My Casino... do I hold the advantage here?

Factual Questions
1

This is the situation at my local Casino (Casino Canberra), in the game of ‘poker’.

The dealer and the rest of the table are dealt 5 cards, and those 5 cards are what you must stay with. There is no “throw down and pick up”. If the dealer has nothing in his/her hand, then you automatically win and get a 2/1 return on your bet, REGARDLESS of what you hold.

Now…
According to this thread…

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=36745

…More then %50 of the time you are dealt 5 cards… you will get ‘nothing’ of worth. That means that this will also apply for the dealer. Therefore, does this mean that if I sat there betting 10 dollars on EVERY hand I got, I will hold the advantage? Even more so if I get 3 of a kind… in which case I can bet even more and win most of the time? Surely the odds are in my favor here?

2

Are you talking about Caribbean Stud poker? If so, you are not explaining the whole story.

Let’s say you bet your $10. If you want to stay in the hand against the dealer, you must put an additional $20 down, bringing your total risk to $30.

Outcome 1
You decide not to play, you forfeit your $10.

Outcome 2
You have nothing, but you’ve put the extra $20 down, because, as you say, the dealer probably doesn’t have anything either. If he doesn’t, you only win $10 (but you are risking $30 to win that $10–not a good bet). That’s right, if you’ve guessed wrong, the dealer wins all $30. Hmmm, pay off $10, but collect $30.

Outcome 3
You have a good hand; but if the dealer doen’t ‘qualify’ with at least an AK or higher (pair, two-pair, on upwards), it doesn’t matter what you have; you only win the original $10.

Outcome 4
You have a good hand, but the dealer’s hand is better. Oops! There goes your $30!

Outcome 5
You have a good hand, the dealer qualifies with a hand lower than yours. Finally! Now we’re talking. A good win for you, paid out depending on what you hold.

Taking all the above into consideration, the house advantage in this game is about 5.27,% about the same as roulette, worse than baccarat, and considerably worse than blackjack if you know at least basic strategy.

3

It’s a 5 dollar ante just to be dealt cards…

Your bet must be at least double, ie 10 bucks.

If you win the hand… both your ante and bet are doubled. Meaning… that 15 bucks on the table now becomes 30 bucks in your pocket.

4

Hang on, I explained that wrong. The ante is gone… no matter what. But…

If you win the hand… you gain 15 bucks. If you lose the hand… you lose 15 bucks.

So its still even money whether you win or lose here.

5

The key to your statement is “if you win the hand.” The casinos have skewed the game in their favor (of course), so that “if you win the hand” occurs less frequently than “when you lose the hand.”

Caribbean stud is not a simple 50-50 either win your $15 or lose your $15. The rules of when a dealer qualifies and how much you have to put out there to win your ante comes back to haunt you in the long run.

For example, in your last post, you are forgetting that the dealer has to qualify for you to win that $15. If he doesn’t, all you win is the ante $5 (and you’ve risked 3 bets, $15, to win one bet of $5). Even if he does qualify, that’s still no guarantee that you will win. If he’s got a better hand than you, you lose.

Please re-read my outcomes above. It is not easy to do this over a message board. If you want, print them out and really study the game the next time you go to the casino. Believe me, this is how it works. I’ve been in casinos all over the U.S. and the Bahamas, and Caribbean stud is always played the same standard way.

6

The odds discussed in the other thread (as I recall) concerned only a standard 52-card deck. According to Hoyle, the dealer will have about a 50.12% chance of getting nothing in the deal. However, if there are any wild cards, the odds change. For example, if there is one wild joker (a 53-card deck), the dealer’s probability of getting nothing falls to about 45.39%. Wild deuces in a 52-card deck would also improve the dealer’s odds of getting a pair or better.

7

Please explain what you mean by ‘qualify’.

8

In Caribbean stud, for you to win your bet (not the ante, but the second bet you put out if you decide to play), the dealer must have a qualifying hand, and your hand must be better.

A qualifying hand for the dealer is one in which there is at least an AK together. Any higher hand, such as a pair or better is a qualifying hand.

examples of qualifying hands:
A26KJ
22678
39494
AK593

examples of non-qualifying hands:
10JQA7
2479A
KQ789

The implication if this is important. If the dealer does not qualify, you only win your ante bet at 1-1. All those nice payoffs for good hands you may have become moot. And as you have noticed; the chance that a dealer is not dealt a qualifying hand is pretty good.

Ah, you say, I can at least win the ante more times than not, right? Not exactly. Like I said before, to put your ante into play, you must make an additional bet of twice the ante amount. 3 bets risked just to win your ante (1 bet). If you lose, you lose all three bets.

Of course, sometimes you do win against a dealer’s qualifying hand. That’s a good payout for you. However, the game is constructed so that when all is said and done and everything is taken into account, the house advantage is about 5.27%

9

OK, MadHatter, here’s another way to think about the situation that doesn’t require any math at all.

Do you think a casino would run a game where the mark has a 50-50 chance of winning? No. They only run games where the odds are in their favor. You and I might not understand the odds of how the game works, or exactly why the game is rigged, but believe me, the casinos know. If it’s not a good game for them, they don’t play.

How do you think they pay for all the help, the $4 buffets, the free soft drinks, the shows, etc? They pay for it with the money of people who thought they had a good chance of winning money at the casino. Those people are wrong. You don’t have to be able to calculate the odds to know they are against you. Now, some games, and some plays in the games, are less against you than others. If I recall correctly, if you play craps “straight”…none of the fancy side bets and such…you only lose 1% or so per game. But why would casinos offer Carribean Stud if they didn’t make money at it?

10

At the risk of picking a nit, you can occasionally find a casino game that is in your favor. There are a few blackjack tables to be found (notably the single deck at Slots-A-Fun in Vegas) where correct basic strategy will put the game about 1% in your favor. I’d be willing to bet that this table still makes money, since most people don’t use solid basic strategy, and even those who do might not know it for single-deck. (I’d have to look it up, myself.)

Sometimes you can find a progressive video poker machine that mathematically pays out more than 100%, but not much. Even so, it only comes into your favor if you hit a royal. Again, it also assumes 100% correct play.

Dr. J

11

Lemur, I think that MadHatter realizes that the odds are against him; he just wants to know how. For that, you need the math.

DoctorJ, if you apply perfect strategy (i.e., remembering every single card that’s been played thus far), you can win in blackjack with up to (I think) six decks. This is, of course, moot, since if the house sees that you’re playing intelligently, they’ll declare you to be cheating and kick you out, or worse. Personally, I’ve always thought that they should allow counting, but let the dealer do the same, and ditch the “Dealer always hits on 16” rule. The odds would still be in their favor if they did that, since the dealer plays last.

12

Chronos–what you describe is card counting, which is separate from basic strategy. BS just means that you know whether to hit, stand, double, or split on a given hand–you hit 16 against a 10, stay on 12 against a 6, double 10 except against a 10 or ace, etc. This changes (though not very much) based on the rules and the number of decks. If you’re playing correct BS, you will just about always be playing at less than a 1.5% disadvantage, and you can find the rare game (such as the one I mentioned above) which is actually in your favor.

Card counting takes this a step further, by using your knowledge of the previous cards to change your bet or your strategy. If you can count, you can get just about any game in your favor, although I doubt you could ever make an 8-deck game good enough to bother counting.

The Slots-A-Fun single deck is in your favor with BS alone. The casino is safe, since most people won’t even use correct BS, and it doesn’t take many mistakes to negate your advantage.

Dr. J