Big Six is more of a carnival game than a casino game. It’s not even that common anymore. But I do know one thing about carnival games – the odds are in the casino’s favor in a BIG way.
Here’s how the Big Six works. There is a revolving wheel, similar to the Wheel of Fortune, but it is vertical rather than level with the ground. There are dollar symbols of various denominations on the wheel, and these dollar amounts are also found on the surface of the betting table.
The wheel and table also have options for the “Big Six” logo.
If you bet $1 on the result of $1, you win $1 if that result comes out when the wheel stops. If you bet $5, you win $5 if that result comes when the wheel stops. And so on for the $10 and $20 bets. Betting on the logo pays $40.
The odds of winning most of these bets are poor compared to the payout, but some bets are definitely better than others in this game.
The best of the bad bets in this game is the $1 bet. The casino’s advantage for this bet is just 11.11%. That’s twice the casino’s advantage over American roulette, which if you remember has already appeared on our list of worst casino games.
But that is the BEST bet in this game. Bet $5 or $20 and the casino edge is 22.22%. That’s about what you’d expect from a game of keno, but it doesn’t have even the slightest chance of getting a big payout. The best you can hope to win is $5 or $20.
It’s a ridiculous game that you can’t find in many casinos anymore. When you actually find him, you’ll usually see him by the entrance.
I don’t judge casino games based on casino advantage alone, but I take that into account, and so should you.
There’s no good strategy for playing Big Six, but if you’re going to play, stick to the $1 bets as the casino edge increases stratospherically to all other bets at the table.
War
Vegas Vacation, and the character Chevy Chase goes to a less frequented casino that has a few stupid games. One of the games was War, which, as far as I know, wasn’t actually being played in real casinos at the time. That was part of the joke. But some casino executives saw an opportunity somewhere here, and gambling is now quite common.
The problem is that it’s boring and has poor odds.
The game works like this:
When you were a kid, you probably played War on the kitchen table. You draw a card, and your opponent draws another card. The player with the highest card wins the hand. If there is a tie, you turn over 2 or 3 cards and have to play another one.
In the casino version of the game, you and the dealer compete in the same type of challenge. But if you have to go to War in the event of a tie, you only win your original bet, although you have to place an additional bet to go to War in the first place.
Not only does the game have a relatively high casino edge, it is played incredibly quickly. Unlike blackjack, there are few decisions to be made. And we are talking about half of the cards per hand. So seeing 200 hands an hour is not surprising or even difficult to achieve while playing Casino War.
The casino edge is between 2% and 2.5%, but there is a side bet where you can bet on whether or not to go to war in that hand. The casino’s advantage in this bet is great. The payout is only 10 to 1, but the odds of actually going to war in a given hand are 12 to 1.
War is similar to games like roulette and slots. You have no opportunity to make any kind of decision that would help you win more often.