Games are structured
in two ways to give the casino the edge. The casino
can win more decisions than the player, or the casino
can tax the player’s winning bets. In craps,
for every 495 decisions, a Pass line or Come player
will win 244 decisions but will lose 251 decisions
on average. That seven-decision shortfall on the
part of the player means the casino has a 1.41 percent
edge on the game. (Just divide 495 into 7 and you
get 0.0141414.) That means for every $100 bet this
way, you can expect to lose $1.41 in the long run.
As house edges go, this is comparatively quite low.
So the Pass line and Come bets would be considered
good bets to make. If we take a look at the worst
bet on the craps table, the Big Red or Any 7 bet,
we see how the casino utilizes a tax to generate
profits. In 36 rolls of two six-sided dice, the
7 will come up six times on average. That’s
because the 7 can be made in six different ways
(1:6; 6:1; 2:5; 5:2; 3:4; 4:3). The probability
of getting a 7 on any given roll is therefore six
in thirty-six or one in six. That means for every
7 that shows, five non-7s will also show. That makes
the odds on the 7 appearing five to one. In a “fair
game,” defined as a game where nobody has an
edge, a winning Any 7 bet would pay $5 for every
winning $1 wagered. The player would lose $5 on
the five $1 bets he lost, win $5 on the one bet
he won and -- everybody goes home even (in the long
run). Unfortunately for the player, the casino can’t
make any money on the Any 7 bet if it pays off at
five to one. So when you bet the Big Red or Any
7, the casino does not pay you the true odds of
the bet. Instead it pays you four to one. So you
lose five time ($5) and win once ($4) and you are
down a dollar. In a very real sense, the casino
keeps that extra dollar for itself! So when you
win you also lose.
In roulette, we see the same kind of tax being imposed.
On the American double-zero wheel, there are 38
pockets for the ball to fall into, the numbers 1
through 36 and the 0 and 00. The probability of
any one pocket hitting is one in 38. The odds of
winning are therefore 37 to one. The casino pays
out $35 for every winning $1 bet, in essence keeping
$2 for itself. That becomes the casino edge on roulette,
5.26 percent. (Just divide 38 into 2 and you get
0.0526315.) Again when you win, you lose.
Card games can be much
more complicated to analyze than other games as
the number of combinations that can be made with
a deck of cards are enormous. However, blackjack
falls into the first category of games -- the casino
wins more decisions. Approximately 48 percent of
the decisions are won by the casino, 44 percent
by the player, and 8 percent are ties. So how is
it that blackjack is such a close game? Because
on those 44 player wins, the casino will sometimes
pay more than even money (a blackjack), or it will
allow the player to increase his bet in player-favorable
situations (doubling down and splitting pairs).
That makes up some of the shortfall the players
face. But it isn’t enough to make the game
a positive one for the players who will still face
about a half percent edge in multiple-deck games
(if they use the correct basic strategy that is).
Now, students of business
should not be shocked that the casinos attempt to
structure all their games so that they have the
edge. After all, no one is shocked to learn that
the local department store actually makes a profit
on you when you buy your hardware, underwear or
cookware, or that your local stationery store marks
up its newspapers, magazines and books, or even
that your local supermarket has the audacity to
make a profit on your hunger by charging you more
for the food than it costs them. When you buy a
television set no one thinks he is getting it for
what it really cost to build. For businesses to
function, they must make profits. That’s a
no brainer.
Sadly, some other no-brainers in a misguided effort
to keep the rest of us from having fun, often articulate
the notion that somehow or other it is immoral for
the casinos to charge a tax on their games, or to
structure their games so that they win more decisions
from the players than they lose, in order to guarantee
a profit for their owners and investors. Why is
that immoral? What’s not to understand? Business
is business. The casinos aren’t interested
in gambling on their games, they want the math on
their side. By analogy, what’s the sense of
making a new product if you sell it for less than
what it costs you? The casinos sell their games
to the players and it is up to the players to get
the best bargain they can, just as it is up to shoppers
to be cost conscious when they make a purchase.
Certainly, my mother
was right when she said: “The casinos win in
the end,” because if they didn’t, there
wouldn’t be any casinos at all -- and where
would that leave all of us casino-thrill shoppers?
There are only limited thrills to be had at a Home
Depot after all.
Visit Websites Of The Scoblete Network
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