Beat the Casino Ride The Bus [$500 -> $721] [44% ROI]

[Corner]

Strategy

Average +$221 per $500 bet, but bet 6.6% of your bankroll to maximise growth.

Red or Black:

Doesn't matter

Higher or Lower:

<9 -> higher
9 -> cashout
>9 -> lower

Inside or Outside

difference of 5 or 6 -> cashout (i.e 3,8 or 3,9)
otherwise -> choose the obvious choice

Suit

choose any suit not already played

This game is so heavily skewed towards the player that even if you don't play the optimal strategy (play without cashouts) you will still on average make +$216 on every $500 bet.

Reasoning

Here is my python simulation assuming a single deck of cards: pastebin[pastebin.com]

Every single decision is profitable (on average), excluding the first one which is net even.

Since you can always cashout, you will always profit regardless of how small the increasing multipliers are. This is because any game state where you could lose you can instead just cashout and make money.

The suit decision multiplier being so high makes it especially profitable (33% ROI), which snowballs through the previous decisions.

The bet of 6.6% of the bankroll is calculated using the Kelly criterion and that the variance is ~21.7.

Let me know if you find any mistakes in my simulation.

[Corner]

Realised that "higher" will succeed even if you have the same rank of card so updated everything to account for that

[Beba]

I went from like 1000--> 70,000 on night when I was particularly bored. You can go on crazy -30,000 lose streaks too though.

[Owennerd]

I have never seen a casino game this heavily in the players favor in any game, ever.

It's so poorly designed in terms of player advantage, ha.

When my friend was streaming he started playing Ride the Bus and I very quickly realized how insanely +EV it is to play. We actually did 7, 8, or 9 cashout to lower variance. The fact you can essentially cash out your bet when you don't like the odds you're presented is insane. It's also insane that the worst odds you're ever given are the opening 50-50 color choice, and even that is purely even odds...

I got him from $5k to $80k in like an hour. It's also a legal casino so really the best way to make money in the game is through purely legal means!

[Sugarwolf]

I mean that's great and all but if you just max bet all five of the slots for a few minutes you'll hit the 10k jackpot at least once if not multiple times.