Is this a +ev BJ Promotion?

[karl]

Hi,

A local casino to me does a promotion whereby they award a blackjack with an additional £5 roulette bet whereby if you win the roullete bet you are only paid the winnings and not returned the stake, so I think this is equivalent to £2.43 taking into account the house edge on the single "0" roulette wheel. This is in addition to the standard 1.5-1 payout.

The minimum bet is £3, im wondering if I bet only the minimum using only basic starategy does this game become positive ev? The game has standard UK rules (im not 100% sure of the BJ house rules as I dont really play blackjack).

If this game is +ev, could someone possible calculate my expectation per hand approx?

Thanks in advance.

Karl

 

[mjbballar23]

+ev

assuming no ridiculous rules i would venture to say that it is +EV but not by a lot. We need to know the house rules to give you an exact answer.

 

[KenSmith]

You can get 4.72 GBP worth out of the coupon at single-zero roulette by playing a single number straight up instead of betting one of the even money bets.

If this is allowed, the offer means that blackjack on a 3 GBP bet pays 9.22 GBP. This adds 7.13% to the game. Let's assume bad rules and a 0.77% house edge on the base game. (6 Decks, H17, DA2, DAS, NS, EHNC).

Your edge is now 6.36%. At 3 GBP per hand and 60 hands per hour, that's worth 12.83 GBP per hour.

(If you are forced to play the roulette bet on even money bets, it's only worth 6.61 GBP per hour.)

 

[davidpom]

Is there a limit to how many extra tickets you can play in a day, or at once on the roulette table? Seems to me that if you accumulated 37 free roulette tickets, and played them all on the same spin (assuming that was allowed), that you'd be rewarded with 175GBP for your trouble - guaranteed. Each number pays 35 to 1, so 5GBP on a single number straight up would reap that sort of return.

On the basis that a blackjack occurs say, on average, once every 23 hands (or thereabouts), then you'd need 851 hands of blackjack to earn the 37 free roulette tickets. This of course is widely variable, but is an indication. So you play 851 hands x 3GBP = 2553GBP, which at .77% house edge (bad rules) but perfect basic strategy, should cost you 19.65GBP. So you can get 175GBP for an investment of 19.65GBP.

Depending on how busy the table is, and whether this is a CSM or hand shuffled game, you could probably average say 80 hands per hour. So it would take you about 10 1/2 hours to make your 155GBP profit (175-19.65 expected loss).

Those figures are pretty much in line with Ken's I think -the only variable being how many hands you play in an hour.

Advice: check the fine print on those coupons. This offer seems TOO GOOD to be true. Either that, or the casino marketing department are crazy (or perhaps they're working on an average bet formula, and assume that most of their players are playing 10-20GBP averages or higher).

 

[karl]

Thanks for all the replys, they are very informative and im very greatfull.

I actually play poker full time and noticed this promotion in a local casino, I assumed it would be positive ev with some rough maths but thought it would be good to ask the professionals.

This promotion is time limited to only certain times during the day, but so far its been working with no problems.

We covered all the spots with coupons today (we actually had 36 coupons so but a £5 chip on 0), after deliberating with the floor person the bets were alowed to stand and we won the £175.

Afterwards I noticed the said floorman deliberating with another to the tune of, "those guys just covered all the singles on roulette with coupons" to which he replied "were giving away free bets not free money, we will need to do something about that". It also seemed to attract them to our BJ table watching us etc.

We were even playing each others spots behind so we would recieve a token each for a blackjack, it makes our strategy pretty obvious but my brother goes back to work soon and Id make more from just playing poker so im seeing it as a bit of fun and not really worried if the promotion gets pulled.

Im not sure what they could do short of cancelling the promotion because even if they only allow us to use a small number of coupons per spin we could just take the high varience route and bet single numbers a lot of times, or cover the remaining numbers with cash.

Thanks again.

Karl

 

[Opinion]

To Late!

I was going to suggest to not play every number on the board for the very reasons you state. They will end the promotion or exclude you or your strategy in some way!

I would change the strategy. Who is to say they won't do it again if they don't realize what is going on!

One should play just like the other players, blend in.
or
Perhaps cover half or half of the board +1.

How many other coupons are being played or bets being placed? I would not be the big coupon user or the big bettor. Even if that means going back and forth from bj to roulette more often. Go to different roulette tables.

If ahead perhaps employ even more no cost camo. Several coupons on one spot?

I don't think you would like it if you were personally excluded and they decided to prolong the promotion or bring it back in the future.

 

[karl]

This casino is tiny, it would be hard to "blend in". Everyone else has no clue of basic strategy, always play the front "3 card" bet and spend the coupons in singles etc. The most I have seen is 5 on the table.

The casino has 1 blackjack table running and 1 roulette table running. When we played our roulette bet no one else was on the table.

When we came back to the BJ table the dealer said "welcome back cheaters, I mean players...."

I think camoflage went straight out the window today lol.

From what I herd the promotion is ongoing with no expiry date, originally the expiry was june but its been made open ended.

 

[Opinion]

Confused

If you get the coupon for a blackjack?

Others are playing blackjack and getting coupons?

Are they not playing theirs?

There should be more coupons playing then just yours?
I would still at least not cover the table, if they made it clear they don't like that.

Maybe wait till others are playing their coupons also. If you were to bet the same numbers as another then the casino should not complain at all.

If any casino employee used the word cheater, well you don't want that name following you to the poker table? The casino could act against you or other players may avoid you.

 

[karl]

Other players are playing there coupons but usually they just play at the end of the shoe, they don't collect tokens as such. If I wanted to camoflage my play I should certainly just place whatever Roulette tokens I have at the end of each shoe, knowing that ill have the same expectation just higher varience.

But as stated it isn't a long term venture, we are just playing over the holidays for fun.

As for the cheater statement effecting poker, they do play poker at this casino but for low stakes, ive never played here so its not really a problem. I play mainly online, and sometimes some of the bigger UK casino that have bigger cash games.

Out of interest supposing I was banned from this casino is it likely id be banned from any other casinos (Competitors casinos?) as this could be a problem for me.

p.s before this promotion I had never played a hand of blackjack in a casino before.

Karl

 

[Opinion]

Let's Not Panic, However

Yes, play just like the others. If there are 2 or 3 others playing I would spread my play around and copy many or all of their bets, that way if you win, someone else does and you don't stand out.

If only one other perhaps bet with them over 50% of the spots. If you copy them completely they may think you are a team.

The cheater comment by the dealer was probably just a rude comment. However, add that to the heat you drew and things could get out of hand. Being called a cheater is kinda being called a criminal depending on your laws.

You probably know your casinos better then I, but generally if burned in one casino probably burned in the same companies casinos and sometimes at other properties. Perhaps a casino across the street as an example.

If you are not playing rated this is less of a fear.

If you have played since the cover the table episode and things calmed down then I would be less concerned. Do not cover the table again!