| Not only that. Martha obviously didn't have average luck on this machine. She did considerably better. If she had just one extra full house, one extra flush and one extra straight, that's another $5 the short pays cost her. And what if that big hand hadn't come just then? She easily could have walked away a $40 loser. But with the full payoffs, she'd still have had 100 or more coins on the screen. They could have kept her in action that much longer, waiting for the big hand. Treasure Island goes one step further in allowing us to raise our bet to $25 without increasing the commission. Now, in our average three trials, we have bets of $25 on the table, and since we win once, we pay the house $1 in commission. Our total outlay is $76. The one time we win, we collect $50 in winnings and keep our $25 wager for a total of $75. The house edge is the $1 commission on that winning bet divided by our $76 outlay. Multiplied by 100, that's a house edge of 1.32 percent. Few casinos charge the commission only on winning bets. And not all will let you push that $1 commission to bets higher than $20. If you're in a house that's a real stickler, you might pay a $1 commission on a $20 bet, and find the casino wants to push it up to $2 on a $21 wager. On the other hand, Scoblete says he's been allowed to bet as much as $38 with a $1 commission. It doesn't hurt to ask. Does lowering the house edge to 1.32 percent, as on the $25 wagers at Treasure Island, make buying the 4 or 10 bets worth making? That depends. At that level, the house edge is even lower than the edge on placing the 6 or 8. In fact, it's even lower than the 1.41 percent edge on pass or the 1.4 percent on don't pass. However, place and buy bets are decided in fewer rolls than pass/don't pass wagers because there is no need to determine the point with a comeout roll. If you're placing or buying, the house edge has more chances per hour to work against you than if you're betting pass or don't pass. Not only that. You can't back place or buy bets with free odds as you can pass and don't pass wagers. The free odds are among the few bets in the casino that have no house edge. Backing a pass bet with single odds drops the house edge on the pass-odds combination to 0.8 percent, and it sinks lower when more odds are permitted. Given my druthers and $25 to bet, I'd rather have $5 on pass and $20 in odds than a buy bet on 4--even with the edge lowered to 1.32 percent. With differences so narrow, why would anyone but a pro trying to milk every last fraction of a penny from a game bother with penalty cards? |
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