Ask The Wizard #192

I was at Foxwoods the other day, watching the final two tables of the Foxwoods Poker Classic. When Vince Van Patten (one of the World Poker Tour hosts) came in to watch, he started making all kinds of prop bets with some of the poker pros who were hanging around. He was offering anyone 20 to 1 if they could flip through an entire deck of cards cycling through the ranks and saying aloud while peeling each card Ace, 2, 3, 4, and so on up to King and starting again at Ace without ever having the card they’re announcing come up. Nobody made it all the way through and Vince won a few hundred dollars in about 10 minutes before everybody gave up. I know this has to be possible, but I have a suspicion Vince has quite the hustle going offering only 20 to 1 on this. What are the odds of actually getting through the whole deck?

You have the odds and combinations listed for five-card stud with one joker fully wild. Would you also post the same for two jokers fully wild, as all decks come with two jokers (1-red, 1-black) and many people play with both used as wilds.

I recently made a trip out to Vegas, where I came upon a game called the "World’s Most Liberal Blackjack" at the Las Vegas Club. In this game you are allowed to: double down with any 2, 3 or 4 card combination, split & re-split aces as often as you choose, split & re-split any pair as often as you like, surrender your first two cards for half of your original bet and any hand with six cards automatically wins. The caveat is blackjack pays even money unless it’s suited in which case it pays 2 to 1. Is this a better game than a 3 to 2 BJ with 6 decks and the dealer standing on a soft 17? Also, in this case, would it be beneficial to double down since the BJ only pays even money?

I went to Vegas last month and played Three Card Poker for the first time. I got a straight flush, and was so excited to win that I didn’t notice that the dealer only paid out 20 to 1 instead of 40 to 1. I lost a few hands and left the table to go cash in, then realized what had happened. My question is, if I notice an error in the future, what should I do? I’m assuming after I left the table it was way too late, but what is the rule if I’m still at the table? If I don’t point out an error before the next hand begins, is it too late?

For baccarat, if you found a casino that allowed a player to bet both player and banker at the same time, is there any advantage to do that? How about if they rated you for the total of both bets? (I.E. - bet $25 on Banker, $25 on Player and be rated for $50)

Many casinos allow bets behind another player’s on the blackjack table. Can you please tell us the proper pair-splitting strategy when the "behind" wager far exceeds the regular wager, assuming the two bettors are working together?

This is about controlling the dice at Craps. You previously discussed the Stanford Wong Experiment, stating, "The terms of the bet were whether precision shooters could roll fewer than 79.5 sevens in 500 rolls of the dice. The expected number in a random game would be 83.33. The probability of rolling 79 or fewer sevens in 500 random rolls is 32.66%.... The probability of rolling 74 or fewer sevens in 500 random rolls is 14.41%."

The question I have about this bet is that 14.41% still isn’t "statistically significant" [ i.e. p < 0.05 ] , which is usually taken to mean greater than two Standard Deviations from the Mean -- or a probability of less than a *combined* 5% of the event happening randomly on EITHER end of the series.

How many Sevens would have to be rolled in 500 rolls before you could say that there is a less than 2.5% chance that the outcome was entirely random (i.e. that the outcome was statistically significant) ?

Many Thanks & BTW , yours is ABSOLUTELY the BEST web site on the subject of gambling odds & probabilities that I’ve found .... keep up the good work !!!

What is the expected number of rolls needed to get a Yahtzee?