Barnum Bets for those
born every minute
11 April 2005
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
I was told that the tie bet on a baccarat table
was the worst bet in the casino. Someone else
told me the blackjack insurance bet was. I’ve
been a fan of both for years. Any chance you
list some of the sucker bets the casino offers
so I can avoid them in the future? Charles J.
The dictionary describes "worst" as the
superlative of bad, and believe me, Charles,
there are plenty of bad bets the casino offers.
Casino owners figure that so long as some
die-hard gamblers insist on making stupid
wagers; why not offer a smorgasbord of them to
the die-soon players.
So, Charles, for you, and others who have any
interest in beating the casino at their own
game, PLUCK , EXILE AND BANISH these WORST
wagers from your playing repertoire.
The Insurance Bet at Blackjack: Unless you are
an experienced card counter, you should never
make this wager. Depending upon the table rules,
the casino edge runs from 5% to 8%. Worse yet,
insuring a hand composed of two face cards on a
single-deck game gives the casino a 14.3% edge.
The Tie bet at Casino War: A Monster Loser. This
bet has a House Advantage of 18.65%.
The Tie Bet in Baccarat: Another tie wager that
carries a hefty house advantage. It’s 14.1%.
The Side bet in Caribbean Stud Poker: Don't let
that progressive meter jackpot suck you into a
dollar wager, with the hope of being dealt a
"natural" royal flush. The true odds are almost
650,000 to 1. Even though a $100,000 plus
jackpot looks tempting -- as it was designed to
be -- unless you see a progressive figure
closing in on those high odds, it is a no-value
bet. Avoid also the Let-It-Ride Side Bets: They
too carry a double-digit casino edge.
Proposition Bets on a crap game: The stickman
will entice you to make a multitude of lousy
wagers, such as, one-number bets like the
betting the 7. This wager alone has a casino
advantage of over 16% against you.
Here is list of sucker bets found on a crap game
along with their house edge.
Big 6 & 8 (9.1%)
Hardway 6 or 8 (9.1%)
Hardway 4 or 10 (11.1%)
Any craps (11.1%)
3 or 11 proposition (11.1%)
2 or 12 proposition (13.9%)
Any 7 (16.1%)
Most Sic-Bo Bets: Place a bet on anything except
Big or Small, and you're looking at a house edge
of from 7.87% to 18.52%.
The Big Six: Any bet on this game has a minimum
house edge of 15%. I'd run from this game.
Keno: This game of luck has an extremely high
house advantage, at the bare minimum of 25%.
The 5-Number (0, 00, 1, 2, 3) wager in roulette:
This bet has a casino advantage of 7.89%. We're
not through. The house edge on a Double Zero
roulette table is 5.26% against you no matter
how you bet it. If roulette just happens to be
your favorite game, at least look for the single
zero wheel where the house edge is down to the
2% range.
Indeed, there are more, like one-armed bandits
in general, or haphazard and hunch play at
blackjack or video poker, but the gist of it,
Charles, is that the casino figures so long as
you are giving your hard-earned money away, you
might as well be giving it to them with the
wagers listed above. But if you choose your bets
wisely, you can drastically affect the outcome
of your casino visit in your favor, not theirs.
Not a bad idea.
Gambling quote of the week: “The more I reflect
upon the great number of events, past or
present, the more I recognize the effect of
chance in all earthly things.” TACITUS, Germanicus (A.D. 99)
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