I'll try to post a lousy picture that I took, but a couple of weeks ago at Paris, a guy hit a 7 card straight flush with good money bet on it--I think $15 on the fortune bet maybe? I don't know the game well, but I guess the payout was to be $120,000 for him and $5,000 for the 3 others at his table who also had the fortune bet thingie. Unfortunately for him, there was a placard on the table that said $50,000 max payout so he lost out on the $70k difference. Still awfully nice, though!
If you are going to play the fortune bet you do need to pay attention to what the Max payout is for precisely that reason, you're losing a lot of value if you're betting enough to exceed the Max.
For a big casino like Paris, $50,000 max payout is too stingy. I sew many small places having max $80,000 on fortune bonus.
Good win. I think the larger fortune bets are good for lesser jackpots. It's unlikely you will hit a 7 card striaght flush and if you do you will lose anything over the aggregate but you can make a lot of money with a larger fortune bet on the smaller jackpots so over betting the fortune bet is good in most cases. I bet heavily on the fortune bet because that is the reason I play Pai Gow. The even money part of the bet does not interest me at all.
Heck, the fortune payout at Orleans (and Gold Coast) yesterday was a little over 100K! Yeah, I bet it; but needless, to say, I didn't win it.
Barely any theoretical value at all actually. $15 bet pays $50,000 instead of $120,000 on a 8000:1 paytable. With a 7 card natural straight flush probability of .000021%, that $70,000 they shaved off translates to $0.014 per hand in expected value that is being lost to the max aggregate rule. I do think the $50k limit is entirely too low, though. The question I have though, is this -- If there's a $50,000 max aggregate and someone hits $40,000 with the 7-card NSF ($5 bet) and with 3 or more live envy bets (normally get paid $5,000 for 7-card NSF envy) on other players, do all the envy bets split the remaining $10,000? Does it go in some sort of CW or CCW order?
Depends on what the max limit really is and different casinos do this differently. $50,000 max payout per player and everyone gets paid in full up to $50,000 without affecting other people. $50,000 max aggregate typically means that you get a pro-rata share of that $50,000. So, if someone bet $15 @ 8,000:1 and 3 other people had $5,000 envy payments coming, they would add that all up ($135,000), figure out each person's share (120,000/135,000 = 88.9%; each of the envy players 5,000/135,000 = 3.7%) and everyone takes their share of $50,000 (the player who hit it gets $44,450; the others get $1,850 each).
Most places where I've actually looked, the placard states that envy bonuses do not apply to the table max. So if someone's huge win exceeds the table max, the other players will still get their full envy. This as at MGM properties, at least...
Yeah, IMHO the max payout thing is complete bull. The side bet favors the house strongly (generally around ~7% HA) even without the max. I think its awful to put an artificial cap on a payout-rather than just limiting the amount of the bet itself. If they aren't willing to pay out 8000 to 1 on anything more than $5 they should not allow bets more than $5. I'd hate to see someone who plays blacks on the side bet (it happens) actually hit one of the monsters and lose 90% of their money to the cap. Dragon side bet is more fun.