Russian Roulette Goes Horribly Wrong
Read Time:1 Minute, 20 Second
Russian roulette (Russian: Русская рулетка, Russkaya ruletka) is a potentially lethal game of chance in which participants place a single round in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger. “Russian” refers to the supposed country of origin of the game and roulette to the element of risk-taking and the spinning of the revolver’s cylinder being reminiscent of spinning a roulette wheel.
Two players either take turns spinning and firing the revolver so that each successive turn has an equal 1/6 probability of failure, or, the players simply take turns without spinning the cylinders until one is shot. If playing with more than two players, without re-spinning, the initial probability of each player for being killed is 1/6th, but the probability of being killed changes every time the trigger is pulled. The second player has a 1/5th (20%) probability of being killed, and the probability of the third player 1/4th (25%). Until the sixth player when the chance of being killed is 1/1 (100%) assuming the cartridge works (however, since the probability of the 6th player getting to pull the trigger is equal to the probability of the first five not being killed, the initial probability of him being killed is (5/6) * (4/5) * (3/4) * (2/3) * (1/2) = 1/6, the same as the first player’s chance). In the former case, where they re-spin the chamber, the game could continue, indefinitely and gamblers could presumably only wager on which players will survive and how many turns the game will last
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
One of my favorite movies “The Deer Hunter” has a dramatic Russian roulette segment.
I’d have to be drunk as a skunk to play that game. Now, if I knew how to do it, I’d try the Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo method.
You would have to drink a lot of Russian Vodka to play a game like that!
Cool post Holte. As you can probably tell, I love stuff like this.
Interesting side note. All mechanical systems introduce a bias which can actually change the theoretical odds. For example, the roulette wheel.
In the early 1990s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo believed that casino roulette wheels were not perfectly random, and that by recording the results and analyzing them with a computer, he could gain an edge on the house by predicting that certain numbers were more likely to occur next than the 1-in-36 odds offered by the house suggested.
This he did at the Casino de Madrid in Madrid, Spain, winning 600,000 euros in a single day, and one million euros in total. Legal action against him by the casino was unsuccessful, it being ruled that the casino should fix its wheel.
Very interesting…..
A new driving pupil of mine, Olexander, was once in the Russian Army before the Soviet block fell. I’ve known him for years. He’s actually witnessed russian roulette three times whilst on tour in Afghanistan.
That may possibly explain his driving…;-)
Russian Roulette is not a game for the weak of heart or the sober of mind.
LOL! Excellent. I always enjoyed that game. Great fun when drinking a cold one. Oh how I long for those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer so many, many years ago….. 🙂