Games of Chance and Skill
 
 

What ARE the Odds, Anyway?

You have undoubtedly heard the expression, "what are the odds?" in some context. Most often people use this expression to share their disbelief in the likelihood of something (that has just happened) happening. "Hey, Jim, I just got hit by lightning three times!" "Wow! What are the odds of THAT happening?"

But what, exactly, are "the odds" that people are talking about? In brief, "odds" are the probabilities upon which bookmakers and gamblers are willing to risk the outcomes of random or near-random actions. For example, if you toss a coin into the air, most people would say that it has a fifty-fifty chance of landing on either "HEADS" or "TAILS". That is because they expect that if you flip a coin 1 million times about half those times it WILL land "HEADS" and the other half it WILL land "TAILS".

What is funny about this well-known example is that it is also wrong. Coins can also land on their edges, standing up straight, as it were. What are the odds of that happening? Maybe 1-in-100. Maybe 1-in-1000. But whatever the odds are, they affect the odds of the coin landing "HEADS" or "TAILS" up.

A probability is just the sum total number of times that any given possible outcome is expected to occur when you repeat the same action over and over again for a large number of trials. You divide the number of actual outcomes by the number of trials. There must be the possibility of more than one outcome. If there is only a single possible outcome then your probability is always equal to 1.

An impossible outcome (such as a flipped coin folding itself over and doing two hand springs before landing in an inverse layout position) has a probability of zero. That outcome will never happen no matter how many trials you attempt at producing the outcome.

Everything in-between zero and one is a probability of some specific, given action occurring. Now, just because we have an expectation of a given action occurring a certain percentage of times within any specific number of trials does not mean that is how they will always play out.

If an event has a probability of occurring 75% of the time, you may find that it occurs 69,000 out of 100,000 trials, or maybe 810,000 times out of 1,000,000 trials. That does not mean the probability is wrong. It just means that your trials "beat the odds".

That, of course, is what gambling is all about: beating the odds. A probability represents the average performance over an infinite range of trials. Beating the odds represents an unexpected divergence from the predicted average performance within a finite sub-range of trials.

We hope that random chance favors us when we gamble or take risks. An example of risk-taking might be leaping out of a perfectly good airplane at 10,000 feet above sea level. You are taking a risk, risking that your parachute may not open, or may be damaged as it opens, thus failing to slow your descent.

If you are reading this article the chances (odds) are that you are most likely interested in the odds for a gambling game or sporting event outcome. You won't find that information here (sorry) but here are a few Websites that talk about the odds and what you should expect.


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