Terms used on this site
GLOSSARY
| Entries | 24 |
|---|---|
| Order | alphabetical |
| Each entry gives | a definition and the page that uses it |
These are the terms that recur across the index and the explainers. Several of them are used loosely in ordinary speech and precisely here, and the difference occasionally matters: odds and probability are not synonyms, return and hit rate are not the same dial, and a fair bet is a technical description rather than a compliment.
- Combination/probability-basics/
A selection where order does not matter; the basis of every draw-game count.
- Edge/house-edge/
The share of an average stake retained by the operator over the long run.
- Even-money bet/games/roulette/
A bet paid one to one, covering slightly less than half the outcomes.
- Expected value/house-edge/
Each outcome's probability multiplied by its return, summed.
- Fair bet/house-edge/
A bet whose payout equals the true odds, giving an expected value of zero.
- Five-number bet/games/roulette/
The zero, double zero, one, two and three wager; the worst price on a wheel.
- Free odds/games/dice-and-craps/
A supplementary craps wager paid at true odds, carrying no edge.
- Gambler's fallacy/law-of-large-numbers/
The belief that past independent results make future ones more or less likely.
- Hard way/games/dice-and-craps/
A dice bet requiring a total to be made as a pair before any seven.
- Hit rate/game-design/
How often a game returns anything at all, independent of how much it returns.
- Hold/game-design/
The complement of return; the share of stakes a game retains.
- Insurance/games/card-games/
A blackjack side bet on the dealer holding a natural, paid two to one.
- Law of large numbers/law-of-large-numbers/
The result that averages converge on expected value as trials accumulate.
- Margin/history-of-betting/
The amount by which a set of quoted prices exceeds a total probability of one.
- Near-miss/games/gaming-machines/
A display outcome resembling a win; a mapping artefact, not a probability.
- Odds against/probability-basics/
Losing outcomes expressed relative to winning ones.
- Par sheet/game-design/
The design document listing symbol counts, payouts and the resulting return.
The total established on a first dice roll that must repeat before a seven.
A settlement method dividing all stakes, less a deduction, among winners.
- Return/games/gaming-machines/
The share of stakes a game pays back over the long run.
- Rollover/games/lotteries/
A jackpot carried to the next draw because no ticket matched.
- True odds/house-edge/
The odds implied by the actual outcome counts, before any payout is set.
- Variance/law-of-large-numbers/
The spread of results around the expected value over a given number of plays.
- Virtual reel/games/gaming-machines/
Internal positions mapped onto visible stops, decoupling symbols from probability.