Casino Games – What the Heck is Sic Bo?
By: Jerry Whittaker
If you are a lover of casino games and in particular online casino games, you may have come across the name of this game – sic bo! I have, and I have been writing about as well as playing casino games for a very long time. The one game I have never delved into in any great detail however is this “sic bo”. Why – I don’t have a clue? Either the topic has never come up or I have never been intrigued enough to find out. I recon it’s time to give it a go!
My first port of call when finding out about new casino games and how to play is to delve into their history a little, and to say I wasn’t in the least bit surprise to find that sic bo originates in China would be an understatement. What did surprise me was the meaning of the name. It literally translated means “dice pair”! Now I am already confused because sic bo is played with three dice! Perhaps this is done intentionally to confuse, or even to add an aura of oriental mystique, who knows?
Nevertheless, if you don’t allow the name to confuse you, this is a simple dice game (so the experts say) which has in its time been called Tai Sai or “lucky dice”, also called Dai Sui in Macau which means “big small”, and Hi Lo in the Phillippines. It has a relationship to Grand Hazard, which was a game played by the English Crusaders and is believed to be related to craps.
This having been said, sic bo may be like an eastern version of craps; it is a traditional Asian game played in China, Korea and Southeast Asia still. You may even find it categorized under “Asian Casino Games” at an online casino.
The aim of the game is to place bets on the outcome of a roll of the dice. The betting options are based on combinations of one, two or all three of the dice and one of the most popular betting options is “Big”, “Small” hence the Macau naming of this game. Bets can be placed on single numbers, two of a kind, three of a kind or more.
Although sic bo pundits say this is a simple dice game, it can get complicated if you look at all the betting options. Just like craps really, only the bets are in pictorial form on the table with the associated possible payout; there are fifty different options! The bets are placed on the table, as in roulette and the dice are tumbled in a basket by the dealer. He enters the winning numbers and these light up on the table. Winners are paid out and losing bets are removed from the table. At that in a nutshell is another of the casino games you can play online – and I haven’t played yet!
