Numbers Gambling Game
The types of specialty games available in this section include lotto-style games, scratch cards, and a spin-off of the popular Sudoku numbers game. The lotto-style games include bingo and Keno and are all about numbers. New casino players can differentiate between bingo and Keno by noticing how the numbers are selected. When it comes to betting on cold numbers, or the opposite, choose a platform that shows what were the most and least drawn numbers in the game. One of such platforms is Monkey Keno. The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, the Italian lottery, or the daily number, is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a bettor attempts to pick three digits to match those that will be randomly drawn the following day. Numbers games were a pervasive form of gambling in African-American urban communities from around the turn of the twentieth century until the late 1970s, when state lotteries and other forms of legalized gambling were instituted. Until that time, the local numbers runner was a familiar figure in. Citywide, gambling complaints that included numbers rackets dropped by more than 30 percent in that same period, said Inspector Lori Pollock. This is not news to the man arrested at the door that.
All casino gambling games involve math, and almost all of them feature numbers in one way or another. Blackjack, for example, has playing cards that are numbered and have point values. Slot machines have a specific number of reels and use numbers to compare the payouts with the amount you bet on each spin of the reels.
But some gambling games feature numbers in a more specific way. I’m thinking of games like bingo, keno, and the lottery.
You can find a bewildering variety of gambling games that feature numbers, but here are seven of the most common that are worth trying.
1 – The Lottery
The most notable thing about the lottery is that it’s a game run by the government. In the United States, almost every state has a state-run lottery game to play. But that’s not a new thing, governments have been running lottery games for centuries.
The numbers behind the lottery are usually straightforward enough. The lottery administrators sell a specific number of tickets for a specific amount of money. They use 50% of that money (give or take) to form a prize pool. That prize pool is divided among the winners.
Most lotteries involve a random drawing of a specific set of numbers. The more of those numbers you got right on your pick, the more money you win.
One of the most popular lottery games in the United States is Mega Millions, which costs $2 per ticket. You choose six numbers total, five numbers between 1 and 70 and a sixth number from 1 to 25. (The sixth number is the “Mega Ball,” which is distinguished from the other numbers by color. It’s gold rather than white like the other numbered balls in the drawing.)
If you match all six numbers, you win the entire jackpot. If someone else gets all six numbers right, you split the jackpot with them.
But you can win smaller prizes by getting fewer numbers right. There are nine total ways to win, including the jackpot.
2 – Keno
Keno is basically a lottery game run by a casino. Some lotteries offer keno as a separate game from their other lottery games. It does have a distinct set of rules when compared to most lottery games.
In a keno drawing, there are 20 numbers drawn, each of which ranges from between 1 and 80. The numbers are printed on balls and drawn at random, just like they are in most lottery games.
The administrator of the game has a pay table outlining what the payouts are for, getting a set of numbers right. This is based on how many numbers you picked and how much you bet.
The house edge for keno is generally much higher than it is for most other casino games, although it’s roughly comparable to the house edge for lottery games in general. You’ll see some games with a house edge of around 4%, but that’s unusual.
Most keno games have a house edge closer to 35%. The biggest difference between keno and the lottery is that you get to decide how many numbers you’re going to choose on your keno ticket.
3 – Bingo
Bingo is one of the most popular gambling games in the world, and it lacks the association with vice that other forms of gambling have. Bingo is even played in churches, which usually frown on gambling.
To play bingo, you start by buying bingo cards. These cards have numbers organized into a 5×5 grid with “B – I – N – G – O” printed across the type. Every number, therefore, has a letter-number combination.
During the game, the caller draws letter-number combinations from a randomizer. These are usually printed on balls. He calls those numbers out as they’re drawn, and you mark the squares on your card when your numbers get called.
When you get five numbers in a row—horizontally, vertically, or diagonally—you yell bingo and collect your prize.
Bingo has lots of variations, most of which involve variations to which kinds of patterns you need to draw on the bingo card to win. For example, in “blackout,” you must cover all the numbers on your bingo card.
Bingo is even popular on the internet.
4 – 30-Ball Bingo
30-Ball Bingo is a variation of bingo played online at casinos powered by Rival software. Instead of using a 5×5 card, 30-Ball Bingo uses a 3×3 card. It also only has 30 balls, which is considerably less than the 75 balls used in a standard bingo game.
That’s not the only difference between standard bingo and 30-Ball Bingo. The other big change is that, instead of trying to win before the other players, you’re just paid off based on the best pattern on your bingo card.
You can play up to 100 cards for between a dime and a dollar per card. You also get to decide how many of the 30 numbers get drawn—20, 22, or 24. The maximum bet is $50.
30-Ball Bingo is a blackout game, so you only win on cards where you black out all the numbers on the card. The payoffs are based on how many numbers are chosen.
If you chose 20 balls, the payoff is 80 for 1. If you chose 22 balls, the payoff is 27 for 1. If you chose 24 balls, the payoff is 10 for 1.
In this game, the house edge varies based on how many balls are chosen. The best odds for the player are in the game where you choose 20 balls. The house edge for that version is still 6.08%, though.
5 – Blitz Keno
Like many gambling games, Blitz Keno is just keno with an additional wrinkle. The main game is the same as regular keno, you choose to bet on numbers when 20 numbers are drawn.
But Blitz Keno offers a side bet on the total of the numbers on those 20 balls. In some respects, these bets resemble the bets made in sic bo. For example, you can bet on whether the total will be odd or even.
The payoff for that bet is even money less a 5% commission, making the house edge exactly 5%. You can also bet high or low. Any total of 809 or less is considered low, and any total of 810 or more is considered high. This also has an even money payoff less a 5% commission.
There are a whole other set of bets, too, including a bet that the total will be exactly 810. That bet pays off at 108 for 1. You get the idea.
6 – Easy Lotto
Numbers Gambling Game
Easy Lotto is a video game version of the lottery found in some Las Vegas casinos. You choose six numbers from between 0 and 9, and the video game then chooses six random numbers. You get paid off based on how many numbers you matched and where those matches happened on the screen.
You get to score your outcome in two different ways, and you get paid off based on which way wins you more money.
One win has to do with how the numbers line up. They not only need to match numbers, but also positions from left to right.
7 – Liar’s Poker
This isn’t actually a casino game at all, but it is a gambling game using numbers that’s popularly played in bars throughout the United States. I used to play this game a lot with my college buddies. Honestly, I’m surprised there isn’t a version of it available in casinos.
Instead of using playing cards, Liar’s Poker uses the serial number on dollar bills. One is treated as an ace, and zero is treated as a 10. The other numbers are just the numbers.
You hold onto your dollar bill, and the other players do the same with theirs. Your goal is to guess how many times a specific digit shows up on all the dollars of all the players.
When you bet, you must make a bet that’s either equal to or higher than the previous bet. This continues until the other players challenge a bet. Here’s an example. The first player bids that there will be a total of four 7s across all the dollars. The next player can bid a higher number, claiming that there will be five 7s. He also has the option of bidding four, but he chooses another number, like six. Or he can challenge the previous bidder.
This continues until a specific bid has been challenged by all the other players in the game. If the challenger is right, and the total number of that digit is lower than the bid, the bidder has to give a dollar to each of the other players.
But if the challenger is incorrect, he must give the other players a dollar each.
Conclusion
That’s my list of casino gambling games that feature numbers. Most of them involve choosing numbers and hoping they match numbers that are chosen randomly by the casino.
What variations of these kinds of games did I leave out that I should have included?
Leave me a message about your favorite numbers-based gambling game in the comments.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Events or outcomes that are equally probable have an equal chance of occurring in each instance. In games of pure chance, each instance is a completely independent one; that is, each play has the same probability as each of the others of producing a given outcome. Probability statements apply in practice to a long series of events but not to individual ones. The law of large numbers is an expression of the fact that the ratios predicted by probability statements are increasingly accurate as the number of events increases, but the absolute number of outcomes of a particular type departs from expectation with increasing frequency as the number of repetitions increases. It is the ratios that are accurately predictable, not the individual events or precise totals.
The probability of a favourable outcome among all possibilities can be expressed: probability (p) equals the total number of favourable outcomes (f) divided by the total number of possibilities (t), or p = f/t. But this holds only in situations governed by chance alone. In a game of tossing two dice, for example, the total number of possible outcomes is 36 (each of six sides of one die combined with each of six sides of the other), and the number of ways to make, say, a seven is six (made by throwing 1 and 6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4, 4 and 3, 5 and 2, or 6 and 1); therefore, the probability of throwing a seven is 6/36, or 1/6.
In most gambling games it is customary to express the idea of probability in terms of odds against winning. This is simply the ratio of the unfavourable possibilities to the favourable ones. Because the probability of throwing a seven is 1/6, on average one throw in six would be favourable and five would not; the odds against throwing a seven are therefore 5 to 1. The probability of getting heads in a toss of a coin is 1/2; the odds are 1 to 1, called even. Care must be used in interpreting the phrase on average, which applies most accurately to a large number of cases and is not useful in individual instances. A common gamblers’ fallacy, called the doctrine of the maturity of the chances (or the Monte-Carlo fallacy), falsely assumes that each play in a game of chance is dependent on the others and that a series of outcomes of one sort should be balanced in the short run by the other possibilities. A number of systems have been invented by gamblers largely on the basis of this fallacy; casino operators are happy to encourage the use of such systems and to exploit any gambler’s neglect of the strict rules of probability and independent plays. An interesting example of a game where each play is dependent on previous plays, however, is blackjack, where cards already dealt from the dealing shoe affect the composition of the remaining cards; for example, if all of the aces (worth 1 or 11 points) have been dealt, it is no longer possible to achieve a “natural” (a 21 with two cards). This fact forms the basis for some systems where it is possible to overcome the house advantage.
Numbers Games In Gambling
In some games an advantage may go to the dealer, the banker (the individual who collects and redistributes the stakes), or some other participant. Therefore, not all players have equal chances to win or equal payoffs. This inequality may be corrected by rotating the players among the positions in the game. Commercial gambling operators, however, usually make their profits by regularly occupying an advantaged position as the dealer, or they may charge money for the opportunity to play or subtract a proportion of money from the wagers on each play. In the dice game of craps—which is among the major casino games offering the gambler the most favourable odds—the casino returns to winners from 3/5 of 1 percent to 27 percent less than the fair odds, depending on the type of bet made. Depending on the bet, the house advantage (“vigorish”) for roulette in American casinos varies from about 5.26 to 7.89 percent, and in European casinos it varies from 1.35 to 2.7 percent. The house must always win in the long run. Some casinos also add rules that enhance their profits, especially rules that limit the amounts that may be staked under certain circumstances.
Many gambling games include elements of physical skill or strategy as well as of chance. The game of poker, like most other card games, is a mixture of chance and strategy that also involves a considerable amount of psychology. Betting on horse racing or athletic contests involves the assessment of a contestant’s physical capacity and the use of other evaluative skills. In order to ensure that chance is allowed to play a major role in determining the outcomes of such games, weights, handicaps, or other correctives may be introduced in certain cases to give the contestants approximately equal opportunities to win, and adjustments may be made in the payoffs so that the probabilities of success and the magnitudes of the payoffs are put in inverse proportion to each other. Pari-mutuelpools in horse-race betting, for example, reflect the chances of various horses to win as anticipated by the players. The individual payoffs are large for those bettors whose winning horses are backed by relatively few bettors and small if the winners are backed by a relatively large proportion of the bettors; the more popular the choice, the lower the individual payoff. The same holds true for betting with bookmakers on athletic contests (illegal in most of the United States but legal in England). Bookmakers ordinarily accept bets on the outcome of what is regarded as an uneven match by requiring the side more likely to win to score more than a simple majority of points; this procedure is known as setting a “point spread.” In a game of American or Canadian football, for example, the more highly regarded team would have to win by, say, more than 10 points to yield an even payoff to its backers.
10 Number Gambling Cards
Unhappily, these procedures for maintaining the influence of chance can be interfered with; cheating is possible and reasonably easy in most gambling games. Much of the stigma attached to gambling has resulted from the dishonesty of some of its promoters and players, and a large proportion of modern gambling legislation is written to control cheating. More laws have been oriented to efforts by governments to derive tax revenues from gambling than to control cheating, however.