arkaine23

On 9/10/2021 at 12:35 PM, JaniceB said:

So if you use sail and sign to buy chips with onboard credit you have to pay a service fee?  I guess no service fee on slots when you put card in machine.  Can you play slots, cash out and get money to buy chips?

3% fee.  On slots, you can xfer OBC to your player bank but you can't cash it out until its played.  You can only cash out the winnings.

On 9/20/2021 at 3:33 AM, Caribbean Drifters said:

was this roulette play pre shut down, or recently?

Recently.  Aug 28 - Sept 4 on Vista

I was learning on my last cruise.  My wife and I had a lot of OBC and were trying to spend some of it to get into Player's Club and get the casino offers.  Spoiler:  It worked.  We also made a little money from our OBC.

I played roulette.  This is American Roulette so there are two greens, 0 and 00, as the casino's over 5% house advantage... compared to European Roulette where there's just 1 green 0 and slightly less than a 3% house advantage.    Carnival's tables had two unique outside bets however, Red + Even (8 numbers out of 38) and Black + Odd (8 numbers out of 38).   These are slightly below 25% chance of winning and pay out 3:1.  They both also pay out 1:1 on a 0, which could cut into the house advantage a little depending on how you bet.

Outside bets have a $5 minimum.  So for examples I'll use $5 bets.  You could bet $5 on 1st Dozen (numbers 1-12), $5 on Red+Even, and $5 on Black+Odd.  There is some overlap, 12 is in 1st Dozen and  Red+Even, and 11 is in 1st Dozen and Black+Odd.  0 also overlaps to win on 2 of your bets.  The other 14 Red+Even and Black+ Odd are spread out across the other 24 numbers.  Plus you've got 0 covered, so 27 out of the 38 numbers will win for you.

Each round you're betting $15.

If it lands on either 11 or 12 you win $35.   (2 out of 38, about 5%)

If 0, 13-18, or 29-36, you win $20.  (15 out of 38, about 40%)

If 1-10 you win $15, so you break even.  (10 out of 38, about 26%)

19-28 or 00 you lose $15.  (11 out of 38, about 29%)

Playing like this can prolong your game time.  You win or break even at least 70% of the time.  The house will still win in the long run though, so always try to manage your bankroll and winnings so that you quit when you're ahead.

This is similar to what's called a 3/2 strategy.  With that you bet 3 units on a color and 2 units on a specific Column.  Columns 2 and 3 have uneven distribution of red and black.  So you're betting on the column that has only 4 of the color you're betting on, and gives you 8 numbers of the opposite color.  That has you covering 26 of the numbers on the wheel, and 4 of those numbers are an overlapping win.   

Color pays out 1:1 and Column pays out 2:1.  The 3/2 ratio of bets means both will pay out the same $ amount on a win.  With our $5 minimum outside bet, we'd have to bet $9 on a color and $6 on a column to do the right ratio.   So each round you're betting $15.  The bets are on either Red and Column 2 or Black and Column 3.

When you win, you win $18.   (26 out of 38)

If its one of the 4 overlapping number wins, you get $36.  (4 out of 38)

If its one of the 10 numbers that you don't have covered or 0 or 00 you lose.  (12 out of 38)

You can try out the 3/2 strategy in a roulette simulator.  You can't try out the modified 2/1/1 version of it that'd work on Carnival's tables because no roulette simulator I've found has Red+Even&0 or Black+Odd&0 with a 3:1 or 1:1 payouts.  Seems to be unique to Carnival's casino.

Kind of.  The transaction of purchasing chips is immediate.   You'd buy your chips with your sail n sign account at a table game.  This draws from OBC first, before any real money you've deposited into or any credit funding you've tied to your account.  This would cost you a (3%) $18 fee for $600 worth.    So do like $580 and leave ~20 OBC on there to cover the $17.40 fee.  You do not have to do this as a single transaction if you don't want to.  

I think the pit boss would have something to say if you go to a table and draw a bunch of chips and then don't play at that table.  So do nothing is not really an option.  But you can do small/easy bets and play for a good amount of time without wining or losing a whole lot.

I recommend treating your chips as 3 distinct groups-  one is the Bankroll you play with, one is an untouchable Reserve, and the last is your Winnings which you will redistribute into the other two every time you've spent your Bankroll.  To set an initial Bankroll, decide how much you are willing to lose.  For example, out of 580 I might do 180 Bankroll and 400 Untouchable Reserve.  I'd split Winnings to Bankroll and Reserve at a roughly even pace.  

When done with the game, tell the dealer you want to cash out.  They will switch your "play chips" (basic multi-colored plastic) for "cash chips" (black/red $ values, probably RFID).  You should tip the dealer a little too for entertaining you and for helping you with your credit-laundering scheme.   You can pocket the "cash chips" and play a different game, come back and play later, or exchange them for cash at the cage/cashier.

Find a free demo/simulator of the game you want to play.  DO NOT TRY to real money gamble online- that's a cesspit of shadiness.   Study the rules of your game(s) of choice and start practicing on free demos.

You can cash it out.  You just have to play with it some first and there may be a fee.

If you use it on slot machines, you can only cash out what you win. 

If you use it at table games there's a 3% service fee to buy chips with your sail n sign card.  IDK if they monitor/expect you to place a certain amount of bets.  Most likely you're not supposed to exchange chips and then cash out immediately without playing at all.  I played small amounts on outside bets at roulette, was able to play for quite awhile, and turned a small profit.

I expect all types of OBC are about the same in this regard.  "Fun play" or whatever casino-specific credit is called can likely only be used in the casino and no where else on the ship.

7 hours ago, highcorral25 said:

I have been on several Carnival cruises but have not gambled.  I most likely will on my upcoming November cruise (Freedom) using the $600 OBC to see if I get a casino offer.  I have some newbie questions about the mechanics.

 

I will most likely play craps and roulette only.

 

If you use your Sail & Sign card to buy chips, what do you do with the chips when you are finished gambling?  Do you cash them in and the credit goes back to your Sail & Sign card?

 

 

You cash them in at the "cage"/casino cashier desk.  Its chips -> cash in your hand.    If you wanted to you could take that cash to guest services and deposit it onto your sail n sign.  I did this with some winnings bc I had scoped out and decided to buy a pair of Diamond Earrings for my wife at the ship's Effy shop.

Can't help you with craps.  I'm still digesting those rules.  Has a lower house edge than roulette, so might be a good idea to research further.

For roulette:

There are 38 numbers on the wheel.  2 of them (0/00) are green.  This is the house's edge unless you choose to place bets on them, which equates to just short of 6% chance (1/17) for the house to win.  The other 1-36 are 18 black and 18 red numbers.  They are arranged in a 3x12 grid on the table.  

Outside bets are simple and have a high chance of winning.  There is a higher minimum wager on these (probably $5). 

• This is betting on red or black, odd or even, or low (1-18) or high (19-36).  These 6 bet types pay out 1:1.  Bet $5, win your original bet and $5 more. 
• There are also dozens and columns which are each a different cross section of 12 of the 36 numbers.   These pay our 2 to 1.  Bet $5, win your original bet +$10.

Carnival has an unusual outside bet for red+even and black+odd.  These amount to 8 of the 38 numbers, so around 20% chance of winning.  They pay out 3 to 1, so bet $5 win your original bet +$15.  They also carry a special rule of paying out 1 to 1 on a 0 (but still lose on 00), so they cut the house edge somewhat.

Inside bets have lower chances to win and a lower minimum wager ($1). 

• You can bet on a single number called Straight Up and get a 35:1 payout.
• 2 numbers is called a Split (put chip on the line between 2 adjacent numbers, 17:1 payout)
• a Row is like a Split where you bet on 0 and 00
• 3 numbers (a Street, place chip on the outside edge of a row of 3 horizontal numbers, 11:1 payout
• 4 numbers (a Corner, place chip in square intersection of 4 adjacent numbers 8:1 payout)
• 5 numbers (Top Line or Basket, this is a special bet of 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3, 6:1 payout (this is the bet with the worst odds)
• 6 numbers (a Double Street, placed like a Street, but bridging 2 rows of 3 numbers, 5:1 payout) 

Best advice:

Set a limit, don't chase your losses!

Walk away when you're ahead.  Put some of the money aside, then come back later with a fixed amount.

No strat is going make you beat the house in the long run.

Whatever trends are displayed for the last 100 rolls mean nothing.  The odds are always exactly the same regardless of past performance.

https://www.onlineroulette.ca/guides/three-two.php

I like the 3/2 strategy.  You place a 3 unit bet on a color and a 2 unit bet on a specific column.  There are 2 columns (#2 and #3) that have uneven color distributions of 4 red/8 black or 8 red/4 black.  So the idea is to bet red (18 numbers are red), and also the column that has 8 black/4 red in it.  This means you have odds on 26 out of 38 numbers on the wheel (nearly 70% of the wheel results in a win).  4 of the numbers overlap so you could win both wagers if the spin lands on one of those numbers.

The 3/2 split of what you bet is such that.... let's say we're using $1 chips, $5 is the min bet for outside bets, so you're doing $9 on a color and $6 on a column to maintain that 3:2 ratio.  You bet $15 each spin.   If the color bet wins, you get $18 (2:1 on $9).  If the column bet wins, you get $18 (3:1 on $4).  Both of these are higher than your total bet for the round of $15.  You can get lucky about 1/10 of the time with an overlapping win and win $36.  Or you can lose your $15 in bets around 30% of the time. 

I was trying to do something similar with Carnival's special Red+Even and Black+Odd outside bet options.  Haven't fully worked it out yet.

My wife did her 1st cruise in 2013.  We started cruising together once/year in 2017, 2018, 2019, and our delayed honeymoon cruise last week.   We live about 75 miles from a port so this is an easy vacation option for us.

She gambled $10 on a slot machine on our 2017 cruise, but never got any casino offers.  This year we had 2020-rebooking OBC, and I made sure we used $200 of it to gamble (on her sail n sign card) because I was hoping we could get these casino offers I kept hearing about-  $50 on slots and $150 on roulette.  We actually won a little more than we put it.

She got the $25 PP and DOU casino offers less than a week after our recent cruise.  Next cruise we'll gamble a little on my sail n sign card and see if I can get casino offers and if they are the same as hers.

We have never Cheers'd or Bottomless Bubbles'd.  We usually spend under $50 on drinks- some happy hour fishbowls.  We smuggle our own and/or order a large $80 bottle of liquor via room service that we mix with the soda we bring or with juices from breakfast.  We have always gotten the RU2 code for the Cheers deal.

I was on the week before.  We had 2533 passengers.  Most people wore masks in all the indoor areas of the ship besides their rooms.  Period.  Keep in mind this ship's crew had a fairly big C-19 outbreak in July.  Follow the rules and keep them safe.

Monday and Thursday were formal nights.  There were early/PG comedy shows.

12 hours ago, ngrund said:

John Heald has mentioned that the OBC for cancelled/rebooked cruises is not going to be able to be used for gift cards or cashed out in the casino.

 

What I have not seen mentioned, is donating any leftover to St Jude.

 

I know I won't have this problem if we end up going on our cruise in May-wife has promised to buy some jewelry if we have any left.

 

 

You can cash it out at the casino.  If you do slots you have to play the money and cash out the winnings.  Tables games its similar but not as 100% filtering the money through play as slots.  You cash an amount into chips and start playing.  You pay a 3% service fee up front for the conversion.  Personally, I didn't try turning a few hundred of OBC into chips and then making just a $1 bet/spin and then cashing out.  I imagine they might have something to say about that.   Your bets aren't being counted though, so seems that would be possible.

I googled how to play roulette.  I played outside bets and won, and got a few drinks, and lost, and tipped and did so a few times on different days and walked away with my $200 converted OBC as cash and a little extra.  Less than a week later I got casino Drinks On Us and $25 PP offers.  And that was the win I was aiming for.

No smoking in Vista's casino at all, and the bar has been removed.  But this has been the case for weeks on this particular ship AFAIK.

18 minutes ago, JaniceB said:

So if you use sail and sign to buy chips with onboard credit you have to pay a service fee?  I guess no service fee on slots when you put card in machine.  Can you play slots, cash out and get money to buy chips?

I would think so.  Any cash you hand over is dropped into the table and you get chips for it, no fee.  There was a young guy that dropped several $100's on mostly inside bets and played for a few mins with me, while I chugged along a bit ahead and mostly breaking even on my outside betting scheme for much longer. 

I haven't seen red+even or black+odd on roulette tables before.  These pay out 3:1 (~22%) or 1:1 on a 0 (~3%), so they cut into the house advantage some.  Playing one and also the opposite color bet worked pretty well for me.  Was up from $150 to over $400 for a little bit, but play long enough and you'll lose it all.

When you use cash at tables games you can tell them your folio number/register who you are by sail n sign if you want to.  I assume this goes towards building your DOU credit/threshold.

FYI my wife's luck on the slots was 50 OBC = $14.86 cash.  Of course with any games of chance, actual or digitally-approximated, YMMV.

We had tried slots on a cruise several years ago, but only like $10.  Of course we never got a casino deal from that.  There is some sort of threshold involved and it certainly seems to be greater than $10.

If it matters we're both Gold and typically do a 7 or 8 day cruise once/year.  We're hoping to start doing a 2nd cruise each year.  This was an intentional attempt to get Players Club deals on our part.  Like, I walked into the casino with a bunch of rebooking OBC as was like, now let's build up a record of some time and money transacted in here on under your name, DW, and do our best to not actually lose the money.

Got back from a 7-day cruise 5 days ago.  Gambled using some of our 2020 rebooking OBC & my wife's sail n sign.  She did $50 on slots, and I did $150 on roulette outside bets which I spread out over 3 play periods on different days for up to an hour.  We bought 3 drinks, tipped the dealer each time I played, and paid the 3% service fee for using sail n sign for chips.   It was pretty fun.  We walked away with $215 cash winnings from 200 OBC (and $4.50 service fees) spent.  Coulda done better if I had quit when ahead, and if we skipped trying the slots.

The real win, and our actual goal?   Wife just got $25 PP Interior with DOU offer email.  Checking our local port/ships and the deals are good through the end of the year with balcony upgrades obtainable for $125-590 PP depending on cruise week and duration.

1 hour ago, eclue said:

Just eliminate the smoking in the casino , there are other outside places on the ship where one can smoke if they so choose

 

On some ships they already did.

32 minutes ago, DanBoy said:

and as long as I have a drink should be ok.. I will walk in with one in my hand..

The casino staff on Vista expect you to slip n sip.  You pull your mask down just enough to take a drink, then pull it back up. 

7 hours ago, ALWAYS CRUZIN said:

You can purchase anything you want with it on board the ship.

Pretty sure you can NOT spend OBC on Carnival gift cards in the Candy Store.

Our 600 OBC went to these things.  Thankfully our balance grew a little on the roulette table, but still not enough to cover the diamond earrings that were a gift for my wife.  I left gratuity off the list, which is a good thing to spend OBC on.  We'd already pre-paid ours more than a year ago.

1)  Lobster rolls, Sushi, or other non-free dining options

2)  Gambling & Drinks

3)  Liquor

4)  Massage

5)  Candy

6)  iMax movie

7 )  T-shirts

8 ) Excursions

9)  Jewelry

I'd think you could report to medical on ship claiming you have symptoms, and they'd test you....  there might be a cost.

1 hour ago, BlerkOne said:

I thought it was more like 27 over a 2 week period.

Depends if you buy into cruise lawyer's onboard sources and math (42 crew and 5 passengers over 2 weeks), or take the numbers 26 & 1 reported by the Belizian authorities for the day the ship ported there in week 2 of the trouble.

Did not see/hear about any cases on Vista last week, although there were nearly 50 over a 2 week period a month ago..  There were some on Panorama and Mardi Gras recently, supposedly with some disembarked at foreign ports for medical (not necessarily covid) reasons.  Seems a handful of covid cases is typical (all ships almost always yellow status), but not disclosed.

MSC Virtuosa seems to have had the worst outbreak so far.

Just can't buy into the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask is unbearable mindset.  Happy to do so to protect the crew, fellow passengers, and people working in the foreign destination ports.  It was little uncomfortable enduring some hours in the heat at ports, so pick beach/swimming excursions?  Doing no excursuon and just shopping in Belize was probably a mistake, but I managed for 3 hours in the heat in a mask just fine.

They will also price match if you find better deals in ports and take photo evidence.  Cozumel prices were $13 less for a liter of johnny white walker and $4.60 less for liters of jack daniels when I was there last week for example, which had carnival refund me the $22.20 difference for the items I bought.

6 hours ago, babyclaytonmom said:

But were any of these OBCs from cancelled cruises? The 300 or 600$ for rebooking?

Yes, the $600 2020 rebooking credit that followed us across 4 rebookings, until we finally sailed.  It got split between us 300/300 on our sail and sign accounts.

My wife played $50 OBC on slots and won/cashed out about $15.

I paid a 3% service fee and turned $150 OBC into chips at a roulette table.  I played for a couple of hours spread out on 3 different days and made outside bets.  I turned that $150 into about $450.  I even won a side bet my wife proposed about tripling my bankroll from $50 to $150 one night.

Ultimately, I didn't walk away as soon as I should have, and spent a little into my winnings.  After service fees, 3 drinks, and a few dealer tips all spent while gambling, I walked away with $200 cash plus the $15 my wife won.

The real win will be if those hours and $'s spent at table games might result in us getting casino rate offers and drinks on us offers in the future.

Out of Galveston because its a 1 hour drive away.  So that means pretty much just Royal or Carnival.

Every time I've tried booking other lines, its been way higher than the 1300-2100 price I get with Carnival for 2 people, with prepaid gratuity and insurance.  Window or balcony room types.  Lately Carnival's been more like 1800-2400, so I just made an effort to earn the casino deals.  Price matters.  I want to do nice vacations, but I also want to be able to upgrade my house and neighborhood this year.

24/7 pizza and ice cream also tip the scales to Carnival for me. Helps to have things on ship open late.  Shutting it all down by like 9pm that I hear about other lines would make me feel like the ship caters to old people.

My issue with 3-5 day vs 7+ day cruises on Carnival is not having a night of all I can eat free lobster tails.  Always do 7-8 days.