The chance won't come again Trivia Quiz

Answer: Blackjack

The insurance bet is a situational side bet in Blackjack. It is offered only when the dealer's upcard is an ace and "insures" the player's hand against the (not too improbable) case that the dealer has a Blackjack, thus making all player hands excepts Blackjacks lose. An insurance bet is always half your base bet and pays 2:1. If it wins, it thus exactly compensates the loss of the main bet.

As it has a higher house edge than the main Blackjack game, it should never be taken unless you are card counting and have a massively favorable count, but even in that case, you'd want to avoid it, because it would immediately tell the casino you're counting and you would probably be asked to play a different game or cash out and leave.

Answer: Blackjack

The double down bet is an important tool in Blackjack strategy. Depending on the casino's rules, you can double down any two-card hand, only unsplit hands or only certain totals (usually 9 to 11 or even 10 to 11). Doubling requires you to put down another bet and you always get exactly one additional card after doing so. Since you will only double down when in an advantageous position, you always want to make this extra bet as large as the original, although it is technically allowed to double down for less - but that would only be advisable if you're on your last full bet and don't have enough left to fully cover your initial stake.

Played with proper strategy, Blackjack is the best casino game available, featuring a house edge of less than one percent and, with card-counting (tracking whether the remaining shoe is rich or poor on high cards and varying stakes and strategy based on that), can theoretically even be played profitably. However, if you deviate from the strategy and play hunches, you might very quickly find your bankroll evaporated!

Answer: Blackjack

Splitting is another Blackjack option. It is available only if your original two cards form a pair. You put down another bet (which must exactly match your original bet, no higher or lower) and split your pair into two hands, each of which receives a new second card and is then played as a separate hand, so you could win one and lose the other. Some casinos limit resplits, particularly on aces, others let players resplit as long as they can and wish to do so. An important rule to remember is to always split aces and eights (turning a horrible 16 into two more salvageable hands) and never split tens (which will usually win as a 20) or fives (which would turn a great start you'd usually want to double with into two probable disasters). Other hands might be split depending on the dealer's upcard.

Note that "split" is als a Roulette bet on exactly two numbers adjacent on the grid (like 4 and 5 or 18 and 21), but it is not an even-money bet since it pays 17 to 1 if you should win.

Answer: Roulette Even Money

Betting on odd or even is one of the three types of even-money bets available on Roulette. Zero is considered neither odd nor even and thus all bets lose when a zero comes up, unless the "en prison" rule is in effect where even-money bets remain on the table for the next spin on a zero. If they were to win the next spin, they are returned (push), otherwise they lose.

Answer: Roulette Even Money

While red and black are also colors of playing cards, there is no simple red or black bet available in any major casino card game. Instead, it is a roulette bet. Usually, colors of numbers alternate as one counts up from 1 to 36, but in three positions of the grid, this pattern is broken: 10-11 and 28-29 are black pairs while 18-19 is red. This setup makes sure that this bet type is fully independent of the odd/even or high/low pattern - there are exactly nine red odd, nine red even, nine red high and nine red low numbers.

For any Roulette bet (with one exception), you can calculate the payout as follows: Divide 36 by the number of winning spots, then subtract 1. Thus, almost all bets carry the same house edge. The one exception is the five-number bet on American (double zero) Roulette. As 36 is not evenly divisible by 5, this bet does not pay the correct 6.2 to 1, but only 6 to 1, making it a bad bet.

Answer: Roulette Even Money

You'll find the numerical 19-36 (and 1-18) designation on most Roulette tables, but in France and some European countries, this bet might be marked as "Passe" (and its low-number counterpart as "Manque").

If it were not for the zero(es), Roulette would be a fair game - all bets would be paid at the exact odds of the desired outcome happening. Thus, if you should ever want to play Roulette, try to find a French table with only a single zero - the house edge is only half as high on those as on the more common American double-zero tables!

Answer: Craps

The pass bet is the most basic Craps bet. You can make it only on a come-out roll of the dice, right after the previous set of pass bets has resolved. If the shooter (the person who rolls the dice) gets a 7 or 11 in their first roll, you win; if they get 2, 3 or 12, you lose, otherwise the number rolled becomes the point. The shooter continues to roll until either the point comes up again, in which case all pass bets win or a 7 is rolled ("Seven Out") and pass bets lose. In case of a Seven Out (but not on a losing opening roll), the dice pass to the next patron.

The pass bet has a house edge of only around 1.4%, so it is one of the best bets in the casino if you want to just have fun (and a free drink or three) without thinking much.

Answer: Craps

If you want more betting action at a Craps table than just betting on come-out rolls, you can also make a come bet. This makes the next roll a come-out roll just for your bet. You would win on a seven while everyone having played a standard pass loses due to the Seven Out. If you want to avoid that, bet "Don't Come" which is just the opposite - you bet on the set of rolls losing by "pass" rules (there is also a "Don't Pass" bet if you want to be negative). Now, with pass being successful just slightly less than 50% of the time, a "don't" bet would have a player advantage, so there is one small modifications: If the first roll of a "don't" bet is a 12 (a few casinos use the 2 instead), the bet merely pushes instead of winning. This makes its house edge almost exactly the same as that of a pass bet.

Craps is a very social and emotional game, with players enjoying winning and losing together - thus, if you wish to be a negative bettor, "don't come" will align you with the masses more than the slightly frowned-upon "don't pass".

Answer: Craps

A bet that doesn't make the casino any money? You can have that at the Craps table, but only as an add-on. First, you must make a pass or come bet (or one of its negatives). Then, if the roll was a point, you can bet extra money which will pay at exactly your winning chances: If the point is a 4 or 10, positive odds will pay 2 to 1, if it is 5 or 9, they pay 3 to 2 and for a 6 or 8, they pay 6 to 5. On negative bets, you instead "lay odds", i.e. you would bet 2 extra units to win 1 on a 4 or 10, and so on. Casinos usually allow double or triple odds (two or three times your original bet on positive bets, enough to win that amount on negative ones), but some allow odds bets up to 100 times the original.

While the odds bets technically don't make the casino any money, they still provide it with a subtle advantage: They make players bet more, thus increasing the risk that a losing streak will eliminate their bankroll at which point they are done playing and can't win it back! If you plan on playing Craps with significant odds bets, you'll thus want to use a lower base bet than you'd use without, thus making your gambling money last the same number of rolls.

Answer: Baccarat

Baccarat is a card game whose rules at first look complex: Two cards each are dealt to two hands called Player and Banker (which is just for bets - you can bet either). Then their value is determined by adding up the pips (10s and faces count 0) and, if needed, discounting the tens digit: a 9 and a 7 make a hand value of 6.

Then, if either hand is an 8 or 9, the round is over and the higher total wins (ties push). If that's not the case, a player hand of 6 or 7 will stand while 5 or less will draw a third card. If the player stood, the banker uses the same rule (they will not try to improve a 6 even against a player 7). So far, so good...

Answer: Baccarat

It however really gets complex if the player hand took a third card. Now, that third card (ignoring the first two) determines how the banker will draw. On a player draw of 8, the bank draws only on 0, 1 or 2, while on a 6 or 7, it will draw on any value from 0 to 6, standing only on a 7. The other values fall in between. The aim of this complex procedure (which you do not have to remember at all - your friendly dealer will do all of it) is to make the two sides very even, so the player hand will win (ignoring ties) just under 50% of the time, while the banker hand wins a little over that - with the caveat that banker wins incur a 5% commission, so if you bet $20, you'll only win $19.

This 5% and the ritual around the game (on true Baccarat tables, players will actually deal the cards as instructed by casino staff, making rounds somewhat slow) are the reasons that Baccarat is typically a high-stakes game although you can usually find it as Mini-Baccarat with all card handling done by staff and minimum bets as low as $5 (bring a roll of quarters to pay the commissions on Banker bet wins!) although a $20 minimum is far more common, avoiding cash at the tables.

Answer: Baccarat

The tie bet is the third and final betting option on Baccarat tables. It pays 8 to 1 or, occasionally 9 to 1. The latter sounds fair (after all, there are ten possible scores, so a tie should come up every 10 games), but the complex banker third-card rules ensure ties are less common than they would be, so even in the generous 9 to 1 payout, the house edge remains at 4.85% while with the more common 8 to 1, it is a devastating 14.4%! To compare, the player and banker bets both have a house edge of around 1%, with the banker bet being slightly better even in spite of the commission.

Note that some sports books will allow a "tie" bet on certain games, e.g. soccer matches, but the quiz specifies MLB, where tied games always go to extra innings!

Answer: Sports Book (MLB)

A moneyline bet is probably the most straightforward bet you can make on a baseball game. You pick the team to win and if your favorite team wins, you win as well - the question is just how much.

There are two types of sports book odds: One is based on expert knowledge: The casino offers fixed odds based on their own estimate of which team is more likely to win and if you win, you will get the amount you saw when you placed your wager.

The other is called pari mutuel: The casino will pay out all stakes of the losing side (after deducting its own share) to winning bettors. In pari mutuel, the final payout may thus be different from the odds you see when you place your bets; if a lot of people back the same team, it can go down - or if a lot of people back the opponent, you might find your windfall higher than you thought!

Answer: Sports Book (MLB)

Over (and its counterpart, under) is not a bet on who will win, but rather on whether the game will be high or low scoring because you do bet against a threshold of the total score achieved by both teams. If you bet on over 8.5, it does not matter whether the Yankees trounce the Cubs 9-0, the Cubs walk away with an 8-1 rout or it was a ninth-inning nailbiter of 5-4 - all that matters is that at least nine runs were scored. So you are effectively betting on a "batter vs pitcher" match.

Over/under bets are also called total bets and, to avoid pushes, will always feature a half-point threshold - 8.5 means "at least 9 to win". The sports book will usually set the threshold at a level where it can offer close to even money (minus its own share) odds to both sides.

Answer: Sports Book (MLB)

Many sports book bets are set to have odds close to even money, so if you want a really big win, you'll either need a big stake - or bet a parlay. In a parlay, you make not one result prediction (be it moneyline, point spread or over/under), but at least two, and you win only if all your predictions are true. So if you make that 12-way parlay bet in the hopes of becoming a millionaire and get 11 right and your 12th is off by one point, you get a big fat nothing!

Parlay bets are often very disadvantageous to the bettor as they just use the multiplied odds given for each individual bet, as if you placed your stake on the first game and then let it ride for all others. In multi-way parlays, this means that the house edge (usually around 10%) thus gets applied as many times as you have games on your card: A 4-way parlay with a 10% per-line edge would incur a 34.4% house edge and the aforementioned 12-way a crazy 77.8% one!