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Originally posted by: Roulette ManQuote
Originally posted by: BobOrme
Quote
Originally posted by: Roulette Man
The best time I have at Roulette tables is when there are two female dealers (one who spins the wheel and the other helps to stack chips). They kind of go into auto pilot mode where they can talk about non casino stuff, but still deal the game. I find in this kind of situation where the dealer will get in the same rhythm of how she picks up the ball and releases it, all in one smooth move. As long as you aren't betting astronomical amounts, nobody is paying serious attention to you as you bet on various numbers and their neighbors.
Did you ever play the French roulette table at the Paris? A few things that were different at that wheel from any other wheel in Vegas. It always had two croupiers and often times three. They placed your bets for you. It had its own dedicated pit critter. It was not only single zero, it had "in prison" rules on even money bets in affect, dropping the house edge to about 1.3%. Neighbors and other sectional bets were available. The direction of the spin of the wheel and the ball were reversed after each spin.
That table was only on the casino floor for the first year the Paris was open. It treated me VERY good! I was flying to Vegas once a month to play that wheel, and it was well worth it! Gawd, I miss that wheel!!
Yes, I actually did play that table. I was with friends who had a very high roller friend with them. There must be some secret button in the casino, because a casino hostess pounced on the high roller within two minutes after he took ten thousand out in chips and told him she could give him a $50,000 line of credit right now, and could probably give him more after checking up on a couple of things.
The french roulette table with the formal croupiers also has named sections of the wheel that you can bet on. Each named section has a certain number of neighboring numbers.
The MGM Grand also had a formal European wheel when it first opened.
The table that was at the MGM and at the Paris was the exact same table! Not two tables that were the same, they were the same table, and I suspect it is still somewhere on the Bally's-Paris property in storage. The month after it was removed from the floor at the Paris, I asked one of the pit critters (who knew me from my play on that table) what happened to it. He told me it was in storage, and if I wanted it, I could buy it for $10,000. That would have included devalued (redemption notice served and published) jetons. I didn't have that kind of discretionary spending cash sitting around, but if I had, I would have jumped on that deal in a heartbeat. A few weeks later, I was telling one of my deep pocket chip collecting friends about my conversation with the pit critter. He told me he'd fully fund such a transaction for half of the jetons and I'd get to keep the table. Timing is everything! I was back in Vegas the next month, and that pit critter was no longer working at the Paris. No one else in the pit knew what happened to the table or the jetons. Given that Paris French roulette jetons regularly fetch 5 times face value on the collectors market today, it would have been a great deal!
During three or four of my monthly visits to play that table, one of the other players was a crown prince from the United Arab Emirates. I was betting between $120 and $300 a spin (depending on how my numbers were hitting) and the prince's bets made it look like I was pitching pennies! It wasn't unusual for him to have $15,000 on the table per spin. On more than one occasion, he was watching my bets win (I bet straight up numbers, dozens and one column) and instead of betting with me, he started betting stuff I didn't. A couple times I watched him dump over $100,000 betting opposite of my bets while I kept stacking up piles of jetons. Dumb ass!
