Eliot Jacobson Ph.D.

A long long time ago, in a casino far far away, there was a blackjack side bet called “Over/Under 13” (OU13). The player had the opportunity to wager that his two cards would total more than 13 (Over) or would total less than 13 (Under). A total of 13 lost for both wagers. These were even-money wagers, nothing fancy.

In this blog post I explained edge sorting. For many years I have looked at the back of the playing cards Harrah's uses and wondered if it was feasible to edge sort those. Harrah's uses several different designs for their backs.

The table game Caribbean Stud (CS) used to be among the most popular of all proprietary table games in this country. In 1994, there were 167 tables of CS in Nevada.  By the year 2000, that number dropped to 97 tables. In 2009 there were only 15 tables left.

In this post, I gave details about edge sorting Mississippi Stud (MS) by considering the sort where Jacks are oriented in one direction, while non-Jacks are oriented in the opposite direction. The question arises if there is an improvement over the Jack/non-Jack sort? Can the AP do better than 39.489%?

When loss rebates are offered as a strict rebate on total losses, without a time or play requirement, practically any game can be beaten. Roulette takes this theorem to the extreme, giving absurdly short average play times. This implies pure hit-and-run style play for the AP.

I thought I had completed my work on loss rebates when I published the First Loss Rebate Theorem (LRT1) in this post. Then my dog gave me a good idea on how to get a closed form for the quit-win and quit-loss points and it worked.