Freeplay Chips (play til you lose!)

I know there's an article that shows the best way to play them, but I think that's only considering if they are ONE-TIME use, right? Will be going to Vegas soon and me and wife both have $500 each of the PLAY TIL YOU LOSE kind.... now I know if it's one-time use, the best we can do is guarantee half, but what's the best strategy to play if we BOTH have $500 in play til u lose chips?

I was thinking both play at Roulette or Bacarrat, then 1 of us will be guaranteed to win, but if we both bet the same amount then 1 of us would lose the freeplay, which doesn't seem like we could guarantee more than half that way either. Another thing I was thinking about was riding the streak of banker/player or red/black but still that's just taking a chance and there's no guarantee that either would hit more! The final consideration I had (and what i've done before myself) was using them ONLY on a strong double (11 v 5 or 6), which would yield 64% chance winning. Though this is of course not a "lock", I feel it's a strong use of the chips, but my goal is to simply maximize the amount of return we get from our $1000 in chips.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

Blackjack should be where you should play them. Here is the Wizard's site http://wizardofodds.com/gambling/promotional-chips/ and they should be considered non-neg chips.

 

I need more detailed info then that, please... in other words, how should we play them differently when they are play til you lose chips vs. only ONE-TIME use???

 

Assume you have 50 $10 chips. Bet one chip and lose, you now have 49. bet another and win, you are back to 50. keep doing this and with up to 99.6% value of chips (depending on the local rules and you use perfect basic strategy) you will end up with roughly 99 real chips which you can then cash in.

 

Sorry I dont quite follow... if you bet 1 $10 freeplay chip and lose, yes we have only 49 but then you say "bet another and win".... why are you assuming that we will win the next time? Anyway, with $1000 in freeplay PLAY TIL YOU LOSE chips with each person having $500, I want to know what's the most we can GUARANTEE? I already been to that promo chip site many times and it just confuses me as it doesn't answer my query...

 

Bug, blackjack is the publized opinion of several as the best way to churn PLAY TIL YOU LOSE promo chips but there is no GUARANTEE as PTYL promo chips are the same as cash, other options that may be known to AP's will never be revealed as you ask in a public forum. Deltaduke's blackjack recomendation is a correct mathematically use of PTYL promo chips. Asking for a quanteed return for PTYL promo chips is like asking for a QUARANTEED win/loss with cash. The house has a % advantage in every table or machine game.

 

I think the question being asked is how to minimise (or eliminate) variance, while giving up as little expected value as possible, compared to the optimal, EV-focused approach.

If two people each have one PTYL chip, I suppose they could seek to churn one of them by making opposing bets on something like roulette or bacarrat , and then use ('til you lose) the remaining single PTYL chip in a single bet (but probably not on blackjack, since you wouldn't want to be obliged to make a double with a real chip).

Bacarrat might be better than roulette, both because of the lower house edge, and (presuming you keep your PTYL chips in the event of a tie), you don't have to worry about (or hedge against) your opposing bets both losing.

If you really wanted to eliminate all variance, you would have to hedge against all possible losing outcomes at every stage, using real chips where no PTYL chips are available, and thus reducing your expected value even further.

 

Thank you London Colin for being the 1st person to actually understand what I'm wanting to find out! Of course I do appreciate everyone else who replied so far too, but I thought i was clear enough in my OP that I wanted to make the most I could on this free play chips....

London, if I took your suggestion and just bet 1 PTYL chip in bacarrat (say for $50) and the real chips win then I am 1 of my $50 FP chips... I would then only be up $50 but would not want to continue to bet my real money chips on it. However if the PTYL bet wins, then I'll lose my real-money $50 chips and end up break-even (offsetting the 2 bets) so that wouldn't be so good. Aside from guaranteeing exactly 50% of our PTYL chips by betting HALF on every bet, is there any other way to profit more than that? As previously mentioned, we were thinking of using them only on STRONG double down plays because when it wins at least we'd still have another chance to use them in the future! (provided there's no other way to guarantee more money)

 

To be honest, I wouldn't say you've been all that clear, and based on your next paragraph, below, I'm not sure that I have understood you at all, or that you have really understood me.

My assumption was that you and your wife each have single $500 PTYL chips, and it is the high denomination of these chips that is causing you to wish to trade some of their expected value for a greater certainty of getting some return. But it sounds like you actually each have $500 available as a set of smaller denomination chips.

My suggestion (assuming two single $500 PTYL chips) was that you bet them both at once, one on player and one on banker, thus trading them for one $500 PTYL and $500 cash (or 95% of $500 if the banker side wins). Then go on to play the remaining $500 PTYL chip on its own until you lose it.
If you wanted, I suppose you could follow a similar approach with the $500 available to you in smaller denominations. That is, start out with you and your wife making opposing $500 bets. Then, if you want absolutely no risk element in your play, continually split your remaining PTYL chips between you and repeat the process of betting half each. (Actually to remove all variance, you would have to size the bets unevenly, so that the return is the same whether player (1:1) or banker (19:20) wins.)

The expected value of this kind of approach is not the approx 50% that you've been mentioning. PTYL chips are no different to real chips; the total amount you expect to lose in a session on any game is the house edge multiplied by the total amount you bet. After an even money win, with two opposing PTYL bets in play, you effectively have the same bankroll you started with, except you've converted half of the total amount bet from PTYL into real money.

It's only the house edge that prevents this kind of strategy from extracting the full face value from the PTYL chips. E.g., if you are betting red/black on roulette, both your bets lose when zero comes up; if you are betting player/banker on bacarrat, you pay the 5% tax when banker wins.


An advantage of blackjack is that it has a much lower house edge than other games, meaning a greater expected value for you from your $1000 total in PTYL chips. A disadvantage is that there is no way for you and your wife to make opposing bets, so you are exposed to the full variance of the game.

The strong double down idea makes no sense to me. You have to have made an initial bet in the first place, in order to be in the hand, so why not use a PTYL chip to make that bet also? And if you are in a hand and the correct strategy is to double down, I can't see that it would ever make sense to hold back a PTYL chip and bet a real one in its place.

 

Yes we have to make an initial bet in the first place, but the reason you shouldn't just plop the PTYL chip automatically even for the initial bet is because the chances of winning are only ~44%! When you do it on a STRONG DD hand, you have 64% chance of winning the bet! So wouldn't you rather have 64% chance of winning vs. less than 50%? For your 2nd question, it's again because you're not MAXIMIZING your winning chances! For instance, even on a proper DD hand of A/2 vs 5, your edge is only a meager 52% - so why would you prefer to use your PTYL chip on such a weak double vs. a much stronger one 11 v 5/6?! Makes sense now, London?

 

No. There is a huge flaw in your reasoning, which ought to be self-evident, now that you have spelt it out in detail.

 

How is there a huge flaw in my reasoning when everything stated in my previous quote is 100% fact? You seem to think that there's equal reason to play when you have only a 44% winning vs. a solid 20% higher on a strong double, so I clearly broke down the %'s for you, including the weakest DD hand compared to the strongest DD hand (which obviously makes sense to save the PTYL chip for that hand instead!).

 

Let’s assume you have 20 coupons for $50 dollars bets.
You are playing bj with good rules using perfect basic strategy with casino edge of 0.5%.
You should end up with $1,000 (total action) times 99.5% = $995 for playing just the coupons. Of course the variance of the game will make your final result on either up or down from this number.

If you play hedge bets on baccarat and bet half of your total coupons on each Bank and Player you would have 500 worth coupons left after the first decision (we would include the possible commissions at the end of the paragraph), then 250, then 150 if you made two equal bets of 100 on Bank and Player and kept “uneven” 50 coupon, then 100, then you are left with one 50 coupon.
Now you can bet that coupon on Bank and $50 cash on Player, you will play until it wins for the commission of $2.50, or “risk” it on Player and bet cash on Bank – you pay no commission if Player wins but can pay a few times the commission if the Bank keeps winning.
This on average converts your 1,000 coupons to about $973, and in the worse case scenario into $950, and in the best case you turn it into $1,000.

Let’s assume you are playing blackjack, as mentioned above, flat betting $50, so you can use your coupons on “high return” doubles. You are waiting to double them on your 10 vs. dealer’s 4, 5, and 6 (success 60.4%), and on your totals of 11 vs. dealer’s 2 to 6 (success 60.7%).
Those hands happen about once in 36, so to play your 20 coupons you need to play about 700 hands. You should expect to collect $1,210 from playing the coupons.
However, your total action at 0.5 casino edge should cost you $175 (700 x $50 x 0.5) and whether you use real money or coupons when you are dealt double(able) hands does not effects the bottom line.
Effectively you redeem your coupons for $825.

If you are playing some kind of advantage play where you have an edge it does not change the final outcome either – you will win (or lose) what you are supposed to win (or lose due to the specific cards you were dealt) but in a process you “washed” the coupons.

There are some other fine points, but hopefully this clears some of the issues.

S. Yama

 

The finer points can confuse me as much as the next man, but as I understand it, things are slightly more complicated than this, because the total action is not $1000, but however much action it takes you to churn through all the chips. This means it's not just the house edge which affects the favourability of a game; high variance is also beneficial. It just so happens that blackjack still comes out on top, even after you factor this in.

I presume there is some kind of formula for calculating the average action required, but I've never delved that deeply into it.

 

London...

How is there a huge flaw in my reasoning when everything stated in my previous quote is 100% fact? You seem to think that there's equal reason to play when you have only a 44% winning vs. a solid 20% higher on a strong double, so I clearly broke down the %'s for you, including the weakest DD hand compared to the strongest DD hand (which obviously makes sense to save the PTYL chip for that hand instead!).

 

It'd be great if you actually answered me.

 

Thanks Ken, but I was actually referring to this post that London claimed I had a flaw in reasoning...

How is there a huge flaw in my reasoning when everything stated in my previous quote is 100% fact? You seem to think that there's equal reason to play when you have only a 44% winning vs. a solid 20% higher on a strong double, so I clearly broke down the %'s for you, including the weakest DD hand compared to the strongest DD hand (which obviously makes sense to save the PTYL chip for that hand instead!).

 

Wait a minute, So are you saying just to play them straight up?