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Are you good with numbers? Would you like to go to Vegas and party it up and go home with tens of thousands of dollars at the end of your trip?? Then card counting is definitely … not the way to go.
In this episode, we explore the seedy underbelly of the gambling world with the movie 21. This film is all about getting rich quickly. The main character, Ben Campbell, is extremely disappointed with his lot in life. And to be fair, he’s had a rough go. I mean, he’s a white guy who’s extremely intelligent and gifted at math. He’s about to graduate with super high grades from MIT. Oh, and he’s been accepted to Harvard Medical School. I mean, break out the handkerchiefs and have yourselves a good cry over the situation this guy is in.
The one and only thing Ben has to complain about is that Harvard med school is expensive. Which, it is! According to the movie (which came out in 2008), it’s about $300k. Today, it’s more like $400k. That’s a LOT of money. But also … you don’t have to go to Harvard to be a doctor, dude. If you want to be a doctor without the hefty price tag, quit getting so hung up on a name-brand education and go to a superb state school. Or go to Harvard and take out student loans like most people have to, and depending on what specialty you choose, you could easily be earning deep into the six figures before you know it, and can pay off your $400k of student loans in a few short years if you just continue to live like a resident. And then you can go nuts and have a super extravagant “doctor lifestyle.” Seriously, our pal Ben needs to quit whining and realize that he’s won the genetic/life lottery and that every door in the world is swinging wide open for him.
Buuuut, of course, Ben doesn’t do that. Instead, he finds another way to solve the problem of needing money for school: he starts gambling and joins a blackjack ring with other MIT students. In the movie, this is presented as a surefire way to wealth. These math geniuses from MIT take on the big, bad casinos, and they win every single time because they’re just SO gosh-darn smart that they can’t lose. Each weekend trip to Vegas that the blackjack team makes, they go home with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I don’t know about you guys, but at this point, I’m thinking – well why aren’t we all learning how to count cards and getting stupidly wealthy just like these kids in the movie?
Well, friends, I’ll tell you. It’s because this movie is LIES!
In reality, even if you are a top-notch card counter and a whiz at blackjack strategy, the edge you have over the house is roughly 2 percent. At best! According to the Wizard of Odds, who put together a fabulous article on card counting, the edge you have is only about 0.5% to 1%. That means you have a 50.5% to 51% chance of going home with more money than you started with. And, on the flip side, a 49 to 49.5% chance of losing. Now, I don’t know about you, but having a 49% chance of losing does not sound like a surefire path to wealth to me. And as the Wizard of Odds explains, in order for the math to work out in your favor, you need either (1) luck, or (2) a really large bankroll to start with that will allow you to keep playing for a looong time so that eventually your wins and losses balance out and the slight statistical edge you have will start to shine through. In other words, you’re doing just slightly better than betting that tails will come up on a coin toss. And does betting on coin tosses sound smart to you? It shouldn’t!
The lesson here is that get-rich-quick schemes are usually … schemes. They’re not realistic. They depend on one huge factor that few people on the winning side of those schemes like to admit to: LUCK. As we discuss in the podcast, luck is obviously a very real thing. Robert got on a lucky streak of gambling when he had just turned 21 (gambling degenerate that he is). People do win the lottery. People invest in individual stocks that skyrocket in just a few weeks. Or cryptocurrency.
But all these things are gambling. And even though luck happens, you can’t count on it. You can’t wake up in the morning and think … I don’t need to accomplish anything difficult or worthwhile or helpful to other people because I’ll get lucky one day and never need to work again. You can’t neglect saving and planning for your future because you assume you’ll win the lottery one day. Or rather, you can. And people do. But you sure as hell shouldn’t. Work and frugality and savings can give you the closest thing we have to a guarantee in life that you’ll be financially secure and able to purchase the time, freedom, and experiences that make life rich and joyful. But if you neglect those core principles and count on luck to bring you those critical things. Well … you’re gambling with your happiness and your joy.
I don’t know about you guys, but for me, those stakes are far too high for me to gamble on them.