Beating the Las Vegas USA Promotion

Can the Las Vegas USA Online Promotion be Beaten?

It's that time again to look at one of the promotions for our Wizard of Odds APPROVED casinos, Las Vegas USA!!!

Remember that, with a Wizard of Odds Approved casino, (clearly marked on the Wizard of Odds site, and ALL casinos advertised on Wizard of Vegas are currently approved) you get the added assurance that any dispute arising between a player and the online casino, in the event that the player signed up through our link, will have the Wizard personally intervene on the player's behalf in the event that the player and casino cannot reach a mutually agreeable resolution!

Here's the link to that assurance.

With that having been said, as of the time of this writing, Las Vegas USA is offering eleven separate Match promotions for new Wizard players.  These promotions consist of a 100% Match Bonus of up to $1,000, per deposit, which would result in a total of $11,000, cash, and a total of $11,000 in bonus money.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Remember, with this Promotion, you MUST enter your coupon code before making a deposit with the cashier, or the bonus shall not apply.

For this promotion, you must wager 40x your deposit + Bonus ($80,000 in total bets) on valid games, and "If playing Multi hand Video Poker, Blackjack, Video Poker, Caribbean Stud and Perfect Pairs, wagering requirements increase to 90 times your deposit plus bonus."  I will also add that 90x the Bonus is $180,000 in total bets.

As we all know, I like to look for games that are beatable, straight-up, before I do anything else, so let's look at the Wizard's Review of this casino:

It looks like we're eating 0.54% on Blackjack, so:

180000 * .0054 = $972 Expected Loss

With perfect strategy, the player is expected to lose $972 and retain $28 of the Bonus Money.  We would usually advise playing with the least amount of Variance tolerable (i.e. betting the minimum) when at a straight up advantage, but playing 180,000 hands of Blackjack to be expected to profit $28 might be a bit tedious...to say the least.

Of course, playing with a higher degree of Variance does nothing to change the expected outcome, so if you just like playing on-line Blackjack, this isn't a bad promotion, obviously.

Aces & Eights only gives the House a 0.22% edge, with perfect strategy, so the expected profit will be better:

180000 * .0022 = $396

Playing straight up, the player is expected to profit $604, per Bonus redemption.

At $5.00 per hand, again, there is more Variance than betting the minimum, but the overall expectation doesn't change.  I use $5/hand because that would result in 36,000 hands played which could be accomplished, probably, in 160-200 hours.  Again, the expected profit-per-hour isn't great, but if you enjoy playing, this will give you plenty of bang for your buck.

If you want to go for a bigger profit, this is another casino that offers a payoff of 9-1 on the Baccarat tie bet, and fortunately, I've already analyzed this bad boy:

The key differences between this promotion and the one for Bovada are:

1.)  We get $2,000 to wager (after Bonus) as opposed to $500 for Bovada, that's the good news.

2.) The bad news is that the Max Bet for Tie Bet seems to be $250 on Vegas Casino Online.

In this case, we're going to have to look at this in terms of what our bankroll would improve to using the Tie Bet for up to eight losses, and then switching tactics and playing either the lower Variance Blackjack or the higher Variance Aces & Eights:

Here are the Probabilities and New Bankroll for Each Attempt:

First Attempt:  0.095156  ($4250)

Second Attempt:  (1-0.095156) * 0.095156 = 0.08610133566 ($4000)

Third Attempt: (1-0.095156)^2 * 0.095156 = 0.07790827696 ($3750)

NOTE:  For the remaining attempts, simply change the exponent to the attempt number minus one.

Fourth Attempt:  0.07049483696 ($3500)

Fifth Attempt:  0.06378683025 ($3250)

Sixth Attempt:  0.05771713063  ($3000)

Seventh Attempt:  0.05222499935 ($2750)

Eighth Attempt (WIN):  0.04725547731 ($2500)

Eighth Attempt (LOSS):  (1-0.095156)^8 = 0.44935511283  (-$1000)

What we notice is that we actually have a better than 50% probability of improving our bankroll, but then, we're expected to beat the House Edge straight up on Blackjack or Aces & Eights even if we don't, so does this improve our value?

The first thing we want to do is take the probabilities of improving our bankroll and multiply those by what our new bankroll would be less the original $1,000 we invested and less the Expected Loss on the playthrough.  The subtractions will always be $1972 for Blackjack and $1396 for Aces & Eights:

0.095156 *  ($4250-1972) = 216.765368

0.08610133566 * (4000-1972) = 174.613508718

0.07790827696 (3750-1972) = 138.520916435

0.07049483696 (3500-1972) = 107.716110875

0.06378683025 (3250-1972) = 81.5195690595

0.05771713063  (3000-1972) = 59.3332102876

0.05222499935 * (2750-1972) = 40.6310494943

0.04725547731 * (2500-1972) = 24.9508920197

0.44935511283  * (-1000) = -449.35511283

Our total is:

216.765368+174.613508718+138.520916435+107.716110875

+81.5195690595+59.3332102876+40.6310494943+24.9508920197

-449.35511283 = 394.695512059

That means, per attempt, on an initial outlay of $1,000, cash, a player can expect to win $394.6955, or, about $4,341.65 if attempting the promotion eleven times.  This is an expectation of +39.46955% on the money invested, which is an even better edge than Bovada's promotion and is for a lot more cold, hard, cash.

We see that the lower Variance game of Blackjack, however, still yields a lesser overall expected win than playing Aces & Eights straight up.  Since attempting to improve the bankroll first improves the expected return on the Blackjack, it stands to reason that it does the same on Aces & Eights.  If you want to calculate the return of Aces & Eights for yourself, simply change the '1972' in the above formulas to '1396' re-calculate the formulas, and then sum up the totals.

Essentially, we would approach this promotion the same way that we would approach the one for Vegas Casino Online.  Both casinos are powered by RealTime Gaming and the Promotions are substantially the same, the main exception being you ABSOILUTELY MUST redeem the Bonus Code BEFORE making the deposit with this one, or they will not give you the bonus.

For the time being, new Promotion articles will be largely limited to Promotions available on our Wizard of Odds site as we have now fully addressed our Wizard of Vegas affiliates.

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Posted by Mission146

Comments

ticksmentat Jul 15, 2018

You are stating that las vegas usa is approved by wizard of odds. I go to wizard of odds site to specifically look up this casino to read the detailed review and see that it has a D and D- rating with this specific quote... "Wizard Endorsement Status
Las Vegas USA Casino have not earned endorsement from the Wizard of Odds."

What gives?

Mission146 Jul 15, 2018

This article was published May 30, 2015.

The Las Vegas USA review page on WoO was last updated March 21, 2018.

I'm guessing they somehow lost their endorsement with us at some point between those two dates. Anyway, I'll go in and edit that accordingly, please give me a day or two, but it's in my queue.

ticksmentat Jul 15, 2018

ahhh... so they lost their endorsement at some point. That's even more important to me then never receiving it in my opinion. I saw the dates, but since the march 21, 2018 post references this article I thought I should give it a read and post a comment.

Thank you for the clarification.

Mission146 Jul 15, 2018

Mission146 Jul 15, 2018

Mission146 Jul 15, 2018

Test

Mission146 Jul 15, 2018

Mission146 Jul 15, 2018

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I will make sure my guess is right and then we will edit the appropriate page. I will put another comment letting you know what the situation is.

jps Apr 23, 2022

I have a question about one of the terms and conditions for bonuses at this site. They don't seem to have specific T&C for the $11k bonus you analyzed, so I am taking it from the 150% initial deposit bonus (https://www.lasvegasusa.eu/casino/promotions-terms.php), though it looks like all deposit bonuses have this term.

"The bonus chips are unredeemable and will be removed from the associated cashout."

Does this mean that this is a phantom bonus? If so, it seems like that means that an extra $1,000 would have to be subtracted from the cases where we end up with a positive bankroll after the baccarat tie bet and then doing the playthrough requirements.

Is the above right? Since it's been 7 years since this article was posted, I assume this clause was added to make the bonus -EV almost always.

Mission146 Apr 23, 2022

JPS,

I believe you are correct and this article is definitely old news. Had it been a Phantom Bonus as of the time this was written, I would have subtracted the Bonus of $1,000 and initial deposit of $1,000 from the expected outcomes. Either that, or I would have reduced $1,000 from the new effective bankroll on the other side, because I suppose you're not losing $1,000, you're just not getting it in cash regardless of what happens.

Going back and doing this with the same Tie method and playing Aces & Eights (assuming that game is even still there and has the same paytable) we end up with:

121.609368 + 88.5121730585 + 60.6126394749 + 37.2212739149 + 17.7327388095 + 1.61607965764 - (11.5939498557 + 22.3045852903 + 449.35511283) = -155.949375061

As you correctly guessed, this method would have a negative expectation now that this is a Phantom Bonus. Like I said, all I did above was use the Aces and Eights and subtract $1,000 from the effective balance, so:

0.095156 * ($4250-1972)

Became:

0.095156 * ($3250-1972)

That's not to say that Phantom Bonuses are NEVER good; they can be. Effectively, they end up being the same thing as many sports, "Free Bets," that only pay to the extent of winnings and do not return the original wager. Every promotion would have to be analyzed individually, and most importantly, the Terms & Conditions thoroughly read for bet and/or game restrictions, but the general idea of making a long shot bet for as much as possible would still apply.

It would just depend on the game, the probabilities and the playthrough requirements after that, so you would want to analyze anything you think might have a chance if you're taking deep looks at promotions. Phantom Bonuses are not automatically bad, though. Imagine you had $1,000 Phantom dollars with no playthrough requirements other than being bet once. Here's how a Pass Line bet at Craps would work out with $1,000 cash and $1,000 Phantom Bonus:

(2000 * .4929) = $985.80

(1000 * .5071) = -$507.10

985.80 - 507.10 = $478.70

This is obviously because you're getting paid as if you made a $2,000 bet (in terms of winnings), but you only actually risked $1,000 in cash. If your Pass Line bet won, then you would see a balance of $4,000, which would be $3,000 after the Phantom Bonus is removed for profits of $2,000.

There would obviously be some playthrough requirements after that, so it would just depend on the promotion in question.

jps Apr 24, 2022

Thanks for the info Mission146!

I'm just getting into the world of advantage play, so I'm glad that I understood things correctly (though I'm sad that it is not so easy to find a +EV online bonus promotion).