Crown and anchor

Crown and anchor is a gambling game played with three special dice, each face marked with one of six symbols: a crown, an anchor, a diamond, a spade, a club and a heart. Traditionally associated with sailors of the Royal Navy and dating to the eighteenth century, it is played on a mat printed with the same six symbols, where players place stakes on the symbol or symbols they expect the dice to show. After the three dice are thrown, the banker pays even money for each die matching a player's chosen symbol, doubling the return for two matches and tripling it for three, while stakes on symbols that do not appear are lost to the bank. The structure gives the banker a steady mathematical edge of roughly 7.87 percent, returning about 92 pence for every pound wagered over time. The game survives today mainly as a licensed novelty in the Channel Islands and Bermuda, where it is permitted at agricultural shows and similar annual events rather than played freely.