Doubling Your Money: Poker vs. Roulette
This is a guest post from Greg Walker. Greg writes excellent Texas Hold’em strategy at his site ThePokerBank.com.
This is going to be an article about a hypothetical situation that I’m sure many a poker player has thought about from time to time…
If you were going to try and double a set amount of money as quickly as possible, would you be better off taking it to the poker or Roulette tables?
It’s an interesting idea, so lets take a look at a few key points and see which one is going to be the best option.
The Odds.
On a European Roulette table, the house edge is 2.7%, which means that you have 47.3% equity per bet. So if you went all out on one spin and placed all of your money on an evens bet like “Red”, you have just under a 50/50 chance of doubling your money.
That’s all pretty straightforward, but working out the equity and chances of winning in Poker is going to be a little trickier.
In Poker, you are not going to the know the definite odds of winning from one hand to the next. However, to make things a little easier on ourselves, lets assume that we are going to go balls to the walls and move all-in on every hand in the hope of getting lucky. This will be the fastest route in our attempt to double our money.
By moving such a large amount of money in before the flop, we are only going to get called by a certain range of premium hands. These will include hands like TT+, AK and possible AQ depending on the type of players that we are up against, whereas we will be holding a random pair of cards.
If this is the case, we will have equity on average of around 20% to 25% (using an equity calculator), which is far lower than the equity we have by placing a bet on Roulette. Therefore with this basic approach, we are better off throwing all our money on to red rather than taking it to the Poker table as far as our odds are concerned.
Shifting The Odds.
So, on the surface it seems as though taking your money to the nearest high limit Roulette table is the best option for doubling our money. However, Poker has the unique advantage of allowing us to improve our odds with better strategy. Therefore we can increase our chances of winning by tightening up our play.
In spite of this, our initial aim was to double our money relatively quickly, so by employing a solid strategy it is not possible to tell how long this would take.
Nonetheless, if you are a winning player, we can assume that the opportunity to double up will come from an all-in coin-flip or during a well-played hand on your behalf. Therefore, seeing as you will have the edge over the long run (because of your superior strategy), we can assume that you will fair better in doubling-up situations more often than not.
Taking this into account, this will result in you having a greater than 50% equity in Poker on average, which is of course better than the odds you are getting from Roulette.
Overview.
The conclusion? Well, if you want to make the process quick and easy (or if you have little skill in Poker), take your money to the Roulette tables.
On the other hand, if you have a little extra time on your hands and you like to think that you know solid Poker strategy, you are better off playing a few hands of Poker and seeing if you can get your money in with the best of it.
What would I do? More than likely throw it on Roulette. Quick and painless, and potentially less frustrating. I grind out Poker winnings on a regular basis, so going for a spin on the Roulette wheel will be a breath of fresh air.
Although in honesty, I would rather not find myself in the situation where I had to bring together some money so desperately! Interesting thought nonetheless.
