Not a BJ question, more a general casino games question.
House Edge - how good an indicator is it of the "playability" of a game? - ie playability being with some expectation that positive variance will kick in and allow a player to win some.
In some games, the HE is the result of an even distribution of risk - ie roulette, where no matter what combination of numbers are covered, if you win you're always short changed by 2.7%. So the 2.7% is the product of an average of a lot of possibilities all short-changing by 2.7%. I think the house edge on Bacarrat is also fairly spread across the win/loss possibilities.
But I've been playing some of the free online versions of some of the other casino games, commonly referred to by those of you in the US as "carny games". Some of these have a HE less than that of roulette, and this seems to be at the level it is as a result of low possibility outcomes paying a huge payout, ie pulling a straight flush. So the HE is heavily skewed in favour of a player getting a an outcome that has odds of 1 in 72,000ish (1 in 650,000ish for a royal). Video poker is like this as well, with a HE heavily skewed in favour of a small number of possible winning hands (and the fact you've bet five coins to boot). It would be interesting to know what the HE's would be if the top two payout possibilities were removed from the calculations on these games.
On the WoO site, Mr Shackleford has used a calculation for what he calls the "element of risk", as he's stated the HE can be misleading, particularly where additional bets are made, such as in casino stud poker.
Carribean hold em seems a great game - for the house that is. Although the HE is only around 2.2%, bearing in mind the ruleset, pay tables and payouts relative to the amount of money at risk on a called hand (if the dealer doesn't qualify with at least a pair of fours you don't get paid out on 2/3rds of the money you've risked), it seems to me nothing short of robbery. One example of where the published HE is, IMHO, very misleading.
Comments?
House Edge - how good an indicator is it of the "playability" of a game? - ie playability being with some expectation that positive variance will kick in and allow a player to win some.
In some games, the HE is the result of an even distribution of risk - ie roulette, where no matter what combination of numbers are covered, if you win you're always short changed by 2.7%. So the 2.7% is the product of an average of a lot of possibilities all short-changing by 2.7%. I think the house edge on Bacarrat is also fairly spread across the win/loss possibilities.
But I've been playing some of the free online versions of some of the other casino games, commonly referred to by those of you in the US as "carny games". Some of these have a HE less than that of roulette, and this seems to be at the level it is as a result of low possibility outcomes paying a huge payout, ie pulling a straight flush. So the HE is heavily skewed in favour of a player getting a an outcome that has odds of 1 in 72,000ish (1 in 650,000ish for a royal). Video poker is like this as well, with a HE heavily skewed in favour of a small number of possible winning hands (and the fact you've bet five coins to boot). It would be interesting to know what the HE's would be if the top two payout possibilities were removed from the calculations on these games.
On the WoO site, Mr Shackleford has used a calculation for what he calls the "element of risk", as he's stated the HE can be misleading, particularly where additional bets are made, such as in casino stud poker.
Carribean hold em seems a great game - for the house that is. Although the HE is only around 2.2%, bearing in mind the ruleset, pay tables and payouts relative to the amount of money at risk on a called hand (if the dealer doesn't qualify with at least a pair of fours you don't get paid out on 2/3rds of the money you've risked), it seems to me nothing short of robbery. One example of where the published HE is, IMHO, very misleading.
Comments?