Talk:Teetotum

Tidy up
I've done the best I can with the tidy-up. A photo would be nice and clarification of that latin also. Rob  ( Talk )  09:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this highly related to the Dreidel? Especially the description of the game Kirkjerk 15:35, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Alternate Teetotum markings
Is it really necessary to have a Spanish translation of the Latin markings before the English translation? If not, I think I'm going to get rid of them and clean up the spacing.--Bennyfactor 05:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Put and take
I added a brief unsourced section because in the United Kingdom (perhaps in Canada or elswehere in the English speaking world) it is more commonly known as "Put and Take", and the redirect leads here, but before there was no mention of it. At the moment it is completely unsourced and I will try to find RS. I found put-take.com so obviously I have notjust invented this, and indeed those brass die spinners are what I say in the section except my grandfather made them on his on lathe and punched the symbols in with a die punch, which is all very nice but veering towards WP:OR. I have in the past taken pictures for Commons but I clearly label as my own work, not so much for attribution but that nobody then thinks they are some kind of professional job. my spinners say "put", "take", and so on whereas the ones on that website abbreviate to "P" and "T". Early days but I hope just getting the section started makes Wikipedia a little better. I don't want to add the reference to that website since I don't think that is WP:RS and as an IP some others may think that I have something to do with that company - I've never heard of them, I just prefer to remain an IP - but leave it there in case it is of use to any other editors. 05:12, 6 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Actually that website is American, in Florida, so I am wrong in thinking maybe it was WP:ENGVAR, but the tone of the article did suggest this was mostly known in the United States. (It has US spelling, which is fine of course.) I'm British but nobody in Hungary has ever heard of it (not even in Hungarian) so we're enlightening the world which is what we're here for, I thought. The website provides them I guess to casinos but I have never been to Florida - I lived in Texas - and the gaming laws vary state by state so i would hazard it is not the most popular game in the united states... in the UK it is just usually played with family and children for fun. But then British people are ver odd, I have a six-lane dog track with nodding dogs as some pretence at greyhound racing, it's quite easy the first die tells you which dog moves, and the second how many squares it moves. The dog track (an old roll of linoleum, try saying that when you're sober) is just laid out of a grid of six lanes for the dogs and however many spaces fit along the roll, and the children like rolling the big fluffy dice and moving the dogs, and the adults pretend to bet on them and cheer the dogs along and so forth, but it is just for fun not serious betting, which is a mug's game. The secret of winning at gambling: Make sure you are the bookmaker. 92.249.211.226 (talk) 05:22, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually Wikipedia's articles about gambling are generally pretty poor, either they take a social sciences attitude (which is not about gambling but the psychology of why people gamble) or as with Mathematics of bookmaking plunge you straight into probability theory, actually without much reference to reality with ante post and so on bets, bookmaking is a lot more complicated and simple than the mathematics, you're just trying to keep your book overround all the time and balance or change the odds to attract more money onto the least favourite and deter people for betting on the most favourite, what you don't want is a "steamer" where everyone backs it as a "racing cert" and now your book is completely loaded on just one outcome. As a bookmaker you want, ideally, to make money whatever happens. You don't care about the event - must not care about the event, backing your own book is fatal as it skews the odds - but you're running an enormous simultaneous equation with as many variables as there are possible outcomes, and you're balancing all that while also - and the article makes no mention of this - several other bookmakers are trying to do the same, i.e. there is competition between bookmakers, and if my rival lays six to four and I am laying a hundred to thirty, some punter will get in that gap and back us both back, which is value betting or "arbitrage". So I can, usually, lay off if I have a particularly strong horse, my book is out of balance and in theory the odds on all the others go to infinity it is that overbroke, so I'll lay off, what in the stock market is called hedging, I'll hedge my bets by laying off the overbroke onto another bookmaker, whose book is also skewed by some woman who decides she wants to put ten thousand quid down on a non-starter (she probably owns the horse and no amount of convincing will tell her that a rocking-horse has more chance), so we hedge against each other. What you want to happen, as a bookie, is that whatever outcome you get, you get your frac, your profit, of about 20 percent if you're doing it right. There is not really a lot of mathematics to it, quite an lot of mental arithmetic, but the market really drives the prices, and the article does not convey that. My book might be saying, to keep equilibrium (after my frac), that I should offer a hundred to eight, but if the bookie next to me is offering twelve to one, any wise punter can work out whose is the better odds (mine are) so I get more money loaded on there, then it starts to come back into balance. It really is just a great big balancing act, but bookies do not sit there working out normal distributions, the book TELLS you whether to lengthen or shorten the odds. 92.249.211.226 (talk) 05:37, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem is partly that in the United Kingdom and Ireland the odds are still set in ways that make sense in pre-decimal currency. So if I say "six to four against" the reason it is not "three to two against" is that there are four crowns to the old pound, so if you lay four crowns, I'll give you six if you win, plus your stake of four. So I'll give you ten crowns back if you win, if you give me four now. Your bet is actually 2.5 in decimal or 0.4 the other way (they multiply to 1). So in the UK and Ireland, you get these odds like 11-4 or six to four "on", i.e. actually four to six, because it is running on pre decimal number system, so you have to know that if i lay you seven to two that means you get 3.5 back for each 1 you lay, PLUS your original 1. If I lay you "six to four on", that means you have to chance six to win four - plus your original stake of six. The articles tend to all be in decimal but no UK or Irish bookmaker works in decimal, this is not exactly WP:ENGVAR but it does not work that way in the UK and Irish betting mnarket where anyone can name a price whenever they choose and see what bookmaker will take it. It's not all pari mutuel or tote betting.

If I lay you a Burlington (soggy and dirty, one hundred to thirty, burlington Bertie you should never take that, as a shewdie you should take the frac and go for three to one. The chances of the event are the same, but now you have tiny little frac over what my book says are the true odds. My book doesn't lie, it has nothing to do with the actual chances of the horse winning, I don't care about that. All I care about is whether my book is in balance, less my margin. I am not interested in the horses or the dogs at all, just making sure my book is in balance, and I get my margin whatever wins. It is more or less the same as what actuaries do with actuarial tables, but because bookmaking has a moral prejudice against it whereas actuaries are chartered profession, even Wikipedia editors will take out any common sense article about how you actually run a book so instead we have the nonsense of the Mathematics of bookmaking. If we actually had a decent article about how books are made, without all the normal distributions and so on - an bookmaker has no idea what the normal distribution or standard deviation on his book is, he just knows that he needs to keep it in balance - then maybe we could demystify it. As I said before in other words, here is the way to win at cards: make sure you are the one running the table. 92.249.211.226 (talk) 05:49, 6 June 2020 (UTC)