A.C. Revenue report for March

[FLASH1296]

I will refrain from making too much commentary; although, as always, there are some noteworthy things such as the BJ Table Hold and the games that (individual) casinos LOST money at.

e.g.

Hilton BJ hold was the lowest at 5.2%(earning just $862K for March)
They managed to LOSE money at Double Attack BJ !

Bally's held a hefty 14.4%.
They managed to hold a measely 5.4% at Keno !

Borgata held 8.3% but it was good enough for better than $6,000,000.

Caesars held 7.5%

Harrah's held 11.5%
They managed to LOSE 4.8% at Pai Gow Tiles, but the drop was less than 1/2 million

Resorts held 11.7%
They LOST 1.9% on their $100 slots to the tune of a net loss of %35,000.

Showboat held 14.0%

Tropicana held 11.5%

Trump Marina held a modest 6.2%, earning just $544K on a drop of $9,000,000.
Their Spanish 21 tables managed to hold just 5.8% of $485K

Trump Plaza held 7.7% of $16,000,000
They LOST an amazing 34.5 % of a $251K drop on $100 slots.

Taj Mahal held the most - a hefty 15.8% on $69,000,000.
Their Baccarat table held only 5.3% of a $5,000,000 drop.

*********************************************************

The A.C. revenue report is published on or about the 10th of each month.

See: http://www.njccc.gov/casinos/financia/mthrev/ (Archive copy)

 

[1357111317]

I have one question about the holds. The "Hold" is basically the precentage of the money put down on the table that is kept in the tray. My question is that even with horrible basic stratagy the average player would have a tough time playing at more than a 2% disadvantage. Is this high hold precentage due to the fact that players tend to quit when they get wiped out due to bad varience and the players that experience good varience tend to keep playing until they lose it?

 

[Xur]

My friend goes to AC semi-often and plays the **** out of Double Attack Blackjack. Is it actually beatable? or is the casino gettn some bad variance? ;p

 

[FLASH1296]

Well ...yes, in essence, what you have said is correct.

Perhaps a simpler way of looking at it is that the House Advantage is extremely powerful ONLY
because no one is normally playing one or two or three hands and leaving the table, win or lose.

As the money gets churned the seemingly modest house edge remains unchanged,
but the house's profits (the "hold") grows in direct proportion to the number of hands played.

To see this clearly we can extrapolate to the logical extremes:

If every player employed perfect basic strategy and was obliged to play six (6) hours before s/he chooses whether or not to continue
then the "hold" would be very high following the forced playing of several hundreds of hands played. A quick guess would be > 35%

If every player was limited to playing no more than 5 hands and then must stop, the hold would be < l%

Think of this casino enterprise as being similar to compound interest.
A 30 year mortgage on a home costs more than 100% in aggregate interest.

Time is the crucial factor; that is why casinos are expert at keeping
ploppies playing far longer than they intend to, and basing comp's on time at the tables.

Lets re-extrapolate tp even more extreme examples:

Group A must play 5,000 hands (and they cannot run out of money).
Group B must bet one, (and only one), hand.

Group A will have an incredibly high "hold" which will approach 100%
Group B will have a very modest "hold" that will closely approximate the House edge < 1%

Think about it.

 

[FLASH1296]

Xur said:

"My friend goes to AC semi-often and plays the **** out of Double Attack Blackjack. Is it actually beatable? or is the casino gettn some bad variance?"

Playing a variant of Blackjack e.g. "Double Attack", "Spanish21", "BJ Switch", etc. without a specialized, (and generally complex)
strategy would be financially suicidal -- because it means accepting an absolutely ruinous player expectation.

Instead of playing under the burden of a House Edge no better than .41%
(in Atlantic City), this self-destructive gambler would perhaps result in an octupled House Edge.

According to "wizardofodds.com", utilizing a heavily altered Basic Strategy the house edge is 0.62%.
While it is not discussed on that web site, my contention is that using an approximation
of Basic Strategy, identical to how typical casino patrons play ordinary BJ,
could result in a House Edge that may hover between 4% and 5 %.
That would make the game nearly as dreadful as double-zero roulette.

Aargh!

 

[1357111317]

Well ...yes, in essence, what you have said is correct.

Perhaps a simpler way of looking at it is that the House Advantage is extremely powerful ONLY
because no one is normally playing one or two or three hands and leaving the table, win or lose.

As the money gets churned the seemingly modest house edge remains unchanged,
but the house's profits (the "hold") grows in direct proportion to the number of hands played.

To see this clearly we can extrapolate to the logical extremes:

If every player employed perfect basic strategy and was obliged to play six (6) hours before s/he chooses whether or not to continue
then the "hold" would be very high following the forced playing of several hundreds of hands played. A quick guess would be > 35%

If every player was limited to playing no more than 5 hands and then must stop, the hold would be < l%

Think of this casino enterprise as being similar to compound interest.
A 30 year mortgage on a home costs more than 100% in aggregate interest.

Time is the crucial factor; that is why casinos are expert at keeping
ploppies playing far longer than they intend to, and basing comp's on time at the tables.

Lets re-extrapolate tp even more extreme examples:

Group A must play 5,000 hands (and they cannot run out of money).
Group B must bet one, (and only one), hand.

Group A will have an incredibly high "hold" which will approach 100%
Group B will have a very modest "hold" that will closely approximate the House edge < 1%

Think about it.

Yeah that makes sense. I don't know why I didnt figure that out earlier.

 

[21forme]

Consider that many players have very small bankrolls and are likely to get wiped out. Say, for example, someone plays perfect BS, but is betting green chips with a $500 bankroll. They hit some negative variance, and lose their $500 and then quit. They don't have the opportunity to ride the variance curve back to the theoretical house edge of ~0.5%. That's what the casino counts on!

 

[FLASH1296]

The House Advantage applies ONLY to a single random wager.

The cumulative effect of negative expectation is akin to compound interest.

A multiplicative effect - that is, upon a non-advantage player.

Naturally, an advantage player is on the other side of the equation.

:grin:

 

[Automatic Monkey]

Xur said:

"My friend goes to AC semi-often and plays the **** out of Double Attack Blackjack. Is it actually beatable? or is the casino gettn some bad variance?"

Playing a variant of Blackjack e.g. "Double Attack", "Spanish21", "BJ Switch", etc. without a specialized, (and generally complex)
strategy would be financially suicidal -- because it means accepting an absolutely ruinous player expectation.

Instead of playing under the burden of a House Edge no better than .41%
(in Atlantic City), this self-destructive gambler would perhaps result in an octupled House Edge.

According to "wizardofodds.com", utilizing a heavily altered Basic Strategy the house edge is 0.62%.
While it is not discussed on that web site, my contention is that using an approximation
of Basic Strategy, identical to how typical casino patrons play ordinary BJ,
could result in a House Edge that may hover between 4% and 5 %.
That would make the game nearly as dreadful as double-zero roulette.

Aargh!

Of those three games, BJ Switch is the only one that can be played with a count and strategy similar to standard BJ (other than for the switching decision of course). If you subtract 2 (High-Low) from the TC for making your playing (not betting) decisions except for 16 vs 10 you won't be that far off.

On DABJ and SP21 a very large house edge comes from a sidebet that is almost universally played on both games. Quite a few AC properties also have sidebets on blackjack.

 

[FLASH1296]

I stand (partially) corrected as The Basic Strategy for BJ Switch, as presented in Arnold Snyder's "Big Book of Blackjack
is indeed hardly different from ordinary Basic Strategy; but that is only so if you consider the "switching Strategy"
as being separate and distinct from the play of the cards after splitting or deciding not to split.