Ante casino
On Sunday night, I took a date to the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma to do some gambling. Ive never really done much gambling there besides playing poker. We didnt have much fun at the slots, which seemed tight, so we decided to try the table games.
We started with roulette and went on to play blackjack. I knew in a vague way that the Winstar (like other Oklahoma casinos) charges an ante when you place a bet. But this was the first time Id spent much time at the tables paying that ante on every hand of blackjack and every spin of the roulette wheel.
Being a gambling writer whos especially interested in the math behind the games, I started thinking about how to quantify what this ante does to the house edge.
I had a math teacher in high school who insisted that I show my work.
Thats what I intend to do in this post. Calculate the house edge for the table games I played at the Winstar Casino, accounting for the antes.
Whats an Ante?
An ante is a forced bet, usually in poker, that drives action to the game. In the Native American casinos in Oklahoma, its an amount you put up in addition to your bet that the house keeps whether you win, lose, or push.
It would be more accurate to describe this so-called ante as a fee for playing a hand of blackjack or for betting on a spin of the roulette wheel. The casinos love to use euphemisms to make a bad deal seem slightly better, and using the word ante instead of fee is just an example of this.
This has the obvious effect of costing you the amount of the fee multiplied by the number of bets you make. Even if youre winning, the fees add up. They could easily be the difference between a winning session and a losing session.
How the Roulette Ante Affects the House Edge
The first weird thing about playing roulette at the Winstar Casino is that they dont have an actual roulette wheel. Theres an animated roulette wheel that drives the results. That wasnt THAT weird for me; Ive played at plenty of online casinos that did the same thing.
But the online casinos use a random number generator program to produce their roulette results. Thats a computer program that generates thousands of numbers per second. When you hit the spin or bet button at an online casino, the RNG stops on whatever number its thinking of at that millisecond.
The roulette games at the Winstar Casino dont work that way. They have a dealer with a deck of cards. The dealer scans the playing card into a machine, then the animated roulette wheel spins and lands on the space that corresponds to the card that was dealt.
I have no reason to think that the probability of the underlying game had changed. It was a standard American roulette wheel on the giant TV screen above the table. It had 38 possible results, 2 of which were green (the 0 and the 00). 18 of those results were black, while the other 18 were red, and so on.
The table limits werent unusual, either. $5 minimum on the outside bets, with a $ maximum bet.
But I had to pay a $1 fee (the so-called ante) every time they spun the wheel.
I didnt even realize that was the case until the dealer told me to put up the extra dollar.
How did that affect the house edge?
Lets start by assuming that were going to spin the wheel 38 times, and were going to get statistically perfect results. Well also assume that I bet on black every time.
This means that Ill win $5 on 18 spins, and Ill lose $5 on 20 spins.
On top of that, Im going to lose $1 on each of the 38 spins.
I have $90 in winnings, and $ in losses on the spins. Add $38 to my losses, and I wind up with a net loss of $48 over 38 spins.
Thats an average loss of about $ per spin.
Since Im basically putting $6 into action on every spin, an average loss of $ per spin equates to an average loss of 21% of my bet.
Thats a lot higher than a % loss per spin.
In fact, thats TERRIBLE.
Can You Do Anything to Lower the House Edge on the Roulette Games at the Winstar?
Heres the thing:
Im a low roller. (As you can imagine, gambling writers dont make that much money.)
But if you have a bigger bankroll than I do, you can lower the house edge by betting more each time they spin the wheel.
The fee for the roulette games (and the craps games, for that matter) at the Winstar Casino remains $1 regardless of whether youre betting $5 per spin or $ per spin.
What does that change the house edge to?
You do the math the same way, but the average losses as a percentage of the money youre putting into action drop as you raise the size of your bets, as follows:
- If youre betting $5 per spin, your average loss per spin is $
- If youre betting $ per spin, your average loss per spin is $
- If youre betting $ per spin, your average loss per spin is $
This means the house edge at each of these levels is:
- At $5, the house edge is 21%.
- At $, the house edge is %
- At $, the house edge is %.
Notice how at $ per spin, the house edge is almost normalnormal being %.
But your sole goal shouldnt be to get the house edge as low as possible. You should also consider your average cost of playing per hour.
The roulette games moved along at the Winstar at a good clipabout 50 spins per hour.
To calculate your average loss per hour, you multiply the number of bets per hour by the average size of your bet, and then you multiply that by the house edge.
For a $5 bettor, this means youre putting $6 into action 50 times per hour, for $ per hour in total action. With a house edge of 21%, you can expect to lose $63/hour.
For a $ bettor, youre putting $ into action 50 times per hour, for $ in total action. With a house edge of %, you can expect to lose $/hour.
For a $ bettor, youre putting $ into action 50 times per hour, for $25, in total action. With a house edge of %, you can expect to lose $/hour.
The big difference is between the $5 and $ markyoure betting 20 times as much per hand, but the difference in the house edge is so great that your expected losses only go up by a factor of 5.
Youll need to decide for yourself how much an hour of roulette is worth to you, but keep in mind, too, that these are long term averages anyway. Even if youre betting $5/hand, you could come out a winner in the short term.
In fact, even though a lot of gambling experts eschew the Martingale System, Michael Bluejay wrote an excellent page about how the system does increase your probability of having a small winning session in the short run. This will, of course, over time, be balanced out by some large losing sessions.
(The Martingale System worked well enough for me Sunday night that I broke even at the roulette tables.)
What about the Blackjack Ante?
Im going to look at the blackjack math a little differently, but I also should point out that the ante rules for the blackjack games are different. The fee changes based on how much youre betting, as follows:
- If youre betting $5 to $99 per hand, the ante is 50 cents.
- If youre betting $ to $ per hand, the ante is $1.
- If youre betting $ to $, the ante is $2.
- If youre betting $+, the ante is $3.
The first thing Im going to do when calculating the house edge for the blackjack (including the fee) is to look at the games edge based on the rules in place. This also assumes youre playing with perfect basic strategy.
As it turns out, the rules at the Winstar blackjack tables are excellent:
- They deal from 6 decks.
- The dealer stands on soft
- No doubling after splitting.
- No surrender.
- You can double on any 2 cards.
With these rules in place, if you use perfect basic strategy, the house edge is only %.
But thats not taking into account the 50 cent fee.
Heres how were going to get to that number:
Lets start with an expected hourly loss figure that doesnt account for the ante.
When I was there, we only had an average of 3 players at the tableme, my lady friend, and usually one other person. (That person kept changing, but we hung in there for quite a while.)
According to the Wizard of Odds, I can expect hands per hour at such a table. At $5 per hand, Im putting $ per hour into action.
Since Im playing according to perfect basic strategy, my expected loss per hour just on the blackjack action (without the fee) is % of that, or $/hour.
But Im also losing 50 cents per hand to the fee. With hands/hour, thats another $ in hourly losses. (I also get to add that to the hourly action.)
So with the fee, Im wagering $ and losing $ of that.
Thats an effective house edge of %.
I dont need to tell you that this has a terrible effect on what would otherwise be a great blackjack game.
What If You Increase Your Bet Sizes?
If you were paying attention during the roulette section, you probably already realize that if you raise the size of your bets, you can lower that house edge.
Lets say youre betting $99/hand instead. Now youre putting $99 X into action per hour, or $10, Your expected loss on that is $
Youre still paying $ in fees, though, so your expected loss goes up to $
On total action of $10, in action, thats a house edge of %.
Now thats more like it. If you have the bankroll to afford this kind of action, it makes a lot of sense to bet $99/hand instead.
But heres something interesting:
Watch what happens when you start betting $/hand instead of $99/hand:
Your fee doubles. Its now a dollar instead of 50 cents, which means that you now have $ in hourly fees.
Your expected hourly loss besides that doesnt change much. Youre putting $10, into action each hour instead of $10, Your expected loss on that is $ instead of $
Add those together, and your hourly loss is $ instead of $
So the house edge when youre betting $99 is only %, but when youre betting $, its %.
If you really want to drop the house edge, though, just raise the size of your bets to $
$ X = $,
% X $, = $
$ + $ = $
$/$, = %
If you have the bankroll to afford that kind of action, its worth doing. Youll find plenty of casinos in Las Vegas which dont offer a house edge that low.
You might even be able to get an edge at this kind of game with a card counting strategy, although I suspect most people dont have the bankroll for that. Also, I have a feelingand Ive read forum posts suggestingthat the security at the casinos in Oklahoma frown even more on blackjack advantage players than the casinos in Las Vegas do.
Conclusion
The fees (or so-called antes) for the roulette games and the blackjack games at the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma have a significant effect on the house edge.
In fact, if youre a low roller, the best thing you can do is to avoid the roulette game altogether. If you do play roulette, try to avoid betting the minimum. Bet as much as you can comfortably afford, and remember that the house always wins in the long run anyway.
With the blackjack games, be careful with the amount you bet. The house edge can change dramatically between $99 and $ per bet just because of the rising size of the fee.
Youll find other posts in forums complaining about the antes at the casinos in Oklahoma. Ill refrain from any histrionics here. You know what the deal is now, so if you want to play, thats your business.
It does remind me of the old joke about the guy who plays in this lousy poker game. One of his buddies asks him, if the games so bad, why do you keep playing?
Because its the only game in town, he replies.
18516 | 18517 | 18518 | 18519 | 18520 | 18521 | 18522 | 18523 | 18524 | 18525