Games Where You Need To Use Math In Order To Win

When you’re a kid, you never want to do math at school, do you? It just feels like a chore and too much hard work, unless you’re one of those genius kids that is. You might not realise it at the time, but many of the games that you play as a kid with your parents and grandparents, actually rely on math in order to win. There are some stunning, exciting, and fun games that we play as children and into adulthood when we have our own children, that require the use of math to play well, have fun, and to strategise to win! This includes darts, rock paper scissors, Where’s Wally?, and as an adult games we find at the online casino. 

Games where math helps you win

Let’s take a look at a few of the different games that we play as children and then other games that are for adults. What links them all together is the fact that you need math in order to win. 

Darts 

Now, with the recent success of teenage darts prodigy, Luke Littler (he looks a lot older than 17!), at the world championships, darts is on the agenda once again. Out of all the games that are played (there is debate amongst some people as to whether darts is a game played in pubs or if it is a sport) on this list, darts is definitely one that you have to have a good grasp of math in order to be successful. It is fun and exciting to play, but it isn’t the easiest game around, as not only is it required that you can throw a dart to hit the board, you need to use statistics to maximise your efforts, throwing three darts at a time, each player takes it in turns to reach zero from a starting number of 501, and the player must hit a double number to win. 

Hangman 

A word game at first glance, the idea of Hangman is to take turns guessing letters to fill out a word that your competitor has chosen. Every time that you make a wrong guess, another line is drawn to show the hangman. It is a classic road trip game, one with intrigue and danger, but you might be surprised to hear that with some simple math thinking, you can come up with a strategy that could help you succeed and stay alive in the game. When coming up with a word, try not to choose longer words. This might seem like it will make things harder, but by realising there is a higher number of potential vowels in a long word, people are more likely to guess those first and make it easier to work out the whole word from there. Smaller words give you a much better chance to win, and do you know what the best word to use in Hangman is, statistically? Jazz! 

Where’s Wally 

Trying to find the red and white striped jersey and the glasses of Wally within a crowded marketplace, cityscape, library, zoo, or any other of the wealth of weird and wonderful locations was always fun as a child. The Where’s Wally? Books (or Where’s Waldo? In North America) have been childhood favourites for generations. It is thought though, that there are mathematical patterns to finding Wally, and you’ll usually find him hidden within one of two narrow bands across the top or bottom halves of the page. There is a reason for this, in that naturally your eyes will first scan the perimeter of a page before zoning into the centre, leaving these little strips till last. 

Rock, Paper, Scissor 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re deciding which one of you is choosing the takeout tonight, or who gets the front seat of the car, the game of rock, paper, scissors, has been the deciding factor in many decisions over the years. Is there a way to use math to have a better chance of winning though? Math and strategy are important as only the very first throw is pure chance. After that, scissors tend to be played 30% of the time, which means you should always go paper second to give yourself the best chance of success. People subconsciously are more likely to repeat a winning play too, and someone who has lost is likely to go with what beat it last time round so bear that in mind if you’re going for a best of 3.

Online casino 

It is easy to lose money at the casino, and you should never try to play to make huge winnings, as the house does have an edge on you. You can, however, use math and strategy to look at ways to have more fun and maximise your chances of winning. Let’s have a look at roulette as an example, and a game that you find at every casino, online and otherwise. You need to remember that although there are 36 numbers split into two (red and black), there is also another number, the zero, on European roulette wheels, which means you lose your money every time you land there, and this is where the house always wins. This means that there isn’t an even chance of you winning a bet by putting everything on red, instead it is a slightly smaller bet than evens (18/37). You can expect to lose 2.7% of any money you bet in the long-term, paying more the more you play. There are a few roulette systems you can choose to play to maximise your returns, but these can only ever work in a short window of time, as the house will always win eventually in a game of chance like this.

The next time you decide that you want to play some online casino games, whether it is roulette, live blackjack with a human dealer, or the online slots, think about how you can use math to help you come up with strategies and have the best chance of winning. As you can see, there are many games that we play as kids and right through into adulthood that use math. It isn’t like the crusty, boring math that we were used to studying in school, but the principles are the same and help you to find your way to victory if you are careful and plan well. When playing at an online casino, always be sure that you can trust the platform, that your details are safe, and that the brand has an ethos of responsible gambling that looks after its players.