A player, “Joe,” wrote a mailbag question to [email protected], and I decided to answer it here rather than on the air.
It seems that this player has found a 99.8% video blackjack game among a bank of machines with much tighter blackjack games and bad video poker pay schedules.
There are slot club points for free play, multiplier days, mailers and comps. The casino is associated with others — and that’s of value to him. There are tiers to the slot club and his card is more valuable as his tier level increases. All told, on the right days, the game pays well over 100%.
His question is: How does he exploit this game optimally? He doesn’t want others to find it. He doesn’t want to be kicked out of the casino.
The game of video blackjack has a major advantage over video poker — namely, no W2gs, should you keep your bets small enough. This is a huge help in keeping the game secret from the casino.
My first question to Joe is: Are you well known in the local community of sharp video poker players — assuming there is one? If you’re a “nobody” in this crowd, you’re invisible when you play and it’s easier to keep it a secret. If you’re known as a very strong player by a lot of people or the casino, you will be seen. And your strategy should be different depending on which kind of player you are.
Also, whatever game plan you outline, luck factors into what happens. You might be picked off in your first hour of play. You might be able to play the game for hundreds of hours with no heat at all. The casino may retaliate against you. It may not. By the time you know whether they will retaliate or not, it’s too late to go back and try another game plan.
And a third question before we get to game plans: If you come out ahead $2,000 or $3,000 and are 86’d from the casino, is this a good thing or bad thing to you?
If you’re well-known, you’re not going to be able to exploit this game as much as you like. That’s just a fact of life. So, if this is your situation, you might as well come in at the start of a big multiplier day and hammer away as long as you can for the largest stakes as you can afford. You’re going to be stopped eventually (by other players monopolizing the machine, by the casino removing the machine, or by the casino removing you). You might as well get what you can while you can get it.
If you’re not so well-known, I would recommend a different approach. Play 2-3 hours every multiplier day and leave the machine alone otherwise. Play different machines on your other visits to the casino. Sometimes come in on non-multiplier days.
Vary the time you come in to play — sometimes graveyard, sometimes day, and sometimes swing. You don’t want the casino employees to recognize your pattern.
Once you get up to the highest tier level, don’t come in every multiplier day. Come in every other or every third such day. Some casinos get very touchy about players only coming in on these days.
If you’re playing on 10x point days, or whatever, at many casinos the points aren’t added immediately. When your free play (or cash back) reaches an amount you’d be uncomfortable losing, cash it out. This might be $40. This might be $1,000. Whatever.
The reason for this is that eventually, you just might be discovered and maybe the casino feels that you’re a sharpshooter taking advantage of one of their inadvertent mistakes. If they 86 you, you may not get all of your free play or cash back.
I know this is a case where you’d like to be able to exploit it forever. That’s almost certainly not going to happen.
so how are the odds for this hypotetical video blackjack machine calculated? the best odds for a blackjack game are like 99.6%~ aren’t they?
Great info Bob! Info that only a seasoned advantaged player could offer, but most wouldn’t. You’re different in that regard and we all appreciate it. My only hope is that someday I find an advantage play to which I can apply this information.
The current and most recent bugs and advantage plays are so scarse and hard to find that no serious AP is going to give away such informations liberally and takes full advantage of it until it’s over. Which is only logical.
Get it while you can. I have run into the same situation at other casinos. They never last as some people will eventually hammer it and it will be gone. I don’t think you would have any problem with the casino as they will just fix the rules on the machine in error.
Serendipitous. You are describing Horseshoe Cincinnati circa 2013. It was very profitable while it lasted as the Theo to EV ratio was north of 20:1.
Bob,
Thank you so much for answering my question here. Unfortunately the play didn’t last long, but I’ll keep this in mind if it comes up again in the future. I hit it for a few hours on 2 multiplier days and on a 3rd trip I saw someone grinding on it, amazingly with no player’s card inserted and this past weekend lo and behold it was the only machine in the bank that was shut off. I ended up with a net win overall independent of cash back. When I saw it was shut off, of course there was a moment of paranoia and I checked the player’s club account and found my accumulated points and now higher tier all intact, we’ll see if anything changes in the coming weeks.
I’m not well known there, in fact rarely play video poker there at all because of the bad pay tables, but the players club it’s tied into is quite good. For this reason I was hoping I could somehow turn this into a long-term easy way to maintain a high tier level and comps rather than a quick smash & grab resulting in a deflyer/ban.
For others who are asking, the payback was calculated with Wizard of Odds online BJ calculator, and this is not a new play or new machine, in fact it’s on a quite old, very common multi-game machine, just with extremely rare programming that has already been discussed on various forums. There was actually some controversy as to whether the game might actually be 100%+ EV off the top because the Wiz calculator doesn’t have a function for 6 card Charlie and an unusual rule where a 21 after split Aces is paid as a natural BJ as opposed to push if the dealer also gets 21.
Good point about no W2’s and IMO video BJ with a good rules may also offer the advantage of less required brain power/ less player error and faster play for someone who may not have the time or desire to become a skilled VP player, but perhaps has single deck BJ basic strategy down pat. I’ve also seen some BJ machines that were programmed to give the slot rate of points/cashback rather than the poker rate and on the flip side some that were worse than the poker rate.
I have posted before regarding the “unusual rule” that I call BJAS (BlackJack After Split). For a 1-deck NoRSA game, I estimate (from simming 2 billion rounds at 6 rounds per deck) that BJAS adds 0.164%, assuming only 1 card to each split Ace (0.178% if RSA4). To answer the next inevitable question: No, it does not become optimal to split TT against 6 (nor any other upcard).
This person should also add some cover play. Hit the craps table once in a while. Play poker some times. If all you do is walk over to machine X every time you come in, play for 3 hours and then leave, either the casino will figure it out or a local will figure it out.
One of the biggest advantages to this game is speed. Very easy to pay 1500 hands per hour. So, the coin in can be significant. Since the best version of this game ( in the last 20 years) is right around 100%, all of the advantage comes from the freeplay, mailers and offers. Eventually, the casino will figure out what you are doing.
I don’t know of any video BJ machine in Las Vegas that pays 3:2 on a blackjack, so I’m curious as to where this machine(s) is/are. In Las Vegas, or a different city? If in Las Vegas, at what casino? Or is this entire discussion only hypothetical?
As for the problem of getting noticed and/or 86’ed, I’m not thinking that it’s necessarily a problem. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that casinos (or their softwares) are scrutinizing every machine at every hour. And even if some scrutinizing is going on, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to react badly to a winner. Some people just are lucky and get better results than others. And just because a player is well ahead on a machine, it doesn’t mean he is doing something “advantage”. I once played video BJ on a machine that only paid 1:1 for a blackjack, and I was 46 bets ahead (I was betting $1 per hand, so I was $46 ahead). That didn’t mean anything; it was just one of the ebbs and flows of the game. Even an advantage player won’t have a winning session every time. I’m reluctant to endorse the “hammer away” approach because I think it would maximize the odds of the casino noticing. I would recommend playing at a leisurely pace so as to not attract attention.
A friend of mine has been pounding away on one of these “5 for 2” Game Kings for the last few years. No repercussions as of yet.