Royal Match 21 machines in Vegas casinos

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Caesar

Well-Known Member
#1
#1
I've just returned from a trip to Vegas. I went to a lot of casinos and noticed a blackjack game with a dealer on a screen-usually a comely woman. These Royal Match machines have the following characteristics:

BJ pays 6 to 5
Surrender
Dealer stands on s17
Dbl any two
No resplitting
Split aces get one card each
Single deck shuffled each round

The machine offers various bonuses. Due to the 6/5 payout on blackjacks, I assume the casino has an edge over a skilled player. But I wonder what that edge is? Is it small enough that a promotion could turn it into a positive EV game?
 
FLASH1296

FLASH1296

Well-Known Member
#4
#4

Even with the best of rules the 6:5 BJ payoff kills all BJ games.

If all rules are identical the one with the 6:5 BJ payoff will have a
House Advantage accelerated by an absurd 2.35% !

In other words, if the game with the proper BJ payoff of 3:2 has a
H.A. of let us say .15% the change to the larcenous BJ premium
raises the house advantage from .15% to 2.50%

So ... it accelerates the player's handicap by a factor of almost 17 !

Besides, if the deck is always being shuffled, it is impossible to gain an advantage of any kind.

Tourists know no better. You do (now).
 
C

Caesar

Well-Known Member
#5
#5
Sahara

They were at Sahara's and some other properties. They often had players using them. I did not play a single hand. But I met a guy who claimed they were beatable, so I jotted down some numbers before leaving. I don't know exactly what the bonuses are but I think there's one for a suited blackjack and some others. The various bonuses, surrender, and the single deck are good for the player, but the 6/5 payouts are just too much to overcome. Still, assuming perfect play, I wonder what the casino edge is? I checked the Wizard of Odds but could not find anything on his site.
By the way, Sahara's is advertising its dollar blackjack(regular tables, not Match 21), dollar hotdogs, dollar beers, and dollar shots. The hotdogs, beer, and shots were great, but I avoided the blackjack. Its dollar games have very poor rules. This dollar promotion was mentioned in the last issue of The Player's Edge in the Las-Vegas Review Journal.
 
C

Caesar

Well-Known Member
#6
#6
Flash: 6/5 BJ

Flash, you said that the dreadful 6/5 payout for BJ gives the house an edge of 2.35%. On the Wizard of Odd's site, he gives a figure of 1.39% as the house edge for this rule. As a poker player, maybe I'm missing something somewhere! I mean I avoid 6/5 games like the plague, but there is a one percent difference between our figures.
 
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callipygian

Well-Known Member
#7
#7
Caesar said:
Flash, you said that the dreadful 6/5 payout for BJ gives the house an edge of 2.35%. On the Wizard of Odd's site, he gives a figure of 1.39% as the house edge for this rule.
Click to expand...
Wizard of Odds is correct.

For an infinite deck,

BJ(3/2) = 0.5*(2*4/13*1/13)*(1-2*4/13*1/13)
BJ(6/5) = 0.2*(2*4/13*1/13)*(1-2*4/13*1/13)

The difference between the two is 1.35%.

Flash1296 may be thinking of blackjack paying out 1:1.

BJ(1/1) = 0
BJ(3/2) - BJ(1/1) = 2.25%
 
C

callipygian

Well-Known Member
#8
#8
Caesar said:
I avoid 6/5 games like the plague
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that, while the baseline EV dropping has a big part to do with this, card counters have a second reason to avoid 6:5 games - the effect of card counting is reduced.

That is, for every true count increment on a 3:2 game, your EV goes up by about 0.6%. If you start off with a game around -0.6%, you're even by TC+1 and can build up a 2.5% advantage by TC+5.

In contrast, in a 6:5 game, each true count increment only count for about 0.5%. So you start off with a game at -2.0%, but even if you didn't (for example, 6:5 with 5-card charlies which offset each other in terms of EV), you wouldn't be able to build up the same advantage as the count goes high - the same TC+5 count gives you less than a 2.0% advantage. (5-card charlies actually decrease the effect of card counting even more because small cards are more likely to trigger the 5-card charlie)
 
B

Beazle

New Member
#9
#9
Been reading the board of awhile now and was just in Vegas. Unless they changed it in the last week the BJ machine in the Sahara and Luxor both pay 3:2 for BJ. The Sahara machine is a $3 min machine and the Luxor is a $5 min. For killing time with friends it beats playing CSM tables.

The $1 min tables are the Sahara are 6:5 games
 
S

shadroch

Well-Known Member
#11
#11
As I said, every RM machine I've seen in Vegas pays 3-2 and does not shuffle after every hand. I suspect the original poster was a bit sloppy in his observations.

The Sahara $1 game is great for beginners. Flat bet $1 and have a few Coronas.
 
sagefr0g

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#13
#13
apparently the casino's can configure these machines in virtually endless ways.
i've seen about three or four different configurations in various places, same with those video roulette machines, they can make them double zero, single zero, probably screw around with the payoffs as well.:confused::whip:
 
C

Caesar

Well-Known Member
#14
#14
You're probably right, Sagefrog. After all, Jacks or Better video poker games, for example, have all sorts of paytables. The payoffs for full houses and flushes vary widely. The full-pay version of Jacks or Better is 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush. But it is rather difficult to find that version in Las Vegas today. By the way, I could not find the 9/6 version of Jacks or Better at Sahara. So the casinos can easily play around with paytables on other games too.
 
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shadroch

Well-Known Member
#15
#15
I called a friend who is at Luxor. The ShuffleMaster machines pay 3-2 and deal a six deck shoe. This is consistant with every other RM game I've played. These machines are leased by the casino, and as such, the maker not the casino makes the rules. There are a number of other BJ machines that shuffle every hand,and some(most) that pay 1-1 on BJ, but not the shuffleMaster Royal Matchs. These machines have been discussed ad infininitum on these and other boards.

BTW- 9/6 JOB is not that hard to find in Vegas. There are even websites that will steer you directly to where in the casino to find the machines.
It's pretty much gone from the strip, but it's out there
 
C

Caesar

Well-Known Member
#16
#16
Shadroch, go to the Sahara and check the numbers. They're on the machine.
Maybe the machine you're thinking of and the one I saw are completely different makes. Anyway, just look next time you're there.
As for 9/6, I never said that it wasn't available. But it is much, much less common than before. The 9/6 game is usually a stand-alone type of machine; these are usually a bit older. Newer machines are often multi-game types that have Jacks or Better, but the Jacks or Better on these newer machines are usually less than 9/6, typically 9/5 or 8/5 or even 6/5. It's true that video poker paytables have worsened in the last decade-as have the rules in the blackjack games.
 
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shadroch

Well-Known Member
#18
#18
SystemsTrader said:
The Sahara $1 blackjacks only pay 1-1.
Click to expand...
Yes, it does. So what. Do the math.
As the tables are almost always packed with novices, you are lucky to get 50hands an hour. A flat betting novice will end up betting $50 an hour, with a EV of what? A dollar an hour loss?
If they weren't playing Bj, they'd be at a slot machine, or even a VP machine. Even if they found a machine that paid back 98% or better, they'd still be playing several hundred hands an hour, with an expected loss of much more than $1.
In any event,having as little as two adult beverages turns this $1 a hand game into a positive value.
 
S

SystemsTrader

Well-Known Member
#19
#19
shadroch said:
Yes, it does. So what. Do the math.
Click to expand...
I was just pointing it out that blackjacks only pay 1-1. So I just did the math if any new players are reading this you are better off going up the street to the El Cortez and playing their single deck $5 table you will lose less money per hour even if you play an additional 50 hands per hour. However I don't know if you can get Corona's at the El Cortez!
 
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