[Editor’s Note: For this answer, we turned to our game-development expert, Dan Lubin, author of our hot new book, The Essentials of Casino Game Design—From the Cocktail Napkin to the Casino Floor. Dan is the designer of commission-free EZ Pai Gow and numerous other games and has years of experience working for game distributors.]
Generally, when a new casino game goes into use at a casino, it’ll need some tweaking to perform optimally: a paytable adjustment, a dealing procedure change, or a change to its dealer qualifier level.
What determines if a casino game gets adjusted is always its hold percentage, the amount of money that the casino retains, calculated as a percentage of the players’ buy-in money.
For example, if 50 gamblers play a game over the course of a day and each buys into the game with $200, the game’s buy-in or drop is $10,000; that’s compared with what the game holds. A table game should hold about 20% to 30% of its drop on average, to pay for the dealers, the floorman, the lights, and what have you.
In turn, the hold is based on the game’s house edge. The typical edge of 1% to 3% usually produces a hold of 20% to 30%.
If you’re wondering how a 2% house edge on a table game produces a 20% or so hold, it’s because the players’ chips are constantly re-bet, re-cycled (churned), a house edge of a couple points has a cumulative effect over all the gambling sessions and the many players. Some players win a lot, some a little, some lose a bit, and others lose their ass—it gets averaged out over many players over a lot of time.
Just last night at Green Valley Ranch, I was on a long losing streak at Wild-5 Poker and the guy to my left was constantly getting great hands: "LOOK! Another dealt four-of-a-kind! Can ya believe this?!" Yes I can, and I was happy for him. Wild-5 Poker has a house edge of 2.4% and holds about 24% of the buy-in. I know, as I worked on designing this game with a retired anesthesiologist and gambler I’ve known for a while, about two years ago, good ol’ Dr. Al Lwin from Chicago.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah. If a table is under-holding (say 14% or less), the casino will bump up the house edge by, to use your example, paying 6-5 instead of 3-2 for a natural blackjack.
The casino can make these changes at will to a new game—if the game designer, or the distributor (AGS, Galaxy Gaming, or Shuffle Master of Scientific Games) built the game, such as Wild-5 Poker, with multiple paytables and play options for these house-edge adjustments, and got them approved by the regulators during the gaming submission process.
It's extremely rare in this day and age for a new casino game not to have the gamut of paytables and options available; nearly all non-legacy games have about five paytables and two dealer/house qualifier options for each of the bets offered. The casino selects the best configuration and orders felt layouts and "How to Play" rack cards to adjust as needed, with dealer training (hopefully) being a part of this process.
For legacy grandfathered games like blackjack and craps, minor changes, such as payouts on blackjacks and hardways, can be made at the discretion of the casino operator, though just about all changes must be present in a game’s approved "configuration book," or the formal Gaming filing-specification sheet. The casino may use any approved mathematical configuration that fits its needs, with the locals casinos generally using looser configurations and Strip casinos and struggling card rooms (like up in Washington state) using slightly tighter configurations.
In the case of triple-zero roulette, however, it was recently introduced by the Sands group (at Venetian and Palazzo) and had to be tested in live action by a field trial, under the approval of the Gaming Control Board. The triple-zero spot is actually an "S" for Sands (and the game has a sizable house edge of 8%).
