How Bad are those Bad Bets - and How Can You Profit From Them
Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2022 2:01 pm
In this month's newsletter I updated an older article of mine called "How Bad are those Bad Bets. I'm going to reprint it below and open it up for comments. SPECIFICALLY, I'd like to see some conversation about some of those bad (high vig) bets and how DI's can profit from them. Please be specific as regards to bet sizing, press moves, and dice sets you would use in specific situations (e.g. Come Out) to make these scores.
I'll give you an example. Place Bets on the Four and Ten have a house edge of 6.67%. Ordinarily we'd say that's too much of a vig to try to overcome. However, since you can Buy the Four and Ten for as low as $20 you can reduce the commission to 5%. If you Buy it for $25 that reduces the commission to 4%. If you can Buy it for $30 for $1 it reduces the edge to 3.33%. So let's assume you set the Four or Ten as the point and you have a BoneTracker developed dice set that is strong on both the Four and Ten. You take odds on the point and then you Place bet the sister number for $15. On the first hit on that number you're paid $27 for the Place Bet. Buy the number for $25 and get $16 or $17 change, depending on whether they take the commission up front or after the next win. On the next hit Press to the maximum Buy you can get for just a $1 commission. In some casinos you'll be able to press it all the way up to $39 for just a $1 commission - and if they collect that commission AFTER the bet wins it reduces the house edge to the point that it's better than Placing the Six and Eight. THAT is a powerful Advantage Betting Play off of a high vig bet. That's the kind of information I'd like to see you guys come up with and share with us. Now here's that article:
I'll give you an example. Place Bets on the Four and Ten have a house edge of 6.67%. Ordinarily we'd say that's too much of a vig to try to overcome. However, since you can Buy the Four and Ten for as low as $20 you can reduce the commission to 5%. If you Buy it for $25 that reduces the commission to 4%. If you can Buy it for $30 for $1 it reduces the edge to 3.33%. So let's assume you set the Four or Ten as the point and you have a BoneTracker developed dice set that is strong on both the Four and Ten. You take odds on the point and then you Place bet the sister number for $15. On the first hit on that number you're paid $27 for the Place Bet. Buy the number for $25 and get $16 or $17 change, depending on whether they take the commission up front or after the next win. On the next hit Press to the maximum Buy you can get for just a $1 commission. In some casinos you'll be able to press it all the way up to $39 for just a $1 commission - and if they collect that commission AFTER the bet wins it reduces the house edge to the point that it's better than Placing the Six and Eight. THAT is a powerful Advantage Betting Play off of a high vig bet. That's the kind of information I'd like to see you guys come up with and share with us. Now here's that article:
Pease comment below.How Bad ARE Those Bad Bets?
Yeah, I know. I already talked about “Confirmation Bias” when talking about the Full Moon and hospital births in my opening remarks, and said the “math” word and scared the hell of of some of you. Well, welcome back to the classroom. And stop doing that eye-roll thing. We’re going to keep beating you over the head with this until you get it so you may as well read on.
Determining the house’s mathematical edge in a game like craps is fairly easy. I could give you the mathematical formula but some of you would just scratch your . . . uh. . . heads and wonder what it said so I’ll just spell it out. First you determine the amount paid for every positive player outcome. Then you determine the amount won by the casino on every negative player outcome. Simple, right? Next you take the difference in the two and divide it by the total number of possible outcomes. That gives you the house edge expressed as a percentage, also known as the house advantage or the vig. Or you could think of it as the player disadvantage. I’m really not going to beat you over the head with it. I was joking about that. If you want to learn how to do the calculation just Google it. It’s not rocket science and if I can do it you can learn to do it your self - or just look it up on the Wizard of Odds. But I warn you. His answers may confuse you even further.
Now, I want to take you outside the box for a minute and get you to think about a game OTHER than craps. The other game we’ll talk about is blackjack.
Did you know that the math guys can’t really define what the house’s exact edge is at blackjack? Oh, they can tell you what the edge is if a customer plays perfect strategy as long as the rules of the game are clearly defined. But therein lies the problem with blackjack. Few of the players at a blackjack table can actually pull off basic strategy - much less incorporate any of the subtler intricacies involved in adjusting play to the number of decks or the specific rules of a particular game when it comes to splits, double downs, insurance, early surrender, dealer hitting on soft seventeens, etc. Nor does any of these take into consideration a players ability, if any, to count cards, track aces or high cards, take advantage of a sloppy dealer and get an occasional peek at a hole card, or any of the other things 21 players can do to get a small edge.
Depending on the rules of the game and the player’s skill level the house edge on blackjack may range from as little as a zero to as much as eight-and-a-half percent or more. On average, “tourist” players, and by that they mean recreational players who make a little more than one misplay in every ten hands, contribute an estimated 7% more to the game’s bottom line than “informed” players. In a $10 game that means for every ten hands played the tourist who doesn’t know basic strategy loses $7 more than the smart play of knowledgeable gamblers. And that’s in a 3-2 game. Imagine that most tourists sit down to a 6-5 game and play it without a second thought? Hell, I’ve seen players on cruise ships refuse to play double 0 roulette because they’d played on a triple 0 wheel and liked it better. If two zeros is good, three must be better, right? Sigh. Sucks to be stupid.
The casino, of course, has the benefit of years of tracking table drops, hold, and wins. As a result, they can accurately estimate an overall house advantage of around 2% at blackjack. That’s the number they use when forecasting blackjack profits. It’s also the number they use when determining how much they’re willing to give back to the player in the form of comps.
Now let’s go back to the other side of the pit and consider our game - craps. And for the sake of keeping things simple we’ll even toss out any edge you might get through dice influence and just look at the straight-up game. But even without DI in the mix it’s damned difficult to know just what the house edge is. Why? Because most of us don’t limit ourselves to a single bet. Calculating your EV on any one bet on the layout is fairly straight forward. In fact, the work’s already been done for you many times. The Pass Line bet, for example, has a house edge of 1.41%. Free odds added take it even lower. Place bets on the six and eight have a similar house edge of 1.51%. But what’s the house edge if you have a buck each on the hardways, another $10 in the Come plus $1 Any Craps. Suppose the point is 10 and we take $30 odds, the Come travels to the Nine and we take another $40 odds, then place the Six and Eight for $18 each and bet $15 in the Field. Wow. There are some pretty good bets in there - and some pretty bad ones.
Take the famous gaming author that claimed the Doey-Don’t didn’t carry a 2.82% vig because the only way you can lose is one way – one the 12. Well, when he made that statement back around 2005 he proved once again he was innumerate. I mean, let’s face it. Instead of lumping those two bets together made by one person, let’s put a husband and wife side by side. We’ll have him play $10 on the Pass and her play $10 on the DC. Now, the Pass Line bet carries a 1.41% vig and if we do a little creative rounding we can say the Don’t Pass is about the same. So over the long run, EACH of these two players effectively pays about .14 cents in vig every time they make their $10 bets, regardless which one of them wins. So what is different if just ONE person is making these two bets than two separate people – especially if these two people are playing out of a shared bankroll? Zip. Nada. Nothing. BUT, in a sense the famous gaming author was correct. The Doey-Don’t bet didn’t carry a 2.82% vig. But not for the reason stated, but because there is no such thing as a Doey-Don’t bet – just as there is no such thing as a Three-Five bet or a Sixty-Nine bet or a . . . well, you get it.
Now, some people try to calculate the vig on this bet incorrectly and come up with 2.82%, but they do it by lumping the two bets together, which you cannot do. Instead, you have to calculate the vig separately on each bet. I suppose you could add the amount of the two bets together - let’s say you have two $10 bets, for example - and multiply the $20 result times 1.41%. But even that’s not going to be quite right because the vig on the Don’t Pass is slightly less than 1.41%. And even if you DO come up with the same answer - the process is wrong. Which is why your math teacher always told you to “show your work” on those tests.
If you’re going to do the math – at least do it correctly. Then again, even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.
