Promo chips only work on Player (Bac) at Md Live Casino :(

I was one of like 100 winners in a free $500 raffle at Md live!
I had the option of taking it as slot play or table chips.

since e-Craps and e-baccarat no longer take free slot play, I opted for table chips.

promo chips can only be used on 1:1 odds bets.
that means blackjack, pass/don't pass (no odds) in craps, odd/even or red/black in roulette, or (I thought) banker/player in bac.

Its been so long that I don't remember basic strategy in bj so that's out.

I walked up to the 10x craps table and bought in for $1500. used the promo chips for $25 don't pass and real $ for max odds.
shooter hit 4 points in a row. bye bye $1500 and 100 promo chips :(

next plan was four $100 bets on Banker at bac.
put $100 in promo chips in banker. floor supervisor said promo chips can only be bet on Player.
WTF!?!?!
so Banker wins 4 times in a row, all a natural 8 or 9. FVCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I asked the Floor sup why can I only bet on Player. He said he didn't know. that was the house Rules.

Has anyone else here experienced that promo chips can only be bet on Player if playing Bac?
If so, what's the reason?


-$500 promo chips and -$1500 real cash in like 15min! double FVCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
wished I didn't win the raffle!! :(

(i'd probably cool down by tomorrow and be glad I won when I realize i was just the wrong side of variance.)

Quote: 100xOdds

promo chips can only be used on 1:1 odds bets.

Has anyone else here experienced that promo chips can only be bet on Player if playing Bac?
If so, what's the reason?

You just answered your own question. Banker pays 19:20 not 1:1.

Quote: 100xOdds

Has anyone else here experienced that promo chips can only be bet on Player if playing Bac?
If so, what's the reason?

Commission. You're already not giving them cash...they don't want to take the extra time to cut out 5% on wins.

It's probably worth pointing out that if the promo chip is "one use only", it's worth more when bet on player than on banker.

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

It's probably worth pointing out that if the promo chip is "one use only", it's worth more when bet on player than on banker.

yes, one use. if I win, it gets converted to a real chip.

why is it worth more as Player in this case?

The math is explained here by the great James grosjean: http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/beyondcouponsbjfo.pdf but the bottom line is that you want higher variance on those 1 time use coupons so a bet that pays more money less frequently is one way to achieve that.

Quote: 100xOdds

yes, one use. if I win, it gets converted to a real chip.

why is it worth more as Player in this case?

Ok, first of all, accepting one-use 1-1 promo chips over slot freeplay is a HORRIBLE deal. Even if you can't use the freeplay for VP, and the slots are all utter trash in terms of payout, it's still worth about 85% of it's value (85% return slots are pretty bad... you can almost certainly do much better). One-use only, 1-1 bet only promo chips are generally worth slightly less than 50% of their value.

Now, the reason that these chips are worth only 50% of their value is because when you win, they take the chip (unlike real cash). If you could use them on a high-odds bet, they would be worth a lot more. Eg, if you bet 38 of them simultaneously on roulette numbers (ie, covering all the numbers) you would get 35 chips worth of money back, giving them 35/38 of their value, which is a hell of a lot more than 1/2.

So, basically, for one-use-only chips, getting a higher payout on wins tends to be more important than house edge. Roulette is a complete suckers game in terms of house edge, but as you can see, betting on a single number outperforms even a no-house-edge 50-50 bet in this case (since 35/38 is WAY more than 1/2). In the case of baccarat, it works out that getting a 1:1 payout, rather than 19:20 is worth more than the lower house edge on banker.

James Grosjean writes about this. If you go to beyondcounting.com you can download some pdfs of his papers. He gives baccarat as an example (I am just trusting him -- I didn't bother to do the calculation myself. It is not a hard calculation though).

One more thing: if using them for baccarat, make sure that you don't lose the chip in case of a push.

axion

thx for the advice of taking the free slotplay. will do that next time.