Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1883 — A Gambler’s Chances. [ARTICLE]

A Gambler’s Chances.

A “reformed gambler” del'voted a lecture in New Yprk on gambling. He analyzed each game, showed that the owner of the game had a percentage in his favor which is never less than 6, and which very generally rises to an absolute certainty. The majority of all the dollars which are invested in an attempt to win a game of faro, or any of the games which are open in a modern gambling-house, are just as certainly lost by the owner as if he were to throw them into a furnace. Even suppose the game to be a fair one, and the percentage in favor of the game no more than 6; even this is enough to “eat up” any capitalist. What sort of an idiot would a man be who should, in betting at “evens,” be willing always to put up $lO6 as often as his antagonist lays down SIOO ? But what is more infinite than the folly of making a bet, in cases where the chances equally favor both parties, for one of them to be compelled to furnish from $l3O to $175 as often as his opponent advances SIOO ? And yet this is precisely what is being done by every man who undertakes to win in a gambling-house. In fact, he encounters, as a rule, even larger odds than these; he is compelled to make bets in which he furnishes all the stakes, and in which he has not even the chance of winning. back his stakes. It is precisely a case in which one man bets on a sure thing and obliges the loser to put up all the money. What is still stranger about it all is that men will continue to play when they know just what chances they have to encounter. Men will continue to play, week after week, even year after year, losing constantly, and yet filled with the idiotic hope that something may happen which they know cannot happen. Said a well-known gambler in this city, “Do you suppose that sporting-men can afford to rent spacious rooms, fit them up at great cost, furnish expensive suppers, wine, cigars and all that, and then give customers any chance to win? We’re obliged to win, and we do.” The most damaging feature of this nefarious gambling mania is that it affects so many poor men. Were it the case that only rich men should gamble and lose, there would be less cause of complaint than now. —Chicago Daily News.