Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Spread in betting games

Friday, October 23, 2009

Spread in betting games

What are the spreads in some of the common betting games, such as 4D, Toto, Big Sweep, horse racing, football betting?

Here are the ways to find out:

a) 4D, Big Sweep. Assume that the operator sell all of the tickets. How much money is collected? How much money is paid out, adding up all the prizes of all the winning tickets. This represents the odds. I believe that the total payout is about 60% to 75% of the total bets. The balance goes towards expenses (e.g. salaries, printing, office, sales commission), taxes (i.e. paid to the Government) and profit to the operator.

b) Toto, horse racing, football betting. You are not able to calculate the bets and prizes from the structure of the betting game as there are some variables that cannot be directly calculated. Here, you can look at the accounts and find out the total amount that is collected from the bets and the total paid out as prizes to the winners.

Which game is best for betting? It depends on whether you are a real gambler (in which case, you choose a game with the highest payout ratio, such as roulette or poker), or whether you are a fun gambler (in which case, you choose a game that you enjoyed most, such as horse racing or football betting).

Tip: Always bet with money that you can afford to lose. Treat it as another form of entertainment. If you can spend $500 on a holiday, and you enjoy spending this amount on a betting game, go and bet - but make sure that the money can give you the enjoyment for a few hours or a day (and not in just a few minutes).

Tan Kin Lian

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: Thanks for an interesting set of articles on gambling as a form of entertainment.

Would like to make a small contribuition with regard to gambling at Genting.

Going to Genting is one of the most popular forms of holiday entertainments for Singaporeans. If you sit round the coffee shop to swap Genting stories, you will inevitably hear horror stories of how people lost several thousand dollars over a weekend holiday at Genting.

A holiday in Genting does not have to be a horror story where you spend thousands of dollars over a few days. In you exercise a bit of self control, you can have a good time with a modest amount of money.

The easiest way to do this is to make use of the daily Casino package. You can buy this on arrival at the counter outside the Monte Carlo casino room.

The package is good value for money. For 100 RM, you get

1) Approximately RM 110 in chips/slot machine credits

2) A RM10 meal voucher.

You therefore pay RM 100 to get RM 120 worth of benefits.

Given that most games/machines in Genting return 95 cents to 97 cents for every RM 1 that is wagered, this is actually a postive expectations games. This means that if you do this many many times, in the long run you can expect a positive return.

The good part about playing ONLY with the casino package only is that it limits the amount of money which you spend gambling. At RM100 per day, you get yourself a limit of RM 300 for a 3 day / 2 night stay. This is a very modest amount which is affordable to most Singaporeans going for a short holiday.

Once you have used up that daily amount on gambling, you can then spend time to enjoy the other attractions at Genting which are subsidised by the earning from the casino,; October 23, 2009 10:01 AM
Anonymous said...: If we "liken" our banking hall as a way of gambling in structured products to a casino, then I have the following revelations (while holidaying on the star cruise):

i) the nite is forever young in the casino.. that means there would be no shortage of investors in structured products.

ii)all clients in the casino parted their money willingly ... same as investors in the structured products.

Let us all hope that in furture, we play moderately, and invest wisely and carefully.; October 23, 2009 10:12 PM
Vincent Sear said...: Yes, the casino package is a marketing package to tempt you to play beyond that. There're actuarial calculations behind this kind of offer packages, e.g. for XX customers who played off and go, there're XXX customers who played on and lose on.; October 23, 2009 10:35 PM
Anonymous said...: The slot machines pays 95-97%. I dont think this is correct.; October 24, 2009 1:29 PM
Anonymous said...: How much do the slots at Genting pay? Unlike Las Vegas, Genting does not publish the pay out rate of their machines. Would be quite interested in empirical work anyone has done to determine what is the slot payout at Genting.; October 25, 2009 7:56 AM
SD said...: In 4D, Toto etc, i think the payout is much lesser than 60 - 75%. Unconfirmed, but I think they only pay about 40% of the total bets.; October 27, 2009 10:20 AM