Ask the Wizard #17

This is a close variation of the Martingale betting system, in which the player doubles after every loss. Usually, the Martingale player will win but occasionally he will have more consecutive losses than he can handle and suffer a major loss. Assuming your friend is betting on the player, the probability that any given bet will begin a streak of nine losses in a row is (2153464/(2153464+2212744))⁹ =~ .001727, or 1 in 579, assuming ties are ignored. There is more information available about the folly of the Martingale in my section on betting systems. However, the more ridiculous a belief is the more tenaciously it tends to be held. It usually takes a big loss to possibly convince a believer in any particular betting systems to stop.

Yes. I always include pushes in the house edge. The only exception is certain craps bets that usually result in a push, namely the place, buy, lay, and hard ways, that tend to remain up until resolved. For those bets, I define the house edge as the expected loss per bet resolved.

Bovada has lots of games you can play for fun, including blackjack. No account required, just one click and you're in. Just go to the Instant Play casino and then then click "practice" for blackjack.

It is hard to find a blackjack game where the basic strategy player has an edge over the house. The player edge in single-deck blackjack on my site is based on otherwise multiple deck rules, which rarely exist in single deck. I organized the table this way to illustrate the effect of the number of decks. Unified Gaming offers the best blackjack game for the basic strategy player I have ever seen is offered anywhere. For a list visit my online casino index. If you do play a game with a negative house edge then, yes, that does mean you will have better odds than the house, assuming you play the basic strategy.

No, when you download software you are still playing a game based on a server elsewhere. The day may come when people can play on their own computers but casinos would have to worry about you cheating. Whether downloadable or Java, the number that pops up in roulette is determined by a remote server. The software on your end just presents the graphics and establishes communication with the online casino's server.

Unfortunately, casino cheating does happen. I keep a list of some incidents I suspect in my blacklist.

I see from your e-mail address you are with U.C. Santa Barbara. That is where I went to college. BA in mathematics/economics, class of ’88. For a fellow Gaucho, I spent about an hour playing this game, to hopefully help you out. I got up to 426 points one round. For the benefit of other readers the game in question has 17 rounds of jacks-or-better video poker, with a much different pay table than found in the casinos. Most notably a high pair pays 2:1 and two pair pays 4:1.

With the generous pay table of this game, the player should bet the maximum unless the cards are total garbage. With garbage, the expected return is about 0.7X money bet. With a single high card, the return is 0.94X money bet. With a low pair, the return is 1.53X money bet. Betting the maximum on a single high card may sound like a bad bet but in this game you need to be aggressive. Towards the end, the player should bet the maximum, even on garbage, because a long shot is the only hope to get 500. I would not sacrifice pairs for 4 to a straight or flush. It will likely take getting a 4 of a kind at some point to get the 500.

This $1000 bonus lowers the house edge from 6.67% to 6.00%, assuming a $1 bet.

There was a similar question asked in the June 15 column, which I worked out in detail. However, briefly, I estimate the answer to be about 78%. Over a year, you could expect to lose 0.52% (the house edge) of the total initial bets.