Casino Math
Understanding the mathematics that lays behind the casino game could be helpful for the player in order for them to choose the most appropriate and sensitive betting strategy and how to place. It is the math used for winnings in casinos that does not take into account of how much was spent to win it. University of Akron offer a class on casion mathematics. Novice gamblers have always been the bread and butter players of the casino. They simply play without any form of expectation and firmly believe it's the.
Last week, I discussed how casinos don’t actually gamble. At that point, I was talking about sports books and how the goal of the casino is to put half the money on one side and half on the other and collect a 5 percent ‘fee’ regardless of the outcome.
But how does this concept of not gambling apply to the table game, video poker or slot portion of the casino business? It’s all about the math.
Every game in the casino is based on math. It does not matter which game, but there is a math analysis for every game and it is the math in that analysis that tells the casinos that they are not actually gambling. Not one bit.
Casino Mathematician Jobs
Several years ago, shortly after the 6-Card Bonus side bet was launched for 3-card poker, it hit twice in a week at Caesars properties in Atlantic City. The odds of the top prize being awarded which was a cool $1 million was just over 20 million-to-one. You needed a 6-card Straight Flush of a particular suit to win it. It was a $5 wager so it actually paid 200,000 to 1.
Of course, there are lower prizes as well. If I recall correctly, the payback of the side bet is about 85 percent.
I got a call from a friend who said that Caesars was definitely going to pull the game after paying out that money. Quite the contrary, as I received a call asking for the odds that it hit twice in that week’s period as they wanted to use it in their marketing information.
With a 15 percent house edge, the casino knows that at the end of the year, their profit will be incredibly close to 15 percent of the total amount wagered. The more wagered, the more likely it will approach 15 percent and the larger this number will be overall.
There will be some ups and downs over the year, but the math is the math and nothing alters it – well, short of cheating.
What in the math tells the casino all of this? First of all, it is possible to create a program that simulates the 6-Card Bonus side bet. If you don’t believe that a computer simulation can represent what will actually happen in a casino, then there isn’t much I can do.
The deal from a properly-shuffled deck of cards is random. The computer program is random. That’s as good as we can do.
Next, a casino like Caesars knows exactly how many hands are dealt over any period of time. You’ll note that many Progressive or Large payout side bets use special mechanisms (i.e. that lit red circle) for tracking the wager. This system allows a casino to know exactly how many wagers are made on the side bet. So, they know what the participation rate is, they know how many wagers were wagered on the side bet and they can know how they did over the year.
All of this information can be fed into our computer simulation program that might play 100,000 hands to simulate a year. Quite frankly, it can do whatever number is deemed to be fairly accurate.
The good part is that the computer program can run 100,000 random hands thousands of times and tabulate all the results. Now, if 100,000 hands represents one year of play, that means a thousand of these simulations represent an entire millennia of results. This is way longer than any casino bothers to worry about.
From this data we can learn lots of things. First, we can learn that the payback over a 1,000-year period will be right at that 85 percent. More importantly, we will learn how the casino can expect to do in an average year, which is going to be very close to that 85 percent.
Casino Math Test
But the mathematical average is only a part of the story. We will also see the extremes. What was the worst year the casino can expect to have and the best year. From this sample, we can calculate what is called the standard deviation, which gives us an idea of how likely the real number over a year will deviate from the average.
I do not have the numbers handy for just such a simulation, but from my knowledge of similar simulations, the casinos have little to worry about with a side bet paying 85 percent. In a worst-case scenario, they can count on the payback hitting 90 percent and they’ll only take 10 percent that year. It’s still not gambling on their part.
Casino Math Copian
Now, this is all from the casino perspective. Next week, I’ll begin turning the math around and bringing it back to the Player side of the table.