My friends and I just went for our first trip to the casino and we were a little intimidated by table games (namely Roulette, Baccarat(sp?), Craps, and Pai Gow.) So I was wondering if any Dopers would have sites that explain the games in simple plain english and might have some simple strategys (I know, theres no guarentee to win).
Thanks in advance.
(P.S. I won $100 on the slots 
)
d12: I find this site by “The Wizard of Odds” to be a pretty good explanation of how table games work. The guy who runs the site is sharp at telling you which games are rip-offs and which actually have decent odds. Enjoy!
Darwin Ortiz has a very good book or two on it. One small mistake when describing the odds at craps, otherwise excellent.
Casinos often run table game instruction sessions for customers. I doubt they’re dishonest at all in what they teach, because no matter what you do at the table you’re giving them money. You might want to look into those.
Of course the now somewhat-dated Scarne’s Complete Guide to Gambling is a fine addition to anyone’s library.
In Roulette, for example, every single bet (except one) that you can make on the table will pay off at the same overall return. So, there is no real strategy that works any better or worse than any other. You could just drop chips from your hand onto the board and do exactly as well as people who study the game and try to use strategy.
As for Craps and Baccarat, the only control you have is where you place your bets. As long as you stay away from the really poor bets, it really doesn’t matter what you bet on, the house gets the same edge.
In Pai-Gow, you have some control over the cards. If you are unsure what to do, you can turn the cards face up and tell the dealer to arrange them as the house would.
So, if you are just a little bit cautious with your play, you can’t go too far wrong.
I mean, the house doesn’t really want to rip you off. Since they know they get constant percent of any bet you make at any table, they would rather have you be happy with your gambling experience than pissed off.
The casinos have no need to cheat; their edge is built into the rules of the games.
The casino I was at/plan to be doesn’t have lessons (none that I know of). Its the Casino De Hull (Casino De Lac Leamy)
I’ll second the recommendation of any book by Ortiz. Dopers will enjoy GAMBLING SCAMS too.
I would highly suggest Pai Gow as an introductory table game. The vast majority of time, all you have to do is keep your highest card in the big hand and the next two highest in the little, or keep your pair in the big hand and your two highest cards in the little, or keep your big pair in the big and little pair in the little.
If you get confused by better hands, you can always ask the dealer “How would the house play this”. 99 times out a 100, that’s also the right way for you to play the hand.
You also get good odds, as long as you stay away from the side bets. Only blackjack offers better odds, and that’s only when you know what you’re doing.
A simple web search on “pai gow house way” or some such should give you some basic holding strategy if you wish to learn a bit before you go.
About the only daunting thing about it is that you usually have to bet something like $20/hand minimum. But you don’t really lose all that often (on average) and you don’t play all that many hands an hour (as compared to blackjack), so in terms of money lost/hour, it’s a very good game.
-lv
Be careful with table games - a lot of them have some real sucker bets sprinkled in with the good bets Stay away from them.
Here’s a quick guide which should give you all you need to have some fun:
Barracat - This game is essentially a coin flip. There is NO strategy involved. Ignore the people you’ll see at the table with little pads of paper marking down patterns - they don’t know what they are doing. Best odds: Just keep betting bank, and hope bank wins more than 50% of the time that you play. The odds are just a hair over 1% for the house.
Craps: Bet the pass line, and take odds. Ignore all the field bets, hardways bets, etc. They’re for the suckers, and the house makes 10X off of them what they get from the passline. If you take 4x odds, you can get the house percentage down below 1%.
Roulette: Only play if it’s a single-zero game, and even then the house edge is over 2%. If the wheel has a 0 and 00 spot (and most North American wheels do), the house is going to take 5.26% of each bet. There is no strategy you can employ that will change this in any way. So bet your hunches, but better yet don’t bet at all.
Stay away from the Money Wheel, Big six, Carribean Poker, and all the other minor and side games. They typically have horrendous odds.
Do not play slots under any circumstances. There’s no faster way to lose your money in Vegas.
The best game in the house is Blackjack, which you can even gain an advantage in, but you’ll have to learn the strategy and a simple count system to do it. If you’re looking for a casual, no brain required fun time, stick to Baccarat and maybe craps. Craps plays faster, so it costs you more per hour.
So, go to the casino, walk up to a mini baccaract table. You’ll see a circle marked “player”, and one marked “bank”. Put your bet on one of those circles, and hope you win. You’re making about the smartest bet available in the casino for a casual player.
Anecdote: While staying at the Luxor one night in Vegas, I was chatting with the receptionist about how much money the slot machines took in. She confided, matter-of-factly, that the yearly take from the nickel slots alone was enough to pay all the bills for the hotel, from electricity to food to employee salaries.
Makes me :eek: to think of the money (profit!) they were getting from the other games…
Actually, don’t pass has slightly better odds than pass. People at the table tend to glare at you for some stupid superstitous reason though.
Taking odds does decrease the house percentage. However, if you have a relatively small bankroll, a few bad rolls can wipe you out very quickly, since your are quintupling your bet (in the above example).
Not true. Craps has many different bets, and even the ones that are not sucker bets have different odds.
Pass
Don’t Pass
Pass, taking odds behind the line
Don’t Pass, taking odds behind the line
Field bet
Taking the 6 or 8 point
Come/Don’t Come (same edge as pass/don’t pass)
Come/Don’t Come with odds (same as pass/don’t pass with odds)
…is my personal list of reasonable odds bets, and they all have different edges for the house.
Great site but I still don’t understand that the heck odds are. I’ve tried to find craps games and Hoyle Casino (I’ve got a copy around here somewhere) but to no avail. I’m just lost on the full odds, 2x odds, etc
> the yearly take from the nickel slots alone was enough to pay all the bills for the hotel
> Makes me to think of the money (profit!) they were getting from the other games…
The “other games” in the house, like craps, blackjack and so on, are only in the casino to provide gamblers with variety. Casinos would be perfectly happy with all slot machines (and many of them do just that). The table games are there to keep the husbands busy while the wives feed the slot machines (I’m using gender to represent the majority of gamblers, not all of them).
Between the lost floor space (that could have more slot machines) and dealer salaries, the casinos simply hope for only a moderate profit.
The “odds” mentioned here are the increases in your bet. A $10 pass line bet will pay $10 if the shooter hits his number. It always pays even money. However, you can place money behind the pass line (closer to you) and that bet will pay out at better than even money depending on the value of the point (shooters intended number)
So by making a $10 pass line bet and backing it up with $40 (4X odds that Sam mentioned) you have ventured $50 total, but you will win more than $50 if the shooter hits his point. How much more depends on if the point was a 6-8 (lowest payout since they are the numbers most probable to hit besides 7, but still better than even money) 5-9 (next highest payback, next hardest combo to hit) or 4-10 (hardest to hit, pays out the best).
I think this might be what is confusing you.
The 6 and 8 have the best odds of being hit, but that is not the “odds” that crap shooters talk about. On each table is a plaque that will say something like “5X Odds” or “10X Odds”. This means that you could make a $10 pass line bet and back it up with $50 or $100 respectively.
And the odds bets are also applied to the bets you have on the points. If you have $10 on the 4, for example, you can get the 5X or 10X odds (or whatever the odds are on that table) on that bet as well. It is not confined to the pass line.
It makes no sense to have a bet without getting odds IMHO. Without odds, you will never win better than even money. With odds you can win more than even money, and that is one of the few advantages you have.
> Not true. Craps has many different bets, and even the ones
> that are not sucker bets have different odds.
True, but I did say to find out what the bad bets were and stay away from them.
As long as you restrict your gambling to the “good” bets, the edge is pretty darn close to the same.
Think of it this way for the site I linked to: A “house edge” of 2% means that, for every $100 you stake on a game, you will get a return, on average, of $98. Obviously, the lower the house edge, the better the game.
The tables full of numbers on the site are really only of interest to stats and casino freaks such as myself. The meat of the site is in the house edge statistics. As far as “full odds”, “2x odds,” etc. they are only specific to craps games. Card games don’t use them.
If I had one piece of advice to give to someone new to casinos, it would be this: Find one table game you like (preferably one with a low house edge), learn how to play it well, and stick to it. I know that doesn’t sound exciting, but I think it’s actually more rewarding. Once you become confident at one game, you will feel more confident at all the other games, too.
“Stick to it until you feel confident,” I should have said there.