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I decided to sign up today and ask a question. I have been reading your board for some time, great info! Well, what I was wondering is how does someone figure out the possible percentage of win/loss ratio? Say someone takes $2,500.00 and plays a table game at the rate of $5.00 per hand. What are the other factors that would need to be defined to work the equation? Thanks in advance!

Quote: Vegaseddie

I decided to sign up today and ask a question. I have been reading your board for some time, great info! Well, what I was wondering is how does someone figure out the possible percentage of win/loss ratio? Say someone takes $2,500.00 and plays a table game at the rate of $5.00 per hand. What are the other factors that would need to be defined to work the equation? Thanks in advance!

Welcome... Your question is too vague for anyone to answer with any degree of accuracy. I have no idea what you mean by 'percentage of win/loss ratio'. If you try and rephrase the question, there are lots of members who will try and help you....

how many bets made. house edge per bet. you'd have to know what game it is and how the payouts work. number of trials.

welcome.

Let me rephrase a bit: Any table game. What do I need to know, H.A./Number of Hands Wagered, Payouts and so on. Once I compile all the info, how is it that I set up the formula?

#1 What are all the factors I need to know
#2 How do I set up the equation

thanks.

Hey Vegaseddie... and of course, welcome to the forums =p.

What you're referring to figuring out is called the Expected Value, or as I'm sure you've seen it across the forums then, EV. The EV of an event is the probability of the event times the net outcome.

Using your example above. Say I have $2500 (which isn't that important when figuring EV, it's important late for sustainability/RoR). Okay, so say I'm playing blackjack and flat betting $5 per hand, as you suggested. So what else do we need to know? Well we need to know the house edge! In a standard game of blackjack the house has an edge of ~.5%, pending different rules (could get as low as .0% and as high as 2%, damn 6:5 blackjack). So an average game is let's say .5%. Okay, so what else do we need? We need to know the number of trials. If you want to do the EV for 1 hand, then this is 1, but if you play for 3 hours, averaging 60 hands per hour, then this is 180.

So let's say you're playing a .5% house edge blackjack game, betting only $5 per hand, for 2 hours, and you play 100 hands per hour. From this we can conclude a few things:

1) The total amount you wagered was (NumHands)*(AverageBet). Since we only ever bet $5, our average bet is $5... Total Wagered = (200)(5) = $1,000. Now this does NOT mean you used $1,000 of your $2500. This just means in the course of 2 hours you've put $5 in the betting circle 200 times. Don't forget the game is only .5%, which means you'll push or win nearly half the time, so you might be re-betting the same $5 chip. This is how some people play on $100 for hours on end. They don't need $1,000 to put $1,000 worth of action through (total wagered).

2) Expected Value. Your expected value for any game will follow the format: (TotalWagered)*(HouseAdvantage), where TotalWagered can be derived from above. So we also know the house advantage (.5%). You can use one of the Wizard's game calculators to get the house edge for any game/rules. So what's the expected value of this situation? Simple: TotalWagered*HouseAdvantage = (1000)*(-.005) = -$5.

*Note: .5% is -.005 because the house advantage is our DISadvantage, and don't forget to move the decimal for the % lol (I've done it before =p).

So what does this mean? This means if you play blackjack for 2 hours ONLY ever betting $5 and you play 200 hands, if you were to do this over and over again till the day you died on AVERAGE you would lose $5 every 2 hours. This is how we can figure out hourly rates... This means you're losing $2.50/hour at this game. This is how the casino figures out how much to comp you, etc. They'll generally take 20% of your expected loss (which is your EV here) and comp it back to you. So for your 2 hours of play they'll comp you: Comp = EL*(.2) = (2.50)*(.2) = $0.50. So at this game you're expecting to lose $2.50/hour, but get $0.50 back in comps per hour.

Now I hope you can see how advantage players work... with math. They find a way to make the EV (possibly counting the comps) positive. Then they play for hours and hours and hours to earn their expected value per hour.

You can apply this math to any game. Say craps... You bet $5 on the pass line for 3 hours and get 200 rolls. Well, using the Wizards Odds site, or calculator, you can see the House Edge on the craps pass line bet is 1.41%. Let's apply the same formulas!

1) Total Wagered = (200 rolls)($5 average bet) = $1,000.
2) EV = TotalWagered*HouseAdvantage = ($1,000)*(-.0141) = -$14.10.

If you played for 3 hours to do this, then your hourly Expected Loss is -$14.10/3 = $4.70. Your comps would then be EL*(.2) = ($4.70)*(.2) = $0.94, meaning your final amount loss PER HOUR = 4.70 - .94 = $3.76. Again, that's LOSS per hour.

Thank you very much, I been asking others for months, solved in 10 min here. Thank you.

Quote: Vegaseddie

Thank you very much, I been asking others for months, solved in 10 min here. Thank you.

I'm glad you got the answers you were looking for. Feel free to ask any follow up questions. That's a crash course in EV, but we didn't even touch variance/standard deviations, etc =p... Which is why sometimes when you go and bet $5 on blackjack for 2 hours instead of losing $5 (which is your expected value) you may lose $100 or win $100. The point is in "the long run" the data will converge to an average of losing $5 per 2 hour session as described above.

Best of luck with whatever you're trying to figure out!

Take note that on blackjack, the house edge assumes perfect basic strategy play. Most people get basic stratey something like 85% right(ballpark), so I'd expect the average blackjack player to have a house edge much worse, maybe -4%.

adding to this, there is variance. So with the example above, you might sit down with $200 at your $5 blackjack table thinking that's plenty for 3 hours. Although your expected loss is $-14(or something like $-100 with player errors), you can expect to go broke fairly often with that much play, and you may win hundreds.

Quote: Romes

Say craps...

craps

Quote: Romes

You bet $5 on the pass line for 3 hours and get 200 rolls.

200 rolls in 3 hours is a freaking slow table, maybe too crowded, imo
oh, you mean bets.

wow!



200 pass line bets resolved in 3 hours is kicking some craps tables

Quote: Romes

1) Total Wagered = (200 rolls)($5 average bet) = $1,000.

oh, oh


i say 200 rolls = 60 resolved bets = Total Wagered = $300

can you try again and use the proper nomenclature (hehe... no men)
for your example (i know trying to confuse the majority)
it does help
for those reading this in the future

Sally