What is PA?

[Ellis Davis]

Basically, PA is Player Advantage, ROI (Return on Investment). 

Units won divided by units bet. Money earned as a percentage of money invested. It is the standard way all businesses track profits.

The term “PA” was brought to the gambling table by the BJ card counting Instructors. They claim that a BJ player who plays perfect Basic Strategy and counts highs vs lows perfectly and follows their instructions to the letter regarding bet amounts can average a 0.5% PA.

Well, even if that were possible, which it isn’t, what exactly would that mean in terms of profits?

It means that for every $1,000 our card counter bets, he makes a profit of $5.00 $5.00 is 0.5% of $1,000… See that?

Let’s say our counter is playing a $10.00 table. He MUST bet every hand – those are the rules. So his low bet must be at least $10.00. His high bet is likely to be $25.00. He will likely have a sufficiently high enough + count to make his high bet 25% of the time. So his ABS (average bet size) is $12.50. Therefore, to make his $5 profit, he would have to make 80 bets. – about 2 hours worth in a fast game. Then, if all goes perfectly, which it never does, our counter can expect to make $2.50 an hour on a perfect day. Meanwhile his waitress made at least ten times that.

Now, let’s check out a typical NOR Baccarat player at a $10.00 table. A Basic NOR Player playing a 123 prog is playing to a goal of 10.00 units. That is his goal but he won’t likely average that. 5 units a shoe is a pretty good average. 50 hands bet per shoe is about normal and one hour per shoe gives him plenty of time for table searching. That works out to about $50.00 an hour or $40.00 after commission – or about 16 times what a card counter can make on his best day. Apples to apples.

Ha, yet we have thousands of players trying to learn card counting compared to a handful learning Baccarat. Go figure. 

 

 

 

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