Gambling and Hexbugs

Everett (very excitedly) received a hexbug set for Christmas.  He and the kids had a lot of fun with them, except Charlie who at best was tenuously intrigued, as the vibrating function weirded him out.  We had a lot of fun turning them on and placing one in Charlie's hand just to watch revulsion fill his face.

The hexbugs came with a tunnel set.  One night all of the kids were grumpy, I was grumpy, and Joel was probably grumpy but as his grumpiness is always pretty light, he was the least-noticeable.  I decided we all badly needed a distraction.

Cue hexbugs.

Interestingly enough, there is room enough in the tunnels for two hexbugs to pass by each other.  This gave way to our Big Family Gambling Night in which we wagered on a hexbug, set it loose through the tunnel against an opponent, and collected our winnings or agonized over our losses. 

The currency was candy hearts and the excitement was palatable.  To make things easy, we set a basic 2:1 odds for all races.  The kids each started with 10 candy hearts.  They could choose to bet all ten on one race (Everett's main strategy) or a conservative few (Ashley and William's preference).  If their hexbug finished first, they got back double what they wagered.

I thought the kids would lose.  They rarely did.  Everett turned his ten candy hearts into eighty in a short period of time.  Ashley and William were satisfied with their thirty or forty hearts.  The kids knew exactly how many hearts they were due after a win and vigilantly checked over the amounts Joel gave them.

Gambling: the best way to teach kids to do quick and accurate math?

After some time, Everett was only one win away from getting 100 candy hearts--to him, a magical win.  He bet ten more hexbugs.  

He lost.

He bet twenty more; he lost again.  Over and over this happened until Everett had lost half his winnings in just a few rounds. The pressure and subsequent disappointment was too much for him and he left the room in tears.  The sweet victory he'd imagined was permanently bittered.  It took him a few minutes to compose himself enough to rejoin the family and to grumble, "Yeah, well, they're my hexbugs, anyway."

Ashley and William, though excited throughout the event, took their losses with a shrug.  They each had a favorite bug, "I've got my eye on that one," Ashley would glow, "He's a speedy little guy."

And who do you think lost everything?  That's right: Joel.  Our riskiest gambler lost it all.

(I need to be careful what I say here because I lost it all a few rounds later.)

James was just along for the ride but happily shared everyone's enthusiasm.  We had to ply him with suckers so he wouldn't sneak everyone's winnings.

I recorded a few seconds of a race to preserve the excitement and noise for posterity.  Sometimes I feel like our house is always this loud.


DSC 0209 from Elise Johnson on Vimeo.

The kids are chanting "Gray, gray, gray," the color of the hexbug they hope will win.  I don't know how they had such a knack for choosing the winner, but they were almost never wrong.

This was a noisy evening but it is definitely something we will repeat.