The question arises again.............

[Hotchile]

I just got finished answering yet another question about online integrity. This person says "if they let don't let the bad players win, the good players will chew them up fast, that's not good for the site".

Let's clear this up like this. In a casino, blackjack tables hold over 21% of every dollar spent, has the world run out of black jack players? Roulette has an average hold of 24%, are there still roulette players??

First law of gambling, there will always be money and there will always be suckers giving it away. Poker sites do not have to help the fish in order to keep the games going. The games will keep going anyway with more, new fish.

Cheers.....to the fish.

HC

[daryn]

blackjack holds 21% of every dollar spent? i don't think so.

[RiverMel]

Maybe not if every player is playing perfect Basic Strategy. But how many are?

[crazy canuck]

Even if everybody would play basic strategy, the house take doesn't just depend on the house advantage but how long players stay at the table...kind of like a slot machine.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Hotchile worked in the casino business he should know.

[Cyndie]

assume someone sits down at a BJ table with $100 and wagers $5 and does that twenty times with less than optimum strategy...are you saying he would only have $80 left after one pass of the $100, or when they decided to stand up?

[MicroBob]

yes...i believe the key here is that there is a difference between the actual take on a table and the true percentage advantage of the casino game itself.

i think that roulette is a 5.4% disadvantage for the player (paying 35-1 on a 37-1 shot...something like that).
BJ is about a 1-1.5% disadvantage with perfect basic strategy. i have been a dealer for a couple of months and have played for longer than that and very rarely see perfect BS (most people stand on their 15 or 16 v. 7-10....or don't double their soft-17 or soft-18 vs. 6...or don't split their 9's vs. 6...or do soft-double their S13 vs. 2...all of these are mistake plays...unless you are counting).
however, I believe it was BJ expert Stanford Wong who determined that even with some of the most awful play (splitting 10's vs. 10 or A....never splitting A's...stuff like that) the disadvantage at BJ would only be around 11%...which is still better than slots for the most part.

however, the 20% numbers in the initial post seem very possible for casino-take. most players come to the tables with only $100 or $200 and will simply play that until it's gone. due to the natural fluctuations...its very easy to turn that 200 into 0 if youre on a $10 table and be through for the evening.
and if you start with only $40 or $50 then there is a very good chance you will hit 0 at some point in your first hour of play (even if you double or triple your initial buy-in at some point in that hour).
most players who win a little bit....or a lot....will simply press their bets, and their luck, until they lose it all back.
of course, Mr Sklansky may have some theories or data on this subject that agree or disagree with my ideas.

[Am Alert]

He wrote three couplings,

one is blatantly false,

one is obviously true,

so what to make of the reason why sites wouldn't help bad players?

[Hotchile]

Had no idea this would turn into a blackjack thread. It's true, I worked for 13 years in the casino industry and the numbers that I cited came from experience in the casinos in which I worked. Obviously, casinos with different rules will have different holds on particular games.

The point of the post was that, even though the casino is taking a large portion out of each dollar spent, there continues to be blackjack players and roulette players. The same will hold true for poker.

There are countries in the world with uncapped rakes. It seems like the game couldn't survive and yet it does.

Well, without a pokersite "helping" the bad players win, the game will continue to have plenty of soft money in it.

Bad players win sometimes. AA loses sometimes. My advice is, accept it and don't blame the site.

HC

[zooey]

x

[MicroBob]

agreed hotchilie. the players are flocking to the sites and there is no reason to deal a crooked game...otherwise, we would all have incentive to play terribly.
but i seem to have noticed that as my play has improved, so has my win-rate. and i have also noticed that the lousy players seem to lose their money more often than not....go figure. yet somehow the sites seem to be doing quite well.

sorry for helping turn this into a BJ thread....the fact that a game as bad as roulette has any players at all certainly supports the notion that there are plenty out there determined to give their money away.

[daryn]

it's not about people being determined to give their money away.. if you see it like that, fine. but they play roullette to HAVE FUN. i don't consider it fun at all for some reason, but people have different tastes. maybe everyone in the world isn't concerned with EV. but that's what makes us winners

[lorinda]

blackjack holds 21% of every dollar spent? i don't think so

Do you ever get anything right Daryn?

(By the way HC, in England the number is closer to 18%, I believe due to slightly more favorable rules and shorter casino opening hours.)

Lori

[daryn]

sorry.

[lorinda]

NP, Had I read the entire thread, I'd have seen you had been jumped on enough.

Lori

[daryn]

right. what happens is, i see a post, and i decide to respond, and then i do. going back and looking at it, of course i had missed the term "holds".

[daryn]

i did get one thing right, the red sox won.

[Ro-me-ro]

I also worked in a casino for nearly 4 years and confirm the %'s stated.

What you have to remember is that the house edge on a blackjack game is approximately 1% per wager with perfect play.

So whilst a figure of 20% might seem suprising to some, If you think about this logically and I'll give you an example in poker terms:

Suppose your EV is -1% per hand.

How long will it take you to lose most of your money?

After how many hands would you statistically be down about 20% on average?

Casinos would very quickly go out of business if all of it's customers only lost 1% of their money on average a day

Rom.