Fire and Frost

## Equipment needed

* 2 8-sided dice. Two blue, two orange-red

* Ideally, a dice rolling mat.
* A hexagon grid to maximize gambler's fallacy

## Math

percent
percent
fraction
 Tie
 Dragon

A bet is taken by the house if it does not win.

## Checking for winning bets

1. **Either side totals 16:** Dragon wins.
2. **Both sides total 2 or 16:** (1 1 1 1)/(8 8 8 8): All bets win.
3. **Both totals are the same:** When both sides have the same total, both players keep their bets, and Tie wins.
4. **Totals are different, neither side totals 2:** Higher side wins.
5. **Totals are different, a side totals 2:** When a side's dice total 2, the opposite side must have at least 12 to win. Otherwise, the opposite side bets are kept, not doubled.

## Where is the house edge?

After making your bet on fire or frost (it doesn't matter which one), there are 4096 possible outcomes.

There are 1827 ways to win, 1876 ways to lose, and 393 ways to push. The "at least 12 against 2 or push" converts 49 of the 1876 higher-total wins into pushes.

There are more ways to lose than to win. Because all 4096 possible outcomes are equally likely, you are slightly more likely to lose.

There is also a 1/2048 chance of all bets winning. This slightly lowers the house edge.

Remark. The average house edge (assuming player and banker are bet on evenly) of infinite-deck Baccarat is 276593/24134045 or 1.146%. The house edge of Fire and Frost is 47/4096 or 1.147%.

## Improvements upon Baccarat

Note, when I say Baccarat, I refer to the full table punto banco variant.

I Identify a few problems with baccarat:

1. Commission. The banker bet has a 5% reduction upon winning. This feels like a 5% house edge even thought it's only 1%. The players do not "feel" the banker's slightly higher chance of winning, but they absolutely feel the 5% theft. It is also a pain for the dealer.
2. Uneven chance. The banker is slightly more likely to win than the player. This makes the player bet unfun for me.
3. Complexity of dealing. The rules for the banker to hit must be memorized and practiced by the dealer, and he must place the cards down neatly. You cannot take a dealer from another table and reassign him to Baccarat easily. He must also calculate the commission for an oddly-sized bet instead of just duplicating it.
4. Expense of cards. A baccarat game can quickly burn through 8 decks of cards. This is a waste of money and other types of paper. Card counting? Edge sorting? The DaBaby strategy? There are many things that could go wrong.
5. Boringness. Normal baccarat is sort of boring.
6. The square grid. Squares only have 4 points of contact so patterns are less likely. A hexagon grid has 6 points of contact so there are more patterns.

### Dice thing

1. There is no commission. There are only wins replaced with pushes making it more likely to lose - it's like 2 Player bets.
2. It does not matter if you choose fire or ice. You are still fucked. They are both equally irrational actions.
3. It is easy to roll dice, or just let the players roll. Double a bet when it wins and take it away otherwise.
4. There are no cards just dice. You can use a single die for years if you keep it clean.
5. It is less boring. There are neat colors.
6. I think the hexagon grid is cool.