House edge and game hold

I always wonder about this: a typical table game has a house edge of 1% - 4% and the casino hold is normally 15 - 30%. Why? If I play 1,000,000,000,000 hands of 3-Card-Poker, I would only lose the house edge, not the casino hold, right?

House edge is win / handle. Hold is win / drop. Drop != handle.

M.E. a lot of lingo I dont understand & really dont need to.... but in business terms which term would refer to the gross profit for the table? I think about this a lot at the craps table. If you have an equal number of Do's and Dont's with minimal field and prop play that cant be a great opportunity for the house vs. normal conditions where dont and lay action is only 10-20% of the crowd. I wonder if a group came to a $5 table and decided to only play pass or dont pass (w/odds) would the casino even break even after for that session?

Quote: Scotty71

I wonder if a group came to a $5 table and decided to only play pass or dont pass (w/odds) would the casino even break even after for that session?

If it was a night of PSO, it would. PSO= Point, Seven Out because most of that group would be on the Pass line. The added problem is that "and decided to" ... many people "decide" to play a very conservative game, just as they decide to wake up in their own bed, and decide to stick to a diet and decide to refrain from getting drunk. That mid twenties girl in the short blue dress who was on the sidewalk outside of Ceasars at 6:00am totally passed out this morning probably decided to play only the Pass Line and to not have any drinks last night.

Quote: MathExtremist

House edge is win / handle. Hold is win / drop. Drop != handle.

If I understand this correctly, this means...

I buy into a table with $100, and play $5 blackjack. I win some, I lose some. I play for an hour, 80 hands x $5/hand = $400 total wager, and I leave with $80. I lost $20.

The theoretical house edge is whatever it is for the game, say 0.6%

My "experienced" house edge (is there a better term for this?) is $20/$400 = 5%

The hold is $20/$100 = 20%.

Do I have this right?

Quote: RoyalBJ

I always wonder about this: a typical table game has a house edge of 1% - 4% and the casino hold is normally 15 - 30%. Why? If I play 1,000,000,000,000 hands of 3-Card-Poker, I would only lose the house edge, not the casino hold, right?

Hold is also time-dependent as well.

Imagine this; you sit down at a Blackjack table that has a 1% house edge. You cash in $500 and the casino records this as the 'drop'. You now play 4 hours of Blackjack at 100 hands/hour with a $25 wager.

Your expected loss per hand is 25c and this equates to 100x25c per hour = $25 so, after 4 hours you are 'expected' to lose $100. If this happens then the casino records the 'win' as $100. To calculate the hold % you divide 'casino win'/drop = 100/500 = 20%.

So, despite being a 1% house edge game, the hold %, in this example, is 20%.

Quote: FleaStiff

If it was a night of PSO, it would. PSO= Point, Seven Out because most of that group would be on the Pass line. The added problem is that "and decided to" ... many people "decide" to play a very conservative game, just as they decide to wake up in their own bed, and decide to stick to a diet and decide to refrain from getting drunk. That mid twenties girl in the short blue dress who was on the sidewalk outside of Ceasars at 6:00am totally passed out this morning probably decided to play only the Pass Line and to not have any drinks last night.

I should have phrased it better, lets say that there are 12 people at the table and 6 are always Do and 6 are always don't.... The casino better hope that Midnight is getting thrown a lot. If you had that kind of disbursement of players the casino is basically just facilitating the game and the players are just taking each others cash. One side would win of course but it wouldn't be the house.
I agree that good intentions and game plans fly out the window very fast, no argument there. The scenario I pointed out with be a f-ing snooze fest IMO. I just wonder if the casino would say f-it were closing this table down because we are running this table at a loss after salaries etc...

Right and Wrong bettors don't equal out.
Can you imagine explaining to neophytes about betting wrong.... and having them actually do it?

The main thing is that not everyone stays as a conservative basic strategy player, they may resolve to but they don't do it.

The Stick's patter is to get people to go large a bit and make hard way bets. It takes nerves of steel to stand there as a conservative bettor when there is whooping and hollering going on over those center bets.

Its the dice that have to be random in craps, not the bettors. They can have biases.

Quote: Scotty71

I should have phrased it better, lets say that there are 12 people at the table and 6 are always Do and 6 are always don't.... The casino better hope that Midnight is getting thrown a lot. If you had that kind of disbursement of players the casino is basically just facilitating the game and the players are just taking each others cash. One side would win of course but it wouldn't be the house.
I agree that good intentions and game plans fly out the window very fast, no argument there. The scenario I pointed out with be a f-ing snooze fest IMO. I just wonder if the casino would say f-it were closing this table down because we are running this table at a loss after salaries etc...

That wouldn't be meaningfully different from an EV standpoint than all 12 players just betting pass -- just the variance would be lower with the 6 and 6, and that's exactly what the house wants. If nobody's betting anything but pass or don't, you're easily looking at 108 rolls/hour (and realistically a lot more). That means, on average, 3 12s during that time and therefore 6 * 3 = 18 units won by the house per hour. At $5 that's $90. At $10 it's $180.

Take the $10 table, a limit which is about average for the strip. That wins $180/hour * 24 hours * 30 days = about $130,000/month with 6 and 6 playing doey-don't. The actual win on a dice table (on the LV Strip) is in the $121,000/month range. Point is, a full table with people making just the passline (or doey-don't) will perform just fine.

Quote: Scotty71

I should have phrased it better, lets say that there are 12 people at the table and 6 are always Do and 6 are always don't.... The casino better hope that Midnight is getting thrown a lot. If you had that kind of disbursement of players the casino is basically just facilitating the game and the players are just taking each others cash. One side would win of course but it wouldn't be the house.
I agree that good intentions and game plans fly out the window very fast, no argument there. The scenario I pointed out with be a f-ing snooze fest IMO. I just wonder if the casino would say f-it were closing this table down because we are running this table at a loss after salaries etc...

I think the house would be fine with your do/don't set up. Midnight comes up 1 out of 36 rolls or 2.78% of the time. They collect 1/2 of the bets from your 12 player crew which halves the % as compared to the total money bet. One half of 2.78% is 1.39% of all bets and on all the other rolls they are just passing money from 1/2 of the crew to the other.

Sure they hate the fact that they have a bunch of disciplined craps bettors at the table, but they are still making their HE. Bottom line is they don't care what side anyone bets.

Quote: Paradigm

Sure they hate the fact that they have a bunch of disciplined craps bettors at the table, but they are still making their HE. Bottom line is they don't care what side anyone bets.

I appreciate the math you and M.E. put out. I don't think the house cares too much either... as in the 6/6 scenario they are guaranteed a profit or at least no loss on the session. As a market person I love the fact that craps can be a game where you can go long and short so to speak and the house doesn't have to take all the heat on the action.

Two quick questions regarding LV craps tables.

1. Do a majority of LV tables on charge the comm on the buy and lay only on wins? Where I play in IL you pay when you put it up.
2. I understand in crapless craps there is no dont. Can you still buy and lay numbers?

Let's not forget that right bettors and wrong bettors will tend to find some of their chips sucked into the black hole at the center of the table.

Quote: Switch

Hold is also time-dependent as well.

Imagine this; you sit down at a Blackjack table that has a 1% house edge. You cash in $500 and the casino records this as the 'drop'. You now play 4 hours of Blackjack at 100 hands/hour with a $25 wager.

Your expected loss per hand is 25c and this equates to 100x25c per hour = $25 so, after 4 hours you are 'expected' to lose $100. If this happens then the casino records the 'win' as $100. To calculate the hold % you divide 'casino win'/drop = 100/500 = 20%.

So, despite being a 1% house edge game, the hold %, in this example, is 20%.

Switch, This way of calculation would be different from "House Hold = Win / Drop" Say for the $500 buy-in, I lost $300 in 4 hours on the table, So, Win/Drop = $300/$500 = 60%. Is the hold 20% or 60%? Which is right? Or there is no right or wrong, it just that every casino uses different definition...

All casinos use the same definition. In your scenario You dropped $500 (drop meaning bought in) and you lost $300 (left with $200), for a house win of $300 and a house hold of 60%.

If every player played perfectly and only played exactly $100 worth of bets and then left the casino, the house would hold whatever the house edge is on the game over the long haul. The fact that you play hundreds of dollars worth of wagers on your $100 buy in (your winnings get recycled as bets), is the reason the hold percentage is always much higher than the house edge on a game.

So if you are giving up a 2% house edge on every hundred wagered, you might go through $1,000 of wagers on your $100 buy in. This would be an expected hold of 20% (2% x $1,000 in wagers).

Bottom line... you can't win in the long run, even on a game that has a house edge of .5%. Play for the entertainment value.

Zcore13

If I buy in $1000 (drop) and lose $100, the hold is 10%. On the other hand, for the same session if I had bought in only $300 and with the loss of $100, then the hold would become 33%. Which number is used by the casino? I always buy in a lot (and not using them) to get good comp. So, I have been reducing the house holds all these times??? Sorry, gaming people.

Most Casinos dont comp based on buy in on Table Games. It's usually done by average bet and legnth of play. In your case, if I was in the Pit and you always bought in for way more than you were willing to risk, I would reduce your average bet to lower than it really was, just because you were trying to pull one over on me (in your mind) and I don't like that.

The difference in the hold percentage in both of your cases is miniscule compared to the millions dropped, so that makes no difference either way.

Sorry to hear you don't like that. I gamble to entertain myself, not to be liked in the Pit. => In my own casino, I want players to buy in more. Based on my years' of experience, when they buy more, they ALWAYS gamble more. I comp them more, leaving player to control their own temptations.

Your years of experience must make you much more knowledgeable than the thousands and thousands of years combined experience of all the Casinos that base comps on average bet and time played and not buy in, so that someone doesn't buy in for $5,000 and then play $5 per hand for a short time and get lots of comp value without risking any amount of money. Good luck at your Casino.

Thanks for the kind words. It has been working great.

The hold is usually quite high, consider a £5 table, people will tend to buy in for £100. If they lose, notes come out the back pocket and another £100 goes down the slot. So players on a losing streak will have given their entire stack.

Winners, I'm guessing, may always have been ahead and thus only needed their initial one buy-in.

On other tables where higher than even money can be paid out, I would hope that players walk following a good win (otherwise they're going to press until they do, or just gamble on). In that case a player might have had many buy-ins before getting lucky.


Of course what the casino want is (a) you buy-in and play until it's all gone (b) you don't mind losing the amount of your buy-in, feel you;ve had a good evening and are happy to come back again (c) occasionally you get lucky and actually win though not too often (d) you repeat same regularly, perhaps every week! If you can't play blackjack well, even better!

What they hate is the "don't" player who buys in and (a) is happy and walks away with a small win (b) occasionally loses their entire stack (c) plays perfect strategy and occupies a chair that could be better filled by a mug punter (d) feels quite bad after a loss and waits a month or so before coming back.