QUESTION: I am brand new to casino playing and the slot machines fascinated me. I wasn’t so much interested in playing them but in watching others play them. I went from small stakes games and I finally went into the high roller slot area where I saw a player betting on $100 machines. Here’s my question: Why did the casino have someone sitting next to him making notes? I didn’t want to barge in there and ask why this guy had, maybe, his secretary present.
ANSWER: I am guessing the person sitting next to him was not his secretary but someone from the casino who was tracking his play. Why? Because for every $10,000 in cash that he put into the machine or received from the machine, the government would want an accounting and perhaps taxes paid on such money.
There is also a sense that anyone who plays for such large stakes could be doing something illegal, like drug trafficking or bank robbery or some such.
It used to be, long, long ago that gambling was just considered a recreational activity but the politicians decided that wins should be taxed. Then that anyone cashing in for such an amount be recorded as well. In fact, the government will stop people at airports who are carrying more than $10,000 on them.
That is the cold brutal answer. Yes, people’s fun is taxed. (Yes, even tips are taxed!)
QUESTION: I know roulette is a very popular game and has been maybe for centuries. (I don’t if that is true, is it?) My question is simple, really simple, and it is this: How can the casino make money on the game? They pay out a lot on a winning number and there doesn’t seem to be any way to make the casino win more money if the game is honest. What gives? Am I missing something?
ANSWER: You are indeed missing something because you reversed the technique that the casino uses to establish its edge.
First things first; the game of roulette has been a casino staple for about 400 years. It was created by scientist, philosopher Blaise Pascal in the mid-1600s. He had been trying to discover a perpetual motion machine. He failed in that. But he did invent roulette, which means “little wheel.” It has been a kind of perpetual money-motion machine in the casinos ever since that time.
It has been the most popular game for a long time and it is now either number three or four behind slots, blackjack and maybe craps as a money maker for the casino industry.
The game is strictly random and today’s wheels are just about perfect (just about). The American version of the game has 38 pockets for the ball to land in. The pocket that captures the ball is the winning number, color, proposition, etc.
A winning number pays out at 35 to 1. That’s a pretty big payout, right? Yes and no.
You see, with 38 pockets, the odds of hitting one of them is 37 to 1. In a fair game, which means a game where the casino does not have an edge, the payout on a win would be 37 to 1, not 35 to 1. Shorting the player those two units on a win, gives the casino a 5.26% edge over the player.
In short, the casino doesn’t have to change the odds of the game. It just has to change the payouts for the game and that’s how it gets its edge.
Please note: There is a second roulette game called the European/French game that is less severe in terms of the house edge. It has 37 pockets and still pays 35 to 1 where a fair payout would be 36 to 1. It only shorts the player one unit. The house edge on this game is 2.7%. You do not find this game too often in American casinos and when you do it usually has higher minimum bets.
QUESTION: Here is my question and I hope you can answer this. Why do players play games they can’t beat? That makes no sense to me. Does it to you?
ANSWER: Yes, it does. Why do people buy television sets, sports, movie and theater tickets, dinners out with friends and loved ones? And so on.
The casino offers games that are exciting to the players. Unless the player has a bad attitude toward his or her play and loses discipline and a sense of propriety, casino playing is a harmless recreational activity. Not much different than going to any other recreational activity for a fun time.
True, the casino has created edges for all its games. Some of these edges are quite high but some are very low. You want a shot to actually win? Then make the best bets at the games you enjoy playing. No one stops a player from doing that.
I will admit that there are some very bad players out there. That’s not the casino’s fault. The players choose the bets they want to make. The casinos do not force any players to make any bets.
QUESTION: Do casinos cheat the players? I have heard that some casinos will claim big slot wins are not real and were caused by a faulty machine. Is this true?
ANSWER: No, there may be a rare casino somewhere out there that is a cheating creature. However, from what I understand there have been a few cases where a casino’s slot machine has gone on the blink (so to speak) and paid out jackpots that were not real. How often has this happened? Not very.
It makes no sense for the casino to cheat when they have the right to set up the games as they wish. They create their own edges and it would seem that cheating would be a waste of time. If a casino was found to be a cheater, I think players would boycott that place.
QUESTION: What is the toughest casino game to play? There must be some sort of hierarchy in this game-playing world. Do you know what it is?
ANSWER: I’ve never gotten this question before. If we are talking about playing against the house as opposed to playing against other players (a game such as real poker is against other players) then a game that has many strategy variations would be a game that could be hard to learn correctly.
I am thinking that blackjack would be a game that is difficult to learn for many people. There are dozens of different decisions a player has to make given the player’s hand versus the dealer’s up card. Strictly memorization here.
Now, casinos (most casinos) will allow players to bring a strategy card to the table to use to guide their play. Usually, these cards contain the basic strategy that can be used at the game.
The basic strategy is the computer-derived strategy for playing every hand correctly against the dealer’s up card.
Okay, there is a slight wrinkle in my answer here. There are many different types of blackjack games and each one has a separate “perfect” strategy. Are they different? Yes.
Don’t get nervous. The differences in the games are usually not so great that one strategy is okay to use at many of the games. Your play might not be perfect but it will be close enough.
Play correctly at blackjack and the house has about a one-half percent edge against the player. That means the player is expected to lose about 50 cents per $100 wagered. That is a close game, a very close game, if played correctly.
Roulette, craps, Pai Gow Poker and other games are nowhere near as complicated as blackjack. And what of the machines?
Slot machines are not tough to play. They are quite simple. Video poker might be second-place to blackjack in its complicated hand-playing strategies. Yes, with video poker, players do have many different games and many different strategies but again the players can bring a card to help them play the game or games they wish to play.
The casinos want to make money and they don’t want games that scare people off, which leads us to the next question!
QUESTION: I go to the craps tables and guess what? I rarely see women playing the game. Why is that? Usually, the woman at the craps table is the date (or “date”) of the man who is actually playing the game. Why is this? You see plenty of women playing other games, why not craps? One more thing too – where did the name “craps” come from? It seems kind of unsavory.
ANSWER: I am going to take your questions inversely. Where did the name of “craps” come from?
The original American craps game was not called craps; it was called “crabs” and it was a strictly Southern game, heavily played along the Mississippi River. As the game became more popular and started moving up North, the Northerners heard the word “crabs” but thought the game was called “craps” as the Southern accent was not easily translated. So “crabs” became “craps.”
The game became the great city game (the alleyway game). Prior to World War II most young men in America knew about the game or actually played the game. During the war, it became one of the favorite games of the soldiers, sailors and marines.
If you take a look at the population of those armed services, they were overwhelmingly male. Craps became a quintessential game for men. After the war, as former military men went to casinos, both legal and illegal casinos, craps was a favorite table game. A male game!
It has stayed a largely male game to this day.
You will find some women who play the game now but I have no idea why the game still wards them off. I do know that when I started playing craps in the late 1980s, some of the grumpy World War II guys were a little unpleasant to the ladies who came to the tables to play. The women were not welcomed.
Craps has a few excellent bets and a few good ones. Craps has many bad bets. Craps has some really awful bets. But craps is (in my opinion) the most exciting game in the casinos.
Should women who love casinos learn to play the game? Absolutely. There is little else in the casino as heart-poundingly exciting as taking the dice in your hands and trying to roll winners!
QUESTION: Are comps important? I hear players talk about comps all the time. Am I missing why they are so important? What are they based on?
ANSWER: Comps are complementary, meaning stuff the casinos give you for playing their games. These are not free gifts. They are rewards.
They are based on how much a player is expected to lose playing for the amounts he or she plays on the games and the amount of time such players actually play the games. The casinos’ edges are also included to determine the long-term worth of a given player.
The actual strategy of a player is also analyzed to get a monetary value for that player’s long-term expectation.
Are comps free stuff? Nope. Players “earn” their comps!
The next question is also a simple one: Should players worry about getting comps? Not at all. If you hand in a player's card when you sit down (or stand up) to play, you will be given comps if you play a decent length of time – maybe an hour or two.
Casinos want to give players comps because they figure those comps are a great advertisement for those players to come back and play.
Do not – let me repeat – DO NOT play for comps. Don’t play longer than you intend. Do not bet more than you can afford in order to acquire comps. They will come. Just play your game correctly.
All the best in and out of the casinos!
