Interesting, isn’t it? That in most sports or games, you are admired and get congratulations and accolades for being a good player. Not so in Las Vegas!!
In fact in Las Vegas, and the other gambling meccas of this world, being a good player can likely get you barred from the games, harassed, even told you are never to come back on a property.
Larry asked for accounts from our readership regarding any recent wins, and the stories surrounding them. Well I just had the biggest single session win of my short blackjack career and that was immediately followed by my first barring from a game. There are some lessons out here for all players in our audience. But let me share the gist of the story first.
It all started at the airport - yes, that’s true! It started there because between my shuttle and my flight was a two hour layover and I spent that time in an airport bar drinking and playing cards on my laptop. So by the time I got on the plane I had a pretty good buzz going. Then on the plane I had some drinks during the flight. Then when I got to McCarran Airport, I had another strong drink at Wolfgang Puck’s Express while waiting on my bags. By the way, that’s a really nice place to have a drink and fancy food while you’re hanging in the Vegas Airport!
So, hey … we go to Vegas to party, right? Well partying is what I was doing! So I get unpacked and sit down at the double deck blackjack game at my (former, as you’ll see..) favorite casino. I order a free double-whiskey and coke (Crown Royal!) and start playing. I’ve worked hard and followed the advice we give here on Larry’s Las Vegas about basic strategy and blackjack. I’m not a card counter but I do pay attention to the cards, and if I see a whole bunch of 4’s, 5’s and 6’s come out for a couple of hands, I’ll darn sure push out a big bet! Also, I’m not afraid to bet big and to double down and split big. I know that’s the only way to win at this game! And getting schnockered deluxe always helps - a little liquid courage as they say!
Well the next thing you know, I’m not even sure how it happened, but suddenly I have a big stack of pink $500 chips in front of me. I’m up by $6500! I decide to quit, but I sit there to finish my next drink … and heck, I can’t resist the game, and I jump back in. I’m betting big, up to $1000 on a single hand by then, going down to maybe $100 or $300 at minimum. I’m having a big ol’ time, drunk as hell, gambling big… and WINNING! There is another player, that has appeared at my table, that seems very interested in me. He only plays when I play, and asks a lot of questions, which I answer in drunken friendliness. I never did determine if that person was a casino shill or detective … probably not … but it’s entirely possible. The casinos definitely do things like that to winning players.
Soon I’m up by about $10,000!! Wow … this game is great! This is my single biggest winning session ever. I’m so drunk and having so much fun, I barely notice all the suits gathering around my table taking an interest in my game. I’m just about to push out another bet, when all of a sudden, a little sawed-off banty rooster type in a cheap suit and a bad haircut jumps out of the pit and starts screaming at me… “That’s it! I’m tired of sitting here babysitting you! No more double deck for you!” He’s shaking his finger at me and says, “And I BETTER NOT SEE YOU PLAYING DOUBLE DECK HERE AGAIN!!” “Jeez!” I say, “I wasn’t trying to piss anyone off!?” “You just can’t play anymore double deck,” he says. I nod my head, gather up my chips, and move to the next table over, where that have one of those evil continuous shuffle machines. I hate those things, I’m very suspicious of them, but in my drunken state I just feel like spiting this guy … so I sit down and gesture to him like, “Is this OK?” He nods, and the dealer deals to me.
Well I bet $300, lose, bet $500 lose, then I decide, well what the heck, and I bet $1,000! I get a 9 and a 2, double down on the 11 making $2,000 bet on the hand. Lo and behold - a beatiful King of Spades gets laid upon my 11, making me 21 to the dealer’s 18 - a $2,000 win! I looked over and smiled at the pit critter with the napoleon complex and he was steaming mad… smoke was practically coming out of his ears, and he slammed his hand down on the pit clerk’s station! I just shrugged and said, “See, double deck or not doesn’t really matter … I move over here and win anyway! I’m just on a lucky streak tonight!”
So I picked up my chips, now about $11,400 or so, and went and cashed them at the cage. I had to fill out a cash transaction report, because Lord knows we wouldn’t want me to have an extra $10,000 that the federal government didn’t steal from so they can buy votes from welfare recipients or meddle around in other countries with it!
So… let’s look at a couple of things here …
1) I wasn’t really counting cards. I did not have a mathematical advantage on the house. I did not have a guaranteed winning edge. I thought this was obvious, by the way I was playing, and that it wouldn’t matter to them if I won since it was mostly just luck and good guessing. Good guessing, just like winning in baccarat - you put down the big bets when you have a hunch that you’re going to win. Noticing small cards for a couple of hands is not counting and does not give you a mathematical edge on the casinos. I thought this mattered to them, but ….
I WAS WRONG! It doesn’t matter to a lot of these “sweat shop” type casinos HOW you are winning, they just don’t want you to win!
2) If you play well, and you win, expect to get a lot of heat (pit attention, scowls, unpleasantness, shuffle-ups, etc., etc.) especially at the low-end sweat shops like this place, regardless of whether you actually have some advantage on them or not. They don’t really want a lot of action in some of the older, more run-down properties! They don’t want to lose … PERIOD … to ANYONE …. at ANY TIME!! Especially, for some reason, at table games.
Don’t let anyone tell you differently. I knew from hundreds of hours of computer simulations and blackjack practice, that I was capable of a good-sized win like this $10,000 plus session. I thought some of the casino personnel at this place were my friends, I had asked “What if I win, say 10 or 20 thousand? Will they care? I don’t want to wear out my welcome!” and I was told, “Oh, no! No, no… don’t worry about it… it happens all the time… they know they’ll get their money back from you if you play enough !” Well that turned out to be total HORSEHOCKEY and the fact is, that my little $10k win DID bother these people … I later found out I was permanently banned from playing their double deck game, which is the only fair game at this place. The others are either continuous shuffle machines or pay 6/5 on blackjack. Both are highly disadvantageous to the player and are not fair games … they don’t want you to have even a CHANCE to win on their table games and I think that’s very true of many, many casinos.
3) Keep your wits about you. Notice if you are getting lots of heat. I thought I was in a safe a friendly place, I didn’t think a little win mattered considering how much I had lost there over time, but I was wrong. If I had been more sober, I would have figured out that I was about to get backed off and stopped playing way before that happened.
Now, in some places, you may not really care. If you’re winning, and you don’t care what they think, keep playing as long as you are winning until if and when they back you off. Those winning sessions are rare enough that you need to get the maximum you can out of them to have a chance of staying at least somewhat even. But if you care about the place, like I used to care about this place, then keep your sessions short. Leave before you get backed off or barred. This keeps your playing life alive at that shop and keeps you earning comps.
4) Realize that the casinos, for whatever reason, treat table games and especially blackjack it seems, differently than they treat slots or video poker, or what have you. If I had won $10,000 playing slots …. why hell, they’d be publicizing it, taking my picture with handfuls of cash and putting it up on a “winner’s wall”!! They’d be saying “Congratulations! We love winners! Hooray!” But win at blackjack and you’re automatically a suspect. You must be “doing something” !!?!? Go figure. I personally don’t get what the difference is, other than that slots have a higher house edge, and don’t involve skill at all. They don’t like skill, any kind of skill, period. They want you to sit and play like an idiot and deposit your chips in their rack like you’re the casino’s little ATM machines. You aren’t supposed to win and if you do, they don’t want to play with you. Especially, again, at the older, run-down kind of sweat shop properties.
We’re looking into publishing some articles about playing Video Poker for comp purposes. For some reason, because it’s a machine, the casinos treat VP differently than blackjack - even though a skilled VP player can get that house edge way, way down there and maybe even find some machines with a slight player advantage. But because this falls under the slot side of the house, they treat it differently than blackjack.
5) Realize that, casino personnel are not your friend and that some casinos are completely willing to cut their nose off to spite their face. You may be a good customer. You may be showing a clear lifetime profit with them. You may have plenty of losing sessions and paid hotel and restaurant charges with them and feel like you are a good customer. You may have great relationships with the casino’s dealer, wait staff, pit personnel, and hosts - well guess what?
HAVE ONE WINNING SESSION AND NONE OF THAT MAY MATTER !!!!
I know! It doesn’t make any sense does it? Throw away a lifetime profitable customer because he or she gets lucky one night, or shows skill but not a mathematical advantage at a card game …. it really doesn’t make good business sense does it ??? Guess what … THEY DON’T CARE if it makes good business sense. Most of the effort they put into “counter catching” and “countermeasures” and so forth and so on, has been shown to make poor business sense. It’s not profitable for the casino to shuffle up all the time. It’s not profitable to move the cut card shallower in the deck, etc., etc. It’s not profitable to offend or lose hundreds of blackjack players that lose to the house (and their wives, friends, etc.) just to prevent that 1 in 1,000 that can actually play with an advantage. It’s just not! Again, let’s emphasize this… THEY DON’T CARE about the bottom line business sense of it. You’re beating them one night, and THEY JUST DON’T LIKE IT, it has to be because “YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING” even if they don’t have a clue as to what that might be or if you have an actual advantage. You’re winning, they’re losing, it’s not supposed to be that way. So get rid of you. That’s the attitude of the typical uneducated, no business sense, old school casino assistant manager or shift manager.
Realize, the people in these positions at the older or mid-to-low level properties aren’t exactly the cream of the crop, OK? They didn’t get there because they have an MBA from a top B-school! No, they came up from the bottom and they still have a bottom-feeder attitude. Realize this, and use it to your own advantage in observing and dealing with these types.
Now one last thing… let me contrast this experience with some of the other properties in town, properties we’ll be promoting to our readers here at Larry’s Las Vegas.
I recently was comped a whole weekend, room, food, and beverage at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. i played a LOT of blackjack there. There were several times when I bought in for, say $1200 and worked it up to $5000 or more, with the same type of betting and playing that got me banned at the “unnamed” casino in my story above. Guess what? The Hard Rock didn’t bat an eye at me. They don’t sweat piddly 4-figure action. They have actual big players there! There was never a dealer change, a shuffle-up, a lot of heat, or anything like that. They were extremely friendly and professional. And you know what? I enjoyed playing there so much, that I lost most of my winnings back just from playing so much. I didn’t even really mind very much, because they made playing with them a nice experience. They made money on my play. A lot of very professional casino people there, and guess what?
Not one uneducated little banty rooster in the bunch!
Until Next Time, Good Luck at the Tables …
- Sid
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