The paw is up, not out.
He is not handing you anything. The cat at Gotokuji beckoned a man out of a storm and got a temple built around it; the storm was going to happen either way.
Gotokuji, Setagaya, Tokyo. The Ii clan legend, early 17th century.
CATABU is the cat of gambling.
Four hundred years ago a lord was riding past a broke little temple in Setagaya when the weather turned. A cat was sitting under the gate with one paw up. He read it as an invitation, walked in, and lightning took the tree he had been standing under.
He never explained why he trusted a cat. He endowed the temple instead, and it is still there. People carry cats back to Gotokuji when something they hoped for comes in, so the shelves now hold thousands of them, each one a bet that paid.
Nobody brings back a cat for the day they stayed under the tree. That is the whole religion, and it is also the whole business.
CATABU sits the same way the first one did. He will not tell you which way to jump, because he does not know either. He puts a paw up and waits to see what you do about it.
PURRR777.
the nine lives
Nine things that are true whether or not you believe him.
He is a cat, so none of this is advice. Every line under a teaching is where you can go and check it.
Nobody counts the ones who got wet.
Over five months a New York hospital treated 132 cats that had fallen out of windows and 90 percent of them lived. The cats who did not live were never carried in, so they are not in the number, and neither is anybody who went quiet after a bad night.
Whitney and Mehlhaff, high-rise syndrome in cats, JAVMA 191(11), 1987.
One extra pocket.
A European roulette wheel keeps 2.70 percent of everything that crosses it. The American wheel adds a second zero and keeps 5.26. Same felt, same night, nearly twice the price, and most people at the table could not tell you which one they are sitting at.
36 numbers plus one zero against 36 plus two.
The reel is not the machine.
In 1984 Inge Telnaes was granted a patent for putting a weighted list of virtual stops in front of a physical reel. Twenty two visible positions could now hide odds of one in millions. Every slot floor you have walked past runs on those three pages.
US patent 4,448,419, granted 15 May 1984, assigned to Bally.
Almost is a product.
A near miss is rated as less pleasant than a plain loss and it makes people keep playing, and it lights the same circuitry a real win does. The blank above the jackpot symbol is weighted on purpose.
Clark, Lawrence, Astley-Jones and Gray, Neuron 61(3), 12 February 2009.
A win can cost you money.
Stake five, get two back, and the machine still plays the fanfare. The name for it is a loss disguised as a win, and people rate those spins as wins when you ask them afterwards.
Dixon, Harrigan, Sandhu, Collins and Fugelsang, Addiction 105(10), 2010.
The coin has no memory. You do.
On 18 August 1913 black came up 26 times running at Monte Carlo. The house took a fortune off people who were sure red was owed. Nothing was owed. Nothing ever is.
Monte Carlo Casino, 18 August 1913.
He lands the same way up every time.
Marey photographed a falling cat at twelve frames a second and proved it starts the drop with no spin at all and turns anyway. It is the only wager on this page with no variance in it, and the cat is not the one who placed it.
Etienne-Jules Marey, Comptes Rendus, 1894.
The house does not have to cheat.
Nevada will not license a machine that pays back less than 75 percent of what goes in. That is the floor, not the target, and a floor is enough. The room opens again tomorrow and you do not have to.
Nevada Gaming Commission Regulation 14.040.