By Jeff Hwang
In Super Blackjack™, the player is dealt a super blackjack (A♠J♠ or A♠J♣) paying 20-to-1 on the Ante once every 675 hands, and all other suited blackjacks (paying 6-to-1 on the Ante) once every 90 hands. Combined, the player will be dealt either a super or suited blackjack once every 79 hands.
A single player playing alone might see a suited blackjack once an hour, but is unlikely to encounter a super blackjack in a given day playing alone without putting in serious hours. On the other hand, a table of four players seeing 50-60 hands per hour will collectively play 200-240 hands per hour, and will see two or three suited blackjacks per hour, while encountering a super blackjack once every few hours.
Now all of sudden, that rare, higher-payout event that a single player would be unlikely to see in a given day playing by himself occurs with some frequency, and seems that much more attainable.
This is the crux of a concept I call table-wide hit frequency, which reflects how often a given event occurs at a table as a whole rather than on a single-player basis.
The Limitation of Communal Bets
With all of the recent talk about millennials and the desire for more social gaming opportunities (not to be confused with what's being labeled as social gaming), there has been I think a bit more interest lately in producing communal bets where everybody (or at least multiple players) are betting on the same outcome, sharing in the same results. This works great in a game like craps, where most everybody tends to bet the Pass Line, and everybody can high five each other when the point hits.
But the reason this works is because in craps, we are largely dealing with relatively flat payoffs on the pass line and odds (up to 2:1 for odds on 4 and 10), with relatively high frequency wins. However, I suspect the prospect for communal bets will be challenged when they rely on higher-payoff, lower-probability events.
Here's why:
Let's say you have a Texas hold'em table game. Let's also say you are thinking about offering a wager on the five community cards, and have constructed an event based only on those community cards, and with a top payout of a million dollars for an event that occurs once in a jillion hands.
Now you have two problems:
Consequently, I would tend to shy away from using communal sidebets dependent on rare, high-payoff events.
Jeff Hwang is President and CEO of High Variance Games LLC. Jeff is also the best-selling author of Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy and the three-volume Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha series.
In Super Blackjack™, the player is dealt a super blackjack (A♠J♠ or A♠J♣) paying 20-to-1 on the Ante once every 675 hands, and all other suited blackjacks (paying 6-to-1 on the Ante) once every 90 hands. Combined, the player will be dealt either a super or suited blackjack once every 79 hands.
A single player playing alone might see a suited blackjack once an hour, but is unlikely to encounter a super blackjack in a given day playing alone without putting in serious hours. On the other hand, a table of four players seeing 50-60 hands per hour will collectively play 200-240 hands per hour, and will see two or three suited blackjacks per hour, while encountering a super blackjack once every few hours.
Now all of sudden, that rare, higher-payout event that a single player would be unlikely to see in a given day playing by himself occurs with some frequency, and seems that much more attainable.
This is the crux of a concept I call table-wide hit frequency, which reflects how often a given event occurs at a table as a whole rather than on a single-player basis.
The Limitation of Communal Bets
With all of the recent talk about millennials and the desire for more social gaming opportunities (not to be confused with what's being labeled as social gaming), there has been I think a bit more interest lately in producing communal bets where everybody (or at least multiple players) are betting on the same outcome, sharing in the same results. This works great in a game like craps, where most everybody tends to bet the Pass Line, and everybody can high five each other when the point hits.
But the reason this works is because in craps, we are largely dealing with relatively flat payoffs on the pass line and odds (up to 2:1 for odds on 4 and 10), with relatively high frequency wins. However, I suspect the prospect for communal bets will be challenged when they rely on higher-payoff, lower-probability events.
Here's why:
Let's say you have a Texas hold'em table game. Let's also say you are thinking about offering a wager on the five community cards, and have constructed an event based only on those community cards, and with a top payout of a million dollars for an event that occurs once in a jillion hands.
Now you have two problems:
- Everybody has made the same bet. What this means is that if you have five players at the table, you have to pay five players a million dollars when that once-in-a-jillion-hand event occurs. You have in effect multiplied the risk of a Black Swan outcome for the casino operator.
- Rare events occur significantly less often when everybody has made the same bet. If you have five players betting on the same outcome, rare events will generally occur five times less often than when everybody is betting on outcomes based on their own hands. Put differently, you have five players betting on one hand (the community cards) rather than on five hands (a combination of each player's hole cards with the community cards). And in doing so, you have essentially minimized table-wide hit frequency and the benefits that come with it.
Consequently, I would tend to shy away from using communal sidebets dependent on rare, high-payoff events.
Jeff Hwang is President and CEO of High Variance Games LLC. Jeff is also the best-selling author of Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy and the three-volume Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha series.
