MGM No Vig Up Front

All the MGM properties have finally changed to no charge on vig/juice up front for craps buys and lay bets. They only charge AFTER the win. This reduces the house edge by half and is a big deal.

There has been some confusion on day shift at Park MGM (my casino) where they will charge up front except 4/10. Swing shift won’t charge up front at all. I asked the shift manager on swing to talk to day shift, and he said he did and they are going to fix it.

But this makes their Craps Buys and Lay bets the most competitive on the strip, let alone definitely in all of Vegas. Charging the vig after the win reduces the house edge by slightly more than half.

That is HUGE!

I normally place the inside numbers.

If this rule is still in place when I visit in June, I will definitely switch to the outside. 👍 (Unless I’m mistaken, mathematically, 6/8 place bets are still better than buying them with a late vig, but worse than the late vig 4/10.)

Of course, two months is plenty of time for the bean counters to make some noise and get the rule reversed. 🤯

Is there a minimum bet for this?

It’s a new rule they just rolled out so I doubt they’ll be rolling it back. I think if anything they’ll keep it as people won’t lose as quickly. I had wondered too if buying the 6/8 was worth it when you pay the juice after? I don’t know for certain.

Clarify: suppose I buy the 10 for $100 under the "only pay commission on the win" rule and it wins. What do I get back - my original $100 plus $190 ($200 minus 5%), which is $290, or 95% of the whole $300, which is $285? And I assume the original rule was, I had to bet $105 against the casino's $200.

Quote: ThatDonGuy

Clarify: suppose I buy the 10 for $100 under the "only pay commission on the win" rule and it wins. What do I get back - my original $100 plus $190 ($200 minus 5%), which is $290, or 95% of the whole $300, which is $285? And I assume the original rule was, I had to bet $105 against the casino's $200.
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Don’t quote me on this because I am a lay bettor. But I believe it’s 5% of the commission of the flat bet when you Buy. There after you roll a 10, you’d be paid $195 in winnings, unless you wanted to take it down, you’d get $295 total.

This is very important to me because I typically lay a remaining box number when only one is needed for the Bonus Craps (All, Tall, Small) bets.

At Red Rock and Suncoast a $60 lay on 5, 6, 8, 9 would be $2 and a $50 lay on 4, 10 would be $1.

My first question: any change with their Bonus craps bets?

When the commission is charged on win only, you never wager the commission amount...it's deducted from the win amount. So if you wager $100 on 4/10 and win then you collect your $100 plus $195 net winnings ($200 minus the $5 commission). If you lose then you lose your $100

Inverse for lay bets. You'd wager $200 to win $95. Same edge of 5/300 = 1.67%

This change makes the buying the 5/9 a much better deal (2%) than placing it (4%), and puts 5/9 in the range of buying the 4/10 (commission on win only, 1.67%) and placing the 6/8 (1.52%). It's still cheaper to place the 6/8 than to buy it

Not that I'd ever make a buy, lay or place bet. All of those edges are still six or seven times the edge of betting don't pass with 3/4/5 odds, so I'll stick with the don't

Caesars should one-up MGM by charging the commission on 6/8 on a hard 6/8 win only. That would bring the buy 6/8 edge to 0.45% and there would be no reason to place any number. Even I would make this bet occasionally

Quote: Ace2

When the commission is charged on win only, you never wager the commission amount...it's deducted from the win amount. So if you wager $100 on 4/10 and win then you collect your $100 plus $195 net winnings ($200 minus the $5 commission). If you lose then you lose your $100

So the commission is 5% of the original bet, but it's only paid if you win? That's a bit of an eye-raiser...especially if they're doing this on the Strip.

Do they really let you buy the 5 and 9 with vig on win? I think my first post on this forum was starting a thread asking if anyone knew a casino in Vegas that let you do that. Funny.

Buying 5/9? I have basically never seen anybody doing it. Even with a few hundred dollars on it.