If a Table Hold Is Lower than Expected, Does the Casino Look Into It?

Regarding Mr. Snyder’s answer: If the hold of a particular table is significantly lower than expected does that trigger an investigation by the casino that cheating may be involved? Although random fluctuation is expected, if one dealer’s tables yield a lesser hold over a period of time is that a red flag that something improper is happening?

[Editor's Note: Arnold continues the conversation started in his recent QoD on drop/win/hold.]

Casinos definitely pay attention to the daily hold and a significantly lower hold over a period of time will get someone looking into it.

Because of the issues I mentioned in my prior answer, most discrepancies from the expected hold can be attributed to the less-than-perfect method used to estimate it. Ideally, if a casino had real numbers for house win, by literally tallying up the results of every hand dealt on every round of play, they wouldn’t need to estimate win/drop/hold numbers, which are never precise.

To estimate win, most casinos simply count the dealer’s chip rack before and after a session, or before and after a big player gets into the game, also noting when these players walk from the table with high-value chips, how much that specific player dropped and what he walked with, etc. Usually, a pit boss will be able to explain an abnormal hold discrepancy on a table by pointing to the results of one or more high rollers who had big wins, or arrived at the table with a big chip stack, or walked with a lot of chips after a buy-in, etc.

One of the reasons casinos pay attention to the hold is precisely, as you ask, because they're worried about cheating, theft, card counters, hole-card players, and errors made by dealers. Discrepancies have to be explained. I've heard stories of dealers whowere fired simply because the tables they were on consistently underperformed.

But casinos don’t usually fire someone simply based on an abnormally low hold. They want an explanation and can usually find it if they look closely enough.

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Kevin Lewis Jan-09-2022

Oh, definitely...

When I dealt in Vegas and Reno (some thirty-odd years ago), they definitely kept track of "your" hold, as most of the time you had a "main" table and stayed at it for your entire shift (minus breaks, of course). I saw at least a dozen dealers fired for what at first was no apparent reason but later, I found out that their tables' hold had been too low. Apparently, the metric was that you couldn't have three "bad" shifts in a row, or four in any five-day work week, or you were gone--no excuse, no explanation. That's why everybody hated dealing to black-chip players. They generally were terrible tokers, and your entire shift could go down the toilet if they had a ten-minute hot streak.
The only upside was that you could painlessly segue into another dealing job somewhere else--having been fired, even multiple times, was not a detriment. It was, though, a stupid way to make a semi-living.
I'm sure that Corporate Vegas is more sensible now re how they handle "losing" dealers. Uh huh.

O2bnVegas Jan-09-2022

rotating dealers

Some casinos rotate the table dealers in a shift, perhaps to reduce the need to sweat that issue, but that's just a guess.

Sometimes you wish a certain dealer was there for the shift if you have good vibes with him/her, and are disappointed to find out they rotate, that particular casino's rules/system.

Candy

Question of the Day - 09 January 2022

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