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.
In what must have been the climax of the circus, one night I saw three hole-card crews playing three different dealers. I can’t imagine what the crusty old bosses were thinking to have three tables simultaneously entertaining $2000 table-max flatbettors. This is The Plaza, remember!
Operating in the same pit along with two other max-betting crews was itself a bizarre experience. It was the way I imagine it would be to film a porn video, only to show up at the set to see two other crews filming their own porn videos next to you. Bullet and I thought we had the best girl, but from time to time we’d cast a voyeuristic glance across the pit, thinking, “Are those guys betting table max on that dealer? She’s not even that good.”
In a previous era, those sweaty bosses probably would have chased us all out in a heartbeat (wasn’t it The Plaza where a boss chased Stalker and Jimbo out, while baiting them with, “Blackjack’s not as fun when you’re not getting the dealer’s hole card, is it?”). But, management wanted to entice big action, and here it was! Since big action was the goal of the new directives, the bosses just watched with bemusement.
Obviously the situation was not sustainable, and we worried about some of the little indicators of heat, but we all knew that the experiment was doomed to failure anyway. The debacle would probably be blamed on the naivete of the new managers—what audacity to think you could bring big action here. This ain’t the Bellagio! So we crossed our fingers, hoping that the circus would end with no backoffs. Let’s all just shrug our shoulders and move on, agreed?
And so it was. One day we walked into The Plaza and saw something no one had ever seen, or even imagined, in downtown Vegas—all of the blackjack games, including single- and double-deck, were being dealt from shoes. There was not a single pitch game being offered at the Union Plaza. We dubbed it “The Plaza Solution.”
If you think about the context of downtown Vegas, this really was a major innovation. It took years before any table in downtown Vegas was dealt from a shoe. In the mid-1990’s, the Horseshoe still had about 50 single-deck pitch tables. So the Solution was a very strong message: “We figured out what you guys were doing, and we fixed it.” On the other hand, it was a somewhat shocking admission on the part of the casino. To me it said, “Our staff is incapable of dealing a secure game, so our only option is a time-wasting, embarrassing, procedural fix.” The old-school dealers were indeed embarrassed to deal single- and double-deck games from the shoe, and could no longer take pride in their pitching style.
I had to give The Plaza credit, though. It is important for any team to understand the limitations of its personnel. Many of the dealers at The Plaza were only one notch above break-in, so the solution was realistic.
It didn’t take long for The Plaza Solution to spread to the El Cortez, the Western, and the Golden Gate. I think it took a few years before some of the casinos reverted to offering some pitch games, probably in order to offer some necessary skills training to the break-in dealers. Downtown Vegas has experienced so many other major changes (Zip-lining?! Go-go dancers at the Golden Gate!?! A shark tank?!), so you might not have noticed those fossils that tell the story of a unique chapter in Vegas’s AP history, but now you know.
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Why are you sneering at the Plaza for implementing a solution that chased away all you bottom-feeders but kept the games essentially intact? After all, a single-deck game, even dealt from a shoe, is still easily beatable, given standard Downtown rules (even if only two hands are dealt at a full table, given a reasonable allowed spread). But you guys were never about skill. The Plaza could have just backed all of you off–or worse, but instead, they found a classier solution. They neutralized you. They made you irrelevant.
It seems ironic that you forced the Plaza to make this move and then sneered at them for doing so. It isn’t/wasn’t a matter of dealer competence, and you know it. A really good peek sneak (I think you call them “spotters,” but, whatever) can at the very least tell whether the dealer’s hole card is a paint or not, even with a terrible angle and a very brief look, and even if the dealer is aware of the possibility of the hole card being spooked–he/she still has to be able to identify the hole card. The Plaza obviously didn’t want to have to worry about you peek sneaks. I also wonder how you could possibly have been surreptitious about your actions to any degree, and the Plaza’s fairly prompt reaction suggests that you weren’t able to do so.
I wonder why your bunch just didn’t sit down, count the cards (simple enough), use a basic unbalanced two-level count (or something similar of moderate complexity), and shred the game legitimately. Why did you slink away, pouting, when the single-deck shoe game was still one of the most beatable (and given the high limits, lucrative) games in Vegas?
You remind me of that character “Worm” in Rounders, who wouldn’t play unless he had an unfair advantage even though he could have easily beaten the game straight up. That Plaza game presented a huge opportunity for everyone with even a modicum of skill. I was in Europe at the time, so I couldn’t play it, but I know a few people who did. They made out like bandits, and none of them was a particularly good counter. But to beat that game, you didn’t need to be. Instead of skulking around being sneak peekers, you could have, like Worm, beaten the game straight up.
This particular casino gave up on style in blackjack just to stop several hole card teams from having an edge? I wonder if they were getting hurt to the point to where they thought they had to act. With hole card teams pounding their tables during those years I suppose it was their only solution to increase game protection. I’m sure the dealer burnout and turnover rate within the industry has to be high since the inception of casino gambling and with the many casinos that have come about. They also gave up on style so new dealers didn’t have to learn how to pitch in blackjack, it makes up for a dealers sloppiness. The industry has also taken a dealers ability away to shuffle cards. I wonder when major casino chains first introduced auto shufflers into their card games and poker rooms and what the players thought about that.
I don’t think James is sneering at the Plaza. But I still wonder why this “argument” continues about hole-carding vs. counting. Specifically, why ask why they left after the adjustment when the game was still beatable? Both techniques are legal, so it’s up to each player to decide what he wants to do given the plusses and minuses, which may or may not include moral considerations. But once the decision has been made to include both in your repertoire, the decision to leave almost any counting game when there are other more lucrative hole-card (or other) opportunities available elsewhere is an obvious one.
They didn’t make the game classier by bringing in the shoes. The casino just dumbed down their dealers, and in particular brand new cherry dealers to the industry. The casino found out how to neutralize the hole carding aspect from the players perspective. If the SD and DD games were still beatable by counting methods they really didn’t neutralize anyone because an edge is still there for count players and even basic strategy players, but not as high as an edge compared to getting the hole card.
The host doesn’t remind me of Worm. I don’t know if the host would put a hole card crew conveying information amongst themselves on an NLHE game whether in a private or in a brick and mortar casino. I don’t know if that would be considered cheating or trying because more information is available to certain people at a table compared to everyone else.