Talk:Economics of gambling

I want the facts!
This article is vague. I want solid facts in an economy related article. It is hard to find any statistics regarding the economics of casino. One can easily find reports on charitable activity of casino. It is much harder to find answers to the following questions. How much does an average casino make? What is the typical number of players per table? What is the typical bet (most people bet minimal bet; the bigger bets have progressively decreasing probability). What is the money extraction efficiency that is how many cents a casino receives for every dollar bet? This is a key question because a casino cannot possibly survive if they get 5%, dictated by statistics. The income of a casino host on average is $60 000 annually. Casino can at best get (2 players at a table X $5 bet every minute X 60 min/hour X 0.05 probability = $30 per hour) the same $60 000 annually per table. In reality, most of the tables have no players at all. They have the host + supervisor. The supervisor pretends to be a player, but you can clearly tell he is not. Unlike players he is very relaxed and talkative. He will ask you how is it going and explain you the rules. Now, would casino manage to beat statistics (ask crooked gamblers how) than the profitability can easily go up to $300 per hour. Now we are talking about busyness. A profitable, taxable business with a strong lobby. Statistical data would help to see which model is correct. Sadly, the statistical data is nowhere to be found. One can argue that we only accounted for the minimal bets instead of average bets. While this is correct, the average bet seems to be close enough to the minimal bet. Having said that statistical data on extraction coefficient plotted versus the size of the bet would be invaluable. I have a strong feeling that the extraction coefficient reaches 100% for big bets ($100+). This violates the probability theory but allows to get most money at a cost of disappointing one gambler. PS. It would be awesome when someone replaces this paragraph with a real profitability analysis that is supported by solid data from a reliable source. It is less awesome but more likely that someone decides to delete this paragraph to swipe the issues under the carpet. To prevent this I will check this page once in a while.

Sacramento
Why "provides jobs" is considered a benefit? Terrorism also a big industry that provides jobs - so what? Ok, terrorism is so bad it cannot be compensated with "provides jobs". Fine. How about a rich person plays a practical joke - he hires a a guy to turn on a green lamp every day and paying money for that(see Александр Грин "Зеленая лампа" if you can read)? Is this "beneficial because it provides jobs"? A spoiler - in that book it was, but that's because that book is in a sense a Christmas story.