| What is the mathematical story when it comes to controlled shooting? One way to quantify the skill of a shooter is to calculate that shooter's sevens to rolls ratio or SRR. This is just the average of the number of rolls the shooter has between sevens. For a completely random roller this number would be 6 since, on average, a shooter will roll a seven once every six times. A skilled shooter is one who can raise that number. Let's see what various SRRs do for the shooter. To simplify matters I am going to just look at placing or buying the 6 and 8. First we'll discuss placing. To place a number you hand the dealer your chips and tell him you want to place that number. The bet is that the selected number will occur before the seven. The wager is similar to the odds bet in craps, but it is not paid at fair odds. Fair odds on the 6 or 8 are 6 to 5; placing either of these pays 7 to 6. Clearly the expected return on this wager is Last month we analyzed the Pass Line in the game of Casino Craps. We discovered that the house edge for this bet is 1.414141…% and you saw, and I hope understood, how this wager was calculated. This month and next I want to consider a wager that is not shown on the Craps layout but is nonetheless available to players. This is the Free Odds wager. It is available to players who have wagers on the Pass Line, the Come Line, the Don't Pass Line, or the Don't Come Line whenever a point has been established. We'll talk about Don't Pass bets next month. For now I want to focus on Odds bets made for a Pass Line bet. Here is how it works. The bet is made by placing your wager in front of the Pass Line near your Pass Line bet. Suppose, for example, that the shooter has rolled a point of 4 and you have a $10 wager on the Pass Line. Then you can place an additional $10 wager in front of the Pass Line near your line bet indicating that you are making an Odds bet on the 4. This is referred to as Taking the Odds. For a point of 4 you are paid 2 to 1 if the shooter makes the point; you lose the bet if the shooter sevens out. Below I show the payouts for taking the odds on various points. Point Odds 4 2 to 1 5 3 to 2 6 6 to 5 8 6 to 5 9 3 to 2 10 2 to 1 This past June I was in Las Vegas visiting with customers of mine and was staying at the Las Vegas Hilton. Ever since the Las Vegas Convention Center got rid of all the convenient (and free) parking I have been staying at the Hilton because of its close proximity to the convention center. Anyway, while I was there the Hilton was holding the June tournament in their Million Dollar Blackjack tournament series. I decided to give it a shot. Tournament blackjack goes back to the year 1979. It was then that the Fishman brothers created the concept and held the first tournament ever played. It was called the World Championship of Blackjack and was held at the Sahara Hotel. I played in that tournament (and lost). The entry fee was $250 and players played with their own money; the buy-in was $500. The rounds were two hours in length and the game was a single deck dealt face up with great rules. Blackjack will never be any better. As time went on the Fishmans went off in other business directions but their idea caught on big time. Today there are small blackjack tournaments somewhere in Las Vegas just about every day of the week. The format has changed drastically though. Now your buy-in gets you tournament chips, the game is usually a shoe game, and the number of hands per round is limited to around 30. The Hilton Million Dollar format consists of 30 hand rounds, a six-deck shoe, standard Hilton rules (double after split, split Aces once for one card on each, late surrender, and dealer hits soft 17). Except for the soft 17 rule, this is a decent game. In my opinion, however, the surrender rule makes this a great game for tournament play and I'll illustrate why this is so below. In the first round, my table consisted of five players. From first base to third they were Mike Harbec, Dan Nolan, yours truly, Bill Haru, and Daniel Darnell. We had each bought in for $1000 and were now sitting in front of a stack of tournament chips totaling $5000. Besides the tournament chips, we had each received a baseball cap with "Million Dollar Blackjack" embossed on it and three free nights at the Hilton. At the end of 30 hands, the two players with the highest chip totals would advance to the next round. Minimum bets were $100 and maximum bets were $2500. Players that make it to the semifinal round qualify to compete in the million dollar tournament held next May. The game began with the dealer dealing a five-card poker hand to each player. The highest pat hand determined the location of the "button", a marker that rotates clockwise around the table and indicates who receives the first card out of the shoe and, more importantly, who bets first. Daniel got the button. This meant that in the next to the last hand I would bet first but on the last hand I would bet last, a good position in which to be. |
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