Question for the Wizard

I play poker on Bovada, but seeing how a bonus of 200 dollars for purchasing 200 chips in the casino was offered, I took the offer. I didn't realize there was an 80 times rollover requirement. What is the best way I can bet, I have 400 dollars, to meet the rollover requirement with some money left?

I'm not the wizard, but here's my advice...

First, is the requirement 80x $200 or 80x $400?

If it's 80x $200, that means you need to make $16k in total bets. If you find something with a 1% or lower house edge, your expected loss will be $160 (or lower) so it's still +EV for you, although, just barely. You really want something with a MUCH lower than 1% house edge, otherwise you are spending a lot of time grinding for $40 in EV.

I would check:

1. Blackjack. A good game might have a house edge in the range of 0.2%. Find out the rules for the blackjack games that they have, and check the WoO site for the edge with those rules. Get the basic strategy for those rules from WoO as well, and follow it.

2. Craps. Do they count odds as money bet? If so, min passline bet with max odds can give a low edge (just how low depends on the odds multiplier. Your expected loss will be 1.41% of your pass line bet. Odds are a fair bet, with no house edge, so high enough odds can dilute that 1.41% to something reasonable. The nice thing about this is that you can't really make a mistake, like you can with blackjack.

3. Video Poker. Find out what the payout is for the paytables they have. The house edge is just (100% - the payout). This also requires playing with proper strategy -- WoO has some strategy tables. This is even harder than blackjack, though, if you are not used to video poker and you don't know the strategies (looking up every single decision is slow and mistake-prone)

If this doesn't sound appealing, just transfer the money back to your poker account and give up the bonus. If you don't actually enjoy playing the games, and your time has any value at all, this is probably your best option.

how do you have the odds working on the interblock craps machine?

Isn't Bovada's poker bonus essentially rakeback that you only receive for 2 months?

If that's the case - and you are a winning, or break-even, poker player, I'd suggest... well, poker.

Otherwise, and I'm not sure, but I'd assume BJ has a relatively low edge. I would go with BJ, because that's what I know very well (unless the edge was too high)


EDIT: Oh I'm thinking of their bonus on their poker website. BTW - I'm a little lost on how that works exactly, so if you know, can you tell me? Is there rakeback after the initial bonus? And how is Bovada's poker at the microstakes level?

Check the terms and conditions and make sure the game you want to play is not excluded from bonus wagering requirements.