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Gaming Guru
How to Lengthen Your Stay at the Tables2 March 1998
There's no way to predict the answer on an individual here-and-now basis. But good gambling isn't about what happens to a single solid citizen in a particular session. It's about understanding goals and following strategies most likely to reach them. It's about the laws of probability - the chances and statistical expectations associated with alternative events and decisions. But the question can be answered in terms of averages for large numbers of players. And these answers can be helpful to folks wanting to stretch the sessions they get for their stakes. This, because factors that improve the performance of all bettors also tend to enhance the likelihood of each individual's success.
I'll give a few examples. But gamblers know "no pain, no gain," so you might want to try variants for other situations yourself. Say you're a blackjack buff. You buy-in at a table for $200 and make bets averaging $10 each. Your stake is 200/10 or 20 betting units. Play basic strategy the way you think the book should be written rather than the way it is, in a game with no fancy options. House edge will be about 0.75 percent, so multiply your 20 units by the value of 16 from the list to find an expected 320 bets during your session. Play by the book in a casino with options such as resplitting pairs and surrender; this cuts the house edge to about 0.5 percent. Now multiply your 20 units by 24 to find an expected 480 bets during the session. What if you trim the edge for the same money at risk, dropping $10 on pass and taking double odds with no place bets? Now the house advantage is only 0.6 percent. Estimate a recirculation factor of 20, halfway between the values shown for edges of 0.5 and 0.75 percent, and you'll find an expected 17x20 or 340 bets during the session. Lower the edge further taking triple odds but raising your exposure to $40. Your buy-in becomes 500/40 or 12.5 betting units and the edge is under 0.5 percent. You have improved the edge but have fewer betting units; combined, these factors yield an expectation of only 12.5x25 or 312.5 bets during the session. Consideration of recirculation factor offer a rationale for sizing bets to bankroll and minimizing house edge. But the case of triple odds at craps shows that these elements may offset one another. Still, Sumner A Ingmark got the rule right when he said:
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