Читать книгу Casino Gambling For Dummies - Swain Scheps - Страница 81

Bad news: Casinos aren’t in the charity business. In fact, they exist to make money. Like all successful enterprises, they follow reliable business models. And the casino business model is one of the simplest and most successful of all time. With their intimate understanding of probability (and human nature), casino owners have created a catalog of entertaining games that are mathematically guaranteed to keep their pockets full and their bottom lines healthy.

So, you can’t beat the odds when the house arranges them in its favor, but you can understand the odds of winning inside a casino by arming yourself with information about the house edge. By definition, the house edge (sometimes known as the casino advantage or house advantage) is the small percentage of all wagers that the casino expects to win. Every game has a different house edge, and even certain bets within a single game have a better house edge than other bets.

To put it a different way, casinos expect to pay out slightly less money to winning bettors than they take in from losing bettors. The laws of probability tell casinos how often certain bets win relative to how often they lose. Casinos then define the payout odds based on the winning probabilities — the true odds. The payouts are invariably smaller than the true odds, ensuring that, with enough betting action, the casino will take in a certain amount with every dollar wagered.

Table 3-1 shows the house edge for popular casino games and how much you can expect to lose for an average three-day weekend of playing $10 a hand on the most popular table games. As you can see, the higher the house edge, the more you can expect to lose. For example, you cut your losses by 80 percent if you switch from roulette to baccarat!

This table makes a few assumptions. First, it assumes you’re playing the most advantageous bets for games like baccarat and craps. Second, it assumes optimal gameplay rules and payout odds for games like blackjack and video poker. Finally, you’re playing optimal strategy, which has a big impact on house edge in games like Let It Ride, three-card poker, and blackjack. (Check out the specific chapters later in this book for detailed strategies.) This next section looks at the three methods that casinos utilize to assist themselves in performing profitably.

TABLE 3-1 The Minimum House Edge for Popular Casino Games

Game	House Edge	Loss per $8,000 in Total Bets
Baccarat	1.06 percent	$85
Blackjack	0.50 percent	$40
Craps	1.36 percent	$109
Caribbean Stud Poker	5.22 percent	$418
Let It Ride	3.51 percent	$281
Pai Gow Poker	2.54 percent	$203
Roulette	5.26 percent	$421
Three-Card Poker	3.37 percent	$270
Video Poker	0.46 percent	$37