Genres | Hand game |
---|---|
Players | 2 |
Setup time | None |
Playing time | Instant |
Chance | None |
Skills | Psychology |
Odds and evens is a simple game of chance and hand game, involving two people simultaneously revealing a number of fingers and winning or losing depending on whether they are odd or even, or alternatively involving one person picking up coins or other small objects and hiding them in their closed hand, while another player guesses whether they have an odd or even number. The game may be used to make a decision or played for fun.
The finger game is also known as swords, choosies, pick, odds-on poke, or bucking up. [1] This zero-sum game, a variation of the ancient morra and par-impar, [2] is played in Europe, the US, and in Brazil, especially among children.
This game was known by the Greeks (as artiazein) and Romans (as ludere par impar). In the 1858 Krünitzlexikon it says: [3] "The game Odds and Evens was very common amongst the Romans and was played either with tali, tesseris, or money and known as "Alea maior", or with nuts, beans and almonds and known as "Alea minor"." [4]
A medieval reference is found in the Renner by Hugo von Trimberg (verse 2695).
Odds and Evens (Gerade und Ungerade) is included in the list of games prohibited in Austria-Hungary in 1904 by the Ministry of Justice.
The game has similarities with the finger game of Morra or Fingerlosen (one person hides their hand and then quickly folds or extends one's fingers and the other player has to guess how many fingers are folded or extended). [5]
In Odds and Evens, however, individuals prepare by deciding who will be assigned odds and who will be evens. Then, one or both people say "One, two, three, shoot!" or "once, twice, three, shoot!" [6] As the word "shoot" is said, the two people quickly and simultaneously thrust a fist into the center, extending either an index finger, or both the middle and index finger, indicating one or two. The sum total of fingers displayed is either odd or even. If the result is odd, then the person who called even is the victor, and can decide the issue as they see fit. [7] [8] [9] Often, the participants continue to shoot for a best two out of three. [10]
From a game-theoretic perspective, the game is equivalent to matching pennies. See that article for analysis of the strategies and chances of winning.
The name Even-Odd or EO (Gerade und Ungerade) was even given to a predecessor of roulette in the 18th century. This continues today in modern roulette in the bets on Pair and Impair.
Games available in most casinos are commonly called casino games. In a casino game, the players gamble cash or casino chips on various possible random outcomes or combinations of outcomes. Casino games are also available in online casinos, where permitted by law. Casino games can also be played outside of casinos for entertainment purposes, like in parties or in school competitions, on machines that simulate gambling.
The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that, if an event has occurred less frequently than expected, it is more likely to happen again in the future. The fallacy is commonly associated with gambling, where it may be believed, for example, that the next dice roll is more than usually likely to be six because there have recently been fewer than the expected number of sixes.
Roulette is a casino game which was likely developed from the Italian game Biribi. In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the number is high or low.
Rock paper scissors is an intransitive hand game, usually played between two people, in which each player simultaneously forms one of three shapes with an outstretched hand. These shapes are "rock", "paper", and "scissors". The earliest form of "rock paper scissors"-style game originated in China and was subsequently imported into Japan, where it reached its modern standardized form, before being spread throughout the world in the early 20th century.
Two-up is a traditional Australian gambling game, involving a designated "spinner" throwing two coins, usually Australian pennies, into the air. Players bet on whether the coins will both fall with heads (obverse) up, both with tails (reverse) up, or with a head and one a tail. The game is traditionally played in pubs and clubs throughout Australia on Anzac Day, in part to mark a shared experience with diggers (soldiers).
A martingale is a class of betting strategies that originated from and were popular in 18th-century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins the stake if a coin comes up heads and loses if it comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double the bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. Thus the strategy is an instantiation of the St. Petersburg paradox.
Quarters is a drinking game which involves players bouncing an American quarter or similar-size coin off a table in an attempt to have the quarter land in a certain place, usually into a shot glass on that table. It is also played in South America, where it is called "monedita," Spanish for little coin.
A game of skill is a game where the outcome is determined mainly by mental or physical skill, rather than chance.
Coin flipping, coin tossing, or heads or tails is the practice of throwing a coin in the air and checking which side is showing when it lands, in order to randomly choose between two alternatives. It is a form of sortition which inherently has two possible outcomes. The party who calls the side that is facing up when the coin lands wins.
Hand games are games played using only the hands of the players. Hand games exist in a variety of cultures internationally, and are of interest to academic studies in ethnomusicology and music education. Hand games are used to teach music literacy skills and socio-emotional learning in elementary music classrooms internationally.
Matching pennies is a non-cooperative game studied in game theory. It is played between two players, Even and Odd. Each player has a penny and must secretly turn the penny to heads or tails. The players then reveal their choices simultaneously. If the pennies match, then Even wins and keeps both pennies. If the pennies do not match, then Odd wins and keeps both pennies.
Royal Cotillion is a solitaire card game which uses two decks of 52 playing cards each. The name probably derives from the fact that since the two kings and two queens of the same suit, the king and queen of each suit dance the cotillion. It has been given the alternate name of Lords and Ladies because if the game is won, the final layout will show the king and queen of each suit together.
Morra is a hand game that dates back thousands of years to ancient Roman and Greek times. Each player simultaneously reveals their hand, extending any number of fingers, and calls out a number. Any player who successfully guesses the total number of fingers revealed by all players combined scores a point.
The mathematics of gambling is a collection of probability applications encountered in games of chance and can get included in game theory. From a mathematical point of view, the games of chance are experiments generating various types of aleatory events, and it is possible to calculate by using the properties of probability on a finite space of possibilities.
Proper equilibrium is a refinement of Nash Equilibrium by Roger B. Myerson. Proper equilibrium further refines Reinhard Selten's notion of a trembling hand perfect equilibrium by assuming that more costly trembles are made with significantly smaller probability than less costly ones.
Penney's game, named after its inventor Walter Penney, is a binary (head/tail) sequence generating game between two players. Player A selects a sequence of heads and tails, and shows this sequence to player B. Player B then selects another sequence of heads and tails of the same length. Subsequently, a fair coin is tossed until either player A's or player B's sequence appears as a consecutive subsequence of the coin toss outcomes. The player whose sequence appears first wins.
Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker. Someone who practices advantage gambling is often referred to as an advantage player, or AP. Unlike cheating, which is by definition illegal, advantage play exploits innate characteristics of a particular game to give the player an advantage relative to the house or other players. While not illegal, advantage play may result in players being banned by certain casinos.
Cetno i licho is a simple game of chance, of ancient European provenance, where the players had to guess if the hidden objects were even or odd in number, with licho also meaning 'bad luck' or 'devil'. The counted objects could also be white or black pawns or lines drawn in ashes, and the game had mystical overtones of invoking the Sudice, the Slavic counterpart of the Fates.
Odds and evens may refer to:
In for a Penny is a British game show hosted by Stephen Mulhern, based on the segment of the same name in the show Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. The show began airing on Saturday nights on ITV1 from 13 April 2019 to 8 June 2024. In 2023 the show returned for a fifth series, which began on 15 April 2023.