A handful of times in my career, a boss has sat down at our table while my BP and I were playing a target game. Many players have never experienced that scenario, and completely panic when it happens for the first time. They’re not even sure what to make of it, but I’ll tell you. Continue reading The Boss Just Sat at Our Table with Game On: What Now?
Category: Blackjack
Tells: Dealer Toke Hustling
After a session playing with rookies, I like to ask, “What did you think of those dealers?” or “Who was your favorite employee?” Heat management is one of the most important aspects of the game, and sizing up the personnel is the key to heat management. “Bullet” and I tend to have identical assessments of the personnel, but the rookies often reach different conclusions. Rookies don’t realize that some of the apparently friendly interaction is nothing more than incessant toke hustling, and that grates on veterans, even those who are generous tokers (which Bullet certainly is, and I’m far from the cheapest myself). Continue reading Tells: Dealer Toke Hustling
A Response to Dennis Krum’s Devolution of Gaming Theory
Not so long ago, a man named Dennis Krum posted an article on vpFREE about video poker and the devolution of gaming. www.gamblingforums.com
After a quick read, I found the premise interesting and invited Krum as a guest on my Gambling with an Edge radio show. Krum accepted. That particular show may be heard at www.slot-machine-resource.com
I am grateful that Dennis Krum came on the radio show. I discovered that I recognized his face but not his name. He reminded me that we were both at the same event about 10 years previously and were both seated at the same table. I remembered the event but not that he was at the table. I do, however, have no reason to doubt him.
I ended up disagreeing with his premise. This comes across slightly on the radio, but I further clarified my thoughts after the show aired.
Krum’s premise is that casinos are middlemen. They offer games, collect from the losers, pay off the winners, and keep the difference as their fee for having the facilities. All they should be concerned with, according to Krum, is maximizing the amount of play. Their profits will come.
This theory works well enough on games of chance — such as craps and roulette (although there are said to be pros at craps and I KNOW there are pros at roulette). If it is strictly chance, there is no reason for casinos to eliminate anybody.
It’s different, in my mind anyway, when you have games of skill. If a casino offered a blackjack game with sufficient rules, bet spread, and penetration so that competent players could earn $500 an hour, every counter in the country would camp out there. There would be a few wannabe counters who lose, but this game would be juicy enough that large numbers of good counters would move into that casino “for the duration.” And even if there were enough seats for all counters and still had some $5 tables for the recreational players, the many tables losing $3000 an hour from the pros would dwarf the few making $100 an hour from the squares.
The casinos have to do something to keep from hemorrhaging money — despite Krum’s thesis that they should always want to maximize the amount played. They can tighten the rules, penetration, bet spread allowed, or eliminate certain players. If they don’t, they will surely go bankrupt for creating a candy store for knowledgeable players.
The same with video poker. Maybe 10 years ago, Caesars Palace, probably by accident, installed a couple of FPDW (100.76%) machines that took $300 a hand to play. While that is beyond the means of most players, there are plenty of players in Vegas (including some who would create temporary teams and pool their money to play) to keep those machines occupied 24/7. (I would have gladly paid $500 to have an 8 hour shift on one of those machines. I could easily have won or lost a sizeable amount of money over those 8 hours, but the odds were definitely in my favor. Assuming I could get 100 hands an hour — you do get a W2G every 12 hands or so and that slows things down— $30,000 coin-in an hour at a 0.76% rate comes out to $228 an hour plus benefits from the Total Rewards system, which was more generous then than now.) Anyway the machines lasted a couple of days and I didn’t find out about them until after the fact.
A dealt $240K royal sealed the deal on the removal of the machines. Caesars over-reacted. It barred from all Harrah’s properties that particular player for having the nerve to get a dealt royal. We can rant and rave all we want on how inappropriate that was, but let’s go on.
To survive, the casinos MUST somehow balance their wins and losses. They can tighten machines, limit points earned on their loosest machines, restrict players, etc. They can lower their slot club rate, the mailers, the amounts of the drawings, their comp rate, whatever.
Several casinos are in considerable financial stress. Krum argues casinos should want more and more business and should never tighten machines or restrict players. He’s entitled to that opinion, but he’s not going to get any casino manager to agree with him. He’ll get players to agree with him because we don’t like the restrictions casinos place on the game.
As players, we always want MORE. You could give us a 105% game with a 2% slot club and a 3% comp rate and we’d still be asking for senior discounts and be REALLY ticked that we have to pay a $12 daily resort fee.
You can argue that there are enough square players and others playing silly money management schemes that casinos can fade a few winning players. And you’d be right. Except if you give the strongest players a very positive high limit game, we can easily wipe out all the profits generated by the lower-limit players.
Running a casino isn’t easy. It’s easy for players to resent casinos tightening up. It’s kind of like an extra tax on players. Nobody likes taxes and everybody wants the OTHER guy to be taxed.
It’s easy for people to argue how casinos SHOULD spend their money. Everybody who has some money is used to fending off “requests for donations” from a wide variety of charities. Well, players following Krum’s thesis are basically requesting “donations to players.” And for some reason, casinos are lending a deaf ear.
As they should.
Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part II of II
This is the second part of a story about this year’s Blackjack Ball. If you didn’t read last week’s installment, check it out here
The game of 21 Questions as devised by Max Rubin is very difficult. Success requires some specific knowledge, often some mathematical ability, and a lot of fortuitous guessing. In 2013, I won this part of the competition (only to blow out quickly in the skills contest). In 2014, my guessing hat must have been on backwards and I didn’t do well at all. In 2015, I barely missed qualifying for the finals. In fact, if I had only correctly answered the question that I had submitted, I would have advanced to the skills contest. I’ll soon describe how this happened. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part II of II
Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part I of II
Every year, somewhere in Las Vegas, there’s a gathering of blackjack professionals, past and present, along with some gambling attorneys and a few other miscellaneous gambling professionals, including one video poker writer. Predominantly male, many bring wives or dates, but most come alone. Perhaps it speaks poorly of how often I get out of the house, but it’s a high point of my social calendar. The 2015 version of this event occurred recently. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part I of II
18th Annual Blackjack Ball — Part 2 of 2
This is a continuation article. To revisit Part 1, click here
The winner of the blackjack skills competition wins the Grosjean Cup, named after three-time winner James Grosjean. Runner-up gets the smaller Munchkin Award, named after my co-host, who also won three times but took longer to do so and is also a bit shorter.
Continue reading 18th Annual Blackjack Ball — Part 2 of 2
18th Annual Blackjack Ball — Part 1 of 2
The Blackjack Ball is one of my favorite events of the year. Blackjack professionals, whether still practicing or not, come together at an undisclosed location in Las Vegas to share information, swap lies, and compare skills with one another. Hosted by wit and raconteur Max Rubin, the entry fee is a chilled bottle of premium champagne — preferably comped.
In addition to blackjack professionals, certain others are invited as well — including several attorneys and one radio co-host. Each invited guest may bring along another guest Continue reading 18th Annual Blackjack Ball — Part 1 of 2