Back to Baccarat

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           My column a few weeks ago about commission-free Baccarat and commission-free Pai Gow Poker prompted a reader to send me an e-mail asking for advice on how to improve his play at Baccarat.  The simple reality is that I could not provide him with any advice.  Baccarat has no strategy.  Sometimes when I say that, it means that there is sort of no strategy.  For example, in Casino War, the only choice the Player can make is whether to go to war when the Player and Dealer card tie.  Mathematically, the Player should always go to war, so in essence there is no strategy.  The Player IS given a choice of what to do, but the choice is always the same, so is there really any strategy?  I'll leave that to the philosophers and people who wonder about trees falling in the forest.

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The Commish

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The Commish

          Despite being around casinos since I was about 14 years old, I have to admit that it was only the past decade or so that I learned anything about Pai Gow Poker and Baccarat.  All I knew about Baccarat was that James Bond seemed to like to play it and apparently you play it for a lot of money.  With 007 playing it, I always assumed it was a game a lot like blackjack which relied on a good deal of strategy and potentially card counting, which would be why the suave super spy loved it so much.  Little did I know that it is a game of essentially no strategy, albeit there are some similarities to blackjack.

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Blackjack Sidebet Primer

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           What is the allure of sidebets?  I'm not sure if there any blackjack tables that exist without at least one sidebet.  It is almost hard to remember the days when you say down to play blackjack and there is was only one circle on the table.  There's the ago old question about which came first the chicken or the egg.  I wonder the same thing about sidebets.  Was it casinos that wanted them to increase their profits or was it Players who wanted them to increase their chances to win big even on relatively low volatility games like blackjack. 

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Stop the Presses

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         I'm going to skip over what was supposed to be my topic for this week (continuation of Free Bet Blackjack), because there is another compelling and timely topic that simply requires, well, debunking.  For those of you who are sports fans, there is little doubt that you heard that the Cleveland Cavaliers won the top pick in the NBA draft - AGAIN.  This time, despite relatively long odds (1.7%) of doing so.  This has led a large number of people to declare that the NBA Draft Lottery is rigged so that a particular team wins the lottery for some nefarious purpose that serves the NBA.  The media's desire to be as sensationalist as possible has led to some very shoddy math work in an attempt to keep the discussion going.  Ironically, earlier in the day on Tuesday (the day of the draft), I read a parody column that declared the draft rigged BEFORE the draft even took place and showed how that no matter which team won, why people would say that it was rigged.

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New Sheriff in Town

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New Sheriff in Town

             There may be a new sheriff in town.  No, I'm not talking about the upcoming primary elections here in Las Vegas.  I'm talking about a game called Free Bet Blackjack.  Free Bet Blackjack is owned by Bally Technologies and invented by Geoff Hall, who also gave us Blackjack Switch.  Geoff's key patent covers the concept of the Dealer pushing on a 22.  This means that any Player hands that have not busted (and were not a Natural Blackjack) will PUSH if the Dealer busts with a final count of 22. 

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Graduation Day

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            Last week, I alluded to the notion that Players play Ultimate Texas Hold'em more timidly than they should.  While a portion of this is probably based in the relatively complex strategy of the game, I believe the larger portion is in the decision itself.  It takes nerves of steel to put down 4 times your initial Ante wager.  Give me a High Pair or a suited A-J and I'm willing to risk it.  But what about offsuit A-8 or suited K-10.  How good are these hands?  Even if the strategy says to Play 4x, UTH allows the Player to wait for more information and then either Play 2x or wait longer.  So, why rush my decision?

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Bet Early and Often

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Last week I discussed the importance of net win vs. expected value when looking at wagers of different sizes.  The term expected value was originally used mostly to describe video poker hands.  Since the wager size is the same from hand to hand and the payouts are all essentially odds based - meaning they pay a certain amount for each unit wagered as opposed to a fixed dollar amount, using the expected value works fine.  But, in a game like blackjack where the Player has the option to double down, we need to look at net win (or loss) and not expected value.  We lower our win frequency (which lowers the expected value) when we double down, but we still do so because in the end we win more money, which is the real goal.

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Apples to Apples

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           What I'm about to write might sound like blasphemy to those of you who have been reading my column for years.  But, here goes - it is NOT all about expected value.  There I said it.  But an explanation has to go with it.  No, I'm not talking about the importance of liking a game you are playing, which can also override the payback to a certain extent.  In this case, I am not talking about any emotional issues, but a purely mathematical one.  Let me explain.

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When To Walk Away

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When To Walk Away

Another week, another inspiration thanks to a Facebook post.  This one comes from a friend who posted up a blog entry a friend of his had written.  The topic of the blog is unimportant.  It dealt with world events and the importance of knowing when to walk away.  A phrase such as this one is undoubtedly going to draw comparisons to gambling.   More important than knowing when to hit a 17 or when to bet on red is knowing when to walk away is roughly what was written.  I read it about a dozen times and finally could only utter "HUH?"

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Blinded by Science

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Blinded by Science

   Facebook is usually a great place for me to get ideas for columns.  Within any given week, the odds are someone has posted something absurd enough for me to use as a segue into a topic.  This week, I had at least two of them.  As they were loosely related, I'll use them as my lead in.  One was about a study done about homeopathic medicines.  Supposedly 68 different 'common' ones were studied and they did nothing significant to help the condition.  The other was about the anti-vaccine movement that links vaccines to autism.  This is not a political column, so I'm making no statement about either of these two issues (although I am willing to go on record as saying both of my kids had their vaccines).  What I noticed in common for these topics was the number of people who simply dismissed the science behind the facts.  Someone had a bad experience with a prescription but a good one with some homeopathic remedy so this becomes 'proof'.

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Different Strokes

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Different Strokes

           Over the years, I've worked with a lot of inventors and seen a lot of games.  Most of the games never made it into a casino at all.  While casinos are more receptive to new games today than they were years ago, the odds of getting your game into a casino are pretty long.  The odds of the game being successful are even longer.  If you look at the games that are in the casino, most of them are poker based and nearly all the rest are blackjack variants.  Once in a while, I'll get an inventor who will try and convince me how desperately the casino needs a game based on neither of those - whether it be dominoes, backgammon, 3 dice or a 14-sided die.

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Fight Math With Math

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Fight Math With Math

           Have you ever been dealt a hand that contains 3 of one suit and 2 of another and wondered why you don't get paid for this type of 'Full house'?  Imagine if video poker paid for this type of hand.  It is hard to say the exact probability of getting this type of hand after a draw.  I know that a little over 10% of hands are dealt this way, but a fair number of them are other winning hands or near winners.  If you had 3 diamonds to a Royal and 2 clubs would you go for the Royal or would you just take your suit Full House and be content.  You can't answer this until you know how much this hand pays.  If I said it paid 1, you might go for the Royal.  If I said it pays 4, you'd probably keep the suit Full House.

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The Straight and Narrow

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The Straight and Narrow

            When my father passed away in 1998, he was just about ready to place an order for the 2nd printing of the 2nd edition of his book Winning Strategies for Video Poker.  It was with a little bit of trepidation that we went ahead and ordered the full 2000 copies.  I'm not sure how many copies were sold in total before he passed away, but based on what records I can find plus the fact that the full 2000 sold out and I have had it reprinted yet again, I'd say it is fair to say that somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 copies were sold, which is absolutely remarkable for a self-published book from what I'm told.

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Leader of the Band

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Leader of the Band

   Just how important is it for Players to play the correct strategy in the casino?  Most of my columns look at this aspect from only the Player's perspective.  I put it in terms of a loss rate per hour to the Player.  I turn this into an overall impact to the Player's bankroll over a weeklong trip to Vegas.  Today, I want to look at strategy at a very different level.  I'm going to look at how it has changed the landscape of gambling in the world.

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Field Trip

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            Last week, I discussed the importance of knowing which games to play.  Casino game paybacks vary from about 80% all the way up to 100% (and sometimes even more).  If you spend your time playing the 80-95% games, you're going to find it hard to win even in the short run.  The cost of playing in a casino is going to be far greater than if you try and find those 97% and up games.  To this end, when talking video poker, you are looking for full-pay machines.  These are the ones that are commonly found and generally have the highest possible payback for that particular type of machine. 

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Seek Out Full-Pay Machines

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One of the key principles of Expert Strategy is to know which games to play.  For the most part, this means play the games with the highest paybacks possible.  If this is all that mattered, there would be a very long line waiting to play whatever game has the highest payback.  So, I say 'for the most part', because I recognize that if I'm going to argue that casino gaming is a form of entertainment, then the game you choose to play has to be fun for you.  This is a subjective decision.  You may hate playing video poker, or you may hate sitting around a table playing blackjack having people analyze all of your plays.

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Brushing Up

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 Last week's column touched on the notion of gambling without even so much as the basic knowledge of what the Player is wagering on.  I used a real life example of a Super Bowl bettor who didn't understand the concepts of point spreads and/or wagering 11 to win 10, which is fairly standard for sports betting.  I couldn't understand how someone could make a wager without understanding what they are wagering on and how it works. 

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What's a Point Spread?

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What's a Point Spread?

 Last month night, I went over to the Red Rock to place my bets on the Super Bowl.  Apparently me and everybody else in Las Vegas.  I figured I would beat the rush by going in on Saturday night.  I was wrong.  The sportsbook was about as crowded as I had ever seen it (admittedly, I don't watch the game from a sportsbook!).  I think I had read that over $100 million dollars was wagered on the game here in town.  I think I discovered the secret to why so much is wagered.  Apparently, no matter what, you have to put some money down on the game.

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An Oldie but a Goodie

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An Oldie but a Goodie

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Mississippi Stud, which is a relatively new game that has been growing quickly in popularity.  Mississippi Stud was based on one of the granddaddy games - Let It Ride.  I have frequently referred to Mississippi Stud as Let It Ride on Speed.  The critical difference between the two games is that in Let It Ride, one wager is mandatory and the other two are optional.  Your choice is to let it ride or to pull it back.  In Mississippi Stud, your choice is to make a wager or to Fold.  The math - and thus the strategy - is vastly different for these two scenarios.

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