Mississippi Stud House Edge and Risk Odds Explained

By John Grochowski on Tuesday May 8, 2018

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Players who try to sort good bets from the bad sometimes find difficulty with new games that involve more than one round of betting.

Those games have two figure that could fairly be categorized as house edges. A reader recently pointed out that wizardofodds.com lists a house edge of 4.91 percent for Mississippi Stud Poker, but also an element of risk of 1.37 percent.

“Can you explain what that means?” he asked. “A 4.91 percent house edge seems to say this is a pretty bad game, almost as bad as the 5.26 percent on roulette. But that 1.37 percent compares more to the good games like baccarat, if element of risk is anything like house edge.”

Both are important figures. The house edge tells you that on average, the house expects to keep 4.91 percent of your ante. If you begin with a $5 ante, the house expects to profit by about 24.6 cents per hand.

But your wagering doesn’t stop at the ante. Using optimal strategy, additional bets will take the total wager up to an average of 3.59 times your ante per hand.

The average total wager with a $5 ante will be $17.95. But your average loss is still 24.6 cents, the amount already figured into the listed house edge.

If you divide the 4.91 percent house edge by the 3.59 average betting units, you get an element of risk of 1.37 percent.

I generally use the same numbers, but with slightly different terminology — house edge on the ante and house edge on total action.

If you play double-zero roulette, you don’t have the same ante/bet procedure, and you normally can’t bet in nickel denominations, but let’s use a $17.95 wager for a comparison. With a 5.26 percent house edge, your average loss would be 94.4 cents — nearly four times as much as the 24.6-cent loss for a $5 ante/$17.95 total wager Mississippi Stud.

The house edge on the ante makes Mississippi Stud look like the same caliber of bet as double-zero roulette, but the element of risk / house edge on total action tells us you have a better shot to win at Mississippi Stud.