(From\u00a0Blackjack Forum<\/em>\u00a0XX #2, Summer 2000)
\u00a9 Blackjack Forum 2000<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Barry Meadow is the author of Blackjack Autumn: A True Tale of Life, Death, and Splitting Tens in Winnemucca<\/em><\/a> .]<\/p>\n\n\n\n The road is long, With many a-winding turn, That leads us to who knows where, Who knows where…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Uh, I know where. I\u2019ve been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of us have doubled down and split pairs all over Las Vegas and Reno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of us have comp-hustled in Laughlin or surrendered in Lake Tahoe. But I say if you\u2019re going to play serious blackjack in Nevada, hit the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That means blackjack in Tonopah and McDermitt and Ely and Jackpot and every other place you\u2019ve seen on the map, only it was too damn far or too damn cold and why the heck would you drive a hundred miles to Lovelock when there was exactly one blackjack table in town and you\u2019d look like a stalker trying to wong it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been here, and there, and everywhere in Nevada. I counted cards at blackjack in every casino in the state during a two-month trip last year which consisted of me, a suitcase, and $8000. No entourage, no pals, no nothing but yours truly and one open road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every day, I\u2019d record my observations on a tiny tape machine. I made more recordings in garages than a Seattle grunge band. And by the time I finished my trip, 192 casinos later, my laptop computer was in worse shape than Andy Sipowicz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so was I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The name of the book is Blackjack Autumn,<\/em> and if you don\u2019t buy a copy right this minute, shame on you. The subtitle is A True Tale of Life, Death, and Splitting Tens in Winnemucca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I should point out that the count was really, really good at the time. Once I played in a one-deck game dealt all the way to the bottom. Boy, it sure was fun taking insurance on a plus count when only two cards remained to be dealt!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then again, there was the casino that featured a grand total of one player \u2014 me again \u2014 and seven pit employees, none of whom had anything better to do than watch me try to earn a few dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At times I was the crusher, while at other times I was the crushee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen a blackjack dealer pull out more dead hands than a grave robber, and I\u2019ve also seen a blackjack dealer lose so many hands that the floorman actually switched the game from two decks to one deck in an effort to change the casino\u2019s luck (it didn\u2019t work).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I played with plastic cards. I played a game in which a player\u2019s two hands were dealt one face up and the other face down (don\u2019t ask). I saw a man deal the first half of the shoe, walk to the other side of the table, and play the rest of the shoe himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes I was barred for card counting, including one telephone ejection at 1 a.m.. Golly, didn\u2019t that casino manager\u2019s mother ever tell him it was impolite to call after 9 p.m.? A card counter once told me that if you\u2019ve never been barred, you\u2019re doing something wrong. I guess I did something right four times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few tips if you\u2019re going to make a similar trip: Bring money. Have reliable transportation. And don\u2019t blow into town at 8 a.m., you little Carlsonite, because the blackjack game isn\u2019t open until 4 p.m. and what are you going to do all day when there\u2019s absolutely nothing to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t bother showing up at 10 p.m., either, because that means you will have traveled on a two-lane Nevada blacktop at night on roads so dark that if some animal decides to cross the road in front of your vehicle, you\u2019ll never see it until it\u2019s draped over your hood, which is bad for your paint job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a long way from Nowheresville to South Nowheresville in Nevada, as you will soon learn. This is not a trip from Las Vegas to Henderson we\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say, for instance, that you decide to travel to Montgomery Pass to play blackjack. Try finding it on a map. Better yet, try calling information. Chances are you\u2019ll have no luck either way. Hint: The place is actually called the Montgomery Pass Lodge and Casino, but it\u2019s also called Soper\u2019s Cafe, and there\u2019s no town anywhere nearby. If you do manage to find it, you\u2019ll enjoy the $2 chips and the aformentioned plastic cards that the casino employees wash rather than replace. There will also be a sign advising you not to drop your cigarettes into the urinal, always a sign of a first-class establishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along the way, amazing things happened to me, as they no doubt will to you should you take on this assignment. In Beatty, for instance, I realized every card counter\u2019s dream. I won so much money at the Burro Inn \u2014 well not all that much, but pretty big for Beatty as my blackjack profits crept into the mid three-figures \u2014 that the game actually had to come to halt because if I won the next hand, there would not be enough chips to pay me. Yes, all action actually stopped as we waited for one of the bartenders to step into the casino cage to chip-run another rack of reds for my gambling pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good thing, too, because my next hand was a blackjack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I found an Indian casino outside of Laughlin, though I actually found quite a few more Indians near the Say When Casino in McDermitt, and I wound up helping some of them herd horses across the state highway. Found some cowboys in Mesquite, too. And highway patrolmen in more than one place, although why they found 132 miles per hour objectionable is something I\u2019ll never quite understand \u2014 heck, there weren\u2019t any other cars for miles and miles, for Breedlove\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I met cattle who looked meaner than Mike Tyson after a three-day drunk, and pit bosses who looked meaner still. Then again, I ran into gorgeous blackjack dealers, who made me sad that I was already engaged, although there is no evidence that any of these women would have had the slightest interest in me anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now to the important question: Can you actually win counting cards in these towns? Yes and no. You can\u2019t win thousands of dollars, because some of these towns don\u2019t have thousands of dollars. In Wells, the highest limit blackjack game is $25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forget about black chips \u2014 in plenty of places you\u2019ll never even see green chips. If you visit the Bird Farm in Fallon, the highest amount you can play at blackjack is $5 per hand, though by brilliantly spreading from one hand of $2 to two hands of $5 I was able to carve out a $26 profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nor can you blithely spread from $1 to $100 with impunity, Mr. Uston, because even the smallest places have heard of card counters, although in some places I doubt they\u2019ve ever actually seen many of them. At Sturgeon\u2019s in Lovelock, not only did they cut off two of the four decks, but they burned a card after every round. The blackjack game wasn\u2019t much more attractive in Topaz Lake, or in Gardnerville, or in Jean. And I couldn\u2019t even find the blackjack game in Amargosa Valley, which turned out to be open only on weekends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then again, there was Yerington. I lost there \u2014 no big news; I lost in a lot of places \u2014 but I did find one intriguing practice at Casino West. The blackjack game was four decks, with the cut card placed halfway up. When the cut card appeared, the dealer would ask the players if they wanted her to shuffle; if they said no, she\u2019d keep dealing until only a few cards remained. Does that mean you could have gotten negative shoes shuffled away while asking the dealer to keep going on the positive shoes? Apparently so. Hmmmmm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And sometimes the blackjack games were downright good. I had a very nice 80% penetration shoe dealt to me at the Nugget in Searchlight, and the $415 I managed to drop there was simply my way of saying thank you. And the dealt-to-the-bottom blackjack game, discovered at the Station House Casino in Tonopah, proved more than pleasant until I was asked to please leave town as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that you\u2019re likely to find that game any more. Game conditions in these little towns change more often than Bill Clinton\u2019s stories, although you can generally assume bad rules. When the best blackjack game in town is four decks, dealer hits soft 17, double on 10 or 11 only, with a $50 maximum, it\u2019s safe to assume that high-powered card counting teams will be spending their evenings elsewhere. You can\u2019t scout these games, either \u2014 it might look a tad suspicious for a stranger to loiter around a game all day without playing, and you can\u2019t very well table-top because there is no other open table to hop to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is decent action in some of these out-of-the-way places, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take Wendover, for example. It\u2019s on the Utah border, and Utah is one of only two states (Hawaii is the other) where there is no legal gambling of any kind. Naturally the Mormons who populate the state occasionally like to get down a bet or two, and so there are a couple of very large casinos there as well as some smaller ones. At the State Line Casino, I saw a guy bet two hands of $500 apiece. A warning, though: the chips in Wendover are in the weirdest colors you\u2019ve ever seen, so be careful what you\u2019re betting because just when you think you\u2019re betting $17 on a hand, you just might accidentally be betting $341.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elko gets some play, too. The owner of the Red Lion Inn owns an airline and flies in players from all over the West. Not real big players, you understand \u2014 show up with $350 in front money and you\u2019re in, no playing obligation required \u2014 but it\u2019s eerie to visit this small northeastern Nevada town and see dozens of players sporting junket buttons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good news is that in some of these places, if you play for anything resembling quarters, you\u2019ll probably get comped, or least score a casino room rate. At the Saddle West in Pahrump, I had only been playing about fifteen minutes for $35 or so per hand when I asked the floorman what I needed to do to qualify for a comp; he proudly displayed the comp slip that he had already written for me, and gave me a discounted room as well. At the Tahoe Biltmore in Crystal Bay, another eager pitster offered me a room before I even had a chance to ask about it, and I had only been there about ten minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tourists in these burgs are few and far between, the action mostly confined to locals and truckers. You probably won\u2019t find Wayne Newton in the showroom, if you can find a showroom at all. The town\u2019s gourmet restaurant might well be the casino coffee shop. Your room will have a bed and a thin bar of soap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But hey, it\u2019s blackjack. Just make sure you gas up the car, because between towns is the desert, and if you run out of a gas there\u2019s no filling station for 50 miles. It\u2019s also probably best not to try such a trip with a 15-year-old salvage vehicle, unless you have hefty towing insurance and don\u2019t mind waiting a week for a part to come via UPS from Las Vegas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another reason to double-check your automobile is that it would be highly unfortunate to find yourself alone at night on a road next to an inoperable car that\u2019s got $20,000 in cash stuffed in the trunk. It\u2019s bad enough that some of these places don\u2019t have safe-deposit boxes, and you\u2019ve got to sleep with two chairs propped up against your motel door. The last thing you want to do is break down on some bandit-filled Nevada highway, where finding some abandoned mine in which to hide your bullet-riddled body would take the average criminal maybe ten minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you take up the road warrior\u2019s life, you don\u2019t have to worry much about running out of casinos, since Nevada is a pretty large state. If you\u2019ve worn out your welcome in Minden, you\u2019ll still be welcome in Verdi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many places, of course, are still more than happy to bar you if you play with any skill at all, no matter how big or small they might be. After powering my way to a hefty $40 profit at Harrah\u2019s Tahoe, for instance, I was asked to take my action elswhere, preferably to the bottom of Lake Mead. Hey, Mr. Harrah \u2014 it wasn\u2019t me who lost millions on your New Orleans project. Where\u2019s your sense of humor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s difficult to disguise your play much in the little towns, because there is usually only one cashier\u2019s cage, only one or two shifts, and sometimes only one or two tables. If somehow the casino is short a thousand dollars, there are very few suspects, no matter how good your act. So you\u2019re not going to be able to camp out for a week in Battle Mountain and bury the Owl Club and the Nevada Hotel for very long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to play reds for awhile and maintain a moderate spread, chances are nothing too terrible will befall you, though your chances of getting rich are none too great, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sure, the Venetian has beautiful suites and the Desert Inn has a lovely golf course, but can you stay in a historic hotel for $19.95 on a Saturday night as I did in Ely, or play a nine-hole golf course that\u2019s only slightly more challenging than Mel\u2019s Mini-Putt as I did in Hawthorne? OK, there are no Bellagios in Indian Springs, but exactly how many floral cornucopias do you need to see, anyway? \u2660<\/p>\n On the Road to Nevada’s Nowhere Towns by Barry Meadow(From\u00a0Blackjack Forum\u00a0XX #2, Summer 2000)\u00a9 Blackjack Forum 2000 [Barry Meadow is the author of Blackjack Autumn: A True Tale of Life, Death, and Splitting Tens in Winnemucca .] The road is long, With many a-winding turn, That leads us to who knows where, Who knows where… Uh, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nCan You Win Counting Cards in Winnemucca?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Comps at Casinos in Small Town Nevada<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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