The Anexas Story - Chapter 30: Rules at a Roulette Wheel

Thanks for showing so much love to my book – The Anexas Story. Based on many requests to publish chapters of the book on LinkedIn, I continue to write a series of articles based on these chapters. Please read on and keep believing that there is an entrepreneur in you…and everyone! 

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Continuing to talk about partnerships, money may not be generated only for our team members but also for the participants, like the way I told my Black Belt participants in Goa one fine day, “Let us make some money.”

The products matter, of course. But sometimes, the byproducts also matter a lot. The side-effects might be more lucrative than the expected effect of getting trained as a Black Belt. Knowledge of statistics can indeed pay rich dividends with instant easy money, the way this funny incident reveals where black belts applied the principles of probability and statistical process control to the games in casinos of Goa. Of course, they were not disappointed!

While conducting the program for one of the world’s largest toothpaste company in their Goa manufacturing unit, one of the black belts asked, “Amitabh, are these laws of probability applicable to casinos too?” I thought for a while and said ‘Yes, they should be!’

But not just satisfied with my ‘yes,’ they followed that question by a request, rather a challenge, that I needed to demonstrate that in one of the Goa casinos. Out of the thirteen black belts, ten, mostly the younger lot, chose to see the demonstration live. We decided to go to Casino Royale in the evening, which was housed in a ship parked in the center of the river Mandovi. I came to know the reason behind locating the casino in the center of the river and it’s to do with the law. The law states that there will be no gambling on shore but gambling shall be legally allowed offshore.

So, we took a boat to the ship which had the casino. On the boat I framed four rules to follow if everyone wanted to come out as winners from the casino:

1. When we enter the casino, we would only invest Rs. 1500, which itself was the entry fee. Either we lose all of it or gain something, but under no circumstances would we squander more money. If we lose all that money, we would still have an experience of a casino with its free dinner in $20 which was not a bad deal.

2. We would only play those games for which historical data was available and play only when I ask them to.

3. We would consume no alcohol during the course of the game. I could guess why these casinos offered free drinks. They get the players drunk to make them lose their sharp minds, which allows the house to make money at their expense.

4. We would stop the game when I tell them to stop. No arguments or debates would be entertained on the subject. The moment I signal them to stop, they would exit the casino with me.

The goal was to win as much money as possible in four hours. The primary objective was to get back the cover charge of Rs. 1500 to convert the dinner into free. The secondary goal was to try to make something more than that if possible. Out of the ten, six ended up following the rules, making Rs. 39,000 ($500) in the next four hours! How did we do that? Just by following some basic laws of probability and statistics.

We found that roulette was one of the games where historical data was available. Based on the historical data we would place our bet. We would not place our stake in every game. We would set our bet very carefully once we were sure of winning, or when odds were in our favor. Say, for example, out of the two colors if we got one color (black) continuously for five times then we would bet on another color (red). If we would get continuously five odd numbers then we would bet on an even number. Or if we observed that a number had never been a winning number for quite some time, then we would place a bet on that number.

Such combinations would not occur frequently. So, we took our own sweet time, without placing the bet in every game and always playing it safe. Players around us wondered what was going on. But within two to three hours everyone was talking about us and we enjoyed the attention! The magic we witnessed at the roulette wheels was nothing but what our quality fraternity calls as seven rules of control- charts and basic application of probability concepts.

After four hours we decided to quit, first because we had to sleep as the next day we had to continue our training. Secondly, by applying the law of probability, you could not be so lucky, endlessly. So, the good times had to end. On our way back, one of the black belts had a spark of insight, “It appears, playing in the casino every day applying statistical tools is a better profession than the one we have at present.” Then came the warning from me, “Today we won because we followed the rules. However, in general, it is very difficult to stick to these rules because human greed gives in to discipline, and usually, the wall of greed refuses to crack. Best not to repeat the performance under any illusion.”

Even a fun situation needs one to concentrate to get to success and to have loads of discipline while one is at it. Otherwise, there is no light at the end of any tunnel. Like that game show, KBC, where you can have fun with discipline, as you earn. Let me talk about it more.

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For subsequent articles, please watch this space.

You can buy the book directly from its website on https://www.anexasstory.com

or on Amazon on https://www.amazon.in/ANEXAS-STORY-There-Entrepreneur-Everyone-ebook/dp/B07ZGLN8C7

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Amitabh Saxena is founder of Anexas, a well-known lean six sigma and project management consulting organisation. He has trained over 50,000 participants and has 30 years of experience in consulting more than 300 organisations around the world including Fortune 100 companies across industry domains. With a strong team of 25 Master Black Belts, his organisation Anexas has been helping individuals and organisations achieve eminence through excellence since 2006. They can be reached on [email protected].