March 2010

Frontiers On The Felt  by John Grochowski

As long as there has been double-zero roulette, the math has been the same. Whether you’re betting on single numbers, the 18-number red or black combinations, or anything in between, the house has a 5.26 percent edge. The single exception is the five-number bet on 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3, where the house edge soars to 7.89 percent.

So I was intrigued when I walked up to the Casino Gaming LLC booth at the Global Gaming Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center. There, proprietor Frank Mugnolo was touting his new Colors bet. You can wager on either red or black, and you win if your color turns up three times in a row.

If your color turns up once, a plastic marker with a number 1 is placed on top of your wager. Two in a row, and your bet gets a 2 marker. And if your color comes in for the third time, you’re paid at 8-1 odds. The house edge: 4.34 percent, lowest on a double-zero game.

That’s still a substantial house advantage, higher than that at many table games, but anything that knocks a little off that roulette edge is welcome. And the likelihood is that players making the Colors wager would also continue making other bets, giving the house the incentive of a little extra action.

Casino Gaming LLC also showed a new craps proposition, Point Seven. If a point is established on the comeout and the shooter sevens out on the next roll, the Point Seven bet is paid at 7-1 odds. It’s an 11.1 percent house edge, in line with other craps propositions that spot the house too much for my taste. I’d stick to pass and come with odds, or place bets on 6 or 8, but those who like the high-risk propositions and who are frustrated with point-seven sequences might be drawn to this option.

Colors was intriguing, but as always, one of my favorite stops each year at G2E was Gaming Entertainment Inc., for a visit with game designer Joe Awada. He has a knack for creating interesting games with house edges that are reasonable for both player and casino. This year, he showed the new Top Play Poker along with newly tweaked versions of 3 Way Action and Double Draw Blackjack.

Top Play has a novel twist. Two two-card hands are dealt face up, and the higher-ranking hand goes to the players. Players and dealer then each get five cards face down. You can use three of your cards to go with the two face-up cards to make your best five-card poker hand in an attempt to beat the dealer.

If players always start with the better two-card hand, why does the house have a 2.97 percent edge? Because the dealer may use any five of his seven cards, while players must include the two face up cards in their final hand. The dealer has more combinations to choose from.

Last year Gaming Entertainment Incorporated introduced a Double Draw Blackjack side bet that Awada said gave players a 0.25 percent edge when used properly. Awada’s hope was that casinos would add the side bet to increase action on their regular blackjack games.

This time around, GEI tweaked the rules. In Double Draw, the player may wager an amount equal to the original bet anytime the dealer’s face up card is a 2 through 6. Making the wager also brings a free draw. If you have 16 and the dealer has a 6, and you make the side bet, you get to see another card. If it improves your hand, great. If it busts you, you don’t bust, the card is just discarded.

In it’s original version, you’d get the no-risk draw even if you had 17 on up through 20. With a 20, you’d have a free shot at drawing an Ace to give you 21, and if you missed, you’d still have a 20. That’s been scaled back. Now you get the free draw only when you have 12 through 16. If you have less than 12, you still get a regular draw before the free draw comes into play. If you hit 8, draw a 7 for 15, you then get the free draw. Awada says the tweak brings it back to an even bet. The house makes money if Double Draw increases action on the regular game.

The original version of 3 Way Action combined a one-card showdown, blackjack and seven-card stud. The first bet would be settled on whether you or the dealer had a higher first card. That would then be used as the starting point for a game of blackjack. After blackjack bets were settled, enough cards would be dealt out to complete a hand of seven-card stud.

The new version replaces the seven-card stud round with a three-card bonus poker hand, much like the Pair Plus portion of Three Card Poker. It also permits you to split pairs on the blackjack round — the original version prohibited pair splitting. Awada says the house edge averages around 2.9 percent, although that can vary both with the skill of the blackjack player and with the three-card paytable used by the casino.

Pith Gaming Enterprise had a table set up at its booth to show off its new side bet, Picture in the Hole Blackjack. It’s a wager that would appeal to players who like to take insurance, basically a bet that the dealer’s face down card will be a 10 value or an Ace, and it pays 3-2. Players may make the bet on their own any time the dealer’s up card is not a 10 value. With a 10 value up, the dealer must first check for blackjack. With no blackjack, the dealer then offers the Picture in the Hole bet to players. It’s the only time the dealer takes the initiative to offer the wager.

Game inventor Barry Fairhurst took the time to walk me through a few hands. “When might the player make the bet? Maybe when the dealer shows a bust card, hoping the dealer busts,” he said, giving himself a 6 up and a 10 down. Or maybe a player who has a 20, if the dealer has a 10 up, might want to protect against 20. And maybe some players might just like to take a chance any time.”

The twist within this twist? The brochure handed out to those interested comes with a warning. This game can be counted, leading to a large player edge. The recommendation to operators is that Picture in the Hole should never be offered in games that do not use a continuous shuffling machine.

At Shuffle Master, the nation’s largest distributor of patented table games, much of the excitement was over the iTable, introduced at G2E 2008 and just starting to roll into casinos in late 2009, the iTable uses live dealers and real decks of cards, but it eliminates chips. Instead, wagering is on an electronic touch screen, with a screen at each position at the table. There are obvious advantages to the house. It gives an accurate track of wagers so that comps can be awarded based on actual play instead of estimates by the pit boss using observations of average bet size and time of play. It eliminates mistakes on payoffs, as well as scams such as past posting or collusion with the dealer over chip payoffs. It speeds play by making instant payoffs instead of the dealer having to pay by hand.

In short, it gives the house all the game security features it would get through using RFID chips or optical scanners, but with more hands per hour as an added bonus.

What really excited a casino exec I spoke with, though, had to do with the potential of slot machine-like bonusing at the tables. As iTable is being introduced — and the first ones were placed in casinos this summer — the betting screens are enabled with Shuffle Master side bets such as Royal Match. Used in combination with a Shuffle Master card-reading shoe, it also can put up odds for side bets after you’ve seen your cards. If you have a 17 against a dealer’s 9, or a 16 against a 7, or anything else, it can offer you odds on winning the hand.

And with that electronic interface, iTable can be configured for bonus events such as awarding virtual tickets in an electronic drawing for every blackjack. There’s the potential for the operator to get creative, to run a ‘Fours on the Fourth’ promotion, for example, that gives you a prize entry for every pair of 4s.

Not every player is going to go for iTable immediately. Comp wizards won’t get to practice their craft if every bet is tracked accurately, and there is the potential for data on bet variation to be used to trace advantage players. Among average players, most are going to be more comfortable just riffling their chips. But there’s enough in this for operators that some will give it a go, and if enough are attracted by the side bets and bonuses, iTable could carve out a strong following in a hurry.

— John Grochowski is the author of The Casino Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book, The Video Poker Answer Book and the Craps Answer Book, available online at: www.casinoanswerman.com.