Although gambling had been around for centuries, it is interesting to note that it was not until the sixteenth century that the game of dice and other games of chance were subjected to any formal mathematical study.

Italian Gironimo Cardano was a mathematician, physician, teacher and an avid gambler. He was the first known mathematician to determine the likelihood of an event occurring. He determined that the frequency an event occurring could be calculated mathematically and introduced the concept of set outcomes in what was otherwise considered random events.

He expressed the results in a ratio of the number of times an event would occur compared to the number of times it would not occur. For example: Rolling a six on a single die will occur one in six times or the odds are 5 to 1 against it happening. This seems commonplace today but it was a very new concept at the time and formed the basis for probability theory as we know it.

In 1660 Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens published a book whose title translates to On Reasoning in Games of Chance. Huygens was the first person to develop the concept of expected value or EV. This is a term that all gamblers use today in determining whether a wager will be profitable and when we discuss casino games we often refer to them as having either a negative or positive expectation.

The outcome of every game we play and every bet we make can be analyzed using the probability theory developed by these great minds centuries ago. The casinos use this data and adjust their payouts to be slightly less than the true odds of an event occurring and this gives the House Edge.