Proposition Bets

I want to know whether you guys think I should accept one or both Proposition Bets between a friend of mine and myself for which the Rules have already been decided. I think they are interesting Proposition Bets, if nothing else.

THE BETS-Bet 1

The Proposition Bets, as with most Proposition Bets, resulted from idle chatter between the two of us. My friend and I were discussing gambling and he said that he doesn't play the Slot Machines because, "You lose your money too fast." I explained to him that, for one, you'll usually get more actual plays out of a Slot Machine than a Table Game (depending on slot denomination and whether the starting bankroll is the same) and that he'll usually buy-in to a table for $250 making $10 bets (4% of his bankroll) where he will usually only play $20 on a $1.00 machine betting two credits (10% of his bankroll).

I maintained that if he bet an equal amount of his bankroll per bet, flat-betting on Blackjack and per pull on Slots, that he would last longer on the Slots if he were to play the Slots at the same pace Blackjack is played.

He vehemently denies my assertion.

THE RULES-Bet 1

The Blackjack Part:

The Rules for the first proposition bet are that, on a night when the Table Minimums are $10, we will buy-in to the Blackjack Table for $200 after first timing how long it takes for ten hands to be played with a stopwatch. He will then proceed to flat bet $10/hand while taking no action that could constitute a deliberate slowing of the pace of the game. This will result in a bet of 5% of his starting bankroll for every hand.

The time for the Blackjack game will stop at two hours or when the money is gone. If we adjudicate the time for three players at the Blackjack Table and base the slot pulls off of that, he will stand up when more than three people are playing, but he can choose to stand up or remain at the table if there are less than three total players. He must stand up if there are more than three total players.

*It could be two total players, just however many there are when we time it.

Dealer changes will not count towards the two hours required, but shuffles will. We will make sure there is one re-shuffle during the ten hands we both watch for timing purposes. It is my responsibility to stop the stopwatch during a dealer change and to re-start it after the first card is out.

The Slots Part:

When the Blackjack session concludes, we will then go over to the $1 slot machines with a perfectly graduated payout. I will proceed to bet $1/spin (5% of my starting bankroll of $20), however, I will wait (in seconds) the amount of time between spins that each Blackjack hand took. Thus, if the mean time is one minute and ten seconds between hands, then I will wait one minute and ten seconds between spins. I can spin faster at my discretion, but I have absolutely no reason to do so, obviously.

In the event that I switch machines, I must declare, "Switch," during the pendency of a spin at which point the stopwatch will be stopped at the conclusion of the spin and restarted when I pick my new machine. From the time of the restart of the stopwatch, I have the mean amount of time between Blackjack hands to feed the money into the machine and make my first spin.

The Wager:

He is so confident that he will defeat me in this effort that he is giving me 2:1, his $100 vs. my $50. In the meantime, each of us is to contribute $110 ($200-BJ $20-SLOTS) of the money to the wager and any money left, if applicable, will be divided evenly. In the event of a handpay from the slot machine, I am to receive 10% more than he does for tax purposes.

If we both lose our money, then whoever lasted the longest wins the bet.

If one of us still has money after two hours and the other does not, then the one with money is obviously the winner.

If we both last two hours, then the wager is a Push, never to be replayed again.

EDIT: Since Slots will take place second, if he loses his money on BJ, all I have to do is last longer than he did. I do not have to play the full two hours if I don't want to, obviously.

Am I getting the best of it for Bet 1?



THE BETS-Bet 2 "Five and Out"

This bet is much simpler.

I maintain that I can last one hour playing Slot Machines with $5.00.

THE RULES-Bet 2

1.) The stopwatch will be started initially when my finger is on the Spin button of the first slot machine.

2.) I must make a spin within five seconds of the conclusion of the previous spin, otherwise I forfeit the bet. There will be no countdown.

3.) I may play any machine that I want to, however, regardless of the machine I play my minimum bet must be $0.25.

4.) I may have one, "Free Switch," by declaring, "Switch," during the pendency of a spin. I have one minute and thirty seconds to have my money in a different machine and finger on the spin button, otherwise, I must play for 1:01:30 successfully.

5.) If I am to switch machines, the, "Free Switch," must occur before any other switch.

6.) For future switches, the stopwatch will be stopped and re-started when the money is in the new machine and my finger is on the, "Spin," button.

7.) I do not have to Double-Push, "Spin," to make the reels stop faster, except on Bonus Games.

MY STRATEGY

I think I am going to go with, "Black & White Sevens," $0.01 machine with the QuickHits Flat-Top betting 5 lines at $0.05/line. The bonus feature plays up to 25 Free Spins (player selects boxes which have x number of free spins behind them inclusive of 5 at 2x, 7 at 2x, 10 at 2x, 15 at 2x and 20 at 3x...and Wild Plus 5 Bonus Spins) You have to match three Free Spins or two plus the Wild in order for the spins to start occuring.

You can win more Free Spins during the pendency of a Free Spins game, but I believe the winning of more spins can only happen once or twice, I could be wrong.

These Free Games and the selection process will all count as one spin as long as I select my boxes, "At a reasonable speed," which I take to mean, "As fast as humanly possible."

My reasoning is that if I get lucky enough to hit a slightly inordinate number of Free Games, then I can do this all on one machine without ever even having to move. Between the selection process and Ten Free Games, for example, you're probably looking at just about a full minute, because even when you try to Push Spin during the Free Games, there's always a slight delay before the next spin begins.

My theory is that if I get down to $2.00, I'm going to call, "Switch," and go to a $1.00 Flat-Top in an effort to get to $5.00, or more, then back to the Black & White Sevens, unless there are less than ten minutes left, then I am just going to hope for the best. If I get down to less than 1:30 to go, and have not switched machines, then I am obviously going to declare, "Switch," and win by default.

The Wager-Bet 2

He is so supremely confident that I cannot stretch $5.00 for an hour that he is giving me 4:1, his $100 against my $25. I am to provide the $5.00 solely and will keep any money won.

Am I getting the best of it for Bet 2?

FWIW, I believe you will lose both bets. I am positive you will not last an hour on bet 2 betting a quarter a spin. My quick calculations tell me that is about 700 or so spins....very unlikely with a 20 spin bankroll. For Bet 1, you will have to hope he has a terrible run of cards. 20s bones for a 2 hour session would be incredible.

Good luck though...I hope you win.

I agree with avargov. Losing 20 units at blackjack in an hour would be quite a run of negative variance. I think losing at the slots is far easier. Of course, one big or medium hit on the slots would make you a winner. That's why people play slots. Bet 1 I'd say is a VERY poor bet for you, but has a great chance in ending up a push. Bet 2 I'd say is a poor bet, but not that bad, given the 4-1 odds you are getting.

I went over there in the early a.m. to give the second Prop a test run.

I was playing a game called, "Big City 5's," or something of that nature with an accumulated payout for a line of five anything.
I was twenty minutes in betting $0.05/line * 5 lines, but then I hit a bonus game during which I lined up five Jackpots on Line 2 for $322.00-something. The overall bonus game result was $324.00-something and I still had over $2.00 at the time.

I didn't feel like starting over and would not use that machine in the Prop bet anyway because the free games go too quickly.

I'm pretty happy with the hit, though.

I have a few thoughts on the Props, but want to see if I get more responses first. I think I will win number 1 and lose number 2.

PROP BET 1

The essential goal of the timing of this Prop Bet is that he will ideally play the same amount of Blackjack hands as pulls that I take of a slot machine.

The inside information that I happen to have is that he is a horrible BJ player always playing, "Assume a Ten is the next card + Never Bust." In other words, he'll never hit on a Ten Card or higher and he Splits Twenty against a dealer showing 2-6. I'm going to estimate that his play increases the HE to about 8%. My $1.00 slot machine pays back an amount that easily rounds up to 90%, so for 2:1, I think I am getting a great bargain.

He might decide to be less aggressive with Splits, and attempt to completely revert to BS, but I don't think he will know how.

Essentially, he's going to be getting about +2% on ER, but then he's giving me 2:1.

His first Natural (if any) will also essentially not count because he cannot bet an amount other than $10.00. $5.00 for him is as good as $0.00 for the purposes of this bet because he is effectively, "Out of money."

PROP BET 2

I'm starting to gather (despite last night's slot hit) that this wasn't a great idea on my part. I am basically starting with 20 pulls worth of money, and I have figured out:

60 Minutes * 60 Seconds = 3,600 seconds.

I must pull within 5 seconds of a result, and each actual spin takes about 1.6 seconds on my Black & White Sevens machine. (I timed it with as stopwatch, so that's an estimate).

I will play that safe and call it 1.5 seconds per spin.

I also can subtract 90 seconds for my Free Switch, so 3600 - 90 = 3,510.

If we assume that I do not hit any bonus games, I must survive 3,510/6.5 = 540 Spins.

That's probably something of a conservative estimate.

540 Spins, expressed as Credits, is 13,500. I'm starting with 500 credits.

In other words, I have to successfully play through 13,000 credits that I do not have.

If the machine takes 12% of everything that gets run through, then:

500 Credits - 12% = 440 (500 Played)

440 - 12% = 387.2 (940 Played)

387.2 - 12% = 340 (1327 Played)

340 - 12% = 300 (1627 Played)

300 - 12% = 264 (1927 Played)

264 - 12% = 232 (2159 Played)

232 - 12% = 204 (2391 Played)

204 - 12% = 179 (2595 Played)

Interestingly, I should theoretically have played 2391 credits by the time I am down to $2.00 which is 2,391/13,500 = 17.71% of the total needed.

17.71% of 3510 seconds is:

3510 * .1771 = 621.62 seconds

...Slightly over ten minutes.

If everything goes according to this schedule, I will be taking my two $1.00 shots at slightly over ten minutes in, discluding bonus games.

Not ideal.

Bonus games hit once per about 75 spins, though, so I should theoretically have had at least one BG by then...

I'm probably still doing all right getting 4:1 action on it, but I'll need to get pretty lucky.

I wish he'd have been available last night to do the wager. I wouldn't have minded piling another $100.00 on that win, but then, I probably wouldn't have been playing that machine...

By the way, thanks for the well-wishes, Avargov!

Quote: Mission146

By the way, thanks for the well-wishes, Avargov!

Unless he gets destroyed on blackjack he won't bust out. That being said, I think that you can probably last 2 hours, but it is less certain than the blackjack. I wouldn't make this bet, I'm going to say (complete guess) 10% chance win, 60% chance tie, 30% chance lose.

The second bet is atrocious, unless you have a big hit you will bust out quickly on the slot.

Quote: winmonkeyspit3

Unless he gets destroyed on blackjack he won't bust out. That being said, I think that you can probably last 2 hours, but it is less certain than the blackjack. I wouldn't make this bet, I'm going to say (complete guess) 10% chance win, 60% chance tie, 30% chance lose.

The second bet is atrocious, unless you have a big hit you will bust out quickly on the slot.

The math on the second bet says I am in horrible shape. He seems to be under the impression that I accepted both, which is not the impression I was under.

I'm going to try it. I would have never hit for the nearly $325 last night had I not been practicing for this, so it's not like I am losing anything in the greater sense.

Proposition 1 takes place tonight, results tomorrow! Proposition 2 also depending on how awake we are.

Quote: Mission146

The math on the second bet says I am in horrible shape. He seems to be under the impression that I accepted both, which is not the impression I was under.

I'm going to try it. I would have never hit for the nearly $325 last night had I not been practicing for this, so it's not like I am losing anything in the greater sense.

Proposition 1 takes place tonight, results tomorrow! Proposition 2 also depending on how awake we are.

Good luck! Though I am afraid to say you will need it!

The Results Are In:

Bet 1-Blackjack

We ended up having to pony up $150 apiece for BJ because the table minimums when we were there were $15.00. It was pretty busy for the early a.m., even taking into account that it was Saturday.

We came upon a BJ table with only one other player, and my friend said, "I'm just going to play it, the first ten hands count, so time them seperately."

There ended up being a very slow dealer who was extremely chatty with the other player who was sitting at first base. I think she may have been trying to get a date, but they probably didn't mind upstairs because he was betting pretty good amounts and there was NO way he was counting. For example, his average bet was probably about $40, but he stuck $120 out there and five 2-5 cards went out between himself, my friend, and the dealer with only one ten. He won that hand and then REDUCED his bet to $30!!!

My friend and I were both pretty happy that the dealer was taking her sweet time, and the ten hands came in at 13:20. There was no shuffle during the pendency of those ten, but I told him I would let that go since I was getting some slow pace BJ.

The elephant in the room was that he wouldn't always have the same dealer, but I would always be waiting 80 seconds between pulls.

It didn't matter.

We were at 1:18:xx and he got dealt twenty against a dealer showing a five. He split and got eight on the first hand and a Queen on the second. He stood the first hand and split the second, drawing another Queen and a King. 18-20-20

However, the dealer turned over a six giving her eleven!

"Now he shalt learn the error of his ways," I thought.

Not to be. The Dealer hit for a Deuce and then a Jack, busted.

My friend was up to $390 at that point, so I did some quick calculating and realized that I got $45 of that, I would lose $50 if I lost the bet and another $10 for the slot machine if I lost the bet. However, if I lost (but took the $45) I'd only lose $15.00.

Time to hedge.

I put a hand on my friend's shoulder, "You can stand up. We're at one hour and nineteen minutes, I concede that you will last two hours."

He stood up.

Bet 1-Slots

I'm obviously not very happy at this point because I realized that the best I could do on the first bet was Push, and I was probably going to lose the second bet to begin with.

I decided to go with a $1.00 Wild Cherry with a perfectly graduated payout.

The long story short is that Three Single-Bars loved me as I hit for three of them in my first fifteen spins. Those pay 10 credits.

I hit for a handful of 2 credit paying Wild Cherry Anywhere in that time, as well.

I was down to $26 at 1:10, but then I hit for Back-to-Back Three Single-Bars, which brought me up to $44.

"Is it mathematically impossible, he asked me?"

"I have a pen in my pocket if you have a scrap of paper."

50 Minutes left * 60 Seconds in a minute/ 80 seconds between pulls = 37.5 pulls or $37.50

"It's mathematically impossible. I can't lose."

"Well, then," he said, "I concede the draw."

We combined for $90 in BJ winnings and $24 on the slots. $57.00 each, so that was pretty sweet.

Bet 2- $5.00 and Out

I pulled out a $5.00 bill. "You ready?"

I went over to the Black & White Sevens $0.01 machines with QuickHits, as I planned.

I played 5 Credits * 5 Lines for $0.25 bet.

The initial $3.00 lasted longer than expected. In fact, I was at $2.60 after seventeen minutes, so I decided to take my shot, but I didn't switch machines.

Instead, I bet 5 Lines at 20 Credits per line for $1.00/bet. The first pull like that I landed 6 QuickHits for a 50x bet, or $50 payout.

"It's all about knowing when to strike," I said to him. (Not at all true!!!)

He kept me going playing $0.25/spin until forty-five minutes when I still had nearly $41 left.

"Fine, fine, I concede. How about 3:1 for me to win back my $100?"

I kibitzed, "You are my esteemed friend and colleague, and I would have you know that you are dealing with a professional slot machine player. It is due to that fact that I consider it highly inappropriate to take $400 from you on a sure thing. The $100, however, I will most graciously accept and thank you for an entertaining evening."

RESULTS

BET 1: Push (+ $57.00)

Bet 2: Win ($100 + $35.30 in slot winnings = $135.30)

Total = + $192.50

I gave $90 back on Craps, so we won't talk about that.

Still $102.50 ahead for this experiment, and more, if you count the hit for $324 from my practice the other night!!!

A significant improvement to my bankroll, I must say. Hopefully I won't have to play any poker again this year!!!