{"id":40650,"date":"2018-03-13T09:26:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T17:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=40650"},"modified":"2023-08-24T15:05:09","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T23:05:09","slug":"how-do-you-figure-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/how-do-you-figure-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Figure?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me describe a hypothetical situation that is based in reality. <\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say the two best games for you at a casino are 25\u00a2 Ten Play 9\/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe (99.64%) and 25\u00a2 Spin Poker 9\/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%). Let\u2019s also assume the slot club plus the various promotions adds a half percent.<\/span><\/p>\n

You have a miniscule edge at JoB (namely 0.04% — 99.54% + 0.50% = 100.04%) and a slightly-less-miniscule edge at BPD (0.14%). In addition, the Ten Play game requires $12.50 per play while the Spin Poker game requires $11.25 per play.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason the difference in amount per \u201cpull\u201d matters is calculated by the advantage times the amount bet. In our example, the bet size for BPD is 11% greater than that for JoB, so that increases your edge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Further, let\u2019s assume you know both games well, like them both equally, bankroll is not an issue, and want to play the game where you have the bigger advantage. So far, that\u2019s going to be BPD in the Ten Play version. <\/span><\/p>\n

If that\u2019s all there was to it, there would be no discussion worthy of a column. To make things interesting, assume that when you play the Ten Play machine rapidly, one out of ten hands doesn\u2019t register. That is, for every ten hands played, instead of earning the 125 points (at $1 coin-in per point) you deserve, you only receive 112.5 points. Now what? Which game is better? The lesser game gets full points and the better game awards only 90% of the points you are supposed to get.<\/span><\/p>\n

Go ahead and work out your answer. I\u2019ll be happy to wait for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the JoB game works exactly like it\u2019s supposed to, we know that has a 100.04% yield. The only game we need to work on is BPD.<\/span><\/p>\n

For BPD, the game itself is still worth 99.64%, as it would be if you didn\u2019t use your slot club at all. That number isn\u2019t affected by the player tracking system and the slot club. It\u2019s only the 0.5% slot club that\u2019s reduced to 0.45% when you only get credit for 90% of your coin-in. So, 99.64% + 0.45% = 100.09%.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I mentioned earlier, it isn\u2019t the raw percentages we wish to compare, but rather the raw percentages multiplied by the coin-in. But since 90% of $12.50 per hand comes out to be $11.25, which is the same as you\u2019re betting for Spin Poker, no adjustment needs to be done here to compare the two games.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best play is still BPD. Is that what you deduced? This isn\u2019t that difficult, although figuring out exactly how to calculate this is a bit tricky to some players.<\/span><\/p>\n

The guy who told me about this had a totally different take on it. He argued, \u201cThe casino player tracking system shouldn\u2019t be making this mistake. It\u2019s like they\u2019re cheating me. And since I don\u2019t like being cheated, I\u2019m going to avoid the game I\u2019m being cheated on and go with the other game. That\u2019ll teach them!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t like being cheated either. The word \u201ccheated\u201d implies the casino is doing this on purpose. I doubt this is the case here. If you bring it to the slot director\u2019s attention, in most casinos he will attempt to fix the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Personally, even though I\u2019m not afraid to address mistakes to slot directors when I think it appropriate, in this case I would likely keep quiet. In our example, we\u2019re assuming this is the loosest game in the house. Those games make slot directors nervous. Since the fix to this problem would cause the casino to pay out more money for the same amount of play, the slot director might well decide to fix the problem but downgrade the game to 8\/6 rather than 9\/6. That wouldn\u2019t be to my liking at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I would do is play the BPD, even though the machine had a malfunction. Or maybe avoid the casino altogether because a 0.09% edge is just too skinny. But going all the way down to a 0.04% edge would never be my solution. <\/span><\/p>\n

Just because there\u2019s a malfunction doesn\u2019t mean that the game should necessarily be avoided. You need to estimate the cost of the malfunction and proceed accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me describe a hypothetical situation that is based in reality. Let\u2019s say the two best games for you at a casino are 25\u00a2 Ten Play 9\/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe (99.64%) and 25\u00a2 Spin Poker 9\/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%). Let\u2019s also assume the slot club plus the various promotions adds a half percent. You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601,558,557],"tags":[561,724,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40650"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}