twice: in 1985 and 1986. This happens very rarely, and the woman believed in her exceptionality. She decided that if luck is so favorable to her, the best way to use the received $ 5.4 million – to bet in the casino and increase wealth. That plan proved to be a failure. Quite quickly, Evelyn spent all the money in the casino Atlantic City, and returned to her hometown with nothing. Today she lives in a trailer park for food stamps.

Only necessities… and a horse.

Elaine Thomson has managed to manage her money properly and doesn't regret shopping.
Elaine Thomson has managed to manage her money properly and doesn’t regret shopping.
  • Name: Elaine Thomson.
  • Age: 58 years
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Winning: £2.7 million
  • What I spent it on: studying for kids, a luxury house and a horse.
  • Life after winning: the balance of the winnings is deposited in the bank and every year it withdraws interest.

But there are as many good stories in the world as there are bad ones. The story of Eileen Thomson is a prime example of restraint. In 1995, she won a huge sum. Most of the money the woman immediately put aside for the education of her children in the best schools, and also bought for her family a luxurious, but small house. The only excess that the winner allowed herself – a real racehorse. The rest of the family put it in the bank to withdraw the annual interest.

Happy numbers and miserable fortunes

Cynthia and Terry never understood whether or not fate favored them.
Cynthia and Terry never understood whether or not fate favored them.
  • Name: Cynthia Jay and Terry Brennan.
  • Country: USA
  • Winnings: $35 million
  • What they spent it on: giving money to their relatives and getting married.
  • Life after winning: Cynthia had an accident and Terry still hopes that she will recover.

Cynthia and Terry considered the day of their acquaintance as the greatest gift of fate, so with special trembling were among the 27. On January 27, 2000, during their trip to Las Vegas, they decided to spend $27 on a casino and… broke the jackpot. The money was immediately a great use – the couple played a magnificent wedding. However, soon fortune turned its back on the newlyweds. Two months later, the woman was in a car accident, lost her sister, and remained paralyzed for life.

Money doesn’t change the essence…

Mike tried to pretend he was special, but it didn't work.
Mike tried to pretend he was special, but it didn’t work.
  • Name: Mike Carroll.
  • Age: 19 years
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Winning: £9.7 million
  • What I spent on: expensive shopping, drugs, prostitutes.
  • Life after winning: Back to the garbage man’s job.

A typical scavenger from a poor family, Mike Carroll, hit the jackpot in 2002 when he was only 19. After he got rich, the guy declared himself “king of the chow.” That’s what they call themselves in England, teenagers from working families who like to drink and bully. The new millionaire went to all the trouble. He spent crazy sums on drugs and protuberances, bought himself a few houses, two villas in Spain and a couple of expensive cars. It seemed that life would never be the same, but because of its wastefulness soon Mike had to admit bankruptcy. In 2010, there were reports in the press that Carroll was living on unemployment benefits for a while and then returned to work as a garbage man.

“We don’t need anything!”

Allen and Violet were happy to win, but they said they didn't want the money.
Allen and Violet were happy to win, but they said they didn’t want the money.
  • Name: Allen and Violet Large.
  • Country: USA
  • Winnings: $11 million
  • What was it spent on? Donated to charity.
  • Life after winning: the old way of life.

Born in Canada, the Large wives made a huge score in the lottery. They gave almost all the money to organizations in their hometown – churches, fire stations, and the Red Cross. The retirees kept a few hundred thousand for a rainy day and did not change their lifestyle in any way. 75-year-old Allen likes to repeat that he and his wife are enough and everything, and they do not need anything extra.

Online Casino Probability Theory

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Casino – the product of mathematicians, and brilliant. Almost all the mathematical basis for the functioning of gambling institutions appeared a long time ago and is relevant to this day. Everyone knows that the institution always remains in the “plus”. But why? It seems that yesterday you won and withdrew money.

How can a casino make a profit?

In fact, everything has long been calculated and based on conventional probability theory – as, however, and the work of your favorite games: whether it’s slots, roulette or poker. The theory of probability studies the regularities of random phenomena. That’s what it says on the great and mighty Wikipedia.

But what does it mean in the field of gambling?

The outcomes of all gambling, including online slots, are random. I mean, they can’t be predicted in advance. We’re gonna need the mathematical laws of probability theory, which are actually quite simple. First we need to understand that any spin in the slot machine is subject to certain laws.

Yes, we do not know what will be the result of a separate rotation, but we can fairly accurately predict the profit, for example, after 100,000 spins. The theory of probability in online casinos consists of many theories, laws and other established knowledge. The key for us will be the following concepts:

In principle, we do not need anything else to describe the work of the entire casino machine. And this, for a moment, a complex and huge body! In general, let’s take it in order.

Mathematical expectation

In gambling it is important to approximate your potential profit. Mathematical expectation is exactly what helps to do this. It shows the average of a random value.

What is a random value in the same slot machines? This is the win of the individual back! Thus, mathematical expectation shows the average of our winnings.

And if you have any knowledge of modern slots, you know very well about the existence of such an indicator as the percentage of payouts (Return to Player). It, in fact, will be our mathematical expectation. The payout percentage shows how much the slot will give back for a long period of time.

For example, it’s 96%.

This means that the machine is programmed to give at a distance (ie, after a huge number of spins) 96% of the stake invested in it. Not in every spin, but after a large number of them. These same 96% can be called the expectation of a particular game. Only the expectation is not expressed in percentages, it can be in the range of -1 to 1. So our 96% transform into -0.04. And therefore the mathematical expectation is negative. On average, on a distance, it would mean 4% loss.

How do you get the positive mathematical expectation in the casino?

Mathematical expectation can be positive, just in the case of the casino it happens very rarely.

For example,

it can happen in blackjack (when counting cards), but in the Internet with this is much more difficult (because the deck is infinite). Or even when playing with a profitable bonus – say, 200% with an x25 Vader.

Negative mathematical expectation, ie, the potential profit of the player – this is absolutely standard for almost all casino games.

In fact, the player can not make a profit on the distance (but can win a lot on the short run), so do not try to make your hobby the only source of income. It is rather an entertainment for which you have to pay.

Random magnitude dispersion.

Dispersion is a measure of deviation of a random value from the mathematical expectation. Roughly speaking, it is a measure of deviation from the average value.

For example,

take the Space Wars slot. It is considered highly dispersive, which means a large deviation of random variables from the mathematical expectation. In the player’s language, it sounds like, “Eat like a vacuum cleaner!” “Grizzly” slot because it can make big winnings. And how else can large payouts be balanced, if not by long periods of plums?

In Space Wars (conditional) player can get a maximum of x5,000 per spin. But the law works in the opposite direction, so the pool of maximum losses (ie, a series of empty spins) is also lengthened. In another slot machine, the maximum win can be x1,000 for spins. Consequently, it is much less dispersive. There is one important point. The higher the deviation from the mathematical expectation, the more “non-standard” outcomes will be. For example:

  • result 1: x100 win,
  • result 2: 10 empty spins,
  • result 3: x10 win
  • result 4: win x2,
  • result 5: 20 empty spins

and so on. Even after hundreds of spins we may not approach the average of a random value – the mathematical expectation. The same Space Wars gives 96.8% at a distance. If you want, you can roughly estimate whether your results match this value. Although you don’t have to worry about it – most likely it is not. You may be in a big “plus” or a big “minus”, but it is unlikely that you played zero even after a large number of spins.
Why not? Because the dispersion is high.

Normal distribution.

Normal distribution – distribution of probabilities that directly depends on the values of mathematical expectation and dispersion. It is most likely that you have encountered it more than once before. This is the same bell-shaped graph, the highest point of which (peak) corresponds to the value of the mathematical expectation (average value).

In other words, the normal distribution describes the spectrum of scatter of random outcomes. In our case, it will be roulette rotations, spins in slots or rolls of dice in the craps. The higher the dispersion, the lower will be the maximum peak of the chart. Conversely: the lower the variance, the higher the maximum value.

In case of Space Wars automatic machine, the chart of its normal distribution is similar to a small hill. This can be explained by the large dispersion of all outcomes. For example:

  • result 1: x50 win (we put a dot on the chart to the right),
  • result 2: 10 empty rotations (draw points to the left),
  • result 3: win x200 (point still right),
  • result 4: win x2 (points almost in the middle of the chart),
  • result 5: win x2,000 (point almost on the right edge).

and so on. Of all the outcomes (points) and formed a chart. Most of the spins give insignificant winnings and losses and therefore are concentrated in the center. But all the big winnings and numerous periods of constant plums “flatten” the graph, as if to stretch it to the sides. All random variables are subject to normal distribution, if they form a large array of weakly dependent data. And here, by the way, we can mention one more important mathematical law.

Central limit theorem

The central limit theorems generally state the following: if we have a large sample of almost unrelated random variables and none of them is dominant, then their distribution will tend to normal.

There are several central theorems, but they all talk about the same thing. In the casino, all of this also applies and works perfectly.

Large numbers

The law of large numbers is, in fact, synonymous with limit theorems. It states: if there are a large enough number of random, equally distributed values, their average value tends to their mathematical expectation. It’s the same, only in a little different words.

As you can see, the key concepts in casino probability theory are the concepts of mathematical expectation and variance, and all axioms, theorems and laws are formed around them.

The law of large numbers is universal and works in many areas, not just in the casino. In the philistine sense, it demonstrates the possibility of a positive outcome on an extremely large array of random data. Often given as an example of the probability of life on Earth. If the probability of its appearance of 1 of a billion planets, and in the conditional galaxy of 30 billion planets, then another 30 of them have life. But this is a very controversial application of this law.

Mathematical expectation of casino bonuses…

It is quite interesting and useful to calculate the expectation of specific bonus offers. It is quite simple, for this we will need the following values:

  • a vager,
  • casino advantage in a bonus wagering game,
  • the bonus amount.

So, first we take a Vager (let’s say it equals x50) and multiply it by the value of the bonus (for example $ 100) to find out the total sum of bets. We got $ 5,000 (50 * 100 = 5,000). I.e. we need to place a wager of $5,000 to win back the 100% first deposit bonus, which is quite standard. Next, we multiply $ 5,000 by the advantage of the institution in a particular game. Most likely it will be some kind of slot, in machines NetEnt return is most often about 96%, so the advantage of the casino 4% : 5 000 * 0.04 = $ 200. It is we got the theoretical value of loss after putting $ 5,000 in bets. This is very approximate, most often the practical value is very different.

Further from the bonus we take away the theoretical loss and get a mathematical expectation: 100 – 200 = -$ 100. It turns out that it is not profitable to take the bonus.

In the same way you can calculate the “profitability” of any bonus offer. But note that this is all theory, in most cases you will have completely different results in practice.