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 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.
