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Games of chance
A reference work in 12 articles. This page was last modified on 17 August 2026.
Games of chance are built out of three things: a random mechanism, a schedule of prices attached to its outcomes, and a set of rules describing how the two meet. This site explains all three. It sets out the mathematics that decides what a wager is worth, describes how wheels, dice, cards and reel machines actually produce their results, and traces how lotteries, bookmaking and the regulation of both developed into their present forms.
It is a reference work about a subject, not a place to play or a guide to where to play. Nothing here rates, recommends, compares or links to any gambling business, and no article treats these games as a way of making money: the arithmetic in the house edge and long run articles points firmly the other way, and explaining why is most of what the site is for.
Topic portals
Mathematics
Odds, expected value, the house edge and why long runs behave differently from short ones.
The latest file
The Games
How wheels, dice, cards and reel machines actually produce their outcomes.
History
Lotteries as public finance, and the emergence of bookmaking and pooled betting.
Regulation
Prohibition, licensing and the technical supervision of game software.
Featured entry
The house edge is the single idea that connects everything else on this site. It is not a mysterious force and it is not a losing streak: it is the arithmetic gap between the odds an outcome carries and the odds the game pays for it. On a single-zero wheel that gap is one unit in thirty-seven, and it is present on every bet the table offers, in exactly the same proportion.
| Article | Field | Key figure |
|---|---|---|
| Roulette | Game mechanics | 2.70% on a single-zero wheel |
| Slot machines | Game mechanics | 0.8945 return in the worked example |
| Variance and the long run | Mathematics | scatter grows as sqrt(n) |
| A history of lotteries | History | state draws from the 1400s |
| How regulation developed | Regulation | three phases of supervision |