[HN Gopher] Formally Modeling Dreidel, the Sequel
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Formally Modeling Dreidel, the Sequel
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-12-18 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (buttondown.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (buttondown.com)
| oatsandsugar wrote:
| > Dreidel is a bad game.
|
| Mathematically proven now. A gut feel I've had since childhood.
|
| But then again, spinning the thing is sufficiently fun, who needs
| the antes.
| bkandel wrote:
| I actually had the exact opposite conclusion from the analysis:
| Dreidel is a great kids' game of chance, because it's easy to
| come back from a few bad rolls and it's almost impossible to
| lose.
| egypturnash wrote:
| It also seems to be a great game for randomly redistributing
| chocolate coins among children while giving them something to
| do that's not "run around screaming" for a while. The game
| went on all day long? _Great_ , that kept them _out of your
| hair_ and amused them.
| peacedb wrote:
| I used to think this too, but I changed my mind when a few years
| ago my sister wanted to play and I told her why it was a bad game
| because it's just based on luck, but I played anyway. She ended
| up getting something like 20 gimmels in a row and I got like 20
| peys in a row, even after switching dreidels multiple times, and
| even switching where I was sitting, it was honestly one of the
| strangest moments of my life, it was as if god was completely
| rigging it against me. I think the lesson was that dreidel isn't
| about luck, it's about mazal.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Yep, my s.o. wanted to play skip-bo, which is also a game so
| simple that it's just luck of the draw, and I lost 7 games
| straight after lamenting the randomness of it before we even
| started, which isn't as impressive of a streak as 20 but still,
| I understand that feeling.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > also a game so simple that it's just luck of the draw
|
| See also: Candyland.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| 4.0^(20+20) = 1.2e24
|
| Assuming that, over history, a billion Jews have lived and spun
| a dreidel a trillion times, it's safe to reject the null
| hypothesis of this being random and accept the alternate
| hypothesis that G-d exists and He wanted you to lose.
| linenmerchant wrote:
| Mathematically proving why a Jewish game is bad, is the most
| Jewish game there is!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Counterpoint: a game that's mostly about passing time and good
| conversation is the most Jewish game there is.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Two gentiles bump into each other on the street.
|
| The first says: How was the party last night?
|
| The other replies: Great!
|
| Lol
| halflife wrote:
| Odd, as an Israeli Jew I've never heard of this game.
|
| Fun fact for our fellow gentiles, the letter on the dreidel are
| different in Israel vs the rest of the world. In the US for
| example:
|
| n - ns - miracle
|
| g - gdvl - great
|
| h - hyh - was
|
| sh - shm - there
|
| In Israel the final letter is replaced with:
|
| p - ph - here
|
| Meaning that the miracle has happened in Israel.
| binarymax wrote:
| Not as boring when the chocolate coins become shots of schnapps.
|
| Thanks for the sequel! Looking forward to next year's article
| when you get around to writing PRISM as a compiler target.
| senkora wrote:
| Is dreidel typically played to completion?
|
| I always kinda assumed that play would stop at a point where the
| chocolate coins were unevenly distributed but all players were
| still in the game, because it seems unsatisfying to give
| chocolate to a child and then take it all away.
|
| Or perhaps players would eat chocolates as they played, which
| serves the dual purpose of making sure that everyone enjoys some
| chocolate and hastening the end of the game, with the victor
| earning all the leftover chocolate as a prize for later.
| binarymax wrote:
| Maybe the creators purposefully designed the game to take
| forever and keep the kids occupied, so the parents could spend
| time debating Talmud without interruption.
| gryphonclaw wrote:
| Yeah, the game kind of drags if you do just 1 piece in the pot
| per player when empty. Usually when I play it with my family we
| do at least 2 pieces, and also work out extra gimmicks like loans
| with interest to players down on their luck (very Jewish I know).
| Still not the most thrilling of games, but fun to play every
| year.
| llimos wrote:
| _with interest?!_ Oy vey, not very Jewish at all!
| jedberg wrote:
| > If you don't have a dreidel, you can instead use a four-sided
| die, but for the authentic experience you should wait eight
| seconds before looking at your roll.
|
| This made me literally laugh out loud. There is no better way to
| describe waiting for the dreidel.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I'd like to see this kind of analysis applied towards a practical
| question resembling:
|
| "If I let kids=4 play each starting with chocolates=10 for
| minutes=30 before terminating the game, what kinds of outcomes
| should I expect and will any of them involve a loser throwing a
| tantrum?"
| jedberg wrote:
| I've been playing dreidel for 40+ years. I've never played a game
| to completion. But that's not really the point of the game. The
| point is it's a way to distribute chocolate while teaching a
| little bit about probability and game theory.
|
| We usually boxed it to about 10 minutes max. So everyone mostly
| got the same amount of chocolate, and some people did a little
| better than others. And then you went to mom and dad for a
| "bailout" because it wasn't fair that your little brother got
| more than you.
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