ONLINE GAMBLING AND CASINO GUIDE

Expected Value and All That

There’s a lot of talk about Expected Value, or EV, on different games at the casino, i.e., how much you’ll win/lose on average when playing different games. Of course, it’s extremely rare that these numbers add up in any single session, but over, say, a few thousand sessions you can usually count on the numbers to be roughly equivalent with the expected value.

After all, casinos are counting on this for their long-term profits. It’s highly unusual that players have a positive EV on any of the games at a casino, although it happens occasionally – especially if the player takes advantage of a good sign-up bonus.

However, surprisingly few players bother to check their expected return (winning chances) on different games, and often they choose a game with a poor payout percentage. If you plan on playing for a while with a limited amount of money, look for games with a tiny house edge (which is to say the least negative EV for the player.)

For example, most varieties of blackjack offer an almost negligible (short-term) house edge of 0.5%, whereas most slot machines will rob you of about 10% of each wager. Sure – to be reasonably drunk and waste a few bucks on slots has another kind of Expected Value, but if you want more quality time at the casino, my choice would be blackjack, and preferably with a large bonus on the side.

/Sprinkler

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 2:40 am and is filed under Other, Casino, Blackjack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.