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In reality, more than 98% of a player's throws will give a total somewhere in the 20-to-36 range.įurther to this, around 10% of throws will total to 29, and although this is presented as penalty for both sides ("Player and Operator must Double on Number 29") it merely accelerates the rate at which the player hands over their money: if the operator knows they can never lose, doubling the size of the prize makes no difference to them.Įven if the game were run honestly, the mathematical nature of the razzle board makes it extremely unlikely that a player would ever win before running out of money, or that the value of the prizes won would ever equal the amount of money spent chasing them. Visually this would mean that more than half of the squares on the chart showed a payout (with 22 winning squares and only 16 losing ones), and a player might instinctively conclude that more than half of their throws will pay out. Ī chart might list numbers from 8 through to 48, where a result in a middle range of 20 through 36 is shown as scoring the player nothing, while results 8 through 19 and 37 through 48 all pay out. Graph of the likelihoods of particular throws in a game of Razzle, where throws below 20 and above 36 (in red) score points, while all others (in grey) are much more likely, and score nothing. The scattered order of the chart obscures the fact that the point-scoring squares are exclusively among the higher and lower throws. The points-per-number chart is the secret. After complaints from the American embassy about tourists losing money in the clubs of Havana, President Fulgencio Batista ordered the game to be shut down. Jay Mallin records the game being played with eight dice instead of marbles and holes, in Cuban nightclubs and casinos in the 1950s. Whenever the player throws a total of 29, the game is "doubled": the player must pay twice as much for all future rolls, but will receive an extra prize at the end of the game. In most Razzle set-ups, the player must bet one unit of currency (dollar, pound, Euro) per roll. Significant prizes can be on offer, valued in the hundreds of dollars, but they can be won only when a player has reached a particular point or yard total. In football themed versions of the game, points scored are "yards". Around half of the squares on the chart show a point bonus, while the other half are empty and score nothing. A player makes a bet by spilling eight marbles onto the board from a cup, and the numbers of the holes they land in are added together and referenced on a chart that looks something like a calendar, telling the player how many points they have won for that roll. Razzle consists of a large playing board with over a hundred holes numbered 1 through 6.