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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (537962)	12/21/2009 7:03:12 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576762

>>>> So, if I understand you correctly, craps has better odds than blackjack with 6/8 decks? But certain video poker games are even better? I'm not a craps player, but most bets in craps are lousy. The best bet is the pass line with odds. Some casinos offer 100x odds, which can reduce the house edge to 0.021% -- but requiring a big bet. Don't pass with odds can get it down to 0.014%. Most of the bets, like hard ways, have huge house edges. Certain video poker games actually have positive returns if you play them with perfection. But there is a "correct" strategy for each variation, which can be complicated. Also, some casinos offer "cash back" on video poker play that can increase the return by 0.25% or even 0.50% (now rare). Video poker edges are established by the "paytables" presented on the screen and are easily determined by just looking at them. But most casinos set the paytables to provide them with an edge. Where you find the positive expectation VP games is in locals casinos -- in vegas, places like the Golden Nugget and Gold Coast. Strip casinos have a lot of infrastructure to pay for and you don't find positive expectation games on the strip (and in fact, the worst games in vegas are there). 21 games vary widely depending on attributes like whether you are allowed to double down after a split, 6/5 versus 3/2, whether you can "resplit" aces, etc. But you can find games that have a very small house edge with perfect play, even at low stakes. With craps to get these tiny house edges you have to be prepared to bet a lot of dough. Counting cards is really the one way to consistently beat a casino for serious money. And casinos can defeat card counters in a number of ways. The shoe games can be made unbeatable placing the cut card such that, for example, in a 6-deck shoe only 3 decks are dealt -- you can't beat that game. If they put the cut card in so that five decks are dealt, you can kill on it -- but you have to be able to raise your bet from, say, one unit to 10 units -- and when they spot that kind of radical variation they'll usually put the brakes on it if there is significant money at stake (they don't care about red or green chips, but if you playing $100 chips they watch them carefully).