OT maybe a tax on stupid people....but

higher numbers but you significantly reduce your chances of sharing it. "

Hmmm, you might be worth of a game. That applies to all paramutual prizes, which include almost all lottos I've seen in the US.

The first thing to do to learn smart gambling is to forget luck. Of course luck is a factor but it all comes down to math. There are odds and pot odds . Say if you are in a standard poker game, five card stud. you got 2 pair. You took 3 cards. Now, the odds of winning greatly depend on your hand if y ou cannot bluff. Never assume a bluff will work. Therefore you got some ide a of how likely it is to win the hand, though not perfect. You watched the draw, in general the most dangerous hands are the ones the payer drew 2, th at indicates 3 of a kind. However some adept players will have a strong pai r and still only draw 2, why ? Well it is pretty much a pre-bluff, to get y ou to think he has 3 of a kind. Same with a pat hand, if you don't pay to s ee it he might have had scrap. The people who draw 3 almost always are draw ing to a pair. Now, within those 3 cards there is a chance of them picking up another pair. Their odds of picking up a third card to make 3 of a kind is 2:47. To pick up another pair it is 1:46. In draw you do not know if the card they need is in someone's hand or not, (uess it is in yours but you d on't know that either) so you can't act on it, stud is different.

So you have to pretty much roughly calculate the odds of actually winning t he hand, and then compare it to how much is in the pot at that time and how much it will cost you to stay in it. This is precisely where most people f uck up, even people who think they know how to play have an innate desire t o "stay in the game". Watch the winners, they fold more than anyone.

Most people also are clueless on odds. For example you get a aces, spades a nd hearts and the other three cards are hearts. They will see the possible pair ad say "Well with 4 cards i should be able at east get a pair or bette r so they throw out all but the pair breaking up a possible flush. How poss ible ? Well let's just consider the next drawn card to keep it simple. To m ake their pair into a 3 of a kind there are 2 cards out of 47 that can do i t. To get the flush there are 9 cards out of 47 that can do it. That flush not only beats 3 of a kind and 2 pair, but also a straight.

not as stupid as drawing to an inside straight but still. Making a straight when you got four lined up means there are 8 cards in that 47 that can mak e your hand. If it is an inside straight then it drops to 4 cards in the 47 .

Why do I talk about before the draw ? Because if you know what you're doing you should have passed back then before more of your money went into a pot you are not going to win.

The drawback is that all this folding will give the other players the idea that if you actually bet you got something, so you must play a shit hand ev ery once in a while and lose, and bluff every once in a while. Also if you get them used to you bluffing REALLY go crazy when you do have a really str ong hand ad that behavior becomes an advantage because more will want to ca ll your bluff.

And WHEN POSSIBLE, make a digital bet. Digital doesn't just mean 0s and 1s, or fingers, it is in a way "on or off". When you make a calculated bet, no t the minimum nor the maximum, that tells adept players just how strong YOU think your hand. If you bet either the minimum or the maximum all the time they have less resolution with which to figure your confidence level.

Another one is when you got openers and are sitting just to the left of the dealer. You go first and if you have openers it is sometimes a good idea n ot to open.

If you are dealt 3 of a kind, it is a big risk not to open because everyone may pass. I have had that happen and you don't get to do it over. So do it on a pair, but with 3 of a kind in hand - open. With nothing wild, 3 of a kind is a fairly strong hand that wins quite a bit.

And then there are the odds of bettering it. To turn 3 of a kind into 4 of a kind the odds are 1:47. To get another pair the odds are almost the same. (2:46)

These odds, I am only going by how many of the right cards are in the deck. I probably made errors here and there but you get the gist of it.

I find all state/regional lotteries a sucker bet. A fair bet would be if yo u hit the 4 digit straight the payout would be $10,000. Of course it never will be because the house needs money. The odds of hitting it boxed, I dun no but I suspect it may be the square root of straight, 1:3,163. Not sure, it might be 16:10,000 because there are 16 wining combinations, so 1:625 ? I just haven't given it much thought until now because I don't play it.

Now the racetrack is a different story because timing is important. I am no t going into that now.

Suffice it to say, most people who know how to gamble do not play the lotte ry/lotto. However there are bound to be exceptions when the pot hits $1.6 b illion.

."Though one gets used to it. I remember the days when our English teacher became really upset and hollered "Ain't is NOT a proper expression!". Well, by now it is, at least according to Merriam-Webster. "

Fuck them. Play Bil Clinton here - define word. Well I'll take a crack at it. You speak it or write it and people hear it or read it and understand what it means. That makes it a word.

The definition ? Well what I just wrote does seem to claim that there is a definition so;

Ain't is a contraction used interchangeably with "aren't" or "isn't" and "ain't I ?" can can mean "am I not ?".

I guess I should teach them the difference between a motor and an engine.

Looks like someone in South Carolina won it. Better luck next time.

:-)

My first English teachers were Germans but only for a short time. The next was from Kentucky, then an Australian for a while who wore a Stetson and boots, afterwards for many years a teacher from Louisiana. She grew up in New Orleans, speaking French as a kid.

My first exposure to real conversational English was ... hold your breath ... Archie Bunker. As a kid I was quite convinced that dingbat and meathead were part of the vocabulary.

It is funny but English as taught to foreigners contains grammatical subtleties that are all but lost on most native English speakers today.

My favourite is the now all too common "I would be obliged if you could do " as opposed to the formally correct "I should be obliged if you would do ".

The former includes the barbed implication that you do not think the person you are talking to is up to the job! It is commonly used now.

Plenty of modern dictionaries are unaware of the subtle distinction.

Only native English speakers of my generation who did Latin at school were ever taught formal English grammar including the subjunctives. It is even less well taught today with grammar being very sloppy indeed.

The royal high-class version would probably be "I shall be obliged if you can kindly ...".

I notice that sometimes when reading technical documentation created by younger native speakers. When I see grammar goofs in there that weren't typos or hasty glitches because they repeat reliably throughout the whole document. The kind where you almost get an acid reflux every time.

Oh, did I hate Latin in school. Mostly because it was considered a foreign language class, I wanted to also take up Spanish but they didn't allow three and Latin was mandatory. So now I can't speak Spanish where that would sometimes really help.