Casino War is simple and easy game to play at online casinos or land casinos. It is essentially, a very basic game of High-Low. Standard poker card ranks determine the value of each card, with one exception; Aces are always high. Six decks of 52 cards are used, with all jokers removed, as usual. The player gets one card, the dealer gets one card. High card wins. While the rules of the game may be the same, the way players wager on it – and more specifically, they way winning bets are paid – alter the original 50/50 odds to ensure the casino always gets the lion’s share of the rewards.
This means in the base game, the player and dealer have an equal, 50/50 chance of winning every bet. After all, there’s no way to alter the dealer’s odds of getting a higher card than the player, or vice versa. However, probabilities tell use a tie will be dealt, on average, 1 in every 13.52 hands, or 7.4% of the time. When this occurs, the player and dealer “Go To War!” Unfortunately, during War, the player’s fair chance is stripped away by a very one-sided pay table. On a normal hand (no tie), the player will receive a 1-to-1 payout on his original bet for winning. Likewise, the player will lose the original bet if the dealer wins.
When going to War, the player is forced to make a second bet called the Raise, equal to their first bet called the Ante. If the player wins, he only collects a 1-to-1 payout on the Raise. The Ante is returned as a push. But if the dealer wins the War, the player losses both bets.
To put it simply, Casino War rules force players to risk two units in hopes of winning just one i.e. bet $10 to win $5. When you put it all together – including the odds of being dealt a tie 7.4% of the time – Casino War rules give the casino an overall house edge of 2.88%.
Casino War Rules – Variations
There are two semi-common variations to Casino War rules. One works in favor of the player, and the other against.
Surrender on Tie: Some casinos will allow the player to Surrender instead of going to War. Whenever a tie is dealt, the player can choose to forfeit half their bet, and keep the other half. While this may sound beneficial, it’s actually not. The house edge climbs to 3.7%.
Bonus on Double Tie: Some Casino War rules will pay out a Bonus to players if going to War results in another tie. The best known Casino War games for players are offered at online casinos employing the Gamesys platform. These games award a 3x bonus payout on the Ante (original bet only) for a double tie. The house edge is 2.33% on these games.
Not much game variants are found at online casinos for Casino War. Also remember not all Australian friendly online casinos offer the war game. The reason is simple, punters don’t want to play a kids game, its their ego that hurts to go for an easy game. Thus they choose the table game of Blackjack, Roulette, Poker, Baccarat against the casino war game.
But to have fun and memorize your childhood days this game is far more exciting than other casino games. Finally the choice is yours to play or not.