AboutThe Count Expertise I have considerable expertise in all casino games as well as horse race wagering. My strongest area of knowledge is in Blackjack. VideoPoker questions are also welcome as are the areas of Craps and Baccarat. No sport-betting queries. I was a professional gambler for decades, now semi-retired.
Experience I am a semi-retired professional gambler with a graduate education. An accomplished "card-counter", I am very much unwelcome in most American casinos and some abroad.
Publications "Blackjack Forum" (under a pseudonym) and several backgammon newsletters (also psudonomously)
Education/Credentials B.S. M.A.
Past/Present clients Tournament Backgammon, Gourmet Asian Cooking, Macintosh Computing, Cinema, Literature, photography
Question QUESTION: I've recently started playing baccarat at an online casino, using play chips of course, and I've created a system that I think could be very profitable, I just need to figure out the odds on a few situations. The casino i play on uses 6 decks and reshuffles the cards after every hand, and a tie pays out 9 to 1. The unfortunate part is that I have to make a bet every single hand, no free hands are shown. Because of this, when I start betting, I always bet $1 on player because they take 25 cents when I win a bet on banker, and I thought that was a rip off.
The system I use requires making tie bets in succession when a tie hasn't occurred for so many turns. The payout for a winning tie bet is anywhere between $25 and $55 depending on how I bet and when the tie hits. I realize that there is a risk that a tie won't occur and I'll lose my whole bankroll for that session, but I believe that with this system it is so uncommon that I will nearly triple my initial bankroll before losing one. For example, if I start out with $1000 I believe that I can get my bankroll to nearly $3000 before losing my $1000, meaning I'll still be $1000 in profit.
Having said that, I'd like to know what the odds are of a tie not occurring in baccarat for 20 straight turns, 40 straight turns, and 50 straight turns. I'd also like to know, if a tie hasn't occurred for 20 straight turns, what are the odds that a tie will occur within the next 30 turns? My bets are generally placed after a tie hasn't occurred for 20 turns and I continue to bet on tie until either I hit, or 30 turns go by and a tie doesn't occur for over 50 straight turns. The whole idea is, if it is so rare that I will only lose about every 50 or so times I try a tie bet, I can make it to where it only takes 20 to 40 bets to double my money. Thus, I come out in profit even after I have a losing session.
I hope I explained everything clearly, I look forward to hearing your response, even if it means I have more work to do. Thanks :)
ANSWER: Wagering systems of this sort are indeed profoundly commonplace. What ALWAYS happens is that you most likely will have a lot of short winning sessions but (finally) you will go broke. Sometimes you go "belly-up" immediately. Defeat is a certainty, no matter what "loss limits" or other safeguards you attempt to put into place.
Playing at an on-line casino troubles me. You are naive in trusting an online site to be honest when there is absolutely NO oversight at all to keep them honest, and no penalty to pay for being dishonest.
25 cents commission on a ONE dollar bet ? Twenty Five Percent ? Usery. Real Life Casinos charge 5%. They still have a tidy advantage over you at 4%.
Casinos pay 8 to 1 ("9 for one") on winning tie bets. Tie bets are (absolutely) ruinous. The real odds are about 10-1.
The following sentence of yours need to be rewritten as it makes little sense as it is written:
"The payout for a winning tie bet is anywhere between $25 and $55 depending on how I bet and when the tie hits."
Ditto this:
"I believe that with this system it is so uncommon that I will nearly triple my initial bankroll before losing one. For example, if I start out with $1000 I believe that I can get my bankroll to nearly $3000 before losing my $1000, meaning I'll still be $1000 in profit."
Back to the aquestion at hand:
The odds on a tie occurring DO NOT EVER CHANGE depending on how many ties there have been. UNDERSTAND THAT ! If you flip a coin 5 times and it comes up all heads, do you think that the odds on the next flip are different from 50-50 ? Same story on a roulette wheel coming up 8 odd numbers in a row or 6 RED numbers, etc.
In baccarat, in a real life casino, the game is played with 8 decks nearly always, though that is thoroughly irrelevant. The 8 deck shoe results in 78 to 82 hands, and on average anywhere from 5 to 10 ties will occur. With a Six Deck Shoe that would be 3 to 8 ties. Those are just average results. They may or may not occur on any particular hand. They may occur on the first 2 hands and on none other or there may be 4 in succession at some random point, or there may be no ties at all.
I have seen NUMEROUS PEOPLE attempt this, some for huge stakes; and everyone of them experienced the same thing. They "got broke" By the way, a casino hosting an honest game will typically have betting limits of perhaps $20 to $1,000 on Banker or Player, BUT the betting limits for the TIE bet are much more restrictive, e.g. $1 to $50 or $5 to $200.
You need to ask yourself what happens when 100 hands in succession fail to produce a tie. That is NOT so very unlikely. There is no LEGITIMATE probability associated with forecasting these events. Think of it this way. The chance of a tie hand is similar to this: You have 11 beans in a covered bowl. 10 are white and 1 is black. Over the long haul nearly 9% of the time (once in eleven tries) you can pull a Black bean out of the bowl. That does NOT mean that you can do it one in every 11 times. It means that if you tried it 11,000 times, you will succeed about (not exactly) 1,000 times and fail 10,000 times, YOUR error, and it is so very common, is that you do not understand what the mathematician's call "The Law of Large Numbers" You imagine that playing a few dozen hands or even several hundred hands will get you to "THE LONG RUN" If you had limitless money, infinite time, AND there were no betting limits your system WOULD (eventually) WIN. All three elements are requisite. You have none of the three elements. NOBODY DOES. The casino games are ALL cleverly designed to separate people who think that they are smart enough to beat the casinos at their own game from their money. Simple. Casino profits are measured in the billions. Somehow our assets do not approach that. Hmmm.
There are no mathematical systems that can overcome the casino's edge at the game.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Thank you for answering and being very specific in your answer! I will respond to each of your comments in the order they appeared.
To your first comment, I play at bodoglife.com. Bodog is one of the largest online casino/bookie/poker companies. I've been playing there for over a year and have been paid multiple times by them, so in my opinion, they are trustworthy.
To your second comment, I played a session using higher bets, and the commission is actually 5%, but 25 cents is the set minimum, so that was my mistake.
Thirdly, Bodog DOES in fact pay 9 to 1 on a tie, and from what I've read, they are one of the only sites that do.
The sentence that I wrote incorrectly should read, "Based on the system that I use, when I bet on 'tie' and win the bet, I will win between $25 and $55 depending on how many consecutive turns I've bet on 'tie'."
The other incorrect sentence should read, "Using this system, I lose very rarely. So rarely, in fact, that I believe I can triple my bankroll before I do finally have a losing session. For example, if I were to start out with $1000 I believe that I can win around $2000 before I lose $1000. Thus, I'll still be $1000 in profit after having a losing session."
I do in fact realize that it there is about a 10 to 1 chance of a tie occurring regardless of what happened on previous turns. I also know that there is NOT a 10 to 1 chance of not having a tie occur for 100000 hands in a row. I just wanted a general probability of the likelihood of a tie eventually occurring. (Maybe I'm using the wrong term?)
The betting limits for any bet(tie, player, banker) at bodog baccarat is $1 to $250, so my system works into it.
I have played baccarat for a few practice hours, probably between 5 and 8 hours, and I have only seen 2 occurrences where a tie didn't occur for 50 consecutive hands. Those instances had a tie occur after 56 and 83 turns, but I realize it's possible for 100 + turns to occur without a tie.
The fact is, I win an average of $40 each time my system works. This means that if I start with $1000 I will need to win at least 25 times to double my money. I will likely need to win a few more than that to make up for the hands I play when waiting for a chance to bet on tie.(Keep in mind that I always bet on 'player' when not betting on tie, so in the long run, I lose a little bit from betting that way.) If I can create the scenario where I only lose about every 35 to 40 tries, I can afford to take the loss due to that fact that I've already doubled my initial investment.
I don't believe I asked any questions this time, but I am open to further opinions, because I'm still not ready to give up lol. Thank you again.
Answer Apparently you still fail to grasp the reality that there is an UNCHANGING probability of a tie being turned up at any given time. It simply matters not at all how long it has been since there has a been a tie.
You stated: "I just wanted a general probability of the likelihood of a tie eventually occurring. (Maybe I'm using the wrong term?)" NO, that is the correct term. Anyone offering you a probability either misunderstands mathematics or is a liar, except as in the cases illustrated below.
Try to grasp this. You step up to a craps table and you throw 6-6 three times in succession and someone says "WOW ! What would the odds on that be ?" Well, you know that there are 36 possible combinations on the 2 dice and 6-6 represents just one of them, ergo the odds are 35 to 1 which equates to 2.8% Now you remember from school that the probability of THREE of them in a row will be 2.8 'cubed' -- that means that you need to multiply 2.8 times itself and then that product times 2.8 yet again -- because all 3 are INDEPENDENT EVENTS and ALL THREE must occur. They are not added. They are multiplied. So you do the multiplication and you get 2.8 x 2.8 x 2.8 = 21.952 -1 = ODDS of 2,195 to 1
NOW, what is wrong with the above? A lot ! Would you think that the stickman is lying to you if he tells you that he sees that once or twice or thrice a week and sometimes even twice in the same shift ? No, he probably isn't lying to you at all.
The catch here is that the odds of a series of three rolls of the dice coming out the same 6-6 three times running is very long, BUT over the course of an eight hour shift there are perhaps 1,000 three-roll sequences embedded in the LONG series of dice rolls that will take place, and SOMEWHERE in that series of dice rolls someone is bound to roll 6-6 three times in succession, and a lot of other sequences that we imagine are odd but are not. If that dice stickman has seen 1,000 rolls of the dice daily the odds will NOT be 2,195 to one BUT after we multiply that by 1,000 we will get odds of 2.195 to one - about 2 or 3 times per week at his table.
So the net time someone tells you that such an event is "unbelieveable" or "practically impossible" you will understand that the long odds certainly DO apply BUT ONLY for a SPECIFIC set of three rolls of the dice when stated IN ADVANCE, not inclusive within an endless series of dice rolls.
Back to baccarat, essentially the same thing is at work here. If you estimate that a NON-TIE hand occurs 90% of the time- then the probability of many hands in a row being non-tie hands is the product of .90 times .90 for the number of times that you are looking at -- BUT only if predicted IN ADVANCE. In gambling the most basic error is looking at RESULTS and then talking about it, as our Craps Shooters above were doing.
I am hoping that this has helped you re-focus your mathematical perspective.
Along the same lines people are prone to saying things like -- "I understand that betting on the Bank in Baccarat I face a House Advantage of 1.17% and on Bank 1.36%. These numbers sound very small, but in fact they are HUGE. Why you ask? A bank grants you a mortgage at 6% per YEAR. So, on a daily basis you are paying just 6.00% / 365 = 0.0164% That is equal to hardly anything at all you say. You borrowed $100,000 and the mortgage is now costing you (in interest only) $164 a month; but by the time the mortgage is satisfied you will have paid WAY over $200,000 on a $100,000 loan.
The casino is FAR more demanding than the bank as his 1% or so is being extracted from his wagers at a rate of perhaps 60-100 times per hour. This is why casinos WIN Billions from US. and Banks can go bust. Casinos don't. Now you know why.
