Shut the Box - Play online!

See previous thread for a bit of information: Shut the Box as a casino game?

Shut the Box
Place your bets, roll the dice, and go for the shutout!
Click here to play.

I'd love to hear honest opinions on this game. What are the pros and cons you see? Is it fun to play? Should mechanics be tweaked in any way?

Also, I am very aware the table layout is cluttered with text, explaining payouts and the like. This is by design, at least for the moment.

House Way
Players roll the dice, but the house shuts the numbers.

• The dice are totalled
• If a single number can be shut, it shall be
• If not, then the 2-number combination that contains the highest number will be shut
• No more than 2 numbers may be shut in one roll

Examples:
1 2 - - - - 8 9
Roll is 9
The 9 will be shut.

1 2 - - - - 8 9
Roll is 10
The 1 & 9 will be shut.

1 2 - - - - 8 9
Roll is 12
No numbers will be shut. 1+2+9 = 12, but maximum 2 number are shut per turn.
Game ends.

Wager Types

7-Up	Wins when 7, 8 or 9 numbers are shut. Pays 1:2, 1:1 and 3:1 respectively
Low-5	Wins when 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 numbers are shut. Pays 3:1
Singleton	Wins when 8 numbers are shut. Pays X:1, where X is the number remaining un-shut.
No 7 Streak	Wins when any non-7 is rolled. First non-7 roll qualifies bet, each non-7 after pays 1:5. If game ends on a non-7 roll, player wins additional 2:5 bonus.
Shutout Progressive	Wins when all 9 numbers are shut. Pays X:1, where X is the winning number thrown. Doubles pay double. Snake eyes pays 200-1, except $5 bet pays Progressive Jackpot. $0.15 of every losing $1.00 bet goes towards progressive.

First of all, nice design on the webpage. It's colorful and good animation. For teaching/selling purposes, you might want to consider the playable version to have a simpler layout; otherwise, good work there.

The game itself is all right. My only concern is not being able to use three numbers to shut the total. If the numbers are available, then it should be allowed. I know this probably adds to the HE, but as somebody who has played shut the box,that would be very frustrating to me.

While the idea of a progressive is nice to attract jackpot players, I wonder if a "Fire Bet" of sorts might be a better idea. For exampe, if you shut the box once, it pays 25-1, twice gets you 250-1, third time gets 1000-1. I just see a progressive on a dice type table as being very complicated, especially in the event that it hits.

How many dealers would you have working the table? Or would it be an electronic game? I would be hard-pressed to think a casino would want to devote three dealers and a box to the game. The way the layout is you could probably get away with 2 dealers and a box, but any less would slow the game and make it tedious for players.

I like the No-7 bet idea, but to pay that out on every roll, especially in $1 increments would also be tedious. Depending on how strict the house is, the dealer may have to cut the checks for the camera EVERY time, which only slows the play. Perhaps there could be a button that the box hits to keep track and pay out after 7 is rolled.

Overall, if the game makes its way to the floor, I'd give it a roll. I can't imagine committing too much of a bankroll to the game, and I'm not sure that you would pick up many of the players this would fit well for (people who want to learn craps but are too stupid to do so). I wish you the best... I like the concept.

I could see it as a game king type machine or online based gambling game, but not as a table game. One dealer per table could do it, but it's too different and too slow/unexciting, if I may say. I've played the game and written about it previously. The base game is public domain.

No a bad game, it is a easy game.
It is OK as a online game and may be add more bets to it too.

I was initially turned off by the fact that it's in Flash, but it occurred to me almost immediately that Flash is the industry standard format for online casinos, so that's actually a good thing. (I guess that I'm just personally used to the Wizard's Java games. Flash tends to provide a cleaner enduser experience, however.)

I would not be at all surprised to see an online casino offering this -- in fact, I think that someone said that Ladbrokes casinos already do. I have been surprised in the past by some of the games that I've seen offered at online casinos; Rock Paper Scissors (like in that Chevy Chase movie), Solitaire, maybe even Backgammon somewhere. Yet never Pai gow tiles. If anyone has any idea why nobody seems to let you play tiles online for money, I'd love to know. It's a normal casino game and has been for years, and Wizard's practice version demonstrates that online versions of the game are totally possible. Yet nobody seems to offer it for real money.

Anyhow, you've built a very cool game. I love to see older, traditional games getting revived, so this is definitely neat.

Thank you for the honest replies so far. This was a bit of a personal exercise in discovery; Seeing if I could take a known game, and translate it into a casino table game with generally acceptable HE.

If I were to include 3 or 4-number shuts in a roll, I'd have to redo the analysis of the game. I used a spreadsheet to track every possible game, with every roll in order. That is the way I was able to determine the HE of each bet, and to figure out how each bet could be paid. By adding a new rule (shutting 3 or 4 numbers is allowed), this would change the result of some games.

This also gave me a perspective on the difficulty of both creating and analyzing a game.

Questions asked in replies:

Would a "Fire Bet" work better, vs. a Progressive Jackpot?
Probably. I don't know how a jackpot could be paid to multiple people without splitting it up, nor how to add fractions of different sized bets to the progressive jackpot. Do all Progressive games have a slot to put your money into? Can you bet different amounts against the jackpot?
This is one aspect of the game I'd want to heavily re-work.
The odds of shutting all numbers is just over 1 in 20. Paying 20-1, then 400-1 would work well.

How many dealers would work the table?
I can see this as a one-dealer game. Most bets are resolved at the end of the game. The only one that resolves on every roll is the No-7 Streak. I would expect the chips to be cut every time on each result, and not stacked as they are in my example game. That was mostly for simplicity in display. How many dealers does Rock n Roll Dice take? Or Scossa? Or 3-Dice Football?

Wouldn't this work better as an electronic game?
Maybe so. This would allow players to shut their own numbers, and it wouldn't affect any other players. Of course, this would make certain bets easier/harder to win. If I played "terribly", I might win the Low-5 bet at 3-1 very often. By having a House Way of shutting numbers, this allows for easier analysis and odds setup.

Just from the short list of replies, it sounds like this would be a game of luke-warm response. "It sounds fun, I would play it, but I might not play it seriously." And that's fine! It goes to show that making a winner in the new games market isn't easy.

Quote: Dween

How many dealers does Rock n Roll Dice take? Or Scossa? Or 3-Dice Football?

When I played 3-D Football, there were three dealers, but it could be run with two.

Sic bo normally has only one dealer, in my experience, unless it's the rare double table with a layout on either side of the dice dome. I feel like an already-fast game gets too fast when they have one dealer pushing the buttons and another paying winnings and collecting losses.

Quote: heather

Sic bo normally has only one dealer, in my experience, unless it's the rare double table with a layout on either side of the dice dome. I feel like an already-fast game gets too fast when they have one dealer pushing the buttons and another paying winnings and collecting losses.

There are some big differences between Sic Bo and this proposed game. 1) The dealer is the one rolling the dice, not the player. There are no rolls over the table or passing the dice. 2) The payouts are lit up on a Sic Bo table, where this game the dealer has to know where to pay and when and how much. 3) All bets are "1-roll" where this game has payouts that occur on every roll, and ones decided by the endgame. 4) This game encourages a lot of people playing at once. The same COULD be said for Sic Bo, although I have rarely seen a Sic Bo table have more than 4-5 players at once.

As a live game, something would have to be done to prevent past posting on the "qualified" bets.

I don't think it would do well live, since so many turns are ended after a bad roll with two or three numbers left, and many "wins" are actually "smaller losses". Perhaps adding more one roll "action" bets (e.g., hopping hardways, field), or even place bet options, would keep folks more engaged.

The bottom line is the box is very hard to shut. This will limit its sucess.

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Quote: Dween

I don't know how a jackpot could be paid to multiple people without splitting it up, nor how to add fractions of different sized bets to the progressive jackpot. Do all Progressive games have a slot to put your money into? Can you bet different amounts against the jackpot?

Usually $1 in a slot, especially if it's programmed like the Money$uit 31 Progressive.

Quote: Dween

I can see this as a one-dealer game. Most bets are resolved at the end of the game. How many dealers does Rock n Roll Dice take? Or Scossa? Or 3-Dice Football?

Rock-n-Roll Dice is played on a BJ-size table, with a jar-like dice shaker and is fully suped by a single dealer. Scossa and Three-Dice Football are played on tubs suped by at most two dealers. I agree with you that this game could be fully suped by one (two if busy) at a tub.

Quote: Dween

Wouldn't this work better as an electronic game?
Maybe so. This would allow players to shut their own numbers, and it wouldn't affect any other players. Of course, this would make certain bets easier/harder to win. If I played "terribly", I might win the Low-5 bet at 3-to-1 very often. By having a House Way of shutting numbers, this allows for easier analysis and odds setup.

Also, having too many shutting options would most likely reduce the payout on the main bet to lay odds (by increasing the prob of a win), which might reintroduce some of the difficulties foreseeable in banking your No-7 Streak wager.

Quote: Dween

Just from the short list of replies, it sounds like this would be a game of luke-warm response. "It sounds fun, I would play it, but I might not play it seriously." And that's fine! It goes to show that making a winner in the new games market isn't easy.

I feel the same way about my Wholly Crap! and Tic-Tac-TWO: XrOssed Up!, but your Shut-The-Box has the same thing going for it as Casino Backgammon does - it's a familiar classic board game adapted to a gambler's taste for risk. It's too early to be pessy about what the casino dem traffic will be. There was a first time for Craps, and one can make bets on anything - if he has the numbers on it. And Shut-The-Box bears a definite resemblance to Craps - multi-roll line with Doey-Don't versatility of play. Maybe some one-roll dice-sum bets, perhaps as hedges against "bad roll" numbers, or maybe even a visit from the Field bet?

Found this and played. nice job. But I prefer a more straight game, like the 7-8-9 bet, total or pips only ( 3-4 as 7 shuts either the 3&4 or the 7, else end). I was only looking at the ODDS site looking for strat./tips, and didn't know it abounds here. Our local variant is rather easy, allowing the pairs to close any combination possible, otherwise strict pips or total. When the 7-8-9 are shut, the player must use 1 die. We even figured out a mulligan when going from two to 1 die. I've been testing the rule set. About 300 games in, and it looks like 7 or better is a winner with 9-out being 9 in the small saample of 300.