Three point Molly is the best beginner strategy?

Quote: TDVegas

Commit more to the pass line than the odds.

Commit more to the 1.41% edge bet than to the zero edge bet. Scratching my head on this one, please elaborate

Quote: TDVegas

Quote: ChumpChange

I threw five 5's in a row on bubble craps the other night. If I was Come betting, I'd only get 2 winners out of that; as a place bettor, if I had placed it, would have been 5 winners. If I had won the Come bet and replaced it with a Place bet, I'd have 4 winners.
FYI, Buy bets on the 5, 9 pay 1.45X instead of 1.40X as a Place bet.
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I’ve played bubble craps for about 10 years now. Anyone can lay out a scenario they’ve “thrown” to justify strategy A (place) or strategy B (come bet)…and make an argument which was the better plan. For some reason…the argument is always after the fact.
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Place bet edge: 4%

Come bet with 3/4/5 odds edge: 0.37% (less than a tenth of place bet edge)

Is that a good enough argument?

Quote: AlanMendelson

I think we all understand that figures such as 1.41% representing the house edge are all examples of long term math probabilities and have nothing to do with actual payoffs.
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Wrong. If you are making pass line bets only, over the long term your loss will be:

(bets won x payoff - bets lost) / (total bets made) = 7/495 = 1.41%

Taking this "4th grade arithmetic"* one step further, the standard deviation will be about: 1 / (total bets made)^.5

*quoting my mentor and teacher here - tuttigym

My amp goes to 11. Yours only goes to 10. Which is louder?

If the casino is offering a bet at true odds, it means that the house does not expect to make money on it. If you wager $10, the house expects to make zero off of you. If you bet a million dollars, it makes nothing off of you.
Conversely, you can expect to make zero profit, no matter if you bet $10 or a million. At the end of the day, you can expect zero profit. It's like you are depositing money into an ATM and withdrawing it at the same time.
Why does a casino offer such a silly bet when it knows it won't make money off of it? The simple answer is they wouldn't unless they have an ulterior motive. So what is their motive?
Since they won't let you simply take odds, as there is no profit in it for them, why do they offer it?
I'd guess they offer this as an inducement to make that silly pass bet with its 1.41 house edge. Some marketing genius figured out a way to get reasonably intelligent people to play a game with a 1.41 house edge while convincing themselves they are really playing a game with a 0.37 edge.

Quote: ChumpChange

I threw five 5's in a row on bubble craps the other night. If I was Come betting, I'd only get 2 winners out of that; as a place bettor, if I had placed it, would have been 5 winners. If I had won the Come bet and replaced it with a Place bet, I'd have 4 winners.
FYI, Buy bets on the 5, 9 pay 1.45X instead of 1.40X as a Place bet.
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And if, starting from a comeout roll, the rolls had been 7, 7, 11, 7, 7, (153% more likely than 5,5,5,5,5) a passline/come bet would have won five times while a place bet wins nothing. Anything can happen in the short term, but long term the place bet is a very bad, very high edge bet

Regarding the buy vs place: If you buy it, putting $105 on the table, you have a 60% chance of a $105 loss and 40% chance of a $145 net win. If you place it for $105 you also have a 60% chance of a $105 loss but a 40% chance of a $147 net win. They are both sucker bets with 4% + edges that I'd never make, but isn't placing it the better of the two dreadful options?

And if you buy, vig on win, it only takes $100 to get that $145!

Quote: TDVegas

Quote: Ace2

Quote: TDVegas

I believe the argument is flawed that you would only expect to lose .37 per $100 wagered ($25 pass, $75 odds) vs. a lone $25 pass. You will expect to lose the same exact amount…$1.41.

It's a fact, not an argument. In the $25/$75 scenario, for every $100 you put on the table, the casino holds .37 long term. Are you claiming that 0.37/25 = 0.37/100 ?

Don't compare $25 pass with $75 odds to a lone $25 pass. Compare it to a lone $100 pass. The vig is 4 times higher on the $100 lone pass since it's being charged on the full $100 instead of just $25
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My argument is $100 pass line is expected to lose 1.41.

My argument is $100 pass line and $300 odds is expected to lose 1.41.

The only thing the odds bet does in terms of expectation is it ramps up the volatility. You can win OR lose a lot more money depending on how the dice go. It does not change the overall expected loss.

If your argument is make the minimum pass line with the maximum odds…I agree, somewhat. A lot of people like the advantage on come out (8 ways to win, 4 ways to lose)…a 2 to 1 win/loss advantage and the only time a player has an edge, so they commit more on the pass line.
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It’s semantics. Imagine video poker game where if you insert 3 quarters you get a 98% pay table. The fourth quarter has for itself a 100% pay table, so when you put in four quarters the overall pay table is 98.5%.

Would you say:

a) You are making two different bets. A 98% game for three quarters and a 100% game for one quarter.

b) You are playing a 98.5% game for four quarters.

c) It doesn’t matter because it’s semantics.

My guess is however you answer, if you saw someone playing the game for three quarters, you would think they were playing poorly.

Quote: billryan

My amp goes to 11. Yours only goes to 10. Which is louder?

If the casino is offering a bet at true odds, it means that the house does not expect to make money on it. If you wager $10, the house expects to make zero off of you. If you bet a million dollars, it makes nothing off of you.
Conversely, you can expect to make zero profit, no matter if you bet $10 or a million. At the end of the day, you can expect zero profit. It's like you are depositing money into an ATM and withdrawing it at the same time.
Why does a casino offer such a silly bet when it knows it won't make money off of it? The simple answer is they wouldn't unless they have an ulterior motive. So what is their motive?
Since they won't let you simply take odds, as there is no profit in it for them, why do they offer it?
I'd guess they offer this as an inducement to make that silly pass bet with its 1.41 house edge. Some marketing genius figured out a way to get reasonably intelligent people to play a game with a 1.41 house edge while convincing themselves they are really playing a game with a 0.37 edge.
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Let me get this straight. If, for instance, a casino offered roulette with no zeros and normal payoffs, that would be a silly game that no one should play since it has no house edge and is essentially just taking money from one pocket and putting into another? Some predatory marketing gimmick perhaps?

Based on your "withdraw/deposit ATM at same time" comment, it's clear that you do not understand variance and that you still have (almost the same) variance on a free bet compared to the same bet with vig. You think that if you bet on 100 coin flips, wins paying even money (zero vig), that you are guaranteed to win exactly 50 of 100 for a net result of zero? Or... do you deny that such a bet would be zero vig?

Switching to craps, I wouldn't be surprised if casinos eliminated or reduced free odds bets because it's such a great deal for players. You get a PL bet (after point established) with zero vig and even a bit more variance (on a point of 5, SD of 1.22 vs 1 for for a PL bet). I say that based on casinos raising vig by changing BJ to 6:5 and even introducing triple-zero roulette. If every craps player bet only PL with max odds then the game would cease existence because the vig would not cover the cost to deal the game, just like BJ would no longer exist if everyone played proper basic strategy (house edge about 0.5% for 3:2 +/- 0.1% for rule variations). But, in craps, all the people making high vig place bets (especially), hardways etc subsidize the sharps playing PL/Come/DP/DC with max odds, just like the bad blackjack players subsidize the ones playing proper basic strategy. As a sharp, I think it's a fantastic arrangement

Once you get a vig under half a percent, it's almost like it's a free bet because you must make millions of bets before being confident of net results being close to that vig %. So you could play 100,000 hands and still have a decent chance of being up on the casino.

Read all of Ace2's posts and listen to him :)

I find it amazing that across with pressure is the accepted strategy for craps, while being one of the WORST strategies out there.

Bet odds. Even if it's 1x. Bet them. Always.

I just finished reading Lyle Stuart's Casino Gambling for the Winner from 1977, and he talks about how some houses were offering 2x odds instead of just 1x odds. That should tell you what a deal it is for the player. On of the few things in Vegas that have gotten better for the player.

Quote: Ace2

Quote: AlanMendelson

I think we all understand that figures such as 1.41% representing the house edge are all examples of long term math probabilities and have nothing to do with actual payoffs.
link to original post

Wrong. If you are making pass line bets only, over the long term your loss will be:

(bets won x payoff - bets lost) / (total bets made) = 7/495 = 1.41%

Taking this "4th grade arithmetic"* one step further, the standard deviation will be about: 1 / (total bets made)^.5

*quoting my mentor and teacher here - tuttigym
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When I make a $15 passline bet I either win $15 or I lose $15.

I never lose 1.4%

Yet I understand why the house has a 1.4% edge.