Is MGM Detroit's GOLDEN DICE Bet a Golden Opportunity?
As I promised over on the DiceInstitute M-board yesterday; here is my initial report on playing MGM Detroit's Golden Dice prop.
When I hear about a new craps wager (like the 4-Rolls-No-7, or the Fire-bet, or the Small, Tall & All, etc.), I first look at how the bet is structured by its creator in order to determine how it is randomly set up to win for the house...and how it can best be won by me using de-randomized outcomes.
I'll even war-game it on my at-home table to look at potential angles-of-attack in terms of possible dice-permutations, different trigger-points at which to increase my initial wager, and to find potential pitfalls or unforeseen obstacles that don't at first appear on paper, but invariably show up when the dice meet the felt.
Once I am satisfied that the bet is beatable...and that it's likely beatable by me; I'll do a recon of the game and watch it in action for a hand or two to see if it plays out the way I understand the wager to work.
Once that is done, I step up to buy-in to give it a try.
So that brings us up to late last night and early this morning.
I can tell you that MGM Detroit's Golden Dice bet does play out as previously described.
Essentially, it pays according to the number of Passline wins a player throws before 7'ing-Out. So a 'win' is made by either rolling a 7 or 11 on the Come-Out, or by making a PL-Point repeater. Rolling a 2, 3, or 12 on the come out roll does not affect the bet in any way.
~If you or the player you bet on throws four or fewer Passline winners...you get nothing.
About 45% of my Golden Dice bets (10-out-of-22 hands that I threw) fell into this non-winning category.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 5 or 6 PL winners, your bet is paid off at 5-to-1.
About 32% of my G-D bets (7-out-of-22 hands) fell into this pay-scale, including my first attempt. Unfortunately I only had $5 on it to see how things went. I subsequently stepped things up to the $25 G-D mark on the balance of my own hands.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 7 or 8 PL winners, your bet is paid off at 10-to-1.
About 18% of my G-D bets (4-out-of-22) ended up reaching this pay-tier.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 9 or 10 PL winners, your bet is paid off at 25-to-1.
Unfortunately, only one of my hands (4.5% of the total thrown) managed to reach this level of the G-D bet.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 11 or 12 PL winners, your bet is paid off at 50-to-1.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 13 or 14 PL winners, your bet is paid off at 100-to-1.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 15 or 16 PL winners, your bet is paid off at 1000-to-1.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 17, 18, or 19 PL winners, your bet is paid off at 2000-to-1.
~If you or the player you bet on throws 20 or more PL winners, your bet receives a max-payoff of $5000 regardless of the amount of your Golden Dice bet.
As I mentioned previously, my plan was to threw an average of two C-O winners for every one PL-Point repeater, and by averaging a hoped-for minimum of two PL-Point repeaters per hand (for a total of eight Passline winners if you include the anticipated C-O winners at the start of my third hand)...it would produce an average second-tier winning payout of 10:1.
Well, that was the plan, but I only hit that particular pay-scale four out of twenty-two attempts.
What did I learn?
~MGM Grand Detroit's tables remain a little too inconsistent to my attempts at taming them.
~Using the Yo-Trey permutation of the S-6 (Straight-Sixes) dice-set does not produce the best Come-Out cycle results for this bet, at least it doesn't for me.
~By going with the All-7 permutation of the HW-set for the Come-Out, I was able to get very close to a G-D payout on nearly every hand...including the 10 hands where I failed to meet the minimum PL-wins threshold. That was perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this bet...getting close by throwing three or four PL-winners...and not getting anything but the regular PL-payout as my reward.
~I found myself trying a little harder to snipe out PL-Point repeaters, especially when I got past the five PL-winners threshold.
~There was very little pit-attention, even when the 25:1 third-stage payout was made.
~I have mixed feelings about this bet.
On the one hand, the single $625 third-stage payout was nice, as were the multiple second-stage $125 payouts (save for the initial $25 winner on my first hand), and the small handful of $250 payers.
On the other hand, most players who bet the Golden Dice wager were complaining that it wasn't so much that it was hard to win it; it was that the first-stage 5:1 payout was too low to make it worth their while.
I'm going to have to give this one a little more thought...and perhaps a few more sessions until I make my mind up as to whether I like the Golden Dice bet...or whether I really LOVE it.
As always,
Good Luck and Good Skill at the Tables…and in Life.
The Mad Professor
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