In poker, the nut hand, or just the nuts, is the strongest hand possible in any particular situation. The term applies mostly to community card poker games to mean the individual holding that makes the strongest hand possible with the given board of community cards. By extension, the term is used more loosely to refer to any very strong hand.For example in Texas hold ‘em, if the board is ♠ 6♠ A♣ 9♠ 5♥, a player holding
♠ 8♠ has the nuts (a -high straight flush in spades), and cannot lose. Sometimes it is useful to know that your hand is the second or third best possible. On this same board, the hand ♣ 5♦ would be the second-nut hand, four fives; and the third-nut hand would be any pair of the remaining three aces, making a full house A-A-A-5-5.
In high-low split games one often speaks of “nut low” and “nut high” hands separately. With an Omaha board identical to the one above, any hand with
-3 makes the nut low -5-3-2-A, while -4 is the second-nut low (the nut high hands remain the same).
Finally, one also hears terms such as “nut flush” or “nut full house” to mean the highest hand possible in that particular category in the circumstances, even though that may not be strictly the nut hand. For example, a pair of aces with the above board could be called the “nut full house”, even though there are two higher (but very unlikely) hands possible.
The phrase originates from the historical poker games in the colonial west of America. If one bet to the sum of everything he possessed, he would place the “nuts” of his wagon wheels on the table. Most likely, this was to ensure that, should the wagerer lose the hand, he would be unable to flee and would have to make good on the bet. Obviously, to make such a bet one would need to be sure that he has the best possible hand.
There is also a possibility of having a nut losing hand (a hand that will lose to anything). For example, this occurs when the board has four of a kind and a deuce. In this situation, if you hold pocket 2′s, there is no possibility of this hand winning a showdown with any other hand, as any opponent must have a better kicker than you.
Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or internet casinos, are online versions of traditional (“brick and mortar”) casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet.Online casinos generally offer odds and payback percentages that are comparable to land-based casinos. Some online casinos claim higher payback percentages for slot machine games, and some publish payout percentage audits on their websites. Assuming that the online casino is using an appropriately programmed random number generator, table games like blackjack have an established house edge. The payout percentage for these games are established by the rules of the game.
Reliability and trust issues are commonplace and often questioned. Many online casinos lease or purchase their software from well-known companies like Wager Works, Microgaming, Realtime Gaming, Playtech and Cryptologic in an attempt to “piggyback” their reputation on the software manufacturer’s credibility. These software companies either use or claim to use random number generators to ensure that the numbers, cards or dice appear randomly.
At its core, bridge is a game of skill played with randomly dealt cards, which makes each deal a game of chance. Despite this, chance can be largely eliminated by comparing pairs’ results in identical situations. This is achievable when there are eight or more players, sitting at several tables, and the deals from each table are preserved and passed to the next table, thereby duplicating them for another 4 (or more) participants to play. At the end of a competition, the scores for each deal are compared against each other, and most points are awarded to the players doing the best with each particular deal. This measures skill despite the initial chance of the deal.
This form of the game is referred to as duplicate bridge and is played in tournaments, which can gather as many as several hundred players. Duplicate bridge is a mind sport, and its popularity gradually became comparable to that of chess, which it is often compared with for its complexity and mental skills required for high-level competition.
The basic premise of duplicate bridge was occasionally used for whist matches, as early as 1857. For some reason, duplicate was not thought to be suitable for bridge, and so it wasn’t until the 1920s that (auction) bridge tournaments became popular.
In 1925 when contract bridge first evolved, bridge tournaments were becoming popular, but the rules were somewhat in flux, and several different organizing bodies were involved in tournament sponsorship: the American Bridge League (formerly the American Auction Bridge League, which changed its name in 1929), the American Whist League, and the United States Bridge Federation. In 1935, the first officially recognized world championship was held. By 1937, however, the American Contract Bridge League had come to power (a union of the ABL and the USBF), and it remains the principal organizing body for bridge tournaments in North America. In 1958, the World Bridge Federation was founded, as bridge had become an international activity.
Today, the ACBL has over 160,000 members and runs 1100 tournaments per year with 3200 officially-associated bridge clubs.
Bidding boxes and bidding screens
In tournaments, “bidding boxes” are frequently used. A bidding box is a box of cards, each bearing the name of one of the legal calls in bridge. A player wishing to make a call displays the appropriate card from the box, rather than making a verbal declaration. This prevents unauthorized information from being conveyed via voice inflection. In top national and international events, “bidding screens” are used. These are diagonal screens which are placed across the table, preventing a player from seeing his partner during the game.
Important Bridge Players
Giorgio Belladonna
Easley Blackwood Sr.
Norberto Bocchi
Ely Culbertson
Giorgio Duboin
Benito Garozzo
Charles Goren
Bob Hamman
Oswald Jacoby
Jeff Meckstroth
Terence Reese
Eric Rodwell
Omar Sharif
Helen Sobel Smith
Samuel Stayman
Fan-Tan, or fantan (Simplified Chinese: 番摊; Traditional Chinese: 番攤; pinyin: fāntān) is a form of gambling long played in China and among Chinese immigrants to America and other countries.
History
Fan-tan is no longer as popular as it once was, having been replaced by modern casino games, and other traditional Chinese games such as Mah Jong and Pai Gow. However, it was once a favorite pastime of the Chinese in America. Jacob Riis, in his famous book about the underbelly of New York, How the Other Half Lives (1890), wrote of entering a Chinatown fan-tan parlor: “At the first foot-fall of leather soles on the steps the hum of talk ceases, and the group of celestials, crouching over their game of fan tan, stop playing and watch the comer with ugly looks. Fan tan is their ruling passion.”
San Francisco’s large Chinatown was also home to dozens of fan-tan houses in the 19th century. The city’s former police commissioner Jesse B. Cook wrote that in 1889 Chinatown had 50 fan-tan games, and that “in the 50 fan tan gambling houses the tables numbered from one to 24, according to the size of the room.”
Fan-tan is still played at Macau casinos, where play goes on day and night, every day of the week, and bets can be made from 5 cents to 500 dollars.
The game
The game is simple. A square is marked in the centre of an ordinary table, or a square piece of metal is laid on it, the sides being marked 1, 2, 3 and 4. The banker puts on the table a double handful of small buttons, beads, coins, dried beans, or similar articles, which he covers with a metal bowl, or “tan koi”.
The players then bet on the numbers, setting their stakes on the side of the square which bears the number selected. (Players can also bet on the corners, for example between No. 2 and No. 3). When all bets are placed, the bowl is removed, and the “tan kun” or croupier uses a small bamboo stick to remove the buttons from the heap, four at a time, until the final batch is reached. If it contains four buttons, the backer of No. 4 wins; if three, the backer of No. 3 wins, and so on.
A 25% commission is deducted from the stake by the banker, and the winner receives five times the amount of his stake thus reduced.
The Card Game Fantan
Fantan is also the name of a card game, played with an ordinary pack, by any number of players up to eight. The, deal decided, the cards are dealt singly, any that are left over forming a stock, and being placed face downwards on the table. Each player contributes a fixed stake or ante. The first player can enter if he has an ace; if he has not he pays an ante and takes a card from the stock; the second player is then called upon and acts similarly till an ace is played. This (and the other aces when played) is put face upwards on the table, and the piles are built up from the ace to the king. The pool goes to the player who first gets rid of all his cards. If a player fails to play, having a playable card, he is fined the amount of the ante for every card in the other players hands.
The card game Sevens is also sometimes called ‘Fan Tan’
Trick-taking games can be traced back to the early 16th century. Whist became the dominant form, and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word bridge is the English pronunciation of “biritch”, an older name of the game of uncertain origin; the oldest known rule book, from 1886, calls it “Biritch, or Russian Whist”. This game, known today by the retronyms bridge-whist and straight bridge, became popular in the United States and the UK in the 1890s.
Biritch featured several significant developments from Whist: the trump suit was either chosen by the dealer, or he could pass the choice to his partner; there was a call of no trumps; and the dealer’s partner laid his cards on the table as dummy to be played by the dealer. It also featured other characteristics found in modern bridge: points scored above and below the line; game was 3NT, 4H and 5D (although 8 club tricks and 15 spade tricks were needed!); the score could be doubled and redoubled; there were slam bonuses.
In 1904 auction bridge arose where the players bid in a competitive auction to decide the contract and declarer. The object became to make at least as many tricks as were contracted for and penalties were introduced for failing to do so.
The modern game of contract bridge was the result of innovations to the scoring of auction bridge made by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and others. The most significant change was that only tricks contracted for were counted below the line towards game and for slam bonuses, which resulted in bidding becoming much more challenging and interesting. Also new was the concept of vulnerability to make it more expensive to sacrifice to protect the lead in a rubber, and the various scores were adjusted to produce a more balanced game. Vanderbilt set out his rules in 1925, and within a few years contract bridge had so supplanted other forms of the game that “bridge” became synonymous with “contract bridge.”
These days most bridge played is tournament bridge.
Faro is a card game, a descendant of Basset. It enjoyed great popularity during the 18th century, particularly in England and France, and in the 19th Century in the United States, particularly on the American Frontier, where it was practiced by ‘faro dealers’ such as the infamous Doc Holliday. It has since fallen completely out of fashion and is only practiced by dedicated Old West enthusiasts and Civil War re-enactors. Its name is believed to be a corruption of pharaoh, and refers to the Egyptian motif that commonly adorned French-made playing cards of the period.Faro is similar to the contemporary game of Mini-Baccarat.
Literary fiction
Faro is the game played in Aleksandr Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades.
Faro is also played in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov.
Movies
Faro is played by characters in saloons on the HBO series “Deadwood”.
Scenes involving the game of faro (with varying degrees of accuracy) appear in the Hollywood movies Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner, and Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.
In the film The Sting, it is said that the gangster (and intended “mark”) Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) only plays faro when he goes out to casinos, and then only by himself.
The Kelly Criterion or as it is sometimes referred to as the Kelly formula is a formula used to maximize the long-term growth rate of repeated plays of a given gamble that has positive expected value. The formula specifies the percentage of the current bankroll to be bet at each iteration of the game. In addition to maximizing the growth rate in the long run, the formula has the added benefit of having zero risk of ruin, as the formula will never allow a loss of 100% of the bankroll on any bet. An assumption of the formula is that currency and bets are infinitely divisible, though this is met for practical purposes if the bankroll is large enough.The most general statement of the Kelly criterion is that long-term growth rate is maximized by finding the fraction f* of the bankroll that maximizes the expectation of the logarithm of the results. For simple bets with two outcomes, one involving losing the entire amount bet, and the other involving winning the bet amount multiplied by the payoff odds, the following formula can be derived from the general statement:
f* = (bp - q) / b
where
f* = percentage of current bankroll to wager;
b = odds received on the wager;
p = probability of winning;
q = probability of losing = 1 - p.
As an example, if a gamble has a 40% chance of winning (p = 0.40), but the gambler receives 2:1 odds on a winning bet, the gambler should bet 10% of her bankroll at each opportunity, in order to maximize the long-run growth rate of the bankroll.
For even-money bets (i.e. when b = 1), the formula can be simplified to:
f* = 2p - 1
The Kelly Criterion was originally developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, based on the work of his colleague Claude Shannon, which applied to noise issues arising over long distance telephone lines. Kelly showed how Shannon’s information theory could be applied to the problem of a gambler who has inside information about a horse race, trying to determine the optimum bet size. The gambler’s inside information need not be perfect (noise-free) in order for him to exploit his edge. Kelly’s formula was later applied by another colleague of Shannon’s, Edward O. Thorp, both in blackjack and in the stock market.
In gambling terminology a crimp is a bend that has been intentionally made on the corner(s) of a playing card to facilitate identification.A card cheat will typically bend some of the important cards during the game. Below are just several of the most popular examples.
In poker, for instance, a cheat may crimp one of the cards to mark off the exact location where he wishes his secret conspirator to cut the deck. Similarly, if the card cheat is not working with a confederate, he may bend one or more cards to force a cut upon an unsuspecting victim. In either case the deck will most likely be cut at the exact predetermined spot in the same way an old book always tends to open at the same page.
Another poker scenario (also popular in numerous other games) is to crimp some of the high-value cards during the early rounds. On subsequent rounds the cheat will be able to identify some of those cards during the deal. This enables the cheat to employ a second deal and deal some of those cards to the desired hand, or simply to identify some of the cards held by other players. In any event, the cheat has a mathematical edge over the other players.
In casino blackjack a crossroader may crimp all the 10-value cards. this will enable the cheat to sometimes identify the dealer’s hole card (the dealer has one card face up, called the up card, and one card face down, called the hole card). In those instances the cheat(s) will know the dealer’s total and play their hand(s) accordingly.
A daily double is a type of wager offered by horse and dog racing tracks. It requires bettors to select the winners of two consecutive races. Because of the increased difficulty of picking two straight winners, wining daily double bets often pay off at relatively high odds.The daily double was the first so-called “exotic” wager to be offered by American racetracks. The wager was typically offered only for the first two races of each day’s program, as an enticement for spectators to arrive early for the entire program (and hopefully wager more). As with all other American racing wagers, the “double” is conducted in parimutuel fashion, with the number of betting interests in the daily double pool equal to the product of the number of runners in both races — in other words, if there are ten entries in the first race and eight in the second, there will be 80 separate betting interests, one for each combination. By sheer mathematics, this results in the higher payoffs than those found in straight betting for win, place or show.
For many years, the daily double was the only exotic wager offered. Later on, the exacta was also offered on select races during each program. The wagers were offered only a few times each day largely because of the limitations of electro-mechanical totalisator systems. When computer technology took over, many more exotic wagers were introduced, such as the trifecta, superfecta and pick 6. The higher payouts for these wagers tended to diminish interest in the “old fashioned” daily double, but it is still offered at all tracks, sometimes more than once during a program. (A “late double” is frequently offered on the last two races on a program.)
The “Pick 3″ and “Pick 4″ wagers are derived from the daily double; they require bettors to pick the winners of three or four consecutive races. These are often offered on a “rolling” basis — a rolling pick 3 on races one through three, another on races two through four, and so on throughout the day.
Occasional doubles are offered on important races contested on separate days. The most prominent example of the “Oaks-Derby Double” offered by Churchill Downs, where bettors pick the winners of the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby. The Oaks is run the day before the Derby.
A locals casino is a casino designed to attract residents of the area in which it was built rather than tourists or vacationers. The term is most commonly associated with Las Vegas.Locals casinos usually have a different mix of games than other casinos in the area. They usually offer higher payouts, with some video poker machines offering payouts of greater than 100 percent to attract those who live in the area. Local casinos can range from locations with fewer than 15 machines such as a bar with no lodging to resorts that have hundreds of machines and hotels with hundreds of rooms.
In order to attract locals, these casinos offer services like payroll check cashing, frequently with some type of free play bonus, to get patrons into the casino. This is usually expanded with special promotions to cash Internal Revenue Service tax refund checks in Nevada.
Locals casinos in Vegas will offer games not available in Strip casinos like bingo. They frequently include bowling, movie theaters and occasionally day care.
A dead pool, or deathpool is a game of prediction which involves guessing when someone will die. Sometimes it is a bet where money is involved. The combination of dead or death and betting-pool, refers to such a gambling arrangement. A typical modern dead pool might have players pick out celebrities who they think will die within the year. There are several scoring variants. For example, a player might be rewarded few, if any, points for predicting the death of someone who is over 80 years old or is suffering from a terminal disease. Other pools require participants to form a list ranked on how sure they are that a person on the list will die, with points given based on how high a person on their list is ranked, and others award points based on how many other contestants selected the deceased celebrity. Another variant on the game has a single point awarded for each correct prediction, regardless of the celebrity’s age or medical condition. The advantage of this scoring method is that there is more scoring, and it rewards research (learning which celebrities are experiencing failing health) rather than luck.One example of the concept is a series of segments on the Howard Stern Radio Show, where show regulars would place bets into a celebrity death pool, each trying to predict the next celebrity to pass on. The practice has been expanded to include wagering on such abstract entities as businesses.
Definitions of celebrity vary from contest to contest. Smaller pools may rely on consensus of the players as to who is famous. Others require an obituary to appear in a recognized newswire such as the Associated Press or Reuters. The Lee Atwater Invitational employed a Fame Committee consisting of non-contestants who assess ahead of time the name-recognition of each celebrity. The Rotten.com Dead Pool, the largest in the world, uses NNDB as its source of qualified celebrities, and as arbiter of their life status.
The concept and success strategies are also detailed in an annual guide called “The Dead Pool”, written by KQRS radio personality Mike Gelfand and author Mike Wilkinson. KQRS also does an annual on air dead pool contest, similar to Stern’s, where show hosts and listners will attempt to pick which celebrity will die in that calendar year.
In most pools, killing the celebrity in question is considered cheating and results in the killer’s immediate disqualification from the pool. Such a dead pool was depicted in the aptly-titled Clint Eastwood movie, The Dead Pool.
Death List is unlike a traditional dead pool as there are no competitors involved and no points are awarded. The names on the list are chosen by a committee, members of Death List then track the well-being of the chosen celebrities over the course of the year. The Death List was first conceived in a student bar on November 29th 1986, the inspiration being the death of Cary Grant earlier the same day. The list’s aim is to predict which people in the public eye will die in the following year. Ever since 1987, a list has been drawn up, but starting in 1994 the Death List has consisted of 50 prominent people chosen annually by the committee, who might merit a prominent obituary in the UK media — ranging from politicans, religious figures and show business stars.
The Dead Pool is also an arena in the Mortal Kombat series only being featured in Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat: Deception. The stage itself is a pit surrounded with acid. On Mortal Kombat II, you had to wait for the “Finish Him/Her”" screen, then you could knock your opponent in the acid, and it would count as a Fatality. On Mortal Kombat Deception, you could just knock your opponent in the acid with a single powerful strike.
Here is a list of potential restrictions and regulations on private ownership of slot machines in the United States on a state by state basis. Note that these regulations are subject to change without notice and are not fully guaranteed to be completely accurate.
The primary piece of equipment used to play modern Russian roulette is a toy gun that has a 1/6 probability of activating when the trigger is pulled. The gun may be a dedicated device, or it could be a video game light gun connected to a computer programmed for Russian roulette simulation.
Play
All players put money in the pot. Each player in turn points the gun at their head and pulls the trigger. If the gun activates, the person holding the gun is eliminated from the game. The last player remaining wins the pot.
Odds
Assuming a six-shot revolver and that each hole is equally likely to be under the hammer, the probability of losing in the first round is 1 in 6 and the probability increases with each trigger pull. On the 6th trigger pull the probability of losing is 1 in 1 (100%).
Turn
p(Loss)
1
1/6 = 0.166..
2
1/5 = 0.2
3
1/4 = 0.25
4
1/3 = 0.333..
5
1/2 = 0.5
6
1/1 = 1
If the cylinder is spun after every shot, the odds of losing remain the same, 1/6 each time the trigger is pulled; in this case, in a two-person to-the-death game, it is better to go second (if the first person loses, the second person wins, even if he would have lost on his next move — this is equivalent to the house advantage in blackjack, where the house wins if the player busts, even if the dealer himself also is going to bust).
In poker, a dominating hand is one with an overwhelming statistical advantage over another specific hand. For example, in Seven-card stud, while a Starting hand of K♠ K♥ Q♦ has the lead over A♦ K♦ 10♥, the latter has many outs (ways to improve) to beat the former (catching an ace, the straight, the flush, etc.), making it a roughly even contest. However, the first hand dominates in a contest with a hand like Q♥ Q♠ J♣, because this hand has no ways to improve that the first one doesn’t also have (two pair, trips, straight), and the first hand has some of the second hand’s outs as well (unseen cards include two kings, but only one queen), giving it a significant advantage.This concept is most important in no limit play, where it is possible to bet all your money early in the hand. One must judge not only whether your opponent’s hand might be better than yours, but whether or not it might dominate yours to such a degree that long-run fluctuations of luck will amplify the consequences of a mistaken play rather than mitigating them.
One of the things that makes no limit Texas hold ‘em strategically rich and interesting is the unusual relationship of advantage and dominance among various Starting hands. For example, the hand A♣ K♦ is a slight favorite over J♠ 10♠; this hand is a slight favorite over ♠ 4♣; and in a non-transitive relationship, the fours are a small favorite over A♣ K♦. None of these hands dominates any other, but A♣ K♦does dominate A♥ Q♦, ♠ 4♣ is dominated by ♠ ♥, and J♠ 10♠ is dominated by Q♣ J♣.
Double Exposure Blackjack is a variant of blackjack in which both the dealer’s cards are revealed to players at the start of the hand. Knowing the dealer’s hand provides significant information, and without rules modifications would be advantageous to the player.The main rules changes to provide the casino with the advantage are even money payouts on blackjack (compared to 3:2 at normal tables) and ties losing (compared to pushing in standard blackjack).
Other rules changes also exist to the detriment of players. Certain tables restrict doubling down and splitting, and do not allow doubles after splits.
The game was invented by Bob Stupak, former owner of Vegas World and Stratosphere casinos.
In New Zealand and Australia, housie is often used a fundraiser by churches, sports teams, and other groups, and raffles are sold before the game.
Bingo, as housie is known as in the UK (not to be confused with the similar US game Bingo), is an expanding and highly profitable business, with many companies competing for the customers’ money.
The two largest companies with bingo halls in the UK are:
Gala Bingo (Gala Group Ltd.)
Mecca Bingo Ltd. (part of The Rank Group plc)
As well as offering the familiar Housie/Bingo played by marking numbered books, most large clubs have their tables modified for the playing of Cash Housie or Mechanised Cash Bingo (using coin slots or, increasingly in the 21st century, an electronic credit system). This is highly profitable for the operator, with a typical “take” of fifty percent of the stake.
Players: 4
Age range: recommended for 12 and up
Setup time < 2 minutes
Playing time: WBF tournament games = 7.5 minutes per deal
Rules complexity; Medium
Strategy depth: High
Random chance: Low – high depending on variant played
Skills required: Memory, Tactics
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game of skill, and partly of chance, for four players, who form two partnerships (sides). The partners sit opposite each other. The game consists of two main parts – bidding (or auction) and play, after which the hand is scored.
The bidding ends with a contract, which is a declaration by one partnership that their side shall take a stated quantity (or more) of tricks, with specified suit as trump or without trumps. The rules of play are rather simple and similar to other trick-taking games.
A Chinese auction is a type of auction (actually a combination of auction and raffle) that is typically featured at charity or other fundraising events.In a Chinese auction, bidders are not prospective buyers (as in the conventional English auction). Instead, they buy tickets, which are essentially chances to win items. Bidders may buy as many tickets as they like, and bid them on any item(s) they want by placing them in a basket or other container in front of the item(s) they are trying to win. At the conclusion of bidding, the winning ticket is drawn from the tickets bid on each item, and the item is given to the owner of that ticket.
A bidder may increase their chance of winning by buying and bidding more tickets on a specific item. Although there is generally no limit to the number of tickets a given individual may bid on a specific item, the chance of winning depends on the total number of tickets bid by all individuals.
It is unclear whether this type of auction actually originates in China; it is much more likely that the term derives from “chance auction,” which is also another name for this type of auction.
The Chinese auction is similar to the “silent auction,” with the difference being that in the silent auction bidders submit bids listing specific amounts that they are willing to pay for a specific item.
A Calcutta Auction is an open auction held in conjunction with a golf tournament, horse race, or similar contest with multiple entrants. It is popular in Backgammon and is currently enjoying rising popularity for NCAA Basketball pools during March Madness.Bidding for each contestant begins in random order, with only one contestant being bid upon at any time. Accordingly, participants (originally in Calcutta, India, from where this technique was first recorded by the Colonial British) bid among themselves to “buy” each of the contestants, with each contestant being assigned to the highest bidder. The contestant will then pay out to the owner a predetermined proportion of the pool depending on how it performs in the tournament. While variations in payoff schedules exist, in an NCAA Basketball tournament (64 teams, single elimination) the payoffs could resemble the following schedule: 1 win – 0.25%, 2 wins – 2%, 3 wins – 4%, 4 wins – 8%, 5 wins – 16%, tournament winner with 6 wins – 32%.
The most interesting element of Calcutta Auctions is in determining an appropriate wager for each contestant, as the payoff will directly hinge on the size of the pot and thereby the size of the bids being placed. Thus the value of each team fluctuates during the course of the betting. For example, even if a bidder knew the Tar Heels would be the tournament winner and thus pay out 32% of the pool, she would still be unsure of the exact value of the team (unless it was the last team being bid on) as the payout would depend on the sum total of all winning bids.
This is similar to parimutuel betting, in that the winnings are awarded from the total pool of bets, but differs in that only one player can bet on any one contestant. However, a player may purchase as many contestants as they desire.
Casino war is a casino card game based on the children’s game of War. The game is arguably one of the most easily understood casino card games, but it also has a relatively large house edge compared to other games.The game is normally played with six standard 52 card decks. The cards are ranked in the same way that cards in poker games are ranked, except that aces are always high.
The deal
After the player has placed a bet, the dealer and the player are each dealt one card.
If the player’s card is ranked higher than the dealer’s, the player wins even money.
If the dealer’s card is ranked higher than the player’s, the player loses the bet to the house.
Ties
A tie occurs when the dealer and the player each have cards of the same rank. In a tie situation, the player has two options:
The player can surrender, in which case the player loses half the bet.
The player can go to war, in which case the player must place an additional wager the same size as the first wager.
Going to war
If the player goes to war, the dealer burns three cards before dealing each of them an additional card. If the player’s card is ranked higher than or the same as the dealer’s, then the player wins an amount equal to the size of the original bet only. If the dealer’s card is ranked higher than the player’s, the player loses both the original bet and the “going to war” bet.
House advantage
The dealer and the player each have a 50% chance of winning, so this seems like an even money game. The house advantage, however, comes from what happens in the case of a tie.
Some casinos offer a bonus payout in the event of a tie after going to war.
The house advantage increases with the number of decks in play and decreases in casinos who offer a bonus payout. The house advantage for this game is over 2%.
Strategy
Surrendering has a slightly higher advantage for the house, so a player should never surrender.
References
Brisman, Andrew. American Mensa Guide to Casino Gambling: Winning Ways (Stirling, 1999) ISBN 080694837X
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