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
Expert: The Count Date: 5/21/2008 Subject: Best way to play these "promotional chips"?
Question Question: What is the best way and best table game to play these $5
"promotional chips" to win the most money?
Hypothetical Situation: I can buy $125 in "promotional chips" for 100 US
Dollars. The chips are in $5 denominations. Each chip can be used on even
money bets on table games (blackjack, craps, roulette). When a chip is bet
and wins, the even money win is returned along with the "promotional chip"
which can be played again. When the "promotional chip" is bet and loses, the
chip is lost. The promotional chips cannot be redeemed. They must be played
and lost to "get rid of them."
"Promotional chips" can be played at the same time. For example, Pass and
Don't Pass, Come and Don't Come, Field Bets, Odd and Even, Black and Red,
1-18 and 19-36, blackjack bets.
They are equivalent to $5 chips in every way, except they cannot be cashed
back in for real money.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Paul Toot
Answer I began my response by working through relevant computations for baccarat where you can win your "bank" bets about 52% of the time, and craps, etc. etc. when I realized that this question has been answered by a brilliant gambler-mathematician named James Grosjean.
His $40 book "Beyond Counting" fetches around $500 on ebay.
The second edition will be published this year at a greatly increased price. See the url below:
This is truly priceless stuff.
See the subsections entitled Funny Chip Follies and Non-Cashable Chips.
They answer your inquiry in ways that ordinary mathematicians would fail to do.
ALSO, while I am digressing about mathematicians and casinos:
In the world of gambling there are two statisticians/mathematicians that can always be trusted. The other is known as "The Wizard of Odds" -- Michael Shackleford, A.S.A., a professional actuary who has made a career of analyzing casino games. He runs the numbers on new games for casinos and game developers and has helped design many of the popular slot machines on the Internet. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Casino Math at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a former contributing editor to Casino Player magazine, and the author of the book Gambling 102, recently published by Huntington Press. The Wizard's landmark research into the actual returns of slot machines on the Las Vegas strip garnered international attention in 2002, and he has appeared numerous times on national television as a recognized expert on gambling strategy.
