Ask the Wizard #55

The probability of rolling exactly one one with three dice is 3*(5/6)²*(1/6) = 75/216 = 34.72%.

No. This is a hard and fast rule, you never raise in Caribbean Stud Poker with less than ace/king.

For the person with no casino gambling experience who puts an emphasis on something easy to play I would start with baccarat. Just bet on the banker every time.

(18/38)¹⁸ =~ 1 in 693745.

I usually use Blackjack Conditions and Specials for information on where the best blackjack games are in Las Vegas. Surprisingly they say that Caesars Palace has the best basic strategy game: double deck, double on any two cards, dealer stands on soft 17, and late surrender for a house edge of 0.13%.

For those who don’t know what you’re talking about, Triple Action Blackjack is a blackjack variant in which the dealer plays out three different hands, all starting with the same up card. The player makes three bets and his one hand is played against the three dealer hands individually. The strategy for this game is exactly the same as conventional blackjack.

That was nice of you to tip generously. The Wizard definitely supports tipping the dealers when given good service. I’m 99% sure that you were just lucky. If the dealer did have the ability and will to cheat for the players he probability would have arranged for an accomplice to get the big wins and they would have split the money later. I have heard of stories of dealer overpaying players who tipped well, as long as they always tipped back a portion of the overpayments. Of course I don’t approve of any form of cheating.

Let’s assume you hold the ace of spades and toss away four non-ace singletons. There are 44 ways you can get a four of a kind in aces. The 44 is the number of possible singletons you could get on the draw along with the other three aces (52 cards less 4 aces and the 4 singletons you discarded). You might also get a four of a kind in one of the other 8 ranks besides aces and the four you discarded. So the total ways to get a four of a kind on the deal is 44+8=52. The total number of combinations on the deal is combin(47,4)=178365. So the probability of a four of a kind is 52/178365 = 1 in 3430.

You should have asked me this while I was still an actuary at the Social Security Administration. I could have easily have done a nationwide query on death records. I would say the answer is close to 1 in 365. It probably is a little less because infant mortality rates are disproportionately high after birth. For births in the year 2000 the probability of death within the first year is 0.71% of male infants and 0.59% for female infants. In other words those infant deaths are unlikely to occur on the birthday because once the first birthday arrives the child is outside of the danger period. Also, and I don’t know this to be a fact, but on the shoe ’Six Feet Under’ they said that the business for funeral directors picks up in January, evidently because people try to hold on for just one more Christmas holiday and then let go. This same logic might apply to reaching a birthday. Consider George Burns, he died 48 days after his 100th birthday.