Live Casinos v. Online Casinos (BJ)

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February 27th, 2017
Back Live Casinos v. Online Casinos (BJ)

Let’s face it: Gambling Online is a completely different experience than gambling at a Brick-and-Mortar Casino. The latter of the two options is arguably (in my personal opinion) the most exciting, given the constant eye candy, (preferably the Vegas, AC or Biloxi/New Orleans eye candy that also brings me free whiskey) the feel of the cards, the sounds the cards make against the felt, the excitement of the other players, the music and the atmosphere.

Despite my best attempts, I have been unable to recreate the live casino atmosphere at home. That’s mainly because I cannot convince the local drug store to give me free bottles of Crown Royal and I have been equally unsuccessful in convincing my fiance to allow me to replace our dining room table with a proper Blackjack/3CP/Mississippi Stud table...something about our guests having a place to eat, or whatever, you know how it is.

In the meantime, there are some things to be said for gambling online. You can do it anytime you want, you don’t have to travel, Hell, I can do it in my boxer shorts! I can also say that, even as an advantage player, a stop to the casino sucks if there aren’t any plays and you are essentially compelled to leave immediately. It’s like,I went to the casino for that!? It took me longer to get here than the amount of time I actually spent here! You don’t really get that with online. If I want to play for three hours, I play for three hours, if I only want to play a few hands, I play a few hands.

With that, I think it’s fair to argue that the two playing experiences are entirely different, and I don’t believe that is a very controversial opinion. In fact, I would argue that only two things are almost universally true about both methods of gambling:

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1.) Winning is fun and losing sucks.

AND

2.) The House Edge (Return-to-Player, if you prefer) is the most relevant thing there is.

The two things go hand-in-hand. I advantage play mainly because I am a firm believer in the first item, that winning is fun and losing sucks. I want to play with an overall expectation of winning, though as I have admitted, I will occasionally play at a negative expectation if it is a game I really like. I try not to get upset at all, but the one thing I can say is that I’ve only gotten upset about losing when playing something where I had the advantage and was mathematically expected to win. If I’m expected to lose, and then I do lose, being upset about that is akin to eating too much and being upset that you got a stomach ache.

When it comes to winning or losing, at least, in terms of expectation, the house edge (or, return-to-player, if you prefer) is the relevant question.

As an aside, I’m actually starting to lean towards, “Return-to-Player,’ as my preferred term because it is a term that can be used whether or not there is an advantage. For example, let’s say a game has a house edge of 0.5%, but with mailers and points it becomes a player advantage of 0.5%, I have two use two different terms: House Edge, Player Advantage. If I use return-to-player, I can say that the game itself has an RTP of 99.5%, but with mailers and points the RTP is 100.5%. Same term, no ambiguity, no negative numbers, non-gamblers could understand it...cool!

Anyway, the return-to-player is a relevant factor in whether or not a game is any good, and that’s true whether or not a player is playing at an advantage or a disadvantage. Furthermore, even though live play and online play are two completely different things, it enables us to make a legitimate comparison between one game and another.

This comparison will be most relevant for those of you who have a casino in your vicinity AND the ability to play online. If you have a casino near you but can’t play online, then your only option is the casino, and vice-versa if you can play online but no casinos are within a reasonable distance.

For those of you who find yourselves in this situation and asking, “Which game is better,” there are two handy-dandy tools that you can use to answer that question:

The first link is to an online Blackjack survey which tells the player which casino offers the best game (and what that game is) right off the top. The second link is to a live casino Blackjack survey of Las Vegas which does the same thing. This will give players an idea of the sorts of games at what limits can be found online vs. live casinos. Assuming the game does not have a player advantage (which would be a negative house edge) you can get the RTP simply by converting the percentage House Edge to a decimal and subtracting it from one. 0.21% House Edge = 1 - 0.0021 = 99.79% RTP.

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Remember, this comparison is just Blackjack games v. Blackjack games and does not take into account any comps, mailers, points, free play, online bonuses or anything like that, so actual mileage is going to vary. If you hope to use these things to play Blackjack advantageously online, (and the casino doesn’t have a rule that says you can’t) then the online Blackjack survey will give you a pretty good baseline for where to start.

For example, I could look at the 99.79% RTP on a single-deck game offered by a casino powered by CryptoLogic and say, “Hey, that might be worth looking into, let’s see how much their points are worth,” and then make that determination to see if the game is positive, overall. I can also look at the single-deck AmigoTechs 6:5 game with an RTP of 98.72% and go running for the nearest toilet in which to vomit. Why do they need to cut such a big base edge out of a game that almost nobody plays perfectly, anyway?

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The best part is many of these online games come with extremely low minimums, so if you just want to kill time expecting to lose, or hoping to hit a really good run for low stakes, then you’ll get a ton of bang for your buck out of a decent Blackjack game. That’s not the case with live Blackjack games in Las Vegas, in many casinos (Aria, top of the list, is one example) you can’t even get an RTP of 99%+ (mostly due to 6:5 on a Natural) unless you’re betting at least $25 a hand!

The very next casino on the list offers a nice 99.66% return on a double-deck game for only $5 a hand, though, so the location and aesthetic appeal of the casino also plays a big part in it when it comes to physical gambling. That stuff isn’t for me, though, because I care about WINNING! If I want to worry about aesthetic appeal, I’ll sit on a mountain and watch the sunset, RTP 100%, because I’m not gambling anything.

So, Is That the Whole Story?

Absolutely not!

This is just a baseline, for both online casinos and B&M casinos, a starting point. The house edge of a particular game only tells part of the story. For B&M’s, you have to ask, “How are the comps, are the points tracked correctly, what are points worth, how’s the mail?” There may be other questions you would ask, too, particularly if you are counting, edge-sorting or hole-carding.

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The online player tends to have one significant advantage over the B&M player, the online player is able to answer questions with respect to the value of points and how points and/or cashback is earned before ever buying-in to begin with. There’s a lot of trial-and-error in this regard in B&M casinos, and good Blackjack games (especially when combined with a player who plays well) are often met with a cold shoulder from a comping standpoint such that a base game that seems really good can effectively never become positive. (Absent counting or other tactics) With online casinos, at least good online casinos, everything is going to be laid out for you in black and white, so you can see how the points/cashback will improve your RTP.

Online blackjack is really more for the true blackjack enthusiast, though. Overall, it’s much different game than when LCB Admin earned his significant winnings playing it and the casinos are hip to the methods that made such winnings possible. Even in cases where Blackjack is not excluded from bonuses and/or playthrough requirements, the terms are usually such that the blackjack cannot be played at a significant advantage, or can only be played at a significant advantage in conjunction with other games. (Using the variance of another game to your advantage in conjunction with a bonus, generally, and then grinding out the playthrough on Blackjack). Aside from that, you might be able to combine points and bonuses into a very slight advantage playing Blackjack exclusively, if allowed, but don’t expect it to be the cash cow it once was.

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Most importantly, if you ever find an angle on Blackjack at an online casino where your overall RTP is, say, 100.25%, or more, that’s a rare find and you should keep it to yourself! Even if you’re the only one playing it, provided you run at expectation over a sustained period of time, a play like that probably won’t last long on such a low variance game like Blackjack. If you bring a bunch of other players in on it and the casino sees that several players are winning pretty steadily on the blackjack game (showing overall profits, anyway) over the course of a few months, then the game itself will change or the terms/conditions and/or comps will.

Actually, it could all change, several casinos really seem to enjoy going the, ‘Scorched Earth,’ route when they discover that one of their games is beatable.

If nothing else, those are fun charts to look at to compare what you can expect from an online Blackjack game to that in a B&M casino. It doesn’t tell the whole story, but it tells enough of it that you know where to start. Whatever the reason you play, always find the best way and don’t give up one cent more than you have to I say!

“The online player tends to have one significant advantage over the B&M player”

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