rule variation profitability? (casino-side)

[EasyRhino]

I was just wondering if there was any (publicly available) information about how various blackjack rule modifications affect a table's profitability for a casino.

What really got me curious was surrender. I've seen only a very few people play it properly. A significantly larger fraction surrender on very arbitrary (and wrong) hands. And of course, the vast majority of players don't surrender at all, because they're not used to it. So, while adding late surrender to a shoe game may drop the house edge vs a basic strategy player by .08%, how does it really affect the store? My hunch would be not even that much, simply because it's a less-played variant.

Or what about allowing double on anything? Do the player mistakes from bad doubles compensate for the expense of people playing the soft doubles right?

I really have no idea. But if I was running a ploppy casino, I'd be inventing entirely new carnival rules.

 

[Renzey]

Ploppy Soft Doubles

I ran some sims which showed that the typical ploppy soft doubling strategy of doubling A/2, A/3, A/4, A/5 and A/6 vs. 3, 4, 5 or 6 was about .03% better for the player than not soft doubling at all. Proper soft doubling however, was worth .10%.

Then there are the common ploppy errors of doubling 4/4 vs. 4, 5 or 6 and the occasional double on 12.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

I'd say that in shoe games the only rule that always costs a casino any money is the RSA rule, because even ploppies know to split aces and to resplit them. It's hard to screw up resplitting aces. DAS does too but in shoe DAS is the rule rather than the exception. Most ploppies err by not doubling enough or splitting enough (e.g., refusing to split 9's -"but you already have a winning hand!")

Late surrender is my favorite rule because both the casinos and the AP's make money from it. It has a lot more profit for an AP but there are so few of us compared to the people who misplay surrender. One downside for the casino is that the really big bettors don't surrender; they like to be seen putting large sums at risk and surrender tarnishes that image.

Still, there's probably no rule variation that makes them as much money as sidebets.