Are Table-Minimum Increases a Casino-Countermeasure or an Advantage-Play Opportunity?
Let me paint a scenario for you:
~You and a couple of fellow dice-influencers have been playing at the same $5 table for a few hours or so.
~Though you haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire; each of you have been able to pepper the session with enough good hands to put all of the players, including the mostly random-roller balance of the table’s population, into a decent profit position.
~The table is full and there are a couple of wanna-be players hovering around waiting for an opening.
~The head pit-dweller walks up to the table with two table-limit placards. As he hands them to the boxman, he announces, “Next shooter $25 minimum…no grand-fathering of the $5 limit…the price of fun just went up for everyone”.
So, is that a casino counter-measure or is it an advantage-play opportunity for the dice-influencers who are already at that table…or is it both…or perhaps even, neither?
Let me paint another scenario for you:
~You walk into a crowded craps pit. The single $5 table is jammed fuller than Pamela Anderson’s bra, and the $10 and $15 tables are jammed fuller than the bank accounts of the plastic surgeons who helped fill Pamela Anderson’s bra. There is a lone $50 table that is standing idle with a crew that looks as bored a convention of Maytag repairmen.
~Your pre-casino practice session showed an inordinate number of on-axis, primary-faced hits, and you’ve got a buy-in (as well as a long-term validated advantage) that clearly justifies playing at the $50 min-bet level….but you’ve never played at this level before and your confidence-level is not quite as reassuring as your verified edge over the house should have you feeling.
The question is… should you play, and if so, will you?
The oft-noted and distracting red-herring corollary question to all of those thoughts are:
Is the higher-limit table a sinister and greedy casino counter-measure, or is it simply a matter of making sure there is enough room at the inn for better-heeled players.
As dice-influencing advantage-players, we shouldn't really even CARE about the answer to that question. Instead, the real question we need to answer is:
Is it an advantage-play opportunity for dice-influencers who are already there, and does it provide a better prospect for skilled shooters to make more money than they could at a randomly-crowded $5, $10, and $15 tables?
Now before you start thinking negatively like, “Yeah, but higher-minimums also mean that I could lose more too”; let’s look at what "advantage-play opportunity" really means.
~In a nutshell, when you play with a known advantage; then every dollar that is wagered on that advantage has an edge over the casino. Though it doesn’t guarantee a win every time you pick up the dice; a validated in-casino edge does mean that your shooting will prevail more times than it fails…and as such, you should bet as much as you can comfortably afford when the dice are in your advantaged hands…and bet as little, if nothing at all, when the dice are in the disadvantaged hands of a neg-ex random-roller.
~When you have an advantage, it is in your best interest to bet in line with what your true advantage is, as well as betting in line with as much as your total gaming bankroll can reasonably afford.
~When you throw a reasonable number of hands that have a positive-expectation over the house; then you can expect to win more on your properly assigned bets than you will lose…and that’s how savvy advantage-play dice-influencers make money.
~Sure, you can make it more complicated if you want to; but in the end it all boils down to betting more when you have an edge, and betting less or nothing at all when you don’t.
A higher-minimum table tends to drive the random-rollers away, and it opens up all kinds of increased shooting opportunities for you.
The question of course then becomes:
Will you put your money where your true advantage is, or do you still want to play the role of the degenerate gambler and continue betting on everyone…while continuing to turn in mostly losing sessions despite your own validated edge over the house?
It’s a good question to ask…but it’s the answer that most talented players tend to avoid like the plague
But let’s get back to the main question:
Are Table-Minimum Increases a Casino-Countermeasure or an Advantage-Play Opportunity?
Well let’s look at the situation with clear eyes and a sober mind.
~A table-limit increase tends to clear players from the table. Many people take it personally when pit-management raises the sperm-count, and even though they could afford to stay; they take a “Stick it up yer arse” attitude by leaving.
That’s fine by me, and it should be fine by you.
Less random-rollers means LESS neg-ex exposure for your disadvantaged bets, and MORE of a winning prospect for your advantaged ones.
~A table-limit increase also affords more frequent shooting opportunities for those players who are left behind. For a small group of similarly-skilled dice-influencers, that feature alone is worth anywhere from double to quintuple the profit-opportunity than a table filled with mostly random-rollers is.
~By having less random-rollers to contend with, combined with the increased prospect of one or more skilled shooters catching a good to great hand; it is surprising that the idea of intentionally seeking out and playing at a higher-minimum $15, $25, $50, and $100 table isn’t done more often by more skilled players.
~When you add up all of the money that you expose to disadvantaged negative-expectation random-rollers in just one trip around the table; you soon come to realize that that same money could be better spent if it was deployed on your own positive-expectation advantaged wagers.
~If that means moving your D-I act to a higher-minimum table; then so be it. It means you’ll be exposing LESS dollars to random-rollers and MORE dollars to advantaged wagering.
What could be smarter than that?
~While doing so doesn’t guarantee a profit; it at least gives your money a fighting positive-expectation chance of being able to do so.
~Instead of seeing your money slowly chiseled away by the neg-ex house-edge; the advantage-play dice-influencer turns that equation upside down…thereby empowering himself to slowly chisel away at the casino's chip-bank with his own pos-ex wagers.
~When the casino raises the bet-minimum and random-rollers start to emigrate from the table; I see that as a prime opportunity to increase the frequency and probability of turning some of the casinos money into MY money.
No hindering countermeasure here…just plain old opportunity knocking at your advantage-play door.
Good Luck and Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
The Mad Professor
Copyright © 2007