The Worst Weekly Incomes For Gambling Companies

A fan-favorite story in Hollywood movies is when brilliant people use their knowledge to beat gambling games and rob casinos with mathematics. Similar stories have happened a few times in real life, although typically with different lottery variations rather than casinos. However, there were several occasions when casinos in Las Vegas or lotteries around the world had the record worst weekly incomes. Let’s see the worst weekly incomes for gambling companies below!

The Most Famous Incident!

The worst week for gambling companies was when a massive group of scientists arrived at a Vegas hotel. The annual general meeting of the American Physical Society is quite a large-scale event. Thousands of physicists from all universities and research institutes in the USA gather to discuss the state of science among themselves. In 1986, there was some confusion about booking a venue in San Diego, so the association needed to find a new location to host the event at the last minute.

This is how Las Vegas came into the picture, which is not only the capital of gambling in America but also the number one destination for conference tourism. The gigantic hotel-casino complexes are well-equipped with large conference rooms and compete for the biggest conferences. The location of the big party in 86 ended up being one of the most famous casinos in Vegas, the MGM Grand.

Such a gathering is usually a profitable business for the given hotel, which is why the competition to organize these is so big. After all, it involves a lot of paying guests, who, even though do not come for the sake of gambling or partying, they still try their hands at it once the conference is over. So it’s no wonder why the management of the MGM Grand was very excited when APS booked rooms for four thousand physicists.

How the Worst Weekly Incomes for Gambling Companies Went Down!

The business model of Vegas casinos is based on offering very cheap accommodation, saying there will be a profit in terms of consumption and the money they spend on casino games.

In the end, all the income goes to one company, so the owner of the hotel-casino. Physicists, on the other hand, are famously rational people, and they know for a fact that the house always wins in the long run in the casino, so they simply didn’t play. The casino floor of the MGM Grand was empty throughout the week of the conference.

The fact that there were many university students currently working on their doctoral dissertations among the participants of the conference did not help the casino either, as they did not have so much money to gamble away. So, when the meeting ended, the casino had the worst weekly income in its history. It’s funny though they politely informed the physics association that they would no longer wish to host this event. According to online casino sites in the US, the other big casinos joined as word spread, so the APS annual meeting became banned in Las Vegas.

A Math Genius Bringing Her A-Game!

An article about a lady winning the jackpot four times with scratch cards and lottery tickets amazed people. Joan Ginther first won $5.4 million; a decade later, she won $2 million. The third time, she scratched $3 million and finally a 10 million dollar jackpot in 2008. All in all, Joan won over $20 million. What are the chances? Her achievement drew the attention of a mathematician who calculated the probability of such a fortunate string of events.

So, her chances to hit the jackpot multiple times were one for eighteen septillions. To grasp the idea, he tried to show how much that is: there are septillion stars in the universe and a septillion grains of sand on Earth. It’s even crazier that, according to the expert, a person with such luck is born every quadrillion years. Even though people were amazed by her luck at first, more and more became suspicious. Several conspiracy theories have come to light, but no one can prove theirs. 

If something like this happens in a casino, they immediately arrest the person and investigate them. So gambling associations don’t believe in miracles. The lucky lady won the first time in the lotto, while the other three times, with two-year intervals, she won with scratch tickets.

The funny thing is that she bought the slips in the same convenience store in Texas. However, it is weird that she lived in Vegas and took trips there only to purchase the tickets. Nowadays, of course, you can buy tickets on online casino sites like Bodog Casino!

How did Ginther Cause the Worst Weekly Incomes for Gambling Companies?

You would be surprised to learn that Ginther happened to be a former math professor with a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Experts found two possible working theories besides her being lucky. Both agree that she must have found an algorithm helping her determine where the winning ticket is in the series of scratch cards.

The winning tickets are not randomly placed, as the cards arrive in packs at the stores. She must have followed the news and statistics about winnings, so she only played in the games where most of the tickets were already sold, but no one won the big prizes yet.

The theory says that she must have spent even millions of dollars on buying tickets, which means that her first triumph was pure luck, and she used some of the money to invest in buying more. The other concept is that she worked with the store owner and pulled this off together, though it is still a mystery how they could have done it. There is no evidence of either idea, but her background and remarkable success are suspicious. The results are the same, no matter the method! She caused some of the worst weekly incomes for gambling companies!

The Infamous MIT Group

A group of MIT students proved the saying, the house always wins, incorrect. The math students who beat the house spent their free time studying casino games and their winning probabilities. They realized that blackjack was the most beatable game, so after practicing card counting, they made several trips to Vegas. After finding investors and putting together their own money, they managed to play in high-stakes tournaments. Even though card counting was a frequent gaming method by the time they started, adding their expertise in math and computer programs perfected the technique.

They were very clever, as they observed and jotted down information about how casinos and their games worked and then trained for weeks or even months. The students wrote analytical computer programs to find the best strategy, then went to put their theories to the test. They used signs and code words to signal the players when they should join the game. This happened in the 90s and the early 2000s, so the security system was not as advanced as it is now. 

However, card counting is not illegal, only frowned upon, and may result in a ban, which happened to them. Eventually, casinos started to track the students and their playing styles. Once they exposed them, the worst weekly incomes for gambling companies were over, as the MIT team got banned from Las Vegas! However, it was not the end for some of the members! Check out how their stories continued at online casino sites in the US! You can find more genius gamblers who beat the casinos’ odds on the link!

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