Wish I had an extra $300!

Dreamer

Dormant account
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Location
Massachusetts
Am I missing something here, or is this not a good deal??? Yeah, I've been up all night and I am WAY overtired.... This is today's special from Casino on Net, which I just joined yesterday:

Successive Progressive!
February 25, 2005; 00:00 23:59 CONT:

Success is progress to excess!

Our Successive Progressive event can increase your bankroll by an impressive $300!

Here's how it works:
Deposit a minimum of $150 on this day
If by the end of the day the house wins $150 or more from you, you will win $30.
And as the name says it is progressive; here are more great bonuses to be won:
Deposit minimum $300: if the house wins $300 or more - Get back $70!
Deposit minimum $500: if the house wins $500 or more - Get back $150!
Deposit minimum $1000: if the house wins $1000 or more - Get back $300!


Does this make sense to use it to play low risk games like blackjack, baccarat, etc? At first, when I saw it, it sounded really bad, as in who would want to lose their $300 bank in order to win $70? But, the more I thought about it, the better it sounded....

Am I missing something???? Also, you get comp points for every wager....
:what:
 
This is not too good to be true. I had a chat with CON help desk. I already bet my $300 and won. I suggest you all do that.

THIS PROMOTION IS VALID ONLY TODAY FRIDAY 25th.
 
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jubazu said:
This is not too good to be true. I had a chat with CON help desk. I already bet my $300 and won. I suggest you all do that.

THIS PROMOTION IS VALID ONLY TODAY FRIDAY 25.
What???

So you lost $300 and 'won' $70. Nett gain -$230.
Too good to be true?

Am I missing something...????
 
Deposit $300 (or whatever you choose). If you end up loosing $300 you get $70 back at the end of the day. If you win, good for you.

The idea is to make one as high as possible bet. It's not sure win but you have positive expactation value.
 
Yep, say you deposit $1000 & bet it on one hand. If you win you withdraw. If you lose you get $300 back and withdraw that.

Each time you do it your expected profit is well over $200. After a hundred attempts you'd be unlucky not to have made over $20000 profit.

Do it once and you're odds on to lose $700, so it's a bit too risky for my liking, but a good value bet nonetheless.
 
Thanks for the tip, for some reason I don't get e-mail from these guys any more.

The $500+ level is the best deal at 30% cash back on losses, but unfortunately the maximum Baccarat bet is $300 (unless you're a VIP member), and this promo screams "All on Banker!!" to me.

Still a good deal at $300. Slap it all on banker and hope for the best.

Blackjack is not good (even if theoretically less casino edge) because you can't get all your money in on one hand without forgoing the ability to split or double-down.

Or if you want to maximize your expected value... slap it all on two numbers on Roulette ($150/spot is allowed). This is probably the highest long-term EV of all the available bets, but of course "slightly" higher variance in the short term. :)
 
The optimal strategy is much more complicated than just betting everything on one hand. If you deposit $1000 and bet $300 on player in baccarat, you should aim for $2500 or go bankrupt. You expect to win $120 from this promotion. (I know the banker bet is better, but it is much harder to analyze because of the 5% commission.)

I would recommend betting $100 on single numbers on roulette, you should aim for at least $5200, and then you can expect to win $213 from this promotion.
 
OK,
I think I mis-read this one... I thought that you may be able to add up your cumulative losses over the course of a day and get money back on those. Now, that sounds like a great idea to me! Play 60 hands of blackjack at $10 per hand, lose half of them and you lost $300 total, but you really broke even. Now, you get the extra $70 after breaking even.... Yeah, I guess that scenario IS too good to be true....

What the rest of you are talking about is more like a sticky bonus, which I have so far stayed away from, I don't think they are my style. Hey, if it's for you, go for it and good luck!

This offer did NOT come through e-mail, I just joined their site and they were promoting it at the top of the screen while I was playing.

:)
 
GrandMaster said:
The optimal strategy is much more complicated than just betting everything on one hand. If you deposit $1000 and bet $300 on player in baccarat, you should aim for $2500 or go bankrupt. You expect to win $120 from this promotion. (I know the banker bet is better, but it is much harder to analyze because of the 5% commission.)

I would recommend betting $100 on single numbers on roulette, you should aim for at least $5200, and then you can expect to win $213 from this promotion.
I think that reasoning is flawed, do you have some math to back that up?

The way to take advantage of this promotion is to put the casino's money to work for you. Using the $1000 example, where you get $300 cash back:

If you bet it all at once you are getting $1000 in leverage while risking $700, i.e. you are using $300 of the casino's money for free.

If you make multiple smaller bets, you are never putting all of that $300 in casino money to use, unless of course you eventually lose everything, but that's not very productive. :) Instead you are wallowing around getting whittled by the house edge trying to catch a run of cards.

Looked at another way, using your example... you take that $1000, bet $300 on Player in Baccarat, and win. You now have $1300 in your account. That is a $300 profit for you, profit you could withdraw. So if instead you "aim for $2500" and bet $300 again, that next bet is made with 100% your own money. Not good!

Your example of $100 on single-numbers Roulette is a better strategy because you are less likely to win each bet, therefore you will be dipping further into the casino's cash while still retaining the chance for one big payoff. But again unless you lose exactly 9 bets and win the 10th, you still have not fully risked the casino's money.

Using your Roulette example again, if you are aiming for $5200, you should instead stick it all 7 numbers. About 19% of the time you will win and have $5142. If you lose you get $300 back. Expected long-term profit on that strategy is $216 by my calculations.
 
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chalupa said:
I think that reasoning is flawed, do you have some math to back that up?
Yes. I do have a PhD in mathematics and I have written a paper on loss rebates.

chalupa said:
Using your Roulette example again, if you are aiming for $5200, you should instead stick it all 7 numbers. About 19% of the time you will win and have $5142. If you lose you get $300 back. Expected long-term profit on that strategy is $216 by my calculations.
The only problem is that you can only bet $300 on a single spin. If you could put the whole $1000 on a single number it would give you an even better expected value (with enormous variance, of course.)
 
That's nice, I have a B.S. in B.S. :D I meant some math you could show us.

The problem I had with your original post was this:
GrandMaster said:
The optimal strategy is much more complicated than just betting everything on one hand.
From your last post you seem to be recanting that statement, and we are in agreement that betting it all on one hand IS in fact the optimal strategy, when possible within betting limits, is that correct? Assuming that...

The $300 offer can be bet optimally. But the $300/$70 cashback isn't as good as percentage as $500/$150 or $1000/$300.

So it seems to me the interesting question becomes whether it is better (on a percentage profit basis) to do the $300/$70 and optimal all-at-once strategy, or the $1000/$300 sub-optimal piecemeal bet strategy.

If you have some calculations on the latter I'd be interested to see them. Otherwise I think I'm going for one of these two... 50% or 27% chance at glory, depending how daring I'm feeling, hehe.
 
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$30 on each of 10 numbers surrounding the zero... and around and around she goes...

Aaaaah... gotta love it when a plan comes together. :thumbsup:
 
chalupa said:
From your last post you seem to be recanting that statement, and we are in agreement that betting it all on one hand IS in fact the optimal strategy, when possible within betting limits, is that correct? .
I am not recanting anything. Betting big is good, but you should not necessarily stop after one game.

Consider a simple coin toss with a fair coin, where you win or lose with 50% probability and assume that you have $1000.

Your strategy is to bet $1000 and then stop. You win $1000 with probability 0.5, lose $1000 but get $300 rebate with probability 0.5, your expected win is $150.

You could keep playing, until you either reach, say, $10000 or go bust. It is a fair game with 0 house edge, so the probability of reaching $10000 is 0.1, and the probability of busting out and getting the $300 rebate is 0.9. Hence your expected win is $270. Do you see my point?
 
Man, you academics! That's an interesting example, but this same casino would of course have a Roulette wheel with no zeroes on it, so you could could save yourself some time by simply putting all your chips on 3.6 spots and going for the 10x payout. Where do I sign up for this 0% house edge casino anyway? :)

In the real-world, the casino has an edge every time you flip that coin, and the less churning of bets the better, especially if you are going for a big win like a 10x return.

Look at the extreme example. If you were trying to turn that $1000 into $10,000 or go broke trying, would it make sense to bet $1/hand on Banker in Baccarat and try to catch a run?

The odds of you making $10,000 before being ground out by the casino edge would be... well, I dunno. But close enough to zero to be, dare I say, academic. Heheh.

So again it seems to me the statement "The optimal strategy is much more complicated than just betting everything on one hand." is just flat-out wrong.

Assuming you CAN bet everything on one hand, that is EXACTLY what you SHOULD do, and it's not complicated at all.

Then the only question is what game to play for for your desired payout. And the higher the payout you desire, the less concerned you should be about the casino edge of a "bad" game if you get the desired leverage, because you are only paying that edge once. Far better to pay 5% once than 1% ten times.

The nice thing about Roulette for these purposes (and probably why it's often not allowed in promos) is that you can pick your payout, gamble it all at once, and pay a relatively low 2.7% for a highly leveraged bet.
 
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By the way, I'm giving you a hard time, but I would still be interested to see your math behind the cases where you cannot bet it all at once. I have tried figuring some optimal strategy in situations like that myself in the past without much success.

With some more complicated games with variable payouts I'm not sure it can even be done purely mathematically, perhaps computer simulation is needed.

Also there is a casino game worth mentioning that does approximate your coin toss example... Microgaming and Playtech allow betting up to $100/hand on video poker with a 0% edge double-down feature.

Obviously that's not as good as a coin toss, because you have to survive getting a paying poker hand first. And while (correct pay table) video poker has a low casino edge, it's highly variable because the low edge relies on hitting some extreme longshots.

But if you want to turn $100 into $10,000, that's probably the best bet in the casino. Stick it all on one hand, if you get the Royal, you're done :), otherwise keep hammering that double-or-nothing button.

In a less extreme example (and again where you CAN'T bet your entire stake at once), I'm not sure how video poker compares to other options.

For example if you were in this situation...

$1000 deposit
30% cashback on losses

$300 betting limits at blackjack and baccarat
$300 betting limits at single-zero roulette, $100 max on one number
$100 video poker with double down

And your goal is to maximize your expected value, while having a reasonable chance, say 25%, of not losing everything. What is your best strategy?

Beats the hell outta me, which is why I only deposit as much as I can bet all at once. :)

But if you have done some work solving this kind of problem I'd be very interested to see it.
 
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There are two sets of unknowns, the expected values given the current bankroll assuming you play optimal strategy, and the betting strategy (the optimal bet size for each possible bankroll, possibly 0 if you are better off stopping than playing). Given one, it is easy to calculate the other.

My method is an iterative process. Start with the amounts you could get by cashing out immediately, see what the optimal betting strategy would be using these as the estimates for the expected values, update the expected values, then repeat. Every 10 or 20 steps write down a massive system of linear equation to solve for the expected values using the currently optimal strategy and check whether it is indeed optimal. If yes, stop, otherwise go back to the beginning.

The optimal betting strategy can be suprisingly complex, betting the maximum is usually correct, but not always.
 

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