Many of you heard of the guy who sold everything and put it on red, winning over a quarter million? I have a question about the rules of Vegas roulette.
They let this guy bet 270,600 dollars, which they had to pay out! Of course, I’m sure Vegas got a small boost in tourism- maybe- from the televised event, maybe from fellow UKers who then visited the states for a little gambling, but still, the house lost by a crap load :eek: !..
My question: what is the limit on the amount of money you can bet on a color or number in blackjack. Say George Lucas took some of his 3 billion to vegas. He bets 10 million on black! Loses. Alright, now he’s gotta win that back and he wants 10 million more, so 20 million on black. Loses. Eventually, he’ll win, and he can keep going up as long as he needs to until he wins that 10 million and the money he lost. Now he’s got 10 million dollars to give to charity.
Obviously a.) Vegas ain’t gonna let nobody do that! :D, b.) George Lucas don’t need the money! Why would he do that? and c.) How could you convert 10 million into chips? Can’t. But the point is that it’s a cool thought…
So what’s the limit? How about all Vegas gambling? How about all casinos? What’s the most anyone’s ever won?
[QUOTE=andrewdt85]
Many of you heard of the guy who sold everything and put it on red, winning over a quarter million? I have a question about the rules of Vegas roulette.
They let this guy bet 270,600 dollars, which they had to pay out! Of course, I’m sure Vegas got a small boost in tourism- maybe- from the televised event, maybe from fellow UKers who then visited the states for a little gambling, but still, the house lost by a crap load :eek: !..
That’s known as the martingale system. It’s fatal flaw, in addition to running into table limits that most casinos have, is the green 0 (and, on an American table, 00). The green square makes the chances of landing on black less than 50 percent. Ditto for landing on red. The difference doesn’t look significant, but it is. That green square will slowly eat away at your winnings whenever you bet on red/black, or on odd/even (0 and 00 are neither odd nor even), or on 1-18/19-36 (0 and 00 not included) or on 1st 12/2nd 12/3rd 12… you get the picture.
That green square, so often overlooked, makes a roulette a game that looks very promising but will still nibble away at your bankroll in the long run.
Oh, yes they will! They’ll let you bet however you want (as long as you stay above the min and below the max) because the house will ALWAYS win in the long run!
andrew, 128 times is not “in the long run”. Casinos take millions of bets. Some players walk away with more than they started, some with less, but in the long run, the casino wins.
Loop, you say the flaw in the Martingale system is the 0 and 00 on the wheel. I don’t think that’s true. The green numbers are just the house’s advantage in this particular game, whether you make one bet or many, play a system or at random. The flaw with the Martingale system is that when you win (which is most of the time), you win a little; but on the rare occasions when you lose, you lose big. And those few losses will eat up all your winnings, plus enough extra to build the entire city of Las Vegas.
It has been asked and answered that in general, Vegas casinos have no objections to taking large bets any more than small ones, because they know the odds are in their favor, by only a small percentage, but enough to make the difference. Still, what exactly would happen if you walked into a casino with, say, a $3 million US cashier’s cheque, (or other convenient way of carrying that much currency) and said that you wanted to bet it on one spin of the roulette wheel, or a throw of craps, or one game of blackjack.
Specifically I’d be interested in two possible questions:
Would the casino ever be forced to decline out for risk management reasons?? Along the lines of ‘sure, the odds are in our favor, but we can’t pay that bet out right now and still make payroll.’ Or are all vegas casinos backed by sufficiently deep coffers that the amount would have to be many times that before they’d need to worry about not making good on the bet and their other liabilities??
Would there be a need for specific security precautions, over and above regular vegas security procedures, to make sure that some prior setup, some cheatery has not been arranged that would tilt the odds in the gambler’s favor for that one crucial bet??
I’ve always wondered this myself. Here’s a real-life example: going into the last game of the 1998 baseball season, Mark McGwire had 70 home runs and Sammy Sosa had 66. I was listening to a sports talk radio program and the host was talking to a bookmaker in Las Vegas about the possibility of Sosa hitting four in his final game and thus tying McGwire. The bookmaker mentioned that, in Major League History, a player had hit four home runs in a game [some ridiculously small number, like less than a dozen] times. The bookmaker placed the odds of Sosa hitting for dingers that night at 10 million to one. The host laughed and asked where he could place that bet. The bookmaker chuckled and said, “I don’t know of any casino in Las Vegas that’s taking any action on that bet.”
But what if there was? If I were stupid enough to place $1000 on that bet and Sosa had pulled it off, the casino would be in to me for $10 billion.
In Las Vegas (or Monte Carlo or Reno or wherever), what bet has the single highest payout, regardless of the odds? I’m thinking a 10-for-10 card on Keno, which pays like 100,000 to one (and the odds of getting it are in the hundreds of millions, IIRC).
The 100,000 to one on keno is the highest basic game payout I’ve ever seen. The Megabucks progessive slot machines have even higher payout odds, but that starts to look more like a lottery. As I write this, the payout is $14,321,846 for a $3 bet.
As to the casino’s sports books, I’ve never seen payouts much over 1000 to 1. The bookie’s 10,000,000 to 1 comment was rhetorical, not a price quote.
Every casino is legally free to refuse any bet any time for any reason; they aren’t a public utility. At the same time, they’re in business to take bets and even a large one-time loser is good for publicity if nothing else. And yes, now that most are owned by big corporations, they have essentially infinitely deep pockets. Some even have loss-reinsurance just in case they do take a huge hit.
Recall that bookies operate an informal pari-mutuel system. It isn’t stricly pari-mutuel like a horse track, where the track simply takes a cut and then pays the winners the rest of the pot pro-rata. But bookies are trying to “balance their book”, where the odds they advertise reflect not only the instrinsic likelyhood of the outcome in question, but the net bettor sentiment as well.
As an example, in the days before internet betting, an Atlantic City book would post different odds on a major East coast - West coast game than a Vegas book would. Same game, different odds. Why? The easterners would overbet the east coast team to win at the Atlantic city book, while the westerners would do the same in Vegas.
Often the two bookies would cross-bet with each other (“laying off”) to even their collective books. Essentially the same principle as many financial derivitives or commercial reinsurance.
So never confuse the payoff “odds” with the outcome odds. Using the term “odds” to describe the payoff is a deliberately misleading industry practice that dates back hundreds of years.
All this overlooks the obvious: Casinos are businesses. Like nearly all American businesses, they reserve the right to business with anyone, for any reason. If you walked in with $3 million, the croupier would look at the pit boss who would get the manager who would decide whether the casino would accept the bet. If they do, they do. If they don’t, they don’t. It’s the Vegas way. You can be asked to leave if you’re on a hot streak. The casino is not obligated to continue allowing a big winner to keep winning. Them’s the rules and if you don’t like 'em, don’t gamble.
The casino would never take a bet that they could not pay out immediatly. The reason is that the immediate payment of all debts in a casino is the only thing that keeps people comming in. So, they have limits. The pit boss can raise the limit in his pit by a certain amount, the room manager by a larger amount, and the owner can take any bet he can cover without closing down the house.
There are lots of times in Las Vegas when people bet millions over the course of an evening, and a quarter of a million dollar bet, if they lost was just another part of the average give and take of a very well designed system that basically makes incorrect change for tourists. The house always wins. That’s why they built the house.
False. The Martingale is equally flawed in a perfect 50/50 proposition, like flipping a coin and paying even odds.
Any dealer will tell you that playing a system makes you systematically lose. There are systems far superior to the Martingale, but they all have one thing in common: in any given session, you are more likely to lose than to win.
Only half right. Bookie odds refect bettor sentiment only…there is no incentive or desire to reflect the actual outcome of the game.
My buddy long ago devised (well, his little brother did) the idea of betting on NFL games based on performance against the spread. The idea was that since bookies want all action to be even on both sides of the bet, they want all teams to end the season 50-50 against the spread. So if the Raiders went, say, 5-10 against the spread, bet the farm on them in the last week. (Factoring in the opponent record against the spread, as well.)
What this strategy failed to realize is that the bookies don’t care a whit about a team’s record against the spread, nor do they care about who is likely to win. The only thing they care about is that the spread is effective at splitting all action on the game evenly to both sides.
As to the OP, if you want to make a huge single bet as close to 50% as you can, bet the Don’t Pass in craps. The legend goes that somebody walked into the Horseshoe (I think…or was it Binion’s?), famed for having no-limit tables, plunked down $777,777 on the Don’t Pass, and walked out a few minutes later with a cool $1.5 million. Instead of the 5.26% house advantage of roulette, the Don’t Pass offers a mere 1.40% house advantage. (Meaning roulette gives you 47.37% chance to win, while the Don’t Pass gives you a 49.3% chance to win.)
All 50-50 systems should always be played on the Don’t Pass for this reason. As an added bonus, it takes much longer per decision, which helpfully delays the inevitable losing of the shirt.
False. If you play a Martingale, you are significantly more likely to win than you are to lose. It is, however, true that in any system playing a game with a house advantage, your expectation is negative.
As for bookies, the way I heard it explained was that the bookie doesn’t care (at least, from a business standpoint) which team wins. He’s set his line in such a way that he will get the same amount of money for either outcome. At least, that’s the idea: How close it comes to reality will of course depend on how good the bookie is at his job.
"Pass’ has almost the same odds, and if you “give” or “take the odds” and they offer you ‘triple odds’ you can make the bet as close to 50/50 as exists in Vegas
Agreed that towards the end of the offering bookies’ odds converge to reflect pure bettor sentiment.
When they first open the prop however, there is no bettor sentiment, only an estimate of it. The best place to put that initial stake in the ground is near the likelihood of expected outcome. As sson as the action gets too one-sided, IOW as soon as some net bettor sentiment is revealed, they move the prop to drive to total book back towards balance.
The only time they get hosed is when they can’t move far enough fast enough to cover a bad initial offering, or a latebreaking surprise occurs shortly before game time.
I was speaking to a session, not a single trial. It is the rare Martingale player indeed who limits a session length to a reasonable duration. This is because the “reasonable cutoff” limit generates paltry winnings, making it not worth the trip.
Many (if not most) bookies take their initial spreads from the Vegas lines. The Vegas lines are tested against pros before they become available to the public.
Basically, there are people who are good enough at handicapping to make a living at it. Some of these pros are given what we might call “pre-lines”, which are the initial guesses by the Vegas guys. Then these pros book their bets, and offer feedback. (Lucky bastards.) Based on this feedback, the lines are adjusted to more accurately reflect the “bettor sentiment” based on the pros picks.
So, in a way, there is extremely little guess-work required of your local bookie. Vegas does the heavy lifting for him. The adjustments local bookies inevitably make are to correct for local anomlies. One such example might be a game involving a home team, since many people “bet with their heart”.
Okay, since you wrote this in response to my post, explain to me the mechanics involved in placing a single large wager that will pay at least 1:1 with odds closer to 50% than the Don’t Pass. I’m all ears. How much on the line? How much behind it? Does it depend on the number? Why or why not?
My advice remains unchanged. The best odds you can get for a single large bet is the Don’t Pass. As an added bonus, it is psychologically a much stronger position than the Pass Line for the poor schmuck standing there with a stack of $100,000 chips on the table while the dice keep rolling. (The Pass Line better is ready to slit his wrists the moment a point is established, as opposed to the Don’t bettor who merely needs to survive the comeout, and from then on has an excellent chance of winning.)
If you play odds behind the lines, you are in for a scary ride. On the Pass Line, you can expect far more losses than wins, and on the Don’t each loss is often much more expensive than any win. Casinos love the odds because suckers hear the siren song of “true odds” and trip all over themselves to put as much behind the line as they can. All that does is vastly increase the likelihood that a (remarkably short) cold streak will clean them out.
The only purpose of high variance games (like odds in craps) is to maintain a high turnover rate at the table. $5 bettors would never play at a $25 table, because they know intuitively that the likeliest outcome is an abrupt trip home. But that’s exactly what they’re doing when they play odds in craps. Is it any wonder that casinos offer a bet that seemingly has no upside for them? The upside is huge. Gamblers make $20 bets that have the feel of $5 bets, meaning they don’t have enough cash to weather a short cold streak, and so end up nowhere near the expected value. Instead, they end up walking at their loss limit.
Ah, I was interpreting “1 trial” as one game, and the session as the set of games played in a Martingale. And many people do in fact play a strategy of “walk away as soon as I’m up by any amount” or “if I’m ever up by any amount, set some of it aside and only play with winnings above that from then on”, either of which (perhaps combined with a Martingale) will result in a high probability of ending the session up by a small amount. Of course, even here, the expectation is that, over many sessions, you’ll eventually end up in the hole.
I have a question about the Martingale and calculating odds. I thought I knew how to do it, but the numbers I’m getting appear to be off. Assuming we play the Don’t, we bring $320 to a $5 table, and are looking to win $80 before walking away. (16 decisions.) What are the odds to win that session?
The odds of winning a Don’t are precisely 949/1925, and conversely the odds to lose the Don’t are precisely 976/1925. (I can elaborate on these if needed.)
I end up with an 87% chance to win 16 decisions, but that can’t be right. What’s the real number? I would think that it should be a hair under 80%…
Please, explain my error before I jump in the car and head to Uncasville!
ok.this is an old thread but I’ll take a quick shot at it. Having spent 10 years as a casino manager maybe I can be of some help.
First and foremost, there is no ‘good bet’ in a casino. There are ways of playing which reduce the rate at which you lose, but that’ about as good as it gets.
All casinos have table limits, which effectively kill any progressive betting system. Typically, you can only suffer 7 straight losses before you’re maxed. e.g. 5-500 or 10-1000 on roulette. Your bets go as follows, 5,10,20,40,80,160,320, oops, you’ve got to bet 640 but the table limit wont allow. Your best result is to bet 500, so even if you win you’re still behind. Thus the Martingale system is deeply flawed. There are even alternatives which say to wait for 4 reds then start on black etc, but they suffer the same consequences.
Taking odds on dice is irrelevant. True the don’t pass is slightly favourable over the pass, but hardly worth talking about. As for psychology, the dice don’t care! Odds are a 0% bet for the house, but don’t fall in to the trap of thinking this is a ‘good’ bet. You must make a pass line bet to take odds. The house rakes an edge of that bet. This is a net amount. Over the course of an evening, you will neither win nor lose on your odds bets, but take a steady drain from your line bets. From a % point of view they reduce the overall odds to closer to 0, but from a net (ie cash) point of view you lose the same money whether you take them or not.
Quick casino advice, treat all money you take as lost before you enter. View it the same as a theater ticket price or whatever. Leave your credit cards at home.
Really bad bets, insurance/even money on Blackjack, center action on dice, any bet at caribbean stud, an bet on american (double 0) roulette.
Be very careful of books offering winning systems, if they worked why do you think most Vegas casinos have bookshops selling them?
