February 24th, 2021
9
My uncle offered me a bet. If I win he will pay off my student loans. Should I take it?
My uncle has a pretty big gambling problem. It got him into a bunch of trouble a few years ago, and now he lives with us and is not allowed to even watch the news when the lotto numbers are drawn.
The other day, in secret, he offered me the following bet: If I flip a coin 5 times and get heads at least 4 times, he will pay off my student debts. If I don’t get heads 4 times, I just have to buy him 2 cases of beer.
The stakes are really low for me and the upside is huge. But I know my parents wouldn’t be happy knowing I allowed him to gamble, and it could be a gateway to more gambling. What do you guys think?
February 24th, 2021
9
Comments:
TimPowerGamer
Why do you think he even can pay off your student loan debts if he's living with your parents?
He just wants you to buy him beer and feed what sounds like a double-addiction. His odds of winning are over 80% by the way, so he's also doing it to specifically take advantage of you.
6
LearnedButt
Most student loans are in the 30 to 40k range, but many can go a hundred and up.
Two cases of beer is peanuts in comparison. Even at super fancy microbrew beer prices, that's still under 50 bucks
Even at 90% odds of losing, the bet is still in ops favor by a massive margin. Just by taking this bet OP's taking advantage of his uncle
1
TimPowerGamer
Yes, the implied odds are good over an infinite number of "tries", but that's clearly not the situation.
Even if you have good implied odds at a Poker table you won't bet your entire stack on deuce nine offsuit even if you're getting 20 to 1, and the odds of winning with that hand (pre-flop) are much better than this scenario, even against a higher pocket pair or big slick.
You could make the argument that the "cost" here isn't the full stack of chips (although I claimed it as such precisely because I don't think the uncle will make this bet repeatedly until the nephew wins) and that in virtue of it being a minuscule bet for a large reward, it's still "worth taking", but I defer back to I genuinely don't think the uncle is going to pay if he loses regardless.
1
LearnedButt
Obviously the uncle is a deadbeat, and won't pay the student loans, but let's leave that aside for a second, along with the fact that you are contributing to his addiction.
When I'm looking at odds, I'm also looking at the buy-in to pay out ratio to see if it's a good bet.
Here we have a probability of 0.19. call it 0.2 for convenience. For every four losses you have one win. If I put up $1 to win $5, that's a fair bet. Putting up $1 to win $1,000 with those same odds is a bet I would take every single time.
1
TimPowerGamer
I think you're missing the scope of what I'm saying. I understand how implied odds work. The issue is that this is a "roll once" bet that will only be run one time with no further bets in the future. The "system" in Poker works over a large number of plays, but individual hands are lost all the time with much better chances of winning with much lower implied odds.
Making a singular bad-odds bet in isolation at any point is universally foolish if the cost is non-negligible. Add three zeroes to it and say you only have 1300 to your name, is that still a bet you'd take with the odds being more likely than not that you bust and with it now being extremely likely you'll be unable to eat?
Now, it's possible two cases of beer (about 35 bucks) is negligible to this person and the uncle really will pay for the student loans (I would think both are extremely unlikely in virtue of the fact that both are living at someone else's house as adults) and you can try and validate taking the bet in virtue of the implied odds (which I disagree with short-term, agree with long-term, but this is definitionally short-term), but you also have the dynamic of enabling someone with a clear problem, getting him kicked out, and ruining whatever relationship he had with the family. There's a myriad of reasons not to take this bet past the implied odds, but I don't think the implied odds being good justifies the bet regardless.
1
S3simulation
3
[deleted]
So: for one thing, he's probably full of shit. If he's living with you and your parents I'm gonna take a wild guess and say he can't afford to pay off your student loans. Even if you win it's not going to happen.
Second: you're almost guaranteed to lose this bet, you might as well just buy him two cases of beer and tell him to quit gambling and just ask if he wants free booze. That's the only reason he's making this bet with you: not to feed his gambling addiction, but because his ass is so broke he's trying to con his own nephew into getting him beer.
3
another14u
5
urDownvoteSustainsMe
2
[deleted]
1
dudeweresmyvan
1
igiveup1949
1