Walt at Random

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a long essay about a certain leisure activity that’s proving to be a great way to deal with interstitial time at the computer–the times when something’s taking a while to load or when I need a brief break within a long or boring task, and have already walked around.

That essay included the note that, in my geeky desire to track how long it actually takes to go through 200 coins ($50 of quarters) playing optimally but not playing maximum coins, I found that the third run–actually the fourth–was taking a while.

I finally finished it, in what would have been the equivalent of maybe three years of normal gaming back in the old days, maybe five years now: 29,001 hands, or a payback percentage of 99.31%. Which is less than the theoretical payback if playing maximum coins, but considerably better than the theoretical payback playing one coin (98.4%).

Added a bit later: I forgot one thing–checking up on my belief that I’d been ahead of the game for at least two years of light gaming here and there. Easy: In this run, I was continually ahead for at least 19,000 hands in the middle of the game–which at current gaming rates is probably three years of playing. In the long run, of course, the odds caught up with me. Then again, when a tiny variation can shift things that far, you run into the answer to “In the long run…” — “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

Considerably better?

Yes. Numbers get very strange when you deal with percentages at the edge. So, for example:

• In the third run, I played 11,310 hands for a payback of 98.23%.
• In the fourth run, I played 29,001 hands for a payback of 99.31%.
• The difference in percentage: “trivial”–1.08%. The difference in actual playing: Nearly three times the number of hands.

I also tracked the effects of my “system” of varying bets, which should yield favorable results if I’m getting streaky hot hands (3 of a kind or better) and terrible results if I’m going hot & cold. In this case, the “system” was favorable to the tune of 54 coins–but, looking at actual hands, that really means I would have played about 250 fewer hands without varying bets, or about 28,751 hands (99.30%).

That item also shows the problem with playing max coins if you’re gaming, not gambling: it doesn’t take much of a cool streak to run through $50 at $1.25/hand. Try 92 hands (maybe 40 minutes play in a casino) today, and I’ve seen even faster descent.

This was an extraordinary run, with more than one royal flush (which I’d never had in the past–never) albeit no straight flushes (there should have been about three in 30,000 hands. As for everything else, though, while any given playing session can be incredibly streaky–e.g., seven four-of-a-kinds in 1,500 hands or three in 892 hands–over a long period, you do tend toward the mean (and this long run was maybe my long-term lousy play or lousy luck regressing toward the mean). As in, over 17,800 of the hands (the last 2/3 of the play, mostly):

• 0.19% of hands were four of a kind, compared to expected 0.24%
• 1.14% were full houses, compared to expected 1.15%
• 1.12% were flushes, compared to expected 1.10%.
• 1.18% were straights, compared to expected 1.12%
• 7.34% were three of a kind, compared to expected 7.44%
• 13.22% were two pair, compared to expected 12.92%
• 21.08% were jacks or better, compared to expected 21.46%
• 54.73% were losers, compared to expected 54.56%

If you’d asked me, I’d have said I get more 3 of a kind than I expect, more full houses and fewer straights–which says a lot about expectations! (Those odds also show why the payoff for full houses is so important: It pays much better than straights or flushes but hits just about as often–also why drawing to a non-flush inside straight is always stupid, since the odds are terrible and the payoff’s lousy.)

I’ve made the one “expert play” adjustment based on not playing max coins: Namely, when dealt four to a flush, of which three are royal, I keep the four (where “expert play” would have me drop them). The really agonizing one–where you get a full flush dealt, four of which are to a royal flush–it still, just barely, makes sense to drop the non-royal card, but that sure is painful.

Well, a little less painful since no money is involved.

I think that’s the end of these gaming posts, at least for a while. If I never get a run like this again, which seems likely, this one was still fun, even if it was a minute there, two minutes there, at most five minutes elsewhere…

Another post with no grand meaning–just a few miscellaneous items.

Cheapo movies in color and broken plastic

I gave the five-disc pack of 20 Spaghetti Westerns (really 19 Spaghetti Westerns and Possibly The Worst Western Ever Filmed, but not an SW) to a friend who loves this stuff…and saw Mill Creek’s bigger package, “Spaghetti Westerns”–not quite a 50-pack, but a 44-pack on 11 discs–for about $15 on Amazon. Since I know I want to watch some of them again and enjoyed most of them, I put the pack in a new Amazon wishlist.

And also remembered how much I’d enjoyed, just as pure dumb entertainment, the Hercules-and-friends “hero” movies in one of the Mill Creek megapacks. There’s a whole 50-pack of them, “Warriors,” a 13-disc set (really 12.5 discs). Also put that in the wishlist.

Checked last week. Both were at $11.99. My wife needed a supplement we get through Amazon. So, hey, why not?

They arrived today. I’m sure I’ll enjoy both sets when I get around to them some time in the next few years. But there was one difference, consistent with the smaller sets I’d received free from MCE: Instead of the old cardboard boxes, these came in plastic boxes.

Snazzier, but with one little problem (also true of a couple of the smaller sets): The plastic is brittle. In both boxes, which I opened to make sure the discs were all there, there were broken pieces of the box. Oh, I could send them back to Amazon, but why bother? The boxes are still workable, and that’s a lot of hassle for such cheap items. In a way, it’s an odd sort of progress: the new boxes are much snazzier for retail sale and appear much sturdier, but in fact the old cardboard boxes hold up much better.

Generations and personal issues

Jenica’s right, of course, on both counts.

Will library bloggers stop tossing out generational arguments that hold no water?

About as soon as library gurus stop trying to convince public librarians that print books are DOOMED (based on various oversimplistic theories, certainly not based on significant drops in either library print circulation or sales of print books) and that they should run away from the things their patrons actually use, toward some wonderful new future in which, well, you pay for each use or convince your city government that a community center needs professional librarians to run it. Good luck with that.

What? HarperCollins actually surprised you? You thought that you owned that ebook?

Hmm. I’ve combined three or four different things there, haven’t I?

“Hell, Walt, you’re old. You should retire.”

I did, whether willingly or not. But, of course, the job itself went away–and it was never a professional librarian post.

Not asking questions when you don’t want the answers

I’m moving forward with stuff for the April C&I (out sometime between 3/15 and 3/31) and, as it happens, the May issue.

I’m also still dealing with a recent incident in which I was told, in effect, that there were only a handful of people who gave a damn about one area I was active in. Which removed a bunch of already-written material I’d expected to use in C&I.

I find that I don’t want to ask about other aspects of C&I. That answer was hard on me. I concluded two things:

• I shouldn’t ask a question when I might not want the answer.
• I should work with real publishers on all but the smallest projects.

I’m doing the latter. One result is out this month from ALA Editions. I’m hoping for one more each year…

Or, what the hell, there’s an unlimited supply of books out there to be read, at least unlimited in terms of my reading capabilities…but, you know, maybe later.