What is Xoc Dia?

Xoc Dia is a Vietnamese game in which four tokens, red on one face and white on the other, are shaken inside a covered bowl. When the lid is lifted, the bet is settled on how many red faces are showing. The two main bets are even and odd — two or four reds against one or three — and tables also price the individual counts. The maths is unusually clean because there are only sixteen equally likely arrangements of four two-sided tokens. Four reds and zero reds occur once each; three reds and one red occur four times each; two reds occurs six times. Even therefore covers 1 + 6 + 1 = 8 of the 16 and odd covers 4 + 4 = 8. The main bet is an exact coin flip before any house charge. That is the point worth carrying: the entire margin on the main bet is whatever the table takes off the top. A table paying even money with a 5 percent commission on wins holds 2.5 percent. A table paying 0.95 to 1 with no commission holds the same. If a table pays true even money and takes nothing, it is not making money on that bet, which means the margin is somewhere else — usually in the count bets. Gambling is restricted in Vietnam, so this entry describes rules rather than recommending play. The commission and count paytable are on the rules screen.