Share this

Wizard Recommends

Ask the Wizard #177

I noticed you recently changed what you think is the house advantage for pontoon. It used to be .17% making it a very attractive game. Now its .38%, making it not nearly very attractive. As far as I know for many years your website has always said .17% and now it says .38%. Was there a screw-up you just didn’t catch until now? What happened exactly that had you changing the HA so dramatically?

Ben B.

I must confess that my 0.17% figure was an error. I discovered the flaw in my analysis when I recently updated it for the Microgaming rules. To all those who played it because of my 0.17% figure, I apologize.

What is the house edge in video blackjack?

Mickey C. from Reno

It depends on the particular rules, but it is usually high because of a common rule that blackjack pays only even money. I checked at the Suncoast and they have the following rules: one deck, dealer stands on soft 17, blackjack pays even money, late surrender allowed, player may only double on 10 or 11, double after split not allowed, split aces get one card each, only one split allowed, six card Charlie, dealer must stop with six cards. The house edge of this game is 2.39%.

What is the expected number of tosses required in order to obtain at least one of each of the possible outcomes on an unbiased 6 sided dice?

Michael from Melbourne

If the probability of something is p then on average it will take 1/p trials for it to happen the first time. Obviously, on the first roll you’ll cross off one number. The probability of rolling one of the other five numbers next is 5/6. So it will take on average 1/(5/6)=6/5=1.2 rolls for that to happen. Following that reasoning to the end, the expected number of rolls is (6/6)+(6/5)+(6/4)+(6/3)+(6/2)+(6/1) = 14.7.


Paul from Raleigh



Matt from Denver



Daniel L.



Gene from New York City


What is the classical probability of getting a total of 12 when 5 balanced dice are rolled?

Kennith H. from Winters

I hope you’re happy, I just added a new section answering questions such as this for 1 to 25 dice. As the five-dice table shows, the probability of rolling a total of 12 is 0.039223251028807.


Jeff from Rochester



Terry from Corpus Christi






