From: stantz@sgi.com (Mark Stantz)
Newsgroups: rec.gambling
Subject: Re: even bets question...
Date: 12 Aug 92 20:58:42 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.

In article <1992Aug12.013118.19868@nevada.edu> messiah@nevada.edu (MHW) writes:
>Just as its possible to get by with card counting in a casino, inspite of
>the pitbosses being instructed to "watch" for it, so it is possible to
>hustle comps. Just don't be obvious about it. Spread your asction around
>town and use more than one person to balance the other side of the line.

	It almost seems like there's potential here.  But is it possible to 
make money (or rather, to exceed in comp values the magnitude of your certain 
loses?)  I'm not particularly interesting in meeting junket play requirements; 
I don't believe in junkets, because I don't like the idea of being locked 
into one casino.  But I am interested in getting comped cheaply.  Suppose 
you had a team of 6 people.  Not all of them need know a lot about craps.

	1 team member does the face work; he's the BP.  Stands in the usual
position next to one of the dealers, and puts $25 on don't pass every come-
out.  Three other players are scattered around the table; they bet $10, $10 
and $5 per hand.  The other two players stay in reserve to come in when 
non-BP's run low on money or need to take a bathroom break or whatever.  The 
BP can signal them somehow; he himself restricts drinking to minimize
urination downtime.  Sometimes you could have four people around the table 
betting $10, $5, $5 and $5.  Everyone will always want to take full odds.
To hold down your variance and reduce the frequency of money redistribution 
among team members, you'd want to restrict play to double odds tables.

	The team will lose money only when the barred number is rolled on
come-out.  This happens about once every 36 rolls, on the average.  That's
maybe twice an hour at a full table, and you'd want to be playing at a 
full table to maximize pit distraction.  So the team loses around $50/hr, 
or ~$8 per player.

	If things work, the casino doesn't see the rotating small players.
They see only the Big Player.  One important question, I think, is whether 
or not they'd rate a $25-on-the-line, $50 in odds bettor as a $25-average 
bettor or a $75-average bettor.  Probably the former is the case, which
is really unfortunate.

	A $25-average player will be comped only a room for 4 hours of
play, according to Frank Irwin's FAQ table.  That room costs ~$200 to the
team.  It is only useful to the Big Plater and one other person, and is
clearly not worth it.

	Now quadruple everything.  You have a $100 don't bettor taking
double odds and four quarter-bettors taking double odds.  The casino 
will probably notice that the green on the table is balancing all of 
the black, so you'd have come up with something more sophisticated, but
it might still be possible.  Your expected losses are about $800 for
the team in 4 hours.  Now you're looking at an RFB and $150 in airfare 
reimbursement for the BP after four hours.  You can't count on the airfare 
reimburement, I don't think.  You'd have to do this at three casinos with 
different BP's each time to get the entire 6-person team comped.  That takes 
12 hours and bites the team for ~$2400 -- on the average.  I don't know how 
to do the analysis, but I imagine that it's not too statistically improbable 
for the team to be down $7K at this point.  Even the $2.4K is a lot more 
than the expected gain in comps.

	In short, it doesn't look to me like this is worth attempting,
unless you're on a junket, in which case the casino will be specifically
watching for it.  Which is too bad -- it would be a lot of fun to set up
and execute something like this, if only to see if you could get away with 
it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Stantz | stantz@sgi.com | "...First, do no harm..."    -- Hippocrates
Newsgroups: rec.gambling