Braingle: 'House Limit' Brain Teaser

House Limit

Trivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.

Puzzle ID:	#1087
Fun:	(2.46)
Difficulty:	(1.8)
Category:	Trivia
Submitted By:	Michelle
Corrected By:	jntrcs

Even though the odds are always in favor of the gambling house, why does the establishment insist on a house limit on stakes?

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Comments

canu Jul 15, 2004	The gamblers cannot keep doubling their stakes until they win: they are limited by the amount of money they have. ----- But the casinos want to eliminate the risk, however small, of a large loss.
paul726 Mar 04, 2006	Is this math?
tsimkin Apr 17, 2006	Gamblers can only keep doubling up if they have more money than the casino to begin with. Las Vegas Sands has a market capitalization (and therefore value) of almost $23 billion as of April 14, 2006. MGM Mirage has a value of $12.5 billion. The double-up-to-win system (also called a Martingale system) does not work when the edge is in the house's favor, as it is in every casino game. The reason the house has limits is that there is still noise in the outcome, and while a player would never be able to break them, they could lead to huge cash fluctuations that aren't really the business the casinos want to be in. They would much rather see 1000 people bet $100 per blackjack hand than 1 person betting $100,000 per hand, even though their expected income from each is the same (ignoring the cost of dealers). The first case is just much lower volatility for them.
Kalliann Jun 21, 2006	Humph... I never win....
LeafFan4life Apr 02, 2007	well if bill gates was at the casino he could have done this but there is a house limit so good work
penumbra Oct 11, 2008	There's a payout issue as well (building on dude(tte)'s answer above); if enough people win in the same window of time the casino's pool of cash on hand would dry up, which would probably lead to liability issues. This is far more likely with, say, 10 $100k hands than 100 $10k hands, and so on.