sudsy7

Slots are designed by psychologists to maximize take. One of the things they do is make sure there's a decent payout every 80 spins on average. Also slots in well viewed spots pay out more because they get more attention. There are a number of strategies that are more detailed, such as the one Mitnick mentions.

People do make money playing slots, but it's real work.

Ground in the shade may have some insulation? You'd think open ground would be warmer at night because it's unshaded, and because the moon is supposed to be reflecting sunlight. The fact that it's colder is counterintuitive.

It would be interesting to try the experiment on a moonless night to check the difference between open and shaded ground. If they are the same the shade doesn't likely matter (given a sufficient time from sundown).

Well, if they bothered to fool everybody into thinking earth was a spinning ball a few lies from astronauts and some fake photos isn't really a stretch.

I don't know either, but one fun fact is that you can measure the temperature of reflected moonlight with a $20 laser thermometer.

It's reflecting sunlight right, so why does moonlight register as colder than shaded spots.

It's a real easy and fun experiment.

The legality is disputable. They permitted everything he asked for.

Point is, he's the most famous card player in the world playing at the highest stakes at a top tier casino.

There are plenty of low profile players who can do the things Phil knows how to do. Casino's have a hard time distinguishing a lucky run from an advantage player they haven't seen enough times to catch their attention. The last thing they want to do is ban a high roller, so advantage players get the benefit of the doubt.

To make it as an AP you need a big bank roll, a lot of discipline to learn the games, access to a community of APs, and a lot of time for traveling and gambling. It's a job.

Yes, the more creative and rare the exploit the better it pays, and good ones do provide 10%+ advantage.

Good card players have lots of ways to gain advantages.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/25107-poker-legend-phil...

OK, so if you take a sphere spinning on its axis and put it in a spherical aquarium I could see it all spinning together.

But what I don't see is how that works in an atmosphere which is mostly near the earth's surface. It seems like you would lose a lot of energy as you entered the stratosphere because the air density increasingly falls, there's less room for friction to cohere the atmosphere.

High clouds should be less effected which would make them appear to move much faster than low clouds.

Is there a good source somewhere on how this works that takes this into account? The stuff I've seen just assumes its own model and works backwards.

OK, but how does that account for the fact that the atmosphere thins?

I'm not a physicist but it seems to me that given entropy and the thinning of the atmosphere as elevation increases that clouds would not a) not appear to float in place and b) only move in one direction.

Low clouds would appear to float in place but high clouds would move quickly away from the spin of the earth.

I'm not sure about FE, but the "we're spinning right now at 1000mph" disintegrates under any reasonable interrogation.

For example, consider you're looking at a disk shaped cloud 10 miles above that is 20 miles long from the center. If you're on Earth spinning below it at 1000mph you would be looking back at the cloud in less than 2 minutes.

So how do clouds linger above us on a fast spinning earth?

May not be a convincing question for some, but it's made me think.

Card counting is the thing everyone knows about. A good counter is getting a 1-2% advantage and is under lots of heat. If the table is paying 6:5 on blackjack instead of 3:2 like more are becoming it kills your entire edige. We were doing stuff in the 8-12% range. It is far more advanced than CC and almost never discussed online.

Every casino game has a vulnerability, even slots. Advantage play is not free money, it's a job. You need skills, a bank roll, and to put in a lot of hours in casinos.

Weird story.

I'm a decent card player and have an interest in systems. I always want to know how something interesting works. I ended up making friends with a guy who was an expert advantage player, someone who knew how to flip the odds at casinos in his favor. Never did anything illegal, but plenty of things the casinos wouldn't like you doing if they knew you were doing it, and they're watching.

To keep our profile low we'd travel to different places. It looks bad to win too much too many times. Casinos notice.

Between travel and off times we'd end up talking a lot about a lot of things. He was always diving into odd subjects. One of them was Flat Earth. At first it was just curiosity about a peculiar subculture. We'd discuss how stupid it was, but we'd also note where they made points we couldn't deny.

I won't say I've swallowed the whole pancake but I've taken a few bites. I'm not going to get into it here and this is an alt account because it's a topic that generates a lot of hostility from some.

But I have made a lot of friends in the FE community. They're the new people I tend to relate to the best without a known shared background. It's not the FE that's attractive, it's that they're people who put very little value on social conformity and thus can be honest in a way that "fit ins" can't.

I don't wear FE tee shirts or proselytize. It's just a thing I keep to myself and don't trouble anyone with.

JADP.