Casino War
One card each and the high card wins — the whole game lives in the tie: surrender half, or raise and go to war. Every price is exact from the live shoe, and however deep it runs, the numbers barely move.
High card, or go to war
- 1card each
- 2.88%going to war
- 10:1the tie trap
Manual
- One card each.
- High card wins even money on the main bet. Aces are always high and suits never matter — equal ranks are a tie whatever the colours.
- The tie.
- Surrender half the bet — an odd half rounds against you, so you keep the smaller part — or put up a raise equal to the bet and go to war.
- The war.
- Three cards burn face down and one more card is dealt to each side. Equal or higher wins even money on the raise only, while the original bet pushes; lower loses bet and raise both.
- The second-tie bonus.
- Some tables pay a bonus equal to the original bet when the war cards tie again. It is a setting here, off by default, and worth 0.55 points of the main bet.
- The tie side bet.
- Pays 10:1 when the first two cards tie. The shoe deals on from hand to hand and reshuffles when fewer than 26 cards remain; every price is computed from what actually remains.
The game
One card each, face up, and the higher card wins even money — aces always high, suits meaningless. It is the simplest banked game on the floor, and it would be a fair coin flip if the story ended there.
It does not: equal ranks make a tie, and the tie is where the house earns its keep. You surrender half the bet, or you put up a raise equal to the bet and go to war — three cards burn, one more card each, and your war card wins on equal or higher. The raise pays even money; the original bet only pushes.
That asymmetry — winning one where you risked two — is the entire house edge of the game.
The tie arithmetic
Surrender is a fixed price: −0.500 of the bet, every time. War puts up one more bet to win one while risking two, and on a fresh six-deck shoe it prices at −0.389 of the bet. The half you would surrender already costs more than the war does — so war beats surrender at every rank, on any shoe a real game reaches.
| Going to war on the tie | −0.389 of the bet |
| Surrendering | −0.500 of the bet |
The numbers
Exact on a fresh six-deck shoe — and repriced exactly from the live shoe before every hand:
The deeper lesson is that the live pricing barely matters: the shoe runs down, the ledger reprices on every deal, and none of these figures ever moves enough to change a single decision. Counting has nothing to bite on here.
| Main bet · going to war on ties | 2.88% |
| Main bet · with the second-tie bonus | 2.33% |
| Main bet · always surrendering | 3.70% |
| Tie bet · at 10:1 | 18.65% |
| Tie bet · break-even would need | 9.09% ties |
| Ties actually come | 7.40% |
Tactics
Always go to war, never surrender. The whole strategy of the game fits in one sentence, and it is worth 0.82 points of the main bet.
Never touch the tie side bet: 10:1 on a 7.40% event needs 9.09% to break even, and the shortfall is an 18.65% edge against you — six times the price of the game you are already playing.
Where you have the choice, pick a table that pays the second-tie bonus: it is free money written into the rules, cutting the main bet from 2.88% to 2.33%.