Optimal Betting in Casino Blackjack

Abstract

In casino blackjack, the odds fluctuate from round to round as cards are dealt from a randomly shuffled pack. A player who ‘counts cards’ can estimate the odds on the next round and so can vary his bet size accordingly: better-than-average odds warrant a larger bet. The optimal relationship of bet to count is derived here under the criterion of maximum expected increase in capital per round subject to a specified risk of ruin. The optimisation analysis is complicated by the need to impose lower and possibly upper bounds on the bet size. A family of optimal betting schemes is found, depending on the risk selected and other parameters; among this family is the one found by Harris, Janecek and Yamashita using a different optimisation criterion. Representative computational results are displayed for a typical set of blackjack conditions. Some commentary is given on the choice of a bet scheme from the optimal family, depending on the player’s style and objectives. Remarks are also made about Kelly betting, in the context of risk.     

The stocks and flows of Canadian census farm operators, 1966-7*

Les exploitants agricoles lors du recensement de 1966 et qui exerçaient toujours cette activité en 1976 sont communément appelés le groupe de base de tous les exploitants agricoles, par le recensement du Canada. Ils ne représentaient que 31 pour cent de tous les exploitants agricoles recensés qui sont entrés, sortis ou sont demeurés dans l'agriculture au cours de la période (total des exploitants agricoles). En fait, 45 pour cent de tous les exploitants agricoles recensés au Canada avaient quitté cette profession en 1976 tandis que 24 pour cent y sont entrés depuis 1966. Ces chiffres ténoignent des entrées et sorties importantes qui se produisent dans le secteur agricole. On a évalué ces entrées et sorties dans le cadre des activités agricoles ‘à temps partiel’ et ‘de loisir’ lorsque ces der-nières représentaient un moyen d'entrer et de sortir de l'agriculture à plein temps; on a conclu que cela ne constituait pas un facteur important à cet égard. On pense plutôt que le mombre de jours de travail hors ferme et la valeur totale du capital agricole constituent des facteurs beaucoup plus marqués pour ce qui est de l'entrée et de la sortie. L'article discute brièvement des implications analytiques et empiriques de ces résultats pour les reherches à venir. Census farm operators who were continuous farmers in the 1966 to 1976 period constituted only 31 per cent of all Canadian census farm operators who had entered, exited from or stayed in agriculture during the period. Indeed, 56 per cent of the total number of 1966 Canadian census farm operators had departed by 1976 while 44 per cent of 1976 operators had entered since 1966 (Table II). These parameters point out the sizeable ‘flow’ parameters into and out of the occupation of ‘farming.’ These ‘entry’ and ‘exit’ parameters are discussed in the context of the extent to which ‘part-time’ farming constitutes a mode of facilitation for entry into and exit from agriculture. It is concluded that off-farm work is a significant and important facilitator of entry and exit into part-time agricultural production. We argue it is a significant but relatively unimportant facilitator of entry and exit into full-time commercial agricultural production. Total value of farm capital invested is rather more important as a determinant of entry and exit into commercial agricultural production. The analytical and empirical implications of these findings for agricultural labour markets in highly industrialized settings are discussed.     

Actors,others, simulacra: a Deleuzean minority report on the early modern Dubrovnik stage

ABSTRACT

A playwright in the minor and marginal culture of renaissance Ragusa, Marin Dr?i? (1508–1557) has often been compared to Shakespeare, despite the obvious impossibility of influence in either direction. There is however an aspect of Dr?i?’s legacy which has received a scarce critical interest in Croatia, although it could also be discussed along the lines of Shakespeare studies: early modern Dubrovnik acting practice, culture, and style. Dr?i?’s actual and meta-theatrical treatment of acting will here be interpreted through the lenses of Gilles Deleuze’s essay ‘One less manifesto’. In this essay, Deleuze expands his notion of ‘the minor’, arguing for a kind of acting practice that would rely on variation, movement, becoming, and a perpetual linguistic deformation, forces that hinder absorption into the discourse of ‘the major’. I will further suggest that Marin Dr?i?’s exposure of the anti-theatrical prejudice of his contemporaries – clothed in a mock-version of Genesis and elaborated in the prologue of his comedy Uncle Maroje – could be read as an exemplary inversion of Plato’s method of argumentation that makes a Deleuzian case for the actor as the ultimate, troubling Other, the simulacrum of true being, a promiscuous and metamorphic kin of marionettes, animals, and women.     

The Gambling Preferences and Behaviors of a Community Sample of Australian Regular Video Game Players

Research has noted many similarities between video gaming and gambling activities. It has been suggested that video game players may also be attracted to gambling, although there is limited research on this possibility. The present study examined concurrent video gaming and gambling habits in a sample of regular video game players in Australia (N = 485, 84 % male, M _age = 25.8). Gambling involvement was found to be a generally unpopular activity among regular video game players. No significant association between frequency of video game play and frequency of gambling was found. Although significant correlations between gaming ‘addiction’ scores and gambling frequency were identified, age was the only significant predictor of gambling when controlling for all remaining variables. These findings are critically discussed in the context of past research, and future research directions concerning the link between video gaming and gambling are proposed.     

Emigration State: Race,Citizenship and Settler Imperialism in Modern British History,c. 1850–1972

What role did migration play in the making of modern Britain? We now have a good sense of how ethnicity, class, religion and gender structured immigrants' experience and what impact they had on Britain's culture, society and economy. But as Nancy Green pointed out almost two decades ago, scholars of migration must focus on exit as well as entry. Such a call to study ‘the politics of exit’ is especially apposite in the case of the UK. For in every decade between 1850 and 1980 (with the exception of the 1930s), the UK experienced net emigration year on year. This article analyses this outflow of migrants to reveal a new vision of the UK as an ‘emigration state’. The article employs this concept to make a new argument about the formation of migration policy in the UK and offers a revised account of the geographical boundaries of the modern British state.     

Hat sich das duale System in den neuen Ländern erfolgreich etabliert?

In this paper, the transition from firm-based vocational training into the labor market is compared for East and West Germany in the first half of the 1990s. Special attention is given to the extent of unemployment after finishing training and its impact on the following entry into the first job. The paper aims at answering the following questions: How big are East-West-differences at the entry to the labour market? Did these differences decrease towards the middle of the 1990s? Are discrepancies between East and West related to diverging structural labour market conditions and individual differences of the leavers of the training system? By comparing the patterns of entering the labour market in both parts of the country, the paper aims at answering the question whether the dual system of vocational training has been established successfully in East Germany during the first half of the 1990s or whether an ongoing disorder at the ‘second threshold’ points towards a (temporary) failure of the ‘transition regime’ to the labour market. The empirical analyses are based on data from the ‘IAB-Beschäftigtenstichprobe 1975–1995’.     

‘This is just so unfair!’: A qualitative analysis of loss-induced emotions and tilting in on-line poker

Poker is a game of skill and chance, where players often experience significant monetary losses. Detrimental out-of-control poker decision-making due to negative emotions is known as tilting. A qualitative assessment of losing and tilting was conducted by analysing stories about significant monetary losses, written by Finnish on-line poker players (N = 60). Thematic and narrative analyses uncovered five themes and a narrative structure underlying the aetiology and phenomenology of tilting. Tilting, in the narratives, was often instigated by dissociative feelings (‘unreality’, disbelief) following a significant monetary loss. Thereafter, moral indignation was experienced, followed by chasing behaviour, in an attempt to restore a ‘fair balance’ between wins and losses. In the aftermath of tilting, self-focused feelings of disappointment, depression and/or anxiety, and sleeping problems were experienced. It was also observed that experienced players, as compared to inexperienced ones, exhibited in their narratives a more mature disposition towards encountering ‘bad luck’, and losing in general. The results are relevant in better understanding psychological processes related to losing in the multifaceted game of poker, thus contributing also to existing knowledge on detrimental gambling behaviour.     

On ‘telling better stories’*

Over the course of his forty-year career, Lawrence Grossberg has modelled a form of rigorous, politically-engaged, radically contextual social research. Writing about Cultural Studies in the abstract, he has often characterized this work as, principally, about ‘telling better stories,’ and he attempts to tell them in his work on the contemporary conjuncture through analyses of political struggles in the United States. However, in a moment where calls for and claims of ‘better’ cultural stories abound on both the Left and the Right, what exactly does it mean for Cultural Studies to tell them better? I suggest we can locate attempts to grapple with Cultural Studies’ ‘better stories’ problem in the space between Grossberg’s conjunctural work and his work on the identity and future of Cultural Studies. Highlighting these efforts, I clarify what it means for Cultural Studies to assume the responsibility of telling better stories given the specific contours of the present context.     

Framing Robert W. Cox,Framing International Relations

Abstract

In the recent years, R.W. Cox has distanced himself from some genealogical connections made by his followers in regard to what he meant in his famous 1981 article. Was he mischaracterized, framed? This paper focuses on how Cox has been ‘framed’, a concept elaborated and used across social sciences in different contexts. Here, it is used to look at different mechanisms by which ideas, such as those of Cox, can be connected, ‘framed’ to other ideas, not only to advance knowledge but to strengthen individual careers, to strengthen and construct approaches and disciplines. Framing highlights and creates a space but also constrains and obscures. Cox deserves to be seen outside any frames other than the one he creates for himself, one which is changing and developing as does the real world, not captive to any approach, paradigm, discipline, or any other frame.     

Playing with materiality: an agential-realist reading of SethBling's Super Mario World code-injection

ABSTRACT

This article takes inspiration from Youtuber and software developer ‘SethBling’ and his 2016 ‘code-injection’ (Bling, 2016), in which, using only a standard Super Nintendo Entertainment System controller and in-depth knowledge of the console, he ‘injected’ and executed the code of popular mobile game Flappy Bird (Nguyen, 2013) into a running instance of Super Mario World (Miyamoto, 1990), effectively transforming one game into another through play. Drawing from this I propose a performative understanding of videogames (and software in general) to reinvigorate discussions of software's materiality. Though it is possible to contrast Wendy Chun's (2008a) suggestion that one can view software as ‘vaporous’ against Friedrich Kittler's (1995) assertion that ‘there is no software’, I propose a more holistic approach. Academics and users alike should attempt to see software as living a double-life: as simultaneously solid as it is (metaphorically) gaseous. It then becomes possible to embrace software(s) as performative examples of the entangled ‘phenomena’, suggested by Barad (2007), that produce everyday reality through quantum activity. I explore SethBling's code-injection suggesting that actions clearly reveal software's double existence as both tangible ‘thing’, locatable on magnetic memory, and as a vaporous non-entity. Accepting these propositions together, software can be understood as continuously re-emerging through shared activities. Following Barad, I conclude that this quality is not unique to software, but software – and videogames above all – are a useful tool for understanding a vision of reality that favours activity over materiality as the basis of our existence.     

STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGING ADOLESCENT GIRLS AT AN EMERGENCY SHELTER IN A THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP: RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE GIRLS THEMSELVES

Engaging clients is an extremely important part of the therapeutic process. Although there is a literature on adult engagement, few articles discuss adolescent engagement. Those articles that do discuss adolescent engagement have been conducted from the perspective of adults. The purpose of this study was to explore, from the client's perspective, ways to engage and build a positive therapeutic alliance with adolescent girls. A focus group (N = 5) was conducted with residents of an emergency shelter for adolescent girls in an urban area. Clients were asked three questions: ‘If you could tell a counselor anything, what would you tell her/him?’ .‘What do counselors need to know?’ and ‘How can a counselor get you to talk?’ Seven messages emerged from the clients' responses, which focused on a request to be respected, listened to, and not judged. More specifically, themes included ‘Treat me like I'm on your level’, ‘Tell me a little about yourself’, ‘Ask my permission to take notes’, ‘Pay attention to what I'm saying’, ‘Tell me what you're doing’, ‘Don't tell me what's in my file’, and ‘Don't call me names’. Clients provided concrete ways in which social workers and other counseling professionals could better work with them.     

Eustace the Monk: Banditry,Piracy and the Limits of State Authority in the High Middle Ages

Bandits have been popular ‘heroic’ individuals throughout history. Many of them also proved to be quite useful figures, allowing interested parties to fill in gaps in their capacities on the quick by way of co-opting them. Such ‘interested parties’ even included kings, whose authority still was a rather limited one. A particularly glaring gap in their authority existed at sea: keeping a fleet at the ready was quite expensive, and affordable only for a few rich exceptions. Everyone else had to make use of naval mercenaries–pirates with a license. One of the most illustrious medieval examples of such maritime entrepreneurs is Eustace the Monk. His colourful life includes being a monk, the seneschal of the Count of Boulogne, a bandit and pirate after he fell out with the count, and finally naval mercenary first for King John of England, then for King Philip Augustus of France. This contribution focuses on Eustace the Monk's maritime career. It will do so by assessing the political constellation and culture of his days which made it possible in the first place.     

The Organisation and the Mouth of Hell

FLESH

‘We are now beginning a two week consultation period—but let me say this [finger raised for emphasis)—if you are not for this project [dramatic pause) you ought to be looking for a move elsewhere’. (Announcement preceding a post‐1992 university restructuring, April 2002)

‘Hang on. I am just parking the car. I am walking into the building. I am now entering the mouth of hell…’ (Conversation with a friend who was calling from his mobile phone as he entered his workplace)

‘My heart sinks every time I have to go there. It takes away your spirit’. (Former colleague writing about her experiences of going to work)

‘I am nailed to the desk at the moment…’. (My email to friend in another institution) ‘Your email was full of Catholic imagery’. (Reply)

‘We live on that border, crossroads beings, crucified beings’. (Kristeva, 1987 Kristeva, J. 1987. Tales of love, Edited by: Roudiez, L. New York: Columbia University Press.  [Google Scholar]: 254)     

THEORYCRAFTING

This article investigates theorycrafting, a cultural practice of gaming communities, to analyse the differences in participation, knowledge production and dissemination and to show the effect that this has on the community itself. Theorycrafting describes a process of reverse engineering, a process of extracting design ‘blue prints’ to understand a technology better, whose design is not accessible. The ‘design’ not accessible in this case is the game algorithm. The concept of scientification of gameplay is used to highlight the scientific approach of theorycrafters to their gameplay. Their ‘scientific’ approach is described by using Aristotle's concepts episteme, techne and phronesis. His concepts have been chosen as they help us to analyse the different layers of the meaning of ‘theory’ in theorycrafting. This article investigates which understanding of theory and science is central in the practice of theorycrafting. How is a specific concept of science part of mechanisms of participatory surveillance? Theorycrafting can be understood as the desire of players to gain control over the game and share this knowledge with other players. The production of knowledge for the community leads to formulas that are used to improve playing skills, but through the spread of add-ons and forms of social control, it can also be described as a tool for surveillance.     

Benford’s Law and Number Selection in Fixed-Odds Numbers Game

In fixed-odds numbers games, the prizes and the odds of winning are known at the time of placement of the wager. Both players and operators are subject to the vagaries of luck in such games. Most game operators limit their liability exposure by imposing a sales limit on the bets received for each bet type, at the risk of losing the rejected bets to the underground operators. This raises a question—how should the game operator set the appropriate sales limit? We argue that the choice of the sales limit is intimately related to the ways players select numbers to bet on in the games. There are ample empirical evidences suggesting that players do not choose all numbers with equal probability, but have a tendency to bet on (small) numbers that are closely related to events around them (e.g., birth dates, addresses, etc.). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to quantify this phenomenon and examine its relation to the classical Benford’s law. We use this connection to develop a choice model, and propose a method to set the appropriate sales limit in these games.     

The Impact of Child Behaviour Problems on Maternal Employment: A Longitudinal Cohort Study

This prospective population-based study examined associations between children’s behaviour problems and maternal employment. Information on children’s behaviour problems at 3 years from 22,115 mothers employed before pregnancy and participating in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were linked to national register data on employment and relevant social background factors, mothers’ self-reported susceptibility to anxiety/depression and mother-reports of day-care attendance and fathers’ income. Mothers reporting their child to have severe (>2 SD) internalizing or severe combined behaviour problems (5 %) had excess risk of leaving paid employment irrespective of other important characteristics generally associated with maternal employment (RR 1.24–1.31). The attributable risk percent ranged from 30.3 % (internalizing problems) to 32.4 % (combined problems). Externalizing behaviour problems were not uniquely associated with mothers leaving employment.     

Becoming quixotic? A discussion on the discursive construction of disability and how this is maintained through social relations

Using an autoethnographic approach, this paper focuses upon interactions between ‘Paul’ (a pseudonym), whose symptoms associated with ‘severe learning difficulties’ are such that he is positioned on the low-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, his carers and others, in spaces taken for granted to be ‘public’ in both the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. This paper examines how social discourses relating to disability filter into social interactions, ultimately constructing the symptoms they purport to represent. This paper concludes by highlighting how interactions might be viewed as enabling rather than disabling, as producing spaces for thinking about the human condition.     

An Empirical Investigation of Theoretical Loss and Gambling Intensity

Many recent studies of internet gambling—particularly those that have analysed behavioural tracking data—have used variables such ‘bet size’ and ‘number of games played’ as proxy measures for ‘gambling intensity’. In this paper it is argued that the most stable and reliable measure for ‘gambling intensity’ is the ‘theoretical loss’ (a product of total bet size and house advantage). In the long run, the theoretical loss corresponds with the Gross Gaming Revenue generated by commercial gaming operators. For shorter periods of time, theoretical loss is the most stable measure of gambling intensity as it is not distorted by gamblers’ occasional wins. Even for single bets, the theoretical loss reflects the amount a player is willing to risk. Using behavioural tracking data of 100,000 players who played online casino, lottery and/or poker games, this paper also demonstrates that bet size does not equate to or explain theoretical loss as it does not take into account the house advantage. This lack of accuracy is shown to be even more pronounced for gamblers who play a variety of games.     

Committing to cultures of creativity: the significance of transdisciplinarity

As Mittelman rightly observes, neoliberal practices of repurposing universities in pursuit of the impossible goal of world-class standing – the gold standard for educational policy in the global age – have put the soul of the academy at risk. He also makes an important point when he argues that necessary ‘corrective steps’ must push far beyond the palliative rhetoric of ‘reformist reforms’ clothed in neoliberal platitudes about greater ‘stakeholder’ input and the saving grace of digital technology. Still, this article extends Mittelman’s constructive discussion of ‘plausible alternatives’ by making the case for the significance of transdisciplinarity in the practical realization of one of his five corrective steps: the ‘commitment to cultures of creativity’. Indeed, a deep and enduring commitment to transdisciplinarity must play a major role in pushing back against the prevailing neoliberal academic order.