Here’s How Carnival Games Work to Fool You.
If you’ve ever tried to win this super-large plush animal for your sweetheart by throwing a ring and ended up embarrassing yourself, you may have long suspected that carnival games were rigged. It won’t win you any prizes, but this video explains exactly how you will be skating.
Marc Robert is a YouTuber with a background in mechanical engineering who makes videos about practical construction. He spent time at an amusement park collecting data to explain all the ways games are built to make your chances of winning as distant as possible. According to Robert’s findings, some games are much more difficult to win than others, and he even offers some tricks to slightly improve your chances of winning.
Robert divides games into three categories: gambling (like throwing a ball into one of hundreds of cups), skill games (like throwing three pointers at basketball hoops), and games that are undoubtedly outright fraudulent (like climbing stairs) … But the line between the first two categories and the third is thin; take a basketball throw, for example.
Typically a three-point shot is fired from 24 feet and 10 feet. At the carnival he attended, their edge was set at 11 feet and the players stood 28 feet apart. A small adjustment, of course, makes the task a little more difficult, but in fact it interferes with your muscle memory. Even if you are good at three-point throws, your body can handle them well in a different set-up, and you are much more likely to miss without visually knowing why.
But even gambling can be broken down into numbers like a toss of a cup. Robert notes that there are 1,600 cups, but only 160 of them are “winning”, which gives you a one in ten chance of anything. Most games with this percentage also use very light balls, making them bounce and usually not hit where you aim them.
But don’t let Robert or anyone else talk you out of going to the carnival to eat cotton candy and get sunburned, because this is by far one of the funniest (and least effective) ways to be tricked. You can also always do what he does and bring in a professional baseball player to crush your chances. Enjoy this soft toy!