Advantage play help.

A certain casino I attend is offering me the following deal. Come play tables. Any trip that you lose 2 k. We will give you 300 in match play. What is the best way to optimize this versus wins and is it even worth it

What are the table limits? How often can you play? Assuming that each "trip" is 1 day, I'd play bacc for one $2k decision per day for as long as the promotion runs.

Your possible outcomes are:
win $2k (50%)
Lose $2300 (25%)
Lose $1400 (25%)

So you should expect to make about $75/day. I'm not sure whether that's worth it to you or not.

Quote: rdw4potus

What are the table limits? How often can you play? Assuming that each "trip" is 1 day, I'd play bacc for one $2k decision per day for as long as the promotion runs.

Your possible outcomes are:
win $2k (50%)
Lose $2300 (25%)
Lose $1400 (25%)

So you should expect to make about $75/day. I'm not sure whether that's worth it to you or not.

Except, Baccarat is not a fair coin flip. The house edge is over 1%. Assuming 8 decks, and you make the banker bet (and leave the bet out there in case of a tie), the result of your first bet is:

win $1900 (50.68%)
lose $2000 (49.32%)

When you lose, you will get a $300 match play, which you will play immediately. You should bet on player this time, leading to:

win $600 (49.32%)
lose $300 (50.68%)

So the total over the two bets is:

win $1900 (50.68%)
lose $1400 (24.32%)
lose $2300 (25.00%)

And so your total edge is $47.44, which is 2.06% (you are risking $2300)

Furthermore, the variance is about 0.816 units, so, according to the Kelly criterion, you need a bankroll of about $91,153 to take advantage of this bet. Furthermore, you can't resize your bet downwards if you lose, so you probably want a bigger bankroll (assuming you want to go back tomorrow and try again if you lose again). So, call it $100,000.

Presumably, for someone with a six-figure bankroll, an edge of less than $50 a day isn't worth the effort of a seperate trip.

Having said that, if you are at the casino anyway for other AP opportunities, it's an incredible bonus. Just stop playing for the day whenever you hit $2000 down. If you are going to play somewhere anyway, it would be worth choosing this place over somewhere else, if the games are similar.

Note: This assumes that the casino leaves the match play out in case of a push. If they don't (ie, if they take the coupon away from you when it's a tie) it lowers your edge by a little over $7, so you are down to about a $40 edge.

Why not play two hands of blackjack at $1,000/hand? Assuming they have a decent BJ game, you could lose the $2,000 quickly and then play the match play, increasing your profit and also decreasing the necessary bankroll.

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

Except, Baccarat is not a fair coin flip. The house edge is over 1%.

In this scenario, variance is much more important than house edge.

The higher the probability of busting your 2k bankroll (at constant house edge), the more cashback you earn in the long run. So play high variance games with a reasonable house edge (maybe <3%) or low house edge games with a very high betsize.

My point was just that $75 was a huge overstatement of the edge.

You need to be careful, though. In your high variance game with "reasonable" house edge, you probably don't have an edge. You certainly can't overcome a 3% house edge. The $300 match play is worth a max of $150 (assuming it has an "even money bets only" restriction, as most do) so it's only 7.5% of your losses, and it's only when you lose. If you bet through much more than $2k on average to get there, the match play won't overcome your -EV.

Low house edge with high bet size is probably the way to go, which is what the baccarat idea was. As I showed, you do have an edge there, but it's a lot less than 1/4 of the match play amount (which would be your edge if it was a fair coin flip game)

Overall, this deal is not as good as it sounds :)

Obviously the best way to take advantage is a Single $2.000 bet in a low edge game. Even if the table limit is $2.000, I do not think the casino will be very happy to give you the match play on a continous basis (many trips). You might get it the first time and then no more additional offers as they will realise that you take advantage of it. In any event the offer as other people have said is not that good. At maximum $150 per trip.
You said per Trip. What does than mean. If you play today and then in 2 days time will that be a second trip?

Such offers are only usefull as and added bonus in addition to a normal advantage you get.
Say you will play BJ for 10 hours (5 sessions) with counting (or other AP play) at EV of $100 per hour of $1.000 and expect another Ev of $150 from this offer for a Total Trip EV of $1.150.

A single $2000 bet will technically have a positive edge, but it likely won't be repeatable, or repeatable more than once or twice, so the edge won't really matter. The only reason I could see to "take advantage" of this would be if one gets off on the thought of having an edge, with no practical way to make use of it. Moreover, each $2000 bet will have an edge - for baccarat - of $47.56, with a σ of about $1900. Even if they'd let you get away with going every day, that's, what, thirty bets? If you're going to take advantage of a +EV opportunity, at least make it one that you can actually benefit from!