Progressive blackjack game odds ?

I saw that Playtech casinos offer a 1$ side bet for aces. Aces must be in a row and start with the first card. Payout is as follow:

- one Ace pays 5 x side bet

- two Aces pays 50 x side bet

- three Aces pays 150 x side bet

- four Aces 2500 x side bet

- three Suited Aces 5000 x side bet

- four Suited Aces - PROGRESSIVE JACKPOT -

There are 6 decks used for play. Assume House Edge for this game is 0.57% (not taking into account side bets)

- Now, I would have four questions:

1. First one would be to know the odds on each event happening ?

2. The chances to hit the Jackpot (get four Suited Aces) are bigger or lower if we bet more than one hand at a time ? (if multihand)

3. What would be the optimal bet for the hand to cover the feel for 1$ side bet ? (minimum bet is 1$ and maximum bet is 200$)

4. How big must be the Jackpot in order to make it a +EV game at 1$ side bet ?

event	permutations	probability	inverse prob.	payout	return
zero aces	8579718720	0.9230769231	1 in 1.08333	-1	-0.9230769231
one ace	662100480	0.071234232	1 in 14.038	5	0.35617116
two aces	49123584	0.0052851204	1 in 189.21	50	0.264256022
three aces	3359232	0.0003614139	1 in 2766.9	150	0.0542120839
four aces	253584	0.000027283	1 in 36,653	2500	0.068206647
three suited aces	138240	0.000014873	1 in 67,236	5000	0.0743649984
four suited aces	1440	0.000000154927	1 in 6,454,649.5	Jackpot	0.000000154927*j
Total	9294695280	1	1		-0.1058660118 + 0.000000154927*j

1. See table above. The house edge is -0.1058660118 + 0.000000154927*j, where j=Jackpot value in dollars. If 4 suited aces would only pay $5000, then the house edge would be 10.51%.

2. The chances that you eventually hit the jackpot will be proportional to the number of hands you play, however your expected value (EV) from the side bet wager will not change. And since this is undoubtedly a -EV sidebet, there is little incentive to play more hands.

3. "cover the feel"? You mean the best wager to minimize the effects of the -EV side bet? That would be to bet as much on the Blackjack hand as you're willing to afford, unless the jackpot is greater than $646,536. Any jackpot above this amount, then you would want to wager $1 on the Blackjack hand.

4. $683,328 is the breakeven point for the progressive bet. Any jackpot amount greater than this (before taxes) is a +EV side bet.

Thank you tringlomane excellent response !!!

Thank you tringlomane excellent response !!!

Thank you tringlomane excellent response !!!

Sorry Wizard for the double/triple posts and threads, I have no clue why this happen to me. Please delete the duplicates.

Quote: tringlomane

3. "cover the feel"? You mean the best wager to minimize the effects of the -EV side bet? That would be to bet as much on the Blackjack hand as you're willing to afford, unless the jackpot is greater than $646,536. Any jackpot above this amount, then you would want to wager $1 on the Blackjack hand.

4. $683,328 is the breakeven point for the progressive bet. Any jackpot amount greater than this (before taxes) is a +EV side bet.

Sorry but I think I am still left with something unclear, so I better ask now:

- the breakeven point is at $646,535 or at $683,328 ? (yes, not counting the taxes to the financial departments)

- I agree that in order to minimize the -EV $1 side bet, we should bet as high as we can afford (be it table max if we can afford playing with that) and only when the Progressive Jackpot becomes high enough (~ $683,5K ?) to make the $1 side bet a +EV bet we have then to switch and lower our Blackjack bet because this is now what we should try to minimize the effect of it`s -EV.

OK, but how low we should bet since the side bet remains $1 ? - I am asking this, because we certainly can not afford to bet as low as $1 per the Blackjack hand. - That is because it will eat any bankroll in just minutes until we hit the Jackpot ! Imagine with $1 side bet and $1 on the blackjack hand: each time we lose on the blackjack hand, we lose $2 of our bankroll, each time we tie, we still lose $1 from the bankroll. When we win our hand, we only recover our side bet and the bankroll remains unaffected. We only win $0.5 to the bankroll when we hit a natural blackjack. (I did not counted the side bets prizes which pay a very little now and then)

$683,328 is breakeven.

$646,535 makes the game a better EV than the traditional BJ game (-0.57%). I definitely wasn't very clear about that.

Once the jackpot reaches $646,535, the side bet loses less money on AVERAGE than the BJ game, hence, technically we should play as little as possible on the BJ game if we are trying to maximize EV. You're right about what will generally happen by doing this though; we will very often slowly lose money by making the side bet with a $1 BJ bet, the value of the side bet comes from terribly unlikely events. You won't necessarily lose though, if you are lucky enough to get a rush of AA or even one AAA, you'll probably be ahead for a good stretch of hands on the sidebet winnings.

There's no way this jackpot is near this amount of money right now though, right?

Thank you tringlomane now I am more clear about this .. and no, the Playtech BJK Jackpot is currently around $100K.

Interesting enough, in fun money mode is around $1,25 BILLION. I don`t know how it grows since no one can bet on it.