LARO77 Suited Tie: Why It Lands So Rarely in Dragon Tiger
A suited tie in Dragon Tiger is two cards of the same rank and suit.
Key facts and contents
- LARO77 High Roller
- A high roller is a player who bets large stakes, usually at a high-limit or VIP table.
- LARO77 Player Pair
- Player pair is a baccarat side bet that the Player's first two cards are the same rank.
- LARO77 Picture Cards
- Picture cards are the jack, queen and king: 12 in a 52-card deck and 96 in eight decks.
- LARO77 Small Road
- The small road is a baccarat scoreboard drawn from the big road.
- LARO77 Soft Hand
- A soft hand in blackjack holds an ace counted as 11.
- LARO77 Snake Eyes
- Snake eyes is a roll of two ones on two dice.
- LARO77 Three Pictures
- Three Pictures deals three cards to each player.
A suited tie is the Dragon Tiger side bet that the Dragon card and the Tiger card are the same rank and the same suit, and it lands 1.69% of the time in an eight-deck shoe. If you have watched a table for an hour and never seen one, the arithmetic below says that is normal. It is one of the live tables covered in the live casino tables overview.
How Dragon Tiger deals, and what a tie is
Dragon Tiger deals a single card to the Dragon hand and a single card to the Tiger hand. The saved Wizard of Odds Dragon Tiger page ranks the ace lowest and the king highest, so the bigger card wins the round. A tie is two cards of the same rank, whatever their suits.
A suited tie is stricter: the same rank and the same suit. Two examples:
- Jack of spades against jack of spades: a suited tie, and so also a tie.
- Jack of spades against jack of hearts: a plain tie only. For which ranks count as jack, queen and king, see which picture cards rank above the ten.
Why only more than one deck allows a suited tie
One 52-card deck has exactly one of each card, so the second card can never be a copy of the first. Eight decks hold 8 × 52 = 416 cards, which means 8 copies of every rank and suit.
- Eight decks make 8 × 52 = 416 cards in the shoe.
- After the first card is dealt, 415 cards remain.
- Seven of those 415 are copies of the same rank and suit.
- The chance of a suited tie is 7 ÷ 415 = 0.0169, or 1.69%.
That is about 1 round in 59, and the first card does not change it: any rank and suit has 7 copies left.
How the plain tie compares
A plain tie needs the same rank in any suit. Each rank has 4 suits × 8 decks = 32 cards, so after the first card 31 cards of that rank remain: 7 of them in the same suit and 24 in the other three suits.
| Outcome for the second card | Cards left of 415 | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| Same rank and same suit (suited tie) | 7 | 1.69% |
| Same rank, different suit | 24 | 5.78% |
| Same rank, any suit (tie) | 31 | 7.47% |
The 31 ÷ 415 figure matches the saved Wizard of Odds table, which counts 6,448 tying combinations out of 86,320 for a probability of 0.0747. The suited tie row there shows 1,456 combinations, or 0.016867.
What the suited tie payout costs
A payout is whatever the table pays, so open the table’s own paytable first. A commonly published payout for the Suited Tie in an eight-deck game is 50 to 1, which the saved Wizard of Odds Dragon Tiger page lists and a saved studio rules page also states.
The method is expected return = probability × (payout + 1). At 50 to 1 the working, as an example, is 0.016867 × 51 = 0.8602, so each peso staked returns about 86 centavos on average. The cost is 1 − 0.8602 = 0.1398, a house edge of 13.98%, which matches that page’s figure. On a ₱100 bet that is about ₱13.98 each round, labelled as an example.
For comparison, the same page gives 3.73% for a Dragon or Tiger bet where a tie loses half. The suited tie costs about 3.7 times as much per peso. If your table pays a different figure, run the same sum: multiply 0.016867 by the payout plus one, subtract from one, and you have the cost of that table. For the idea behind that percentage, see the house edge meaning in plain terms.
Rank is all that matters here, so the jack, queen and king are ordinary ranks above the ten, as the picture cards page lists in its value table. Card games built on those same cards, such as the three pictures card game, use probability sums of the same kind.
FAQ
What is a suited tie in Dragon Tiger?
Dragon Tiger deals one card to the Dragon and one to the Tiger. A tie is the same rank on both sides, and a suited tie is the same rank and the same suit, such as two queens of hearts.
Why is a suited tie only possible with more than one deck?
A single deck holds one queen of hearts, so a second one cannot appear. An eight-deck shoe holds eight of each card, which leaves 7 matching copies after the first card is dealt.
How often does a suited tie land?
With eight decks, the chance is 7 ÷ 415 = 1.69%, or roughly 1 round in 59. A plain tie by rank alone is 31 ÷ 415 = 7.47%, and that includes the suited ones.
What does a suited tie pay at a LARO77 table?
This site cannot say what any LARO77 table pays. Read the paytable on the table you open. The 50 to 1 figure used below is one commonly published payout, named with its source.
Is the suited tie a good bet?
At 50 to 1 on an eight-deck shoe its published house edge is 13.98%, far above the 3.73% on a Dragon or Tiger bet. The arithmetic shows it costs more per round, which is the reason it is rarely a way to recover losses.