What if... 1% house edge would simply be a charge?

Generations of gamblers had been doing this wrong, but the help is on the way. In every casino game the house advantage is part of the rules, making the game mathematically unfair. It is left to the Lady Luck whether the player will trigger it or not (or more accuratelly - if he will trigger it more often then expected). Only Betfair Zero Roulette was a short-living experiment with fair odds. They had scrapped it after incurring 100.02% Actual RTP on selected markets. It hit me like a diamond bullet right through my forehead - why make the odds unfair in the first place? Why not give the FAIR ODDS (EXACT 100% RTP) and CHARGE BEFORE PLAY? That way it would be far more fair and accurate, IMHO. It would turn the house edge from a mean of cheating into a charge for playing. Right now it's unclear at best. The simplest (and accidentally economially viable) charge would be 1%. It would work like this: 1 cent from every dollar weagered on a 100% RTP game, like no zero roulette. Hence 1 cent goes to the casino's coffer and 99 cents is bet. The player can win 1.98 (on even money) or bust, but the "expected loss" would be turned into single sure loss before every spin. A charge for playing, simply. There would be less gambling in gambling. The only thing left to luck would be the spin itself. This is how it should be, I dare to say. It could also help addicts because they would no longer fool themselves that they don't pay for it. A history of charges could appear on the screen every 5 or 10 spins, for example. Please note that with 1% charge it would be better than 1.35% house edge in French Roulette. Actually that would be better than 1.01% on a single deck baccart.
The only similar approach that I am aware of is 10% commission on winnings used by Betvoyager.
What are your thoughts on that? Why we don't have it? Why do we pretend it's fine to play a skewed game instead of paying for playing a game with fair odds?

Indian casinos already kind of do this... they charge a flat rate per hand, but still have a house edge. So, you're getting doubly-screwed.

All you are doing is changing the odds. The house edge is still there.

In your example of no-zero roulette, let's say you bet 100 on Odd - which, in effect, is actually a bet of 99 plus a charge of 1 - then you make a profit of 98 (win 99 on the bet, lose 1 on the charge) half of the time, and a loss of 100 the other half, so the house edge on the bet is 2%. It is not a "fair game" as, for all intents and purposes, the "even money" bets only pay odds of 49-50.

A flat rate per hand sounds like a message "for rich people only". It's a tax on luxury companionship, nothing else.

> All you are doing is changing the odds. The house edge is still there.

Oh dear. Of course the advantage would not disapear. But it would be transparent, measurable and stable charge instead of unpredictable house edge which CAN be higher then expected. That's the just of it! You pay for a fair roulette instead of accepting skewed variant. I think it would be more fair and transparent with additional benefits. For example, the wheel would be divided into 36 slots, exactly 10 degrees each and 9 on every quarter. You would no longer be gambling with the push. It's converted into a small flat charge, the same for every spin.
Thanks for correcting my mistake through - of course 1 cent for every dollar is equivalent of 2% house edge. 1% equals to 1 cent on every 2$, but that's aside of the question. Of interest is that 1 cent on every dollar is still 0.7% better then the European Roulette.

Matt,

Your idea seems nice enough, so that way you could at least play a "fair" game. However, there are a lot of reasons this will NEVER happen.

1) It would educate the regular joe about the unfairness of the games. Not just the addicts you mentioned, but regular folk, including tons of baccarat heroes, think they can beat the games with money management or hit and runs, etc, not realizing the long run WILL ALWAYS catch up to them. If you do this, it will educate the degenerate and non-degenerate alike. The last thing casinos want is to educate their patrons.

2) You'd be taking away the ability for casinos to fleece people on edges MUCH LARGER than 1%. Take almost any center action bet in craps... 10-20% edges on those bets. Not to mention again combining this with #1... but yeah, why would the casino settle for 1% when they have plenty of ploppies willing to give them 10-20% edges? Not just craps, but look at all the other games with 5% edges, or side bets with 10-20% edges, etc. Slot machines are almost always 7-20% house edges. Would they make the slots fair and just take money out up front?

3) More and more people are very slowly wising up to casino games.... and the fact that the new generation is instantly in massive debt coming out of any schooling (typically the people who had good jobs and extra income to gamble) they are less likely to gamble the money they don't have, or the money they've learned the value of due to the massive debt in getting there. Thus, the casino industry in regards to gambling is shrinking. There's a ton of evidence of this... from the fact that most casinos in vegas are now trying to be more "entertainment resorts" with clubs, shows, fancy restaurants, etc. Back in "the day" it used to be more about gambling, but now it's more about the other entertainment factors. Next, look at the deterioration of the games. 6:5 blackjack is probably the most prevalent example of this. They took a game with ~.5% HE, and they've now made it 2%, quadrupling the house advantage. They're in no rush to come out with "better lower house edge" games.

As ever "educated" gambler figures out, the games are unfair... but that's what you're going to get with any casino. They're the ones building elaborate facilities, they're the ones offering the games, and they're also run by wall street companies that are in it for a profit (like all other businesses). Can't blame them for wanting to make a profit off their business, I personally just hate the 'deception' they put in it to people about their games. But none the less, they're a business that provides a service to make money... thus they'll never make a business decision to make less money, especially while customers are still lining up to play these horrible games/bets. Maybe in another 100 years when people stop going to casinos they'll be forced to offer better odds/games to attract people back in.... maybe.

Romes, thank you posting the first insightful post.
I totaly agree with you that reason 1 is the most obvious and powerful obstacle. As long as the average joe is not CHARGED he thinks that it's everything down to luck, even if he's actually being robbed like with keno. This way it's much easier to swallow losing a lot then being charged a single dollar. For some people being stupid is a bliss - their stupidity shields them from facing reality. On the other hand that's exactly why this disruptive idea is needed.
Your reason 2 is about two things - high house edge and "sucker bets". In principle my idea is not about lowering the house edge but making it clear, flat and apparent. It can work with 2 cents charge on every dollar, equivalent of 4% HE, 3 cents charge on every dollar, equivalent of 6% HE and so on. Looking from this angle it doesn't change anything because most online casinos have a RTP list. As to the sucker bets, you're right, but then this idea works best with games with a single HE, like European Roulette (100/37 %).
Your point 3 is both pessimistic and ambiguous. I see a growing trend to make online gambling more transparent, honest and competitive. Preying on gambler's fallacy and unawarness is so yesterday. Disruptive ideas are emerging. One of them is 0% house edge on skills-based games like blackjack and poker. Single charge on fair odds random games is just another. The best online casinos are those who understand this and at least try to offer something instead of robbing thier own customers. Sure, not every casino thinks this way, but let them die like dinosaurs. The future belongs to those who create it.

Quote: MattUK

...Your point 3 is both pessimistic and ambiguous. I see a growing trend to make online gambling more transparent, honest and competitive. Preying on gambler's fallacy and unawarness is so yesterday. Disruptive ideas are emerging. One of them is 0% house edge on skills-based games like blackjack and poker. Single charge on fair odds random games is just another. The best online casinos are those who understand this and at least try to offer something instead of robbing thier own customers. Sure, not every casino thinks this way, but let them die like dinosaurs. The future belongs to those who create it.

Agree to disagree. Online gambling still has to be competitive due to there being 1 million online sites to compete with, let alone brick and mortar. Online gambling is a whole other world. IF you find a site that doesn't have rigged games (yes there are plenty, but there are also plenty of rigged sites - even having been posted on these boards by the wizard prior). Then you have to pay processing fee's for depositing, cashing out, bank fees for foreign transactions, etc. Then, you have to actually win. Then you have to ACTUALLY get paid out, which MANY posts on these forums point out can be quite difficult, even if you just got dumb lucky and didn't do any promotional plays, etc.

Anyways, back to brick and mortar shops... There is no trend to make gaming ANY more transparent. The first step with that wouldn't even be to change the house edges, but to POST the house edges so people had any kind of idea what they're playing... such as EVERY GAME IN THE CASINO. You can go online and lookup table game odds and VP odds, but they still aren't even posted anywhere inside a casino... let alone slot machines which you can't even lookup most of the time and the other part of the time the manufacturer just tells you a "range" it could be set at, like 85-95%. Good luck figuring that one out. Next, blackjack is not a 0% HE game. RARELY can you find a game that has extremely low house edge (.12% perhaps), and usually it comes with a higher minimum, and online (see above about concerns). There might be a couple places in all of the US that have a house edge of .12%, and it's going to be in a high limit room, and it's countable so it could swing to a players edge which involves watching these games like a hawk and kicking anyone out for just USING THEIR BRAIN to play the game the best they can.

Even the "trial run" of 0% HE roulette you referred to got pulled, after returning "slightly" more than 100% to the players. Why bother when they could just do single zero roulette and people would already like that a lot more, and they get to keep a nice house edge? There's just no incentive for casinos, who truly thrive on their patrons being uneducated in their games, to make the games better or more transparent.

Next, and probably the biggest
They couldn't charge that small.... Think of it logistically at any real casino. Are the players expected to bring ROLES of pennies to sit and pay 4 cents per hand to play? Does the casino really want to deal with millions of dollars in pennies? Is it going to be collected every 10 hands so it's solid dollars? What if someone goes broke and leaves before then? It would HAVE to be collected hand by hand, which would also slow the games down, slowing down hands per hour, and again - costing the casino more money.

Lastly, the casino industry IS a slimy misleading industry overall. Every single casino I've ever been to has some advertising about "come in and win!" or "come beat us" or "1,000,000 in winnings!!" when if you play a hand of VP for $1.25, and PUSH, they count that as $1.25 in WINNINGS they've paid out (aka entirely misleading). The whole industry is to bring people in, keep them entertained while they unknowingly play ever increasing house edge games poorly (making the edge even higher). The average blackjack player doesn't play with a .5% house advantage on a .5% rule based HE game. They play with more like a 2-3% HE because of their poor uneducated play. If the casino made things more transparent or lower HE or taught the players, they'd be literally taking money out of their own pockets... Thus their incentivised to be deceptive and to keep their clients "unskilled" and "unaware" of their games.

Just to clarify - it would work only with online casinos and it's not about the percentage charged (equivalent of house edge). 1% would beat single deck baccarat, but I would prefer to play this variant over European Roulette even with the same odds. The idea itself is revolutionary. The current paradigm to play unfair games instead of paying for fair games is exactly the poison you are talking about. Instead of talking about "how little unfair" games are (therefore: how little dumb we are to play them) let's talk about the charge for the equal opportunity to win. Because that's how it works. People don't gamble to lose little but to win and they pay for that because no one gives that for free. This is what is mistakenly treated as a "house edge" instead of a "casino's commission". We live within the constrains of our language and that's why I'm sure this would spark a revolution.
If every online casino could set up its own commission on no-zero roulette just imagine what competition we would immediatelly have out of nowhere!!! And this is exactly what we DON'T HAVE now because the only difference is within the rules!

Quote: MattUK

Of course the advantage would not disapear. But it would be transparent, measurable and stable charge instead of unpredictable house edge which CAN be higher then expected.

Since you talked about roulette: I’ve always thought all wagers available for table games have a house advantage that is completely transparent, measurable, stable, predictable, and as expected. If that isn’t true, are there any examples where I’m wrong?