Humbly requesting help determining player advantage on Pogo Blackjack Carnival game

Mewtwo

Well-Known Member
#1
While this game is solely for fake money (tokens) on their site, which can be used for prize drawings, I'm wondering how smart (or not) it is to sit here and play this as opposed to their other games.

Pretty much all of their games are +EV; some of their Video Poker returns 120-140%. So I know their BJ has to be +EV, it's just a matter of how much.

The setup:
1 deck, H17, heads-up play (you and dealer only)

Deck dealt until the last possible card (the game knows when there aren't enough points left on cards in the deck to complete a hand; this could mean dealing until 8 cards left, or dealing to the absolute last card)

(The game is kind enough to give you a running count of 10s/face cards in the deck at all times, though you can just track every card as it comes out.)

5-card Charlie (though if you get a 4-card soft 21, the game stops you from hitting on it, which can result in a push sometimes)

Split up to 4 hands, but non-matching 10s/face cards cannot be split

DOA, one card dealt to split Aces, re-splitting Aces okay

Available spread is 10 to 250 tokens; only allowable bets are 10, 25, 50, 100, or 250.



Side bets on the first two cards (5 tokens each, cannot be above or below this, once a Side Bet is selected, it is on for every hand in that single deck and cannot be turned off or changed)

20:1 (100 tokens) for any pair

120:1 (600 tokens) for a Royal Match, but slightly easier than the normal RM as a Jack also counts (KQ suited, KJ suited, or QJ suited all work)

240:1 (1,200 tokens) for a pair of 7s


Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
 

Brock Windsor

Well-Known Member
#2
What is your goal? General interest? The BJ is not player positive off the top of the deck, if you were a gifted computer programmer you could write a program to continuosly count and clean out all their coupons. The royal match game looks good but I can't calculate it.
BW
If you can play the same number of tokens per round, a VP game that offers 140% return is where you should be playing. Can't think of what that paytable would look like.
 

Mewtwo

Well-Known Member
#3
My goal here is general interest, like you suggested (I figure I can use this to at least practice BJ basic strategy at home until I have it exactly right) but also wanting to know which of the side bets is best (I know right off that Super 7's can't be the best because there are 13 ranks, you'd be likely to, on average, hit Pair Square 13 times for each one time you hit Super 7's, so you'd get 1300 there vs. 1200 on the 7s)

As for the video poker...it's weird.

Multi-hand, a fixed 21 hands. 3 tokens per hand = max bet and required for top pays on premium hands.

Single joker.

Pay table:

2 pair = 1
3 of a kind = 2
Straight = 5
Flush = 10
Full house = 15
4 of a kind = 20
Straight Flush = 50
Any Royal Flush (joker or not) = 250
5 of a kind = 250

Okay, the 140% figure was exaggerating. Wizard of Odds's calculator puts it at 117.98%.

But since you're stuck flat-betting 63 tokens a hand and the best you can do is a dealt Royal/5 of a kind for a maximum payout of 15,750, I would think BJ might be more profitable.


I'm neglecting the Jackpot Spin/bonus game tokens for each game, as I have no way of determining the odds on those, just wondering which would be better as a base game.
 

miplet

Active Member
#4
Side bets:

Pair 1 in 17 hands .17647 player edge
royal 1 in 110.5 hands .08597 player edge
7s 1 in 221 hands .08597 player edge

I assumed that the payoffs were for 1, not to 1.
 
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