After getting heat hitting a repeat target, my teammate Bullet sometimes says, “I’ve gotta go in there and find out if my player’s card is good.” Why? Why?? Why???
No! No!! No!!! First of all, do you really even need to know the answer to the question? Continue reading I Think My Card Might be Poisoned: What Now?
When the Horseshoe opened in Cleveland a couple years ago, I happened to be in the area for a wedding, and I couldn’t believe how excited these people were to get a casino! They were saying how they’d finally be a real city, and the TV news showed the people lining up on the street to be the first ones in. Everyone was talking about it, and the reporters were even explaining on TV how you had to always put your card into the machine to get your points, and then showed the chart of what the points were worth! Continue reading Local Casinos: Economic Revival, or Black Hole?
We can’t even cover all the ways casinos waste time in one post, so we’ll just look at three of them that relate to card handling. Now, if you’re in charge of cleaning up the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, do you send the custodians with their mops and vacuums in the middle of the trading day? Probably not. Continue reading Casino (Mis-)Management: Time Wasters #1-3
Once a year for the past 20 years, the finest blackjack players in the world get together for an evening of drinking, visiting, drinking, dining, drinking, and testing themselves against one another. The event is hosted by wit and raconteur Max Rubin with some help from Barona Casino. A few lawyers and other gambling professionals are also invited, including one grateful video poker writer and teacher. Continue reading 2016 Blackjack Ball
Since Vegas is a resort destination, there are families with kids staying in the hotels. By design, access to the hotels, restaurants, and other amenities requires people—including minors—to pass through casino areas. That’s why Vegas doesn’t ID people for age at the door. Continue reading I Expect to be IDed at the Door: What Now?
Obviously you can see when a dealer is grumpy, argumentative, cocky, or lazy, but of course dealers may make a modicum of effort (the key word there: modicum) to suppress such a bad appearance. That’s where we employ tells, subtle clues, some based on dealing procedure, that give away that the dealer has a bad attitude. You should avoid dealers with bad attitudes—they will cost you money sooner or later. In the best case, they’ll toke hustle you to death; in the worst case, they’ll snitch. Continue reading Tells: Dealer Has a Bad Attitude, #1-3
Another excellent post by James Grosjean in his Las Vegas Advisor blog called “Beyond Numbers” occurred in mid August. Continue reading When to Show ID
Years ago, new management at the Union Plaza in downtown Las Vegas tried a grand experiment: they liberalized the blackjack rules and raised the limits. The chip design was modernized, and the cage gracefully handled bigger cashouts with no questions asked. As part of the marketing of this new philosophy (as if “bet more, win more” were some clever, new idea), they held a high-stakes poker tournament and even got some TV crews in there. The goal was to bring some big action back to downtown Vegas. Their experiment worked! Heh heh.
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
This is a rare but timely guest-blogger contribution, penned by renowned Las Vegas attorney Robert Nersesian, the top counsel representing players who run into legal problems involving casinos including (famously and on many occasions) James Grosjean. (For more of this, check James’ own guest contribution to Arnold Snyder’s now-defunct Blackjack Forum publication.)
