Winter Camp Casino Guide XLIV Edition
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Winter Camp Casino Guide Second Edition Winter Camp XLIV Mark Bollman! Winter Camp XLIV Casino Guide 1 Foreword Casino Night is a Winter Camp tradition dating back to Winter Camp II in 1978. It ran from Winter Camps II through XI and, after a brief hiatus, returned beginning at Winter Camp XXI. In its early days, Casiso Night ran on the last night of camp and allowed campers to try their luck against a variety of games of chance. From time to time, it has moved off the fourth night to where it might fit thematically. Blackjack, roulette, craps, chuck-a-luck, poker, baccarat, Tripoley, sic bo, and computerized Volkswagen races have at various times found a welcome reception at the Winter Camp gaming tables. When printed currency was used at Winter Camps IV-VIII, a ready medium of exchange was available. Before its introduction and after its demise, members were issued an allotment of chips from the central bank. Chips emblazoned with Winter Camp's rhombus logo have been available since Winter Camp XXX in 2006. Numerous Arrowmen have made small virtual fortunes during the night, while others fell prey to the immutable laws of probability. In its return to Winter Camp beginning in the 1990's, the event's name has been modified several times to fit with camp themes. At Winter Camp XVIII, it returned in the cloaking of the Pirate theme as \Shore Leave"; at Winter Camp XXII, it was adopted by Canada Day as \Casino Windsor Night", at Winter Camp XXIII as \Hunches in Bunches" for Dr. Seuss Day; and at Winter Camp XXIX, it followed the \Around the World in a Weekette" theme to Macau as \Tropical Casino Night". Winter Camp XXXIV saw Casino Night combined with the Prohibition activities as the casino was transformed into a speakeasy. The casino was the focus of the Ocean's 38 theme at Winter Camp XXXVIII, and several weekette-long activities led up to the extended casino time on Day Four. The first edition of this Winter Camp Casino Guide was written in support of Ocean's 38. Here in 2020, Casino Night proves its durability and flexibility as we adapt to Winter Camp At Home. As the Winter Camp At Home kit includes dice and playing cards, we cover here the rules for the dice games of chuck-a-luck and its Asian cousin sic bo, and for blackjack, the #1 casino table game. Some material taken from Basic Gambling Mathematics: The Numbers Behind The Neon by Mark Bollman!, © 2014, Taylor & Francis/CRC Press. Used with author's permission. 2 Winter Camp XLIV Casino Guide Chuck-a-luck/Sic bo Chuck-a-luck is a game played with three dice. In its original form, it is not often seen in casinos anymore, but can still be found in carnivals and, in expanded form, in the casino game sic bo. The three dice are spun in a wire cage. Gamblers bet on the numbers from 1-6, and are paid according to how many of their number appear on the dice: the amount wagered is matched for each die showing the selected number, so the payoff is 1-1 if one die shows the number, 2-1 if two do, and 3-1 if all three do. The casino holds a 7.89% advantage on every bet, which may be responsible for chuck-a-luck's disappearance from commercial casinos. Sic bo is a three-die game that expands on chuck-a-luck. The chuck-a-luck option of betting on a single number from 1-6 remains, and it is joined by a host of additional betting options. For example, one may bet on various propositions involving the sum of the three dice, the occurrence of a specific pair of numbers, or on whether or not the dice will all show the same number. Figure 1 shows a betting layout for sic bo|the two rows of betting spaces at the bottom of the layout show the chuck-a-luck betting options. At some casinos including the Mohegan Sun in Montville, Connecticut, the layout is electrified, and the sic bo dealer need only press buttons corresponding to the numbers on the three dice to light up all of the winning bets. Figure 1: Sic bo betting layout Each sic bo bet is a one-roll wager, and pays off the amount listed on the layout if the indicated combination|whether it be the sum of the dice or the specific numbers that appear|is rolled. Example 1. If the dice come up , the following bets, from top to bottom in Figure 1, win: Winter Camp XLIV Casino Guide 3 The bet pays 11{1 as an \Each Double" wager. Since the sum is 14 and no triple was rolled, the Big bet pays even money. A bet on a sum of 14 pays 12{1. The two-die combination pays 6{1. A bet on pays even money. A bet on pays 2{1, since two 5s were rolled. If you're operating this game at home, an easy way to process the bets is to follow the example above and work down the layout from top to bottom. The most exciting day in the history of sic bo was October 26, 1994. On that day, the Grand Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi was found to be unwittingly offering an 80 to 1 payoff (possibly through a misprint on the felt layout) for winning bets that the sum of the dice would be 4 or 17. Since there are three ways to roll a total of 4 on three dice (1-1-2, 1-2-1, and 2-1-1), players held a 12.5% advantage when betting on 4. The same player advantage held for a bet on 17. News of this unusual opportunity spread through the gambling community, largely via fax|this was in the infancy of the World Wide Web|and on the 26th, gamblers from across America converged on Biloxi, including one Minnesota man who drove for 17 hours to reach the casino. They played the game for hours, crowding the table so deeply that it was difficult to find a place. After the game shut down for the night, casino officials estimated that the casino's losses were in the neighborhood of $180,000. Casino management closed the game down the next day, and when it reopened, the payout on 4 and 17 had been reduced to the standard 60 to 1 shown above, resulting in a new house advantage of about 15.3%. 4 Winter Camp XLIV Casino Guide Blackjack Contrary to many people's understanding, the object of blackjack is not to get a hand of cards totalling as close to 21 without going over. Rather, the object is to get a hand that is closer to 21 than the dealer's hand without going over. A novice blackjack player would do well to learn basic strategy, which is a set of rules for decision-making for a player to follow. Based on millions of simulated hands, basic strategy gives a player the best advice on how to play a hand, given the composition of the hand and the dealer's upcard. If the first object listed were the point of the game, stopping on a hand of 12, as is often called for in blackjack basic strategy, would be a bad idea. However, there are times when standing on a relatively weak hand in hopes that the dealer's hand will \bust", or go over 21, is the best strategy for a player. Basic Rules Blackjack uses anywhere from 1 to 8 decks of cards shuffled together. Two cards are dealt to each player, and two|one face-up, called the upcard, and the other face-down (the hole card)|to the dealer. Players' cards are customarily dealt face-down from the dealer's hand in single- or double-deck games, and face up from a shoe in games using four or more decks. Each card counts its face value, with the exceptions that face cards count 10, and an ace may be counted as either 1 or 11, at the player's discretion. (In writing about blackjack, it is common to use the shorthand \ten" to refer to any card|10, jack, queen, or king|counting as 10.) A hand containing an ace counted as 11 is called a soft hand, because it cannot be busted by a one-card draw|if a hand counting an ace as 11 goes over 21 upon drawing a card, the ace may simply be revalued at 1. A hand with a total of 12-16 without any aces, or with all aces counted as 1, is called a hard or stiff hand, because drawing a single card risks busting the hand. A player dealt a two-card total of 21 consisting of an ace and a 10-count card|called a natural or blackjack|wins immediately until the dealer also has a natural. Naturals pay either 3-2 or 6-5, depending on the rules of the casino. The alternate name \blackjack" for a 2-card total of 21 derives from the earliest days of the game, when a 21 consisting of the ace and jack of spades qualified for a bonus payoff. If the dealer does not have a natural, then each player in turn has the opportunity to \hit" their hand and take additional cards in an effort to bring their total closer to 21 without going over. If a player's hand exceeds 21, this is called busting or breaking, and the bet is lost and collected at once.