Ask the Wizard

Quote: Wizard

This site has been a good source for "Ask the Wizard" questions. However, I'm currently running low on good questions. So, I welcome you to try to challenge me with some good ones. Please, nothing about betting systems. Also, nothing that is already on my site, like "what is the effect of the dealer standing on soft 17?" Make them interesting, not just for yourself, but for everybody.

I thought I had made a good bet, but my brother is making fun of me.

My friend was running in the Chicago Marathon. Without knowing his runner number, he gave me 10:1 odds that his runner number would be prime. Did I make a good bet or a bad bet? What should fair odds have been?

I ended up losing $1 on the bet...

I have always thought it would be an interesting to experiment to program a game with risk dial. At one extreme you would always get paybacks between 75% and 125% of your original bet (in pennies) in such a way that there is no house edge. The presumption is that players would not play long at that setting because of boredom. At the other end the machine would have an EV where it would keep 50% of the money played, but there would be the potential for 1 million to 1 jackpots (like a lottery).

The player would have the option of where to set the risk meter and the option to change it periodically. The player would also answer some personality questions. The question is where would most people end up and what personality traits drive you one way or the other.

The problem is that such a test machine would not have any true driving forces unless you were playing for real money.

Yup. The Chicago Marathon has a max of 45,000 runners. There are 4685 prime numbers less than 45000, so he had a 14.5% edge over you. True odds are about 8.6:1.

And it gets worse if the Chicago Marathon is seeded and he's a good runner because good runners get lower numbers. In the first half of the pool, there are 2525 primes in the first 22500. If he knew he was seeded in the first half, he'd have a 23.4% edge over you.

Quote: appistappis

wiz, have you ever come up with how the house edge in tiles can be lowered if you know where the four teens and days are???????????

No. With that, please stop asking new questions in this thread. Make a new thread for them.

My question:

Here in South America we have the Oasis Poker issued by the Wiz at his site. One variation is that here we are allowed to talk to other players during the game, even by asking if they have a 'X' card. My question is: in a full table, if I'm dealt 3 of a kind and no one in the table has my card, which is the house edge in buying for quads?

Quote: aluisio

My question...

Please see my post above yours.

Quote: Wizard

Please see my post above yours.

I know you are the boss, but no ofense: I have already started a thread with this question without any answer. (Not that I assume that you must answer it, ok?)

I post a question about PokerJack

Gold Coast has single deck $5 "Fun" 21 game at two tables with rules I can't remember completely but include: even money blackjack, diamond suited blackjack pays 2 to 1, player cards dealt face up, double or surrender on any number of cards (can't remember if early surrender allowed), five card 21 automatic winner, six card unbusted hand automatic winner, unlimited number of splits, unrestricted play on split aces. I see from the site that even money blackjack is -2.27% but I was surprised how often I was taking advantage of such things as surrendering a stiff double-downed hand v. a 10 or doubling on three card hands. Is there any chance this is a positive expectation game or even a good game?

Please stop posting questions here. Instead, please copy and paste the above into a separate thread.