Discount Gambling

While visiting the TCSJohnHuxley booth at G2E last week, I played at the Lucky Draw Baccarat demo table. It’s a fun game that plays like midi-baccarat, where you can squeeze your draw card. Each player wagers an initial bet, and receives their own 2-card starting hand. Everyone plays against the bank hand, whose first card is exposed. Each player may wager an optional 1x Draw bet to receive a 3rd card, or otherwise stand pat. After the action is complete, the banker reveals his hole card. The bank draws a 3rd card when his two-card total is less than five points. Otherwise the bank stands with 5 points or more.

The game is fun, because winning hands pay odds for drawn 7, 8, and 9 totals. The player makes a decision based on his 2-card total, and the exposed bank upcard. Winning hands pay even-money on the initial wager, and odds on the 1x Draw bet according to the paytable:

I analyzed the game to check the house edge, and to run EORs. The outcomes for an 8-deck shoe and optimal player decisions are listed below.

The house edge for Paytable 1 is 1.79%, and 3.34% for Paytable 2.

The basic strategy for the Paytable 1 game is shown in the table below.

The computed single-card EORs for an 8-deck game with Paytable 1 are fairly low. Still, I checked the countability of an 8-deck shoe, assuming only 15 cards cut off the end. For the simple count below, the game gets advantageous only 3.2% of the time (count is +40 or better), and for an average of only +0.23%/bet. That’s essentially worthless. You might pick up some additional edge with indexed plays, or better yet, using a computer and full knowledge of shoe composition. But overall, this game is surprisingly uncountable, given the options and the odds on the Draw bet.

I was browsing the web tonight, and saw one of the game publishers that I follow placed their new Knockout Baccarat game at a casino in the UK. It’s a variation on baccarat, where you post an Ante on the Player or Banker, then they deal the first player card face up. You then decide to 2x raise your Ante, or fold. The hand is then played out following standard drawing rules. If your hand wins, then your Ante is paid even-money, and your Raise bet is paid odds depending on the losing hand total.

I decided to analyze the game, to see if any part of it was countable. You never know, people make vulnerable games, and you might find some double-digit exploit. Well, to cut to the chase, this new game isn’t very countable. I did find the game was kind of pointless, and that the Player bet is a lot worse than with regular baccarat.

I ran the numbers, and there’s no decision. You always 2x Raise your Ante. You just pick Banker or Player before the hand begins, and that’s it. Folding is never even a close option. The Banker bet has a 4.72% house edge, and the Player bet has a 10.98% house edge. Before you roll over in shock, you should really divide these edges by 3, since you’re always 2x raising your Ante. So, the element-of-risk is 1.57% for Banker, and 3.66% for Player.

Update: Oh, I see. Sometimes you win more than even-money, sometimes you win less. That’s different, I guess. Still, that could be done without the needless extra step of the 2x raise. The raise becomes silly once everyone realises you always make it. (Even against a player 9, you still make the 2x Banker Raise. Folding is a mistake costing at least 31% of the Ante.)

I checked the EORs for these bets, and they’re on the order of blackjack EORs relative to the Ante. So you’re not likely to overcome the 4.72% Banker Ante edge. Thus the main bets are not very countable.

There’s a bunch of side bets you can make, but they’re not very good, nor very countable. The Ideal Countability column lists the average return of a fixed bet per shoe, made using an ideal count (perfect shoe composition info), for an 8-deck shoe with 16 cards behind the cut-card.

There’s a new game Lucky 9 at my nearby Harrah’s Rincon that’s a hybrid between baccarat and blackjack. It plays like simplified blackjack, where you can only hit once, and hand totals are between 0-9. Like blackjack, you start with two cards, and the dealer exposes their top card. Like baccarat, hand values are equal to the last digit of the sum of the cards. The best hand is a Lucky 9, which is a two card 9 without a face/ten. It ties a Natural 9 (two card 9 w/ face/ten), but otherwise pays 3:2. However, Lucky 9’s after splits only pay even-money, and push against all dealer 9’s. The house edge of the game is 1.18%.

Probably, the only point of playing this game would be to see how confused the dealer gets when resolving hands involving Lucky 9, especially after split, or against a dealer Natural 9. I’m sure they’ll probably let you hit some hands after splits too. And people will think you’re crazy for standing on 5’s and 6’s.

Rules

The rules for Lucky 9 are as follows:

1. Bets are placed before the hand is dealt.
2. Player and dealer each receive 2 cards; the dealer upcard is exposed.
3. The player may split pairs (up to 3 times) by matching the initial wager. Split hands receive only one card.
4. The player may hit any non-split hand once, or stand.
5. After the players action is complete, the dealer turns up his hole card.
6. The dealer hits once on totals of less than 5.
7. A non-split Lucky 9 (2-card 9 w/o 0-value card) pays 3:2, except for pushes against a dealer 2-card 9.
8. A dealer Lucky 9 beats a player 3-card 9.
9. All other player 9’s vs. dealer 9’s push.
10. The player automatically loses with a total of 0, 1, or 2.
11. Otherwise, wagers are resolved by comparing hand point totals.

Basic Strategy

I put the rules into my blackjack analyzer, and came up with a house edge of 1.18%, and the following auto-generated strategy:

The EORs for the game are extremely low compared to blackjack. There’s no value in counting this game.

Lucky 9 Bonus

The Lucky 9 Bonus is a side bet on your first 2 cards and the dealer upcard. The bet pays for various 3-card totals of 9, as listed in the paytable below. The house edge for this side bet is 13.1%. The EORs (sensitivities to card removal) are too low, and the initial house edge is too high, to make the side bet very countable. An ideal counter (using perfect knowledge of shoe composition) will find +EV betting opportunities about 2.7% of the time, with an average +10.8% EV/bet.

A few months ago, a reader contacted me about the ridiculously beatable Banker/Player Natural 8/9 bets in the Power98 Baccarat game at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. They used to pay 10:1 on a Natural 9, and 11:1 on a Natural 8. (And, they’d pay even more on a “Power Hand”.) Needless to say, this was obviously way too countable, and they finally figured it out, and lowered the pays down to 8:1 for both bets. This game was so beatable, I was even thinking about taking a trip out there. Oh well, our reader tells us that players figured it out, followed by management, and now it’s gone. I mean, this one was old school beatable. Throp and Walden wrote about this one in 1966, and that’s with a payout of 9:1 for both bets. What were these Power98 guys thinking? Anyway, even with their dealing procedure of placing 2 decks behind the cut card, the game was still beatable for about 61% of a fixed bet per shoe. It must have been funny to see everyone all of a sudden betting huge on both Player and Banker Natural 9. Oh well, sic transit gloria.