False Drop and Hold

Introduction | What is Drop? | Hold | Conclusion |

More accurately, the hold percentage is a reflection of the average number of times a player will turnover their drop on a particular game.

That is if the hold percentage on Baccarat is 14% and we know that the edge on Baccarat is approximately 1.25% then on average a player is turning over their drop (buy in) 11.2 times.

What if a very significant player, for whatever reason, decides to only play in short bursts and buys in for large amounts of money for each session always cashing out at the end of the session? Such a player may only turn their drop over, for example, five times. In such an instance the hold from that player would only be 6.25%. If this players drop was contributing substantially as a proportion of the overall Casino drop, this would have an influence on the game’s hold percentage for the period in which the player was acting this way.

This in some circles is known as “false drop”, where a player or players have a propensity to continually cash in their gaming chips only to rebuy-in a short time later.

Quite clearly this may have a significant impact on hold and if not isolated from “normal” results could in fact result in erroneous conclusions being drawn from the analysis of changes in hold. To alleviate this it is necessary to identify and eliminate from comparison significant instances of “false drop”.

A continued shift in hold may, however, require it to be reassessed if it is merely a case of a general shift in players chip purchasing and cashing patterns. This may result in the adoption of a new “theoretical” hold percentage against which to measure actual results.

Caution should be utilised whenever such a decision is made as a significant decrease in hold may in fact be an indicator of illegal or illicit activity occurring within the Casino either on the tables or in its accounting areas.

Thus it is essential that hold be monitored over time, control limits applied and significant deviations or trends thoroughly analysed.

“False drop” may confuse this issue but if it can be identified by on-floor personnel and that information communicated to any business analysis unit that is most helpful.