What Are Casino Carnival Games

Quote: fremont4ever

Faro used to be popular back when the world was in black and white.

Faro flourished for two centuries and faded away in large part due to its universal crookedness near the end. By 20th century the game was always rigged, you had to be a shill to leave a winner. Even then it took the game half a century to die.

Blackjack, Craps and Baccarat all date back at least half a millennium as highly popular games, with only minor and gradual changes along the way. Roulette is actually a relative newcomer due to relatively high-tech machinery involved, by 1700s standards.

So, of course mainstay games do change. Rigging Faro did eventually kill it, while technological advancement has led to the creation of Roulette. But they change at a much slower pace, over multiple generations.

Quote: Paigowdan

CSP and LIR were almost mainstays, too - essentially "Super" Carnival games that faded around 2000 as PGP and 3CP just kept increasing.

That's a very good way to put it.

Quote: Paigowdan

People just turned on that game [DW], along with CSP and LIR for PGP, 3CP, and the newer 4-card poker games and UTH.

Which illustrates the point I'm making in this post very well. Players got tired or bored with the game, went away, and moved to other games. Completely different in terms of gameplay, and all sharing a common theme playing on the popularity of poker proper.

In contrast, mainstay games (from players' perspective, not casinos') are not mutually replaceable. If you remove Blackjack, its players won't flock to the craps table, they will follow their game across state lines if need be; if you ban Roulette, they'll make a wheel with cards laid out on it; and Baccarat aficionados didn't even take its EZ version.
The only way traditional games were displaced is across generations - the older game's audience eventually dying out.

If we still see 3CP, PGP or UTH popular in 25 years, played by our children, with developed subcultures, superstitions, shelves filled with books on beating them and fiercely committed audiences, then they will have what it takes to actually become new mainstay games. If not, they will stay in history as superior carnival games that were well ahead of the field; but their field.

Quote: P90

If we still see 3CP, PGP or UTH popular in 25 years, played by our children, with developed subcultures, superstitions, shelves filled with books on beating them and fiercely committed audiences, then they will have what it takes to actually become new mainstay games. If not, they will stay in history as superior carnival games that were well ahead of the field; but their field.

I think 3CP, PGP, and UTH all have the staying power to make a long-term run. CSP is almost dead, but not quite, and LIR has been replaced by the white-hot Mississippi Stud, for now.

Pai Gow Poker is near mainstream, but given a low number of installs in some key areas (mainly upstate NY, IN and IL) I wonder if it can attain 3CP status. I'd say the same about Ultimate, but it still has a long way to go, plus it has true "competition" from Texas Hold Em Bonus (Not really competition, as it's the same company, but you get the idea).

One thing all these games have in common is that their existence is contingent on the popularity of actual poker. So far it shows no signs of fading, and the level of play, especially online, has gone up an order of magnitude in the last few years.

But should something cause a major fall of poker, be it legislative, religious or just replacement by something else, 3CP, PGP and UTH are goners. UTH/THB are especially vulnerable, since they make such a big deal out of playing the theme. They are still derivative games, not independent ways to gamble. PGP, being a switching game using poker rankings, is likely to be displaced by a switching game using whatever becomes more popular. If China takes over the world (not necessarily in the literal sense)... maybe even by Pai Gow.

Quote: Tiltpoul

I think 3CP, PGP, and UTH all have the staying power to make a long-term run. CSP is almost dead, but not quite, and LIR has been replaced by the white-hot Mississippi Stud, for now.

Pai Gow Poker is near mainstream, but given a low number of installs in some key areas (mainly upstate NY, IN and IL) I wonder if it can attain 3CP status. I'd say the same about Ultimate, but it still has a long way to go, plus it has true "competition" from Texas Hold Em Bonus (Not really competition, as it's the same company, but you get the idea).

PGP has 2,000 U.S. tables, and 3CP has 1,500 world-wide. But it's that PGP is "clumped" in certain areas (West Coast, East Coast) while 3CP is uniform: Many casinos have one 3CP table, but almost all serious houses have it. With PGP, some casinos have 4 or more tables, while many have none. It is interesting to note that in some areas (like LV), a 15-table house averages two PGP tables: Cannery Group's 50 or so tables has nine PGP, all EZ Pai Gow; In Missouri, an 80 table casino may have two or three, and a 15-table casino, none.

To P90, I don't know if a culture is needed to support a particular game: Most BJ, Craps, and Roulette players "simply" play. You can be a devotee without being an aficionado, though it helps. I have an extensive gambling library, and play only craps and PGP, (and Baccarat and 3CP when I don't want to think), but do a lot of BJ and Bac projects as gaming work. The list of the major games change over time.
Modern Craps was really developed and codified by one man, John H. Winn, a gaming exec and gaming supply/dicemaker when gambling was nominally illegal. He came up with the modern layout of pass/don't pass, DC, Field bet, lay bets, developed and fleshed out the place and come bets, etc. It's his game design (circa 1910) that was the basis for modern craps. Patents then where limited to agricultural and factory processes.

Again, we need to do a "stats and charts" project on this: what games where hot or not over time, what did the table games pit look like over time? P90, Dave, Stacy, Paco - Interested??

Quote: Paigowdan

With PGP, some casinos have 4 or more tables, while many have none.

I wonder if those that have none, are reluctant to put it in because they don't want to screw around with those damn quarters. (hint, hint, nudge, nudge.)

Quote: Paigowdan

Again, we need to do a "stats and charts" project on this: what games where hot or not over time, what did the table games pit look like over time? P90, Dave, Stacy, Paco - Interested??

I assume you mean me.

Sure, I'm interested, although I have no data I can add to the project. I wouldn't mind taking whatever data is available and attempting to make a cool / fancy chart out of it...

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Faro died off because it was impossible to find a fair game. As I understand it, that was because it had an extremely low house edge, and cheating was the only way for the house to make money.

If it were modified to have a more reasonable edge and no cheating, and were introduced today, it would be considered a carnival game.

It would make a good historical project, so I'd look up David Schwartz at UNLV for this. He may already have meaningful information. For proprietary games, Shuffle Master is publicly-traded and their sales data should be in annual reports. I remember reading about LIR installs by market during its heyday.

Quote: Paigowdan

PGP has 2,000 U.S. tables, and 3CP has 1,500 world-wide. But it's that PGP is "clumped" in certain areas (West Coast, East Coast) while 3CP is uniform: Many casinos have one 3CP table, but almost all serious houses have it. With PGP, some casinos have 4 or more tables, while many have none. It is interesting to note that in some areas (like LV), a 15-table house averages two PGP tables: Cannery Group's 50 or so tables has nine PGP, all EZ Pai Gow; In Missouri, an 80 table casino may have two or three, and a 15-table casino, none.

I find that to be true... Iowa is usually PGP friendly, on both sides of the state especially. Missouri has picked up on the game, especially in the Kansas City market. The Indiana casinos in Chicago have a high Asian population, thus it's got a following there. However, Tunica has few tables outside Horseshoe and Harrah's. Southern Indiana has few installs (Hollywood-1, Belterra-1, Horseshoe-2 and Rising Star-0) despite relatively large casinos. And the game is nearly nonexistant in IL, with the few casinos offering it. WV has a few installs, but the tables there are thin too.

PA and Atlantic City has a lot of tables.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Faro died off because it was impossible to find a fair game. As I understand it, that was because it had an extremely low house edge, and cheating was the only way for the house to make money.

It's not that low actually. House wins each time there is a pair. The probability of that is variable: it's 3/(n<=50) from the first round, then 2/(n<=48) after one card you're betting on is out, then 1/(n<=46), and finally 0. A full math analysis should be relatively simple, but still somewhat time-consuming.

I'm not sure if I'm off with this calculation, but, playing through the deck, the house should on the average make pairs 3/51*23=1.35 times, winning 1.35 of a bet on an even, maintained 26-bet field. That is if all bets are placed from the start. It's topped off with a 17% HA turn bet. For a realistic scenario, Wizard's calculations suggest 2% HA per bet resolved.

That is a larger HA than Hazard/Craps (I still consider it fundamentally the same game, craps just adds a ton of side bets) and more than classic SD Blackjack even with simple strategy. There is no potential for straight-up advantage play, although one can make some bets with 0 edge late in the game. But "comps milking" could be prevented, not to mention there weren't any comps back in the day.

The edge is only low if you count it per deal, but that's like counting it in hazard/craps per dice roll rather than per bet. Faro is a very fast game too.
So the more likely reason for rigging Faro is that it's just so easy to rig. You don't need loaded dice, stripped shoes, biased wheels, all you need is to do is place cards such as to create more pairs than usual and do an imperfect shuffle. No cost and minimal skill.

BTW, while at that: http://www.gleeson.us/faro/game

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Carnival games are games that have a high house edge.