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00:0011 feet, 11 feet, it's no secret that carnivals exist to make money and to do
00:12that most effectively they employ a bunch of little tricks to make you
00:16overestimate your chances of winning in some cases to such an extent that it's
00:20basically a scam. So I spent a couple days coming down to this amusement park
00:24and observing and collecting data on all of the carnival games. So today I'm going
00:28to tell you which games are the biggest rip-offs and the scientific reasons of
00:31why. I even Nancy-Jude how much the carnival actually pays for the prizes
00:35that people can win. But there is hope because I'll also show you some legitimate
00:39tricks on how to win the most popular games, along with what happens when you
00:42show up to the carnival with your professional baseball playing buddy who
00:45happens to play for the New York Mets.
00:52Let's get started.
00:58Any kind of legitimate investigation needs to start with solid data as the
01:09foundation. So with the promise of unlimited churros, I had some friends
01:13secretly help me collect data on all 24 carnival games for a full day. Not only
01:17did we capture how many times each game was played, but we also recorded how many
01:21times people actually won each game and the prize they won. And so the first
01:25observation, based on the data we collected, is that this relatively small
01:28park collects $20,000 a day off their carnival games alone. So to help frame the
01:34rest of the observations, we'll divide the games into three groups. The first
01:37group, you've got the random chance games. Games like these where no skill is
01:41involved and you're basically just rolling dice. And for the second group you
01:45have your skill-based games like the basketball shot or the milk bottle throw or
01:48the basket toss game, where if you bring some kind of skill or strategy to the
01:52table, you can increase your chances of winning. And the final category are the
01:55games that are pretty much impossible. These ones are borderline scams. There
02:00are three games in this category that lots of people attempted and nobody won. And
02:03if they did win, like in the case of the ladder climb, it was for a very specific
02:07reason, which I will address later.
02:10So let's start by talking about the random chance games. Calculating your chance of
02:13winning here is pretty straightforward. You just divide the winning outcomes by the
02:17total outcomes and you get a percentage. So in this case, there are about 1600 total
02:21cups and 160 winning cups. So that's a 10% chance or 1 in 10 throws will win. There
02:28are a ton of games similar to this, but the catch is they always use balls that are
02:32lightweight and have a high coefficient of restitution, meaning they bounce really
02:35well off things. This makes it much less likely the ball will end up where you
02:39originally aimed it. To illustrate this point, think how much easier this game
02:43would be with beanbags, which are heavier and don't bounce. With a ping pong ball,
02:47however, any imperfection in the aim of your original throw is magnified, which
02:51essentially randomizes things. If you have no skills, these are the games that you
02:55want to play, but don't get too excited because even when you win, you lose. After
03:00some investigative work, I uncovered the source where they ordered their prizes
03:03from, and so even if you got lucky and won on your first throw, it would cost you $1.50 for a
03:08prize that cost them $0.45. But you usually don't get it on your first try, so treating
03:14this as an expected value problem in statistics, it would take you an average of five times
03:18to land it in a yellow cup, which means you pay $7.50 for something that cost them $0.45.
03:24In the case of the big prize, by landing it in the super rare gold cup, it's even worse.
03:29It would take you an average of 25 tries, which works out to $38 for something that cost
03:34them $6. And I'll add, the number of people we observed winning matched up pretty well
03:38with these statistical predictions. Now let's talk about the second group, which
03:41are the skill-based games. And one of the most popular in this category is the basketball
03:45toss, with 825 plays the day that we observed. Now a standard three-pointer is 24 feet back
03:51on a rim that is 10 feet off the ground. But in this case, the line is 28 feet back on a
03:56rim that is 11 feet off the ground. Which is subtle, but if you have a deadly three-pointer
04:01locked into your muscle memory, you will tend to miss short, which is exactly what we saw
04:05a bunch. The reason they have the big sloped tarp in front is so that someone can't stand
04:09directly underneath the rim, where the height difference would be much more apparent. And
04:12here again, even if you go Steph Curry and drain your first $3 shot, you still lose, because
04:17they only paid 80 cents for that basketball.
04:19Here's another example of getting you to overestimate your chances of winning by making subtle changes,
04:24because the table is slanted up slightly, which will reduce the horizontal velocity of the
04:28ball after the bounce. So even if you dominated this game all through college, your previous experience
04:33almost becomes a handicap. This measure your pitch speed game is borderline fraudulent,
04:38as their raider gun registers about 15 miles an hour too slow. I know this because I measured
04:42the distance and then recorded in high speed and counted the frames. This pitch was clocked
04:46at 69 miles per hour, but it's much closer to 84. For the milk bottle game, the only catch
04:51here is the bottles are metal and therefore heavier and more stable and harder to knock down
04:55than a typical bottle of that size. I've seen some carnivals though, where these are bottom weighted,
04:59which would make them more steady and thus less likely to tip. To figure out which kind
05:03you have, you can ask to hold it, and the point at which it balances on your finger is the center
05:07of mass. The key to winning this game is hitting them right here with a hard enough throw to
05:12introduce sufficient kinetic energy. But don't throw it too hard, because we notice those who
05:16threw their hardest usually sacrificed on accuracy. About 1 in 14 people knocked this over on their
05:21first try. And then finally we have the basket toss game, and the key here is to have your first bounce
05:26hit on this front lip to reduce the kinetic energy enough that it won't bounce back out. About 1 in 10 throws
05:31will win on this game, according to our observations. And now this brings us to the final category
05:35of the near impossible games, and there are three of them. On this first one, the goal is to shoot
05:40out this red star completely with this automatic BB gun. So the best strategy is to basically shoot
05:45a circle around the star to cut it out. Not only are the guns not accurate or precise, but the bigger
05:51issue is that you start out doing really well because there's enough surrounding paper for the BB
05:55to easily rip through like this. But Newton's third law tells us that you can only push on something
05:59as hard as it can resist your push. So at the end you have these barely supported pieces of the star
06:05that just move out of the way when the BB comes without building up enough stress to rip the paper.
06:10Out of 120 plays, we saw nobody win this game all day. This ring bottle game is also impossibly
06:16difficult. Again, it's a lightweight object that's really bouncy to encourage randomness,
06:21but the actual inner diameter of the ring is really close to the outer diameter of the bottle.
06:26This means that any throw besides this pretty much perfect one will send the ring bouncing away
06:30without settling in on the bottle. If you really want this bear, I suggest going on Amazon and getting
06:36it for $47. I literally can't tell you how much money this will save you because of the 840 rings we
06:41saw thrown, none stayed on a bottle. Which brings up sort of an obvious rule of thumb. If you want the
06:46feeling of winning a game, do not stop at any booth that offers really big prizes. And for the final
06:52near impossible game, let me reiterate that as a carnival owner, the most lucrative games are
06:56those which the customers overestimate their chances of success. No game is a better example
07:01of that than the ladder climb. There's a subtle issue with this game that I think people realize,
07:05but don't internalize the significance. The ladder converges to be supported on the wall at one point
07:10instead of two. If it was attached at two points, it's like crawling across a rope bridge, which is
07:16pretty easy. Let's pretend this is you, and if you shrunk all the weight of your body down to the average
07:20location, we call that spot the center of mass, which will mark with this dot. And once again,
07:26we can double check this is the right spot because it balances perfectly on one finger. If you draw
07:31imaginary lines connecting the different support points, that creates an area, and as long as your
07:36center of mass dot is within that area, it's impossible to fall off. But as soon as your center
07:41of mass dot is even a little bit outside of the area of supports, you start to rotate and fall off.
07:46And this is true no matter which way you orient it. If you've ever bent over to pick something up,
07:50you actually know this fact whether you realize it or not. In this case, the region of support is
07:54between the back of your heels and the tips of your toes. When you reach over, you will naturally
07:58move your butt back to keep your center of mass in between those support points. If you don't believe
08:03me, try picking something up while standing against the wall so you can't move your butt back. At the
08:07very moment your center of mass gets beyond your toes, you start to tip over. In the case of the
08:12ladder game, you're only connected at one point, so even though it looks wide because the ladder rungs,
08:17that area of support reduces down to a line. So if you don't keep your center of mass directly
08:21above that line, you will start to rotate and fall off. In other words, to win this game,
08:26you basically need to be able to crawl across a tightrope. And you might think, well I can do a
08:30slack line, so I can do this. But a slack line is actually much easier for two reasons. You can flail
08:35your arms and legs out to adjust your center of mass to keep it directly above that line of support.
08:40And your center of mass is higher, increasing your mass moment of inertia, making you more stable. In the same way,
08:45it's easier to balance this umbrella when it's extended versus when it's collapsed.
08:50So while there are a few videos that say tricks like maintain three points of contact, they're
08:54all basically useless. Because keeping your center of mass directly above a line is just something
08:59you have to get a feel for that takes a lot of practice. But once you've had enough practice,
09:03this is the one game at the carnival that's basically all skill. So you can win every time
09:08and clean them out. Unfortunately, the carnival owners know this, which is why it's also the only game
09:12with this super lame caveat. So now that we were carnival experts, I called up my buddy Matt
09:17Winneker, who was recently just drafted to play baseball for the New York Mets to maximize our
09:21chances of winning any skill game that had to do with throwing.
09:44So clearly Matt had a deadly lock on any throwing game, but basketball is more my game. So to finish off
09:50the day, I decided I would bring his ego back into check. But as it turns out, if you are a world
09:55class athlete in one sport, you are a really, really good athlete in all sports. So in conclusion,
10:00you should play the games if you think they're fun. Just know the odds are heavily stacked against you,
10:05so if you lose, it's NBD. Unlike this guy who lost his entire life savings playing carnival games.
10:10And if your motivation is to gain the love and admiration of someone special via a stuffed animal like
10:15this, you don't need carnival games to do that. Amazon works totally just as well.
10:19I just bought this for you, my lady.
10:25Bye.
10:45Bye.
10:57Bye.
10:59Bye.
11:01Bye.
11:03Bye.
11:05Bye.
11:07Bye.
11:09Bye.
11:11Bye.
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