Worst Bet in the Casino

Jack Jones — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:09:01 +0000

There are plenty of bad bets that you can make in a casino, and by bad we mean they have astronomical house edges. However, the casinos don’t want to get rid of these games because the suckers keep on coming in and laying down their hard earned cash. We don’t want you to be one of those suckers so let’s take a look at some of the worst of the worst.

Blackjack

Insurance – Unless you now how to count cards, this is a wager that you are going to want to avoid. Depending on the rules of the table you are playing, the casino will have a house edge of 5% to 8%. If you insure a hand in a single-deck game where you have two face cards, the house edge jumps all the way up to 14.3%.

War

Tie Bet – Stay away from this 18.65% house edge for the casino before you drain your bankroll.

Baccarat

Tie – Again, ties are terrible bets that in this case has a house edge of 14.1%

Caribbean Stud

Side bet – The progressive meter jackpot has suckered in more than a few players, but don’t fall into that trap. The odds of being dealt a natural flush is 650,000 to 1, so even if a $100,000 jackpot looks tempting, it shouldn’t be.

Let-It-Ride

Side Bets – also carry a double-digit casino edge.

Craps

Proposition Bets – Don’t let anyone talk you into things like number bets, with a 16% casino advantage.

Here is list of sucker bets found on a crap game along with their
house edge.

Big 6 & 8 (9.1%)
Hardway 6 or 8 (9.1%)
Hardway 4 or 10 (11.1%)
Any craps (11.1%)
3 or 11 proposition (11.1%)
2 or 12 proposition (13.9%)
Any 7 (16.1%)

Most Sic-Bo Bets: Place a bet on anything except Big or Small, and you’re looking at a house edge of from 7.87% to 18.52%.

The Big Six: Any bet on this game has a minimum house edge of 15%. I’d run from this game.

Keno: This game of luck has an extremely high house advantage, at the bare minimum of 25%.

The 5-Number (0, 00, 1, 2, 3) wager in roulette: This bet has a casino advantage of 7.89%. We’re not through. The house edge on a Double Zero roulette table is 5.26% against you no matter how you bet it. If roulette just happens to be your favorite game, at least look for the single zero wheel where the house edge is down to the 2% range.

Indeed, there are more, like one-armed bandits in general, or haphazard and hunch play at blackjack or video poker, but the gist of it, Charles, is that the casino figures so long as you are giving your hard-earned money away, you might as well be giving it to them with the wagers listed above. But if you choose your bets wisely, you can drastically affect the outcome of your casino visit in your favor, not theirs. Not a bad idea.

Odds on Hitting the Caribbean Stud Progressive

Jack Jones — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:05:20 +0000

One of the casinos favorite tricks is to offer progressive jackpots that lure players into hoping that they are going to walk out that night rich and live happily ever after. Caribbean Stud is one of those games that offers this exciting option. Let’s say you walk into your local casino and see the progressive total is at $55,200 for a royal flush. How good a wager, and when is it mathematically in your favor and what is a good Caribbean Stud poker strategy? Casino expert Mark Pilarski takes a stab at these questions.

He starts out by not recommending this wager to anyone. First, note there are 2,598,960 possible poker hands using a standard 52-card deck. Now divide that figure by four (the different suits) and you’ll come up with 649,740. Because you don’t get to draw any cards in Caribbean Stud, this mathematically is the odds of hitting a royal. One in 649,740 is too big a differential from the $55,200 they plan on paying you for him to endorse this play.

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Worst Bet in the Casino

Odds on Hitting the Caribbean Stud Progressive