This seems to assume the people who did the origination here were casinos or explicit entrepreneurs,
Yeah, there’s reverse causality in assuming purpose—I wrote to explain how the reader could make such a thing intentionally without resorting to “entrepreneurs gambled by starting casinos and pseudo-darwinian survival of the business whose games don’t lose them money led to the casinos of today”. This is probably a side effect of my constructionist tendencies. (I feel like the points I came up with in 5 minutes, which don’t reference odds, are within the imagination of a business owner whose livelihood is at stake.)
the way I’d make the same point you seem to be making here is not “they operated like a startup” and more like “they operated like a group of friends/rivals/communities incrementally experimenting, and by the time someone considered starting an explicit business, good gamblers had some intuitive sense of how games worked.”)
a) That was in the footnote, and point 2, respectively, though you put it way more clearly. b) I suggested the possibility that they could arise without doing odds at all, or even starting not with games of chance. c) I would further note that being a casino and “incrementally experimenting”/‘operating like a group of friends’ need not be incompatible—consider a game store. You buy a new game. If it’s not popular, you lose a little. If it’s really popular you buy a lot more.
[a] 2. It seems like it’s possible to make it by on “this is unlikely” or setting things up so you always win. (I notice snake eyes doesn’t come up a lot. (Perhaps I check this by rolling dice a bunch of times.))
*One game night with a few people, maybe you and your friends? If you have people who are happy to try out a new game, without real money, (For Free! perhaps?), that’s a place to start initially—and all you lose is the time to run it. If you have fun, then maybe that’s a small price to pay. And if people are willing to pay to play a game with fake money, then you can just print more monopoly money if you run out—no odds calculation needed for a sure bet.
[b] you buy a place, and pool equipment, and you rent it out to people. If they make bets with each other on the outcome, you don’t care—they’re just paying you so they can play pool.
Yeah, there’s reverse causality in assuming purpose—I wrote to explain how the reader could make such a thing intentionally without resorting to “entrepreneurs gambled by starting casinos and pseudo-darwinian survival of the business whose games don’t lose them money led to the casinos of today”. This is probably a side effect of my constructionist tendencies. (I feel like the points I came up with in 5 minutes, which don’t reference odds, are within the imagination of a business owner whose livelihood is at stake.)
a) That was in the footnote, and point 2, respectively, though you put it way more clearly. b) I suggested the possibility that they could arise without doing odds at all, or even starting not with games of chance. c) I would further note that being a casino and “incrementally experimenting”/‘operating like a group of friends’ need not be incompatible—consider a game store. You buy a new game. If it’s not popular, you lose a little. If it’s really popular you buy a lot more.