Casino Hold
Written May 22, 2008 by Jack Jones
Recently a reader was involved in a conversation with a pit boss, noting how everyone he came with seemed to be losing. He asked how he thought the casino was doing that night to which the pit boss replied, “we are probably going to hold about 50%. ” He thought this seemed pretty high since blackjack is the game everyone was playing and that is supposed to be one of the best games in the house.
Don’t get confused though because hold is not the same thing as the house edge, which for blackjack is almost nothing. Hold is nothing more than the ratio of chips that casino keeps to the amount of chips that the casino sells to the players. This is generally measured over an eight hour period.
Look at this example. If the blackjack table that you were on sold $20,000 in chips and dropped currency and the table ended up keeping $10,000 of that money, with the players cashing in the other $10,000 then that particular table game would hold 50% for the evening. If every player at that table lost ever chip they bought then the hold would be 100%. The hold can exceed 100% if for example, you bought chips at one table and then lost them at a different one.
