Munchin’ on Casino Freebies
December 5th, 2008
Dear Mark: Is there any way of lowering the
casino’s 1.5 percent edge on a pass line bet by
hedging it somewhere else on the table? Brad D.
If you’re thinking of those snake oil
proposition bets pitched by barking dealers (hardways,
field bets, one number rolls, etc.), absolutely
not. Some of those flummadiddle wagers can carry
a casino edge as high as 16 percent. But there
is a way, Brad, of considerably lowering the
house advantage on your pass line bet, and
that’s by taking free odds. “FREE ODDS?” Whaddat?
Listen up.
Distinct from all other craps wagers, free odds
carry NO house edge. That’s right, zip, zilch,
nada. All bets are paid off at true odds.
For instance, let's say that you bet $5 on the
pass line and the point is 10. On a double-odds
table, where you are allowed to make an odds bet
twice the size of your original pass bet, you
are allowed to back your pass line bet with $10
in free odds.
The odds against your winning are 2-1, because
with two six-sided dice, there are six ways of
making a 7 (loser) and three ways of making a
winner 10. If you win, your pass line bet is
paid at even money, bringing you $5 in winnings,
but your odds bet is paid at the 2-1 true odds,
bringing you an additional $20.
The house edge is actually 1.41 percent on your
pass line wager (not quite 1.5 percent as in
your question), but backing it with free odds
brings the overall edge on the combination down
to well under one percent.
With single odds, the house edge on the pass
with odds grouped together drops to 0.8 percent.
Per my example above, double odds, the house
edge drops to 0.6 percent, 10x odds, 0.2 percent
and 0.02 percent with 100x odds.
Dear Mark: I got my dream hand, or so I thought
at Pai Gow Poker. Four Aces, the Joker, plus a
King and a Queen. I played it this way. The King
and Queen up front, five aces in the back. I won
the hand, but another player on the game said I
should have played it differently. What’s your
take? Kenny L.
Congratulations, Kenny, on getting the highest
hand possible In Pai Gow poker, a hand composed
of four Aces, and the joker, which can be used
either as an Ace or to complete flushes or
straights.
A quick refresher for those not familiar with
Pai Gow Poker: each player is dealt seven cards
with which he must make two hands based on poker
rankings -- a front hand of two cards and a back
hand of five cards. The five-card hand must
outrank the two-card hand. In the play you
described, you put the King/Queen up front, but
was it the right move?
Granted, you won, but the King/Queen two-card
hand might not have been powerful enough,
because, although there was no way possible for
the dealer to beat your five-card hand, the
rules of Pai Gow Poker are that you win only if
you defeat the banker on both your front and
back hands.
A "copy," or push, always goes to the banker,
and a King/Queen would only have given you
bragging rights to catching five Aces against a
banker’s kind King/Queen, and it would
definitely lose in the front against a small
pair. Keeping those five Aces together puts your
weak two-card hand at risk.
The correct way to play five aces is to separate
them, using two Aces in the two-card
"second-high" hand, and three Aces in the
five-card "high" hand.
Gambling Wisdom of the Week: "The boring
thing about video poker is that once you learn
the correct strategy, unlike real poker, there's
nothing left to learn." --VP Pappy
