21 Game

964 Words2 Pages

The “21” video talks about the story which the main character plays the gambling game “21” to earn money in order to achieve his Harvard school dream. “21” is the game that people should draw cards without knowing and make it to be as close as possible to 21 points. His professor in MIT appreciates his talent in math and want to invite him as a member of the group of students to play “21” by counting card. They do not gamble, they just analyze basic math conception which incline to statistics about the probability. They use the specific way to count number of cards and calculate the probability they can win the “21” game, then they can earn a lot of money by putting more bets. “We are counting not gambling.” which said by the professor further …show more content…

That is to say if the set of card has fifty - two cards, then whatever people involve in, the probability for everyone to win this game could be the same by the large number theory. Actually, in this case, these cards could not be determined as independent variables because each card drawn will influence the probability of drawing other particular cards. For example, the dealer has two “ten”(10,J,Q,K) and the player has too, the probability of “the next card would be 10” will change from 4/13 to 12/48(Meanwhile 1/4). Since the probability will change in such situation, players can predict the following result in this game by looking at the cards already drawn. Thus players can count cards to make himself less disadvantageous: when the cards are smaller, the greater probability he can draw big number card, the more money he can put in; contrarily, the less money he should put in. Then the game is not gambling, it tests everyone’s calculating skill and the analyze in …show more content…

First, the movie just talks about the dealer using one set of cards. In real situation, the gamble company will use more sets of cards in order to increase their probability to win while minimizing the probability of players. When the dealer distributes a specific amount of cards, he will change a new set of cards to use which is to say the remaining of the former set would not be used. Then the player should recount points because the situation has changed to new set of fifty-two cards. The plot of the movie that the main characters win constantly would not be feasible in real situation. Considering the new set of cards, the player needs to recount and change another game table if the points are small. Second, the movie does not involve the “Mean number theory”. As the previous paragraph says, the points greater, the probability greater to draw big number card and win. But this is the situation we do not consider about the mean number, if there are still remaining many cards and the mean number of these cards are relatively small, then the probability to win could not be only explained by the “High-Low” method. Many new players might be misled by the method without considering the mean number. When the points are big and the mean number of the remaining cards is big, players could almost believe and use the “High-Low”

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