Amazing what 'not a soul knew anything remotely resembling optimal strategy' did to ensure the game's survival.

But it still doesn't change the fact that it's a rather dull game, but no reason why it couldn't appear on a video poker terminal or some such.īut it's interesting that blackjack survived and flourished despite having a similarly low (or lower!) house edge. Only if a pair was dealt, the house would half of all bets on that card (instead of pushing them), and that's super rare - off the top it would be 1 in 221, and you'd lose half a bet, so that's only a 0.23% house edge, and it's moot anyways because a player could wait until only 1 card of the rank remained and then the house edge could never rear it's ugly head and just bet on that card, and if the last three cards had a pair, they could make a zero-vig bet on them.Ī faro game that took half of ALL bets on any pair would give a 2.94% house edge off the top, much closer to modern standards, and you could institute an early shuffle if no pairs remained.

Card game faro