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Positive Expectations & Gambling |
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Getting the Edge
And not every blackjack game will give you a positive expectation bet, and not every video poker game will either. The rules have to be perfect, and just as importantly, your strategy must be perfect. With blackjack, this means counting cards and not getting caught. You should be able to get a 1% edge counting cards at blackjack under favorable conditions. With video poker, this means finding a machine with a perfect payback chart and following perfect strategy. You can theoretically get about a 0.75% edge over the casino at a great Deuces Wild machine. Or if you can find a big progressive jackpot on a video poker machine, then you can get a better edge over the house than that. Why Would a Casino Allow Such a ThingMost people are too lazy to learn to count cards well in actual casino conditions. Even if they do learn to count cards correctly, they often give themselves away by ranging their bets too much or doing something else to tip off the dealers and pit bosses that they're counting. In that case, the casino will just throw the card counter out. But casinos rely on people thinking that they're better players than they actually are. Many would-be card counters make basic strategy mistakes, or miscount, or do other things that put the edge firmly back in the casino's favor. Same thing with video poker. Most people don't play nearly as well as they think they do, and a lot of people play badly enough to more than make up for the people who do play well. And most people are woefully underfunded to play video poker. A royal flush in jacks or better only comes around once every 40,000 hands. You need a big bankroll to play that many hands, and even then, standard deviation might get in the way and prevent you from hitting that jackpot. More articles about odds and probability in gambling: |
In
casino gambling, there are only two games where you can
realistically get a positive expectation bet: blackjack and
video poker.|
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