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.

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In War, one card is dealt to both the player and the dealer, with the high card winning the hand. If there is a tie then the player must double his or her wager, with another card being dealt. If the dealer wins, the casino gets the whole stack but if the player wins, he collects only on his original wager. This is how the casino generates it’s edge, to the tune of 7.14%

With the game of Battle Royale, the rules offer the player a surrender option, which lowers the casino’s advantage than with the game of War.

Like War, Battle Royale is a game played between the player and the dealer, with one card dealt face up to each. The objective is the same where you want to draw a higher card than the dealer, 2 is low and A is high.

Suits have no relevance to the rankings, it’s either a high card winner or a tie.

Where there is a tie the dealer asks if the player wants to “battle” or surrender his bet. If the player opts to surrender then the dealer takes half of the original wager and a new hand is dealt. If the player wants to go to battle then he must double his bet. Then three cards are burnt off the top of the deck and if the dealer has a high card, the player loses both bets, but if the player wins it’s only for even money on the battle bet, while the original wager is a push.

The twist is if a second tie occurs during the battle then the player is paid at 3:1.

Playing Strategy

Don’t count on making many decisions except on whether to surrender or doubling up your bet. You should always go to war if there is a tie and never surrender. This may seem illogical to risk double the money in order to win back only your original, but the house edge is only 2.68% when you go to war compared to 3.7% if you surrender.

The player can also place a side bet on a tie before the new hand is dealt, with a 10:1 payout, but it’s still a sucker bet with a house advantage of 18.65%.

While this isn’t the best game offered in the house, it has a fairly low house edge, can be fun to play, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

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