Lucky Ladies side bet not so bad?
July 10th, 2011 at 9:54:22 AM
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I frequent Atlantic City casinos and many of my top choice places to play offer the "Lucky Ladies" side bet on their BJ games. Basically all you need to do is be dealt any 20 on the first 2 cards and you get at least 4 to 1 payout. The rest of the payouts are as follows.
Q of hearts pair & dealer has BJ: 1000 to 1
Q of hearts pair: 125 to 1
Matched 20 (same rank and suit): 19 to 1
Suited 20: 9 to 1
Unsuited 20: 4 to 1
Now, the Wizard of Odds analysis gives the house advantage at somewhere around 25% on this. However, I have been keeping track of my wins/losses on this side bet, and it turns out I am still significantly in the green on it in the long run. This has been over the course of several hundred hours of play. I have friends who also like to play this side bet due to similar apparent success, even though they aren't really keeping track.
I generally start putting $5 on this bet as soon as the deck goes even slightly hot (positive count), and play it on every hand. I skip the bet if I just got 20 on the previous hand, and I stop betting it when the deck goes cold.
There have been instances where I've gotten 9 to 1 or 19 to 1, 3 or 4 times in one shoe...and times when I've hit 20 more than 10 times in one shoe. Other shoes I am not that lucky, but I generally will get a 20 at least once every 5 hands in a hot deck (on average, obviously not as a rule), which means the losses are made up for in the 4:1 or more payouts. Due to the relatively low number of hands played at the crowded tables that I play on, the rare shoes where I barely hit 20 at all have been made up for with the shoes I have hit the 9:1 or greater payouts multiple times. Hitting this once makes up for 9 lost hands. Hitting the 19 to 1 once makes up for 19 lost hands (which could be an entire shoe worth of hands that didn't hit it at all). Not to mention I've seen the 125 to 1 and 1000 to 1 hit on multiple occasions...both of which would make up for a lot of shoes where you don't get dealt a 20 at all (which almost never happens in my experience).
Since I'm playing only when the shoe is hot, wouldn't that automatically imply that the odds significantly sway to my favor to be dealt a 20? If not, how come I don't seem to be losing in the long run on this bet. (currently according to my calculations I have net profited nearly 15% over time on this & rising)
Q of hearts pair & dealer has BJ: 1000 to 1
Q of hearts pair: 125 to 1
Matched 20 (same rank and suit): 19 to 1
Suited 20: 9 to 1
Unsuited 20: 4 to 1
Now, the Wizard of Odds analysis gives the house advantage at somewhere around 25% on this. However, I have been keeping track of my wins/losses on this side bet, and it turns out I am still significantly in the green on it in the long run. This has been over the course of several hundred hours of play. I have friends who also like to play this side bet due to similar apparent success, even though they aren't really keeping track.
I generally start putting $5 on this bet as soon as the deck goes even slightly hot (positive count), and play it on every hand. I skip the bet if I just got 20 on the previous hand, and I stop betting it when the deck goes cold.
There have been instances where I've gotten 9 to 1 or 19 to 1, 3 or 4 times in one shoe...and times when I've hit 20 more than 10 times in one shoe. Other shoes I am not that lucky, but I generally will get a 20 at least once every 5 hands in a hot deck (on average, obviously not as a rule), which means the losses are made up for in the 4:1 or more payouts. Due to the relatively low number of hands played at the crowded tables that I play on, the rare shoes where I barely hit 20 at all have been made up for with the shoes I have hit the 9:1 or greater payouts multiple times. Hitting this once makes up for 9 lost hands. Hitting the 19 to 1 once makes up for 19 lost hands (which could be an entire shoe worth of hands that didn't hit it at all). Not to mention I've seen the 125 to 1 and 1000 to 1 hit on multiple occasions...both of which would make up for a lot of shoes where you don't get dealt a 20 at all (which almost never happens in my experience).
Since I'm playing only when the shoe is hot, wouldn't that automatically imply that the odds significantly sway to my favor to be dealt a 20? If not, how come I don't seem to be losing in the long run on this bet. (currently according to my calculations I have net profited nearly 15% over time on this & rising)
July 10th, 2011 at 10:14:37 AM
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to say "when the shoe is hot" makes it sound like you are just following hunches.
If, however, you have determined that there are more 10s and face cards than on average, it would certainly be a better time to bet this than otherwise. The WoO probably assumed that such an obstacle as 25% HE cannot be overcome by counting and did not investigate further. If you can show that this assumption is wrong, that would mean you are on to something and not only the WoO but the casino missed it. I'm glad you have at least been lucky.
here is the WoO webpage
edit: since the below surprisingly seems to confirm that the 25% edge does vanish at high count, I won't venture to say I would know why the WoO had no more evaluation, bearing in mind I may also have missed what he may have done.
If, however, you have determined that there are more 10s and face cards than on average, it would certainly be a better time to bet this than otherwise. The WoO probably assumed that such an obstacle as 25% HE cannot be overcome by counting and did not investigate further. If you can show that this assumption is wrong, that would mean you are on to something and not only the WoO but the casino missed it. I'm glad you have at least been lucky.
here is the WoO webpage
edit: since the below surprisingly seems to confirm that the 25% edge does vanish at high count, I won't venture to say I would know why the WoO had no more evaluation, bearing in mind I may also have missed what he may have done.
the next time Dame Fortune toys with your heart, your soul and your wallet, raise your glass and praise her thus: “Thanks for nothing, you cold-hearted, evil, damnable, nefarious, low-life, malicious monster from Hell!” She is, after all, stone deaf. ... Arnold Snyder
July 10th, 2011 at 10:20:07 AM
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Sorry for the terminology, to me "Shoe is Hot" = positive true count, so indeed more 10s and faces left
July 10th, 2011 at 10:26:15 AM
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Betting with a high count is going to be better than betting a low one, but I'm pretty sure that that edge is too big to overcome. I would say you just got lucky in the short term. I'll try to analyze this to verify though.
July 10th, 2011 at 11:17:25 AM
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Quote: guido111Norm Wattenberger (CVData) has a nice page HERE
Analysis of Lucky Ladies over at BJinfo.com HERE
Wow great links! My findings were pretty similar. They used 6 decks, with 8 decks your advantage at any given count would be a little higher.
I guess what it comes down to is that the 25% house edge can in fact be overcome with a true count higher of 7 or higher. This still makes betting any positive count a poor long-term proposition.
The bad news is that the variation on this bet is pretty high. You would need to play tens of thousands of hands in order to get results that start to match expectations. It isn't realistic to be able to play that many hands at a high count, so most professional card counters would be better off staying away unless the count gets really high (10+).
The high variance also explains how dnice21 was able to show a profit after this amount of play. In the long term this strategy would still show a loss.
