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Donald Catlin Gaming Guru - Page 7  Misreading the Law (of Averages)2 January 2009
I recently received the following letter from one of my readers, Dave Beck.
Don,
Scoblete's recent Casino City Times column about charting has me wondering.
If charting is useless, then the triangle-shaped diagram of the dice combination possibilities must be useless. In one breath he says the percentages are based on this fact of probabilities. ... (read more)
A Slick Proposition Bet5 December 2008
Every now and then I write about proposition bets. Here is a dandy.
You ask your mark to write down any four-digit number and not let you see it. Then tell him to rearrange (permute) the numbers and again not let you see what is being done. Now have him subtract the smaller number from the larger. ... (read more)
7 Point 77 November 2008
The Orleans Hotel and Casino introduced a new Craps bet on Friday, September 19th. The bet is called 7 Point 7 and was developed by Casino Gaming, LLC. Here is how it is played.
The player can place the 7 Point 7 bet on the come-out roll. If a 7 is rolled on the come-out the 7 Point 7 bet wins 2 to 1. ... (read more)
Polya's Urn Scheme3 October 2008
One of the fascinating things about Probability Theory is that sometimes the right answer runs counter to our intuition. In fact, this is the basis for many of the so-called proposition bets one sees, often in bar rooms. A classic example of this is the famous Birthday Problem. If you want to learn about ... (read more)
A ruin question5 September 2008
I recently received the following email from one of my readers:
Dear Don,
My name is Padme, living in India and playing Blackjack in Nepal and Cambodia. Thanks for your great columns and advice. I am writing a very small, and very simple, book on betting at Blackjack for my friends only, mainly because ... (read more)
Three from Four Poker Rankings2 August 2008
I recently received the following letter from one of my readers. Here it is:
Dear Mr. Catlin,
I'm trying to find out the correct Poker ranking (frequency?) for a 3-card hand selected from 4-cards. We played this on a recent golf outing to South Carolina where it was called "Git You One" - each player ... (read more)
The Horn Bet5 July 2008
A couple of weeks ago one of my colleagues asked me if I knew why the Horn bet in craps has such strange odds. I had to confess that since I never bet the Horn I didn't even know what the odds were. "17 to 4" he told me. "You're right," I said, "those are peculiar odds and yours is a reasonable question; I'll look into it."
Let me give you a bit of background. ... (read more)
Deal or No Deal Revisited1 June 2008
Back in November of 2006 I wrote an article about Howie Mandell's show Deal or No Deal. In it I gave examples to show that the show's producers appear to give very low offers early on and then increase them as more and more cases are opened. Then in February 25th of this year they offered a special show that included thirteen million-dollar cases. ... (read more)
Soft Doubling - Part 211 May 2008
Last month, in answer to my reader Thomas Moore inquiring about soft doubling, I indicated how to calculate dealer's final probabilities when the up card is a 6. In that article I gave a table listing the probabilities for dealer's final totals of 17 through 26. Since the hands 22 through 26 are all busted hands, we can add all of those probabilities and simply list it as bust. ... (read more)
Soft Doubling - Part 14 April 2008
I recently received an email from reader Thomas Moore:
It is hard for me to understand how doubling on an ace - x a dealer's 5 or 6 up card is the correct play, where x is a deuce through seven. Please help me understand this basic strategy play. Thanks.
I sent Thomas the following reply: This is not easy to explain but I'll give it a try in an upcoming article. ... (read more)
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