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Bad Odds: Bets Never to Make While Playing at the Casino

You can play at the casino for fun or for profit, or even a bit of both. But if you happen to fall into the latter camp, then choosing your bets with wisdom and precision is a very important skill. And looking at this from another angle, the choosing of which bets not to make is of equal importance. You'll find that sometimes it's wiser to simply skip a bet than take it, more especially is the house edge is looking high. Let's take a look at some casino wagers you should never take with bad odds.

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Bad Odds: The Tie Bet in Baccarat

As you well know, in baccarat only two hands are dealt, the banker and the player. You can bet on either hand. Because the banker wins more than the player, then any player who bets on the banker’s hand and wins will have to pay the house a commission of 5%, so the payoff is even money minus the 5%. Winning players are paid off at even money. These are both pretty good wagers as the house edge is around 1.06% with the banker and around 1.24% with the player.

But, there’s also a third option. The tie bet. You can bet that the two hands will be a tie. Winning bets get paid out at 8:1 odds. OK…that sounds are tempting for those of you looking to turn around a fast profit as opposed to grinding the night away with even-money payoffs. But just take a look at the true odds before you put your money down. The true odds for winning this bet are 9.526:1, not 8:1. But the house edge is a massive 14.4%. So making a tie bet makes absolutely no sense because you already have two available bets at just 1% already available. Don’t ever be tempted.

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Big 6 And Big 8 in Craps

In one roll positions, there are any number of bets you should avoid. The house edges are always too high at 16.67% on any 7, and 11.11% on any craps. Others are too high to be able to overcome. Yet there are bets with an even bigger house edge. If you look at the craps table layout, you’ll see that in two corners are a big red 6 next to a big red 8. We call these “Big 6” and “Big 8”. They play no different than if you place your bets on 6 or 8. Now, if you bet on the Big 6 and the shooter rolls a 6 before rolling a 7, then you win the bet. If a 7 comes up first, then you lose the bet. Absolutely no other numbers matter. If the shooter rolls a 9, 5, 3, 4, then their no decision was taken.

Keep in mind that place bets on the 6 or 8 will pay at 7:6 odds. Big 6 and big 8 payouts at even money. So the actual difference is in the payoff and that can lead to a dramatic gap in the house edge. That’s because the house has a 1.52% edge on those place bets on 6 and 8, but a massive 9.09% on the Big 6 and Big 8 bets. Now because of the 7:6 payoffs, the betting should be in multiples of$6 when placed on the 6 or the 8. But that doesn’t work for the Big 6 and Big 8. Yet there are more losses to be had when you bet $5 on Big 6 or 8 than if you placed it on 6 or 8. Let’s see how that works.

bad odds — Craps is an evergreen casino game – Image source: Flickr

OK…let’s imagine that we bet $6 on 8 for each spin of 36 during which each combination of each dice comes up twice. You, on the other hand, bet $5 on Big 8 for the same 36 spins. Let’s say that on 25 of the spins, the roll is neither a loser 7 or a winner 8. So we just agree to keep our money. So we need to look carefully at the 11 wagers on which the bets will be decided. On those, we have $66 at risk on our place bets. You have $55 on the big 8. So it follows that for each of the 5 winners, we’ll see our $6 back and scoop winnings of $7. At the end of the session, we’ll have $65 of our original $66.

You will have your $5 returned to you and you’ll also get $5 of winnings. So your total will be $55 because the house gets to keep that extra $5 of your original $55. To sum up, yes we bet more than you, but we have won and lost on the same number of rolls. You, on the other hand, have lost 5 x as much money as we did. And that’s why you should never bet on Big 6 or Big 8.

Bad Odds: The Five-Number Bet In Double-Zero in Roulette

Here we’re talking about the US wheel with its double zeros, as opposed to the European version, with just one. So in Europe, there’s no such thing as a 5-number bet. The double zero wheels are standard in the States and also for many online casinos. So you can bet on 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3 all at once. Though the payoff for such a wager is 6:1, it’s not exactly a bargain as the house edge is 7.89%. This is actually 1.5 x higher than the house edge of 5.26% of other available bets. But you can also bet the same 5 numbers and get a lower house edge.

Let’s suppose that you bet $5 on the 5-number bet and we bet 41 on each of the 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3. In effect, we are both risking the same amount per spin. Now let’s suppose that with 38 spins, each number will come up just once. For this, we each bet $190. On each of the 5 winning spins (that’s when the ball lands on the 0, 00, 1, 2, 3), you’ll receive back your initial $5 bet plus $30 in winnings. So at the end of this session, you’ll have $175 of your original $190.

Our single number 5 wins are paid out at 35:1 odds. So on each win, we get back our initial wager of $1 for the bet on each individual number. Plus we get our $35 in winnings. At the end of the same session, we have a grand total of $180 of our initial $190. And there it is, at the end of a session when we each bet the same, we came out on top with an extra $5. There’s no need to make this bet and, as you can now clearly see, there’s no benefit at the end of the day.