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FRONT PAGE - Back to THE ADVISOR PAGE Dear GameMaster, BJ: W-155 L-201 P-20 BJ-12 (BJ's included in wins, so 143 Wins withou
the BJs)
Bacarrat BETTING BANKER EVERYTIME- W-283 L-337 T-60
Please give me the odds on each game and if possible the odds of both games
stats combined in one session. Hello, Art.
In the Baccarat, you played 680 hands and Banker should have won 311 of
them (45.84%). In your case it was 283 and that is just over 2 SD, or
about a 1 in 20 shot. (Not great, obviously, but it's a pretty small
sample.) That is also true for the Player bets (44.62%), where you could
expect 303 wins, but saw 337. The ties (9.52%) should have been 65 and
you saw 60, so that's quite normal.
In the Blackjack, you played 376 hands and expectation was to win 162, lose
180, push on 33 and get 18 Blackjacks. None of these are more than 2SD
from expectation.
In regards to having both of these happen at the same casino at the same
time, it's going to take someone a lot smarter than me to tell you that. A
lot of players will take a .05 probability (1 in 20) and multiply it by .05
(another 1 in 20 probability and declare that such a result is a 1 in 400
shot, but I think they're wrong. I believe that each game has to be looked
at separately, especially when dealing with such small samples as these.
Yours for winning, Dear GameMaster, I've been playing professional blackjack in Greece for four years. After two years of consecutive wins, casinos began to fight me obviously with extreme countermeasures. First, the penetration was eliminated up to 45-50% on the tables I was playing, though the other tables were featuring 60-66% penetration at the same time. Second, they changed the way of shuffling only on the tables I was playing (preferentially), in order to "spoil" the high proportion of negative - value cards in some cases. Third, and by the psychological point of view, whenever I protested in a kind way, they seemed to laugh on me (i.e. "you didn'n notice the cards' penetration precisely", or "the dealer might have done it by himself (by chance). I was never barred because i'm a barrister, and I could surely win a relative trial. My questions are: 1) Is this game supposed to be held in a specific country (Greece) on terms that vary so much, compared to those in the whole world? 2) how could I protect myself from such discriminations in the future?
I woulb be grateful to you, if I had an honest answer. Thanks again for having "opened my eyes".
Hello, Jack.
Beyond disguising yourself, there's very little you can do to get a good game, once you've been identified. If there are other casinos that have not "made" you as a counter, you need to use camouflage, as explained in the "Casino Playing Tactics" lesson that is archived on my Blackjack page.
Yours for winning, GM,
So, not a bad trip. Up $350 in all. I made mostly $25 bets and a few $50
when I was feeling lucky.
Hello, Stacy.
Yours for winning, Hello, Gamemaster,
What I really wanted to tell you was how cool it was watching the counting work. At first, the count was just hanging around a +1, 0, -1 for most of the first dealer. Then the second dealer came and he was very slow. Turned out that he had only been dealing for 2 weeks. Oh yeah, remember when you told me to look around and see if the penetration varied by dealer? Well, this guy only cut off about 1 deck in a six deck shoe! All the other dealers cut off 2 decks. That was cool. When this guy started to deal the count kept going up and up. I was playing a 1-10 bet spread that looked like this: +1$5,+2 $10,+3 $20,+4 $30,+5 $40,+6 $50. The count got as high as TC+4 and I made a few bets at the $30.00 level. Won most of them. After being there for 45 min. I was up $150.00. The third dealer showed up and was much faster but I could still keep up. The count started to go negative. I was only going to be there for about another half hour so I decided to stick it out and see if the count turned. It did not and I gave back about half of what I won. However, all I did was lose in that last half hour but only gave back half of what I won in 5 minutes. The reason was obviously because I was only betting $5.00 hands in the losing circumstances. The guy next to me thought I was a genius!! "Wow", he said, "you sure know when it's hot and when it's not." I thought to myself...I do now!!
Another thing I wanted to mention was that when I first sat down the table was full. The jerk at third base was betting a little more than everyone else at the table like $50-$100 hands. On the first deal a kid next to me was dealt a 15 and the dealer had a 4 up. The kid hit his 15 and drew a 7 and busted. The guy at third base had a soft 14 and drew a 10. The dealer wound up with 21 and the guy at the base was infuriated. "That kid took my card", he said indirectly to his buddy next to him. "He doesn't even know what he did." I sat quiet and hoped the situation would end at that, but I thought if he says something directly to that kid it's going to be hard not to stand up for him. Doesn't that really irritate you when some psuedo "High Roller" gets all upset about something like that....It sure irritates me! The situation ended at that and the guy left the table two hands later. Thank God!!
Let you know what happens next time I go. Should be heading to Vegas soon....and I can't wait.
Hello, Dusty.
As for the "high roller", he needed somebody to blame for his losses and he sure wasn't going to blame himself. People like that used to bug me, but now I ignore them.
Yours for winning, Hello GM,
I'll be playing basic strategy but I won't be counting. It's a 2 day trip
so I figure I'll spend maybe 6 hours total playing. My questions are: Am I an idiot for doing this?
No, but don't let what you might get in comps cause you to lose more $$$.
It's cheaper to buy dinner yourself, than to have it ultimately cost you
$1000.
How much of a bankroll should I bring? I'm planning to bring $1,000.
If your average bet is $30 and you play 60 hands an hour, your total
'action' will be about $10,800 in six hours of play. Assuming the casino
has an edge of 0.5% and IF you play perfect Basic Strategy, your expected
loss is $54. However, it could end up being a $600 profit or a $700 loss.
There's a 65% chance that your session results will be somewhere within
those two figures and a 5% chance that it'll be between +$1200 and -$1300.
A bankroll of $1000 should be sufficient, especially if you always play at
full tables so that the number of hands you get per hour is reduced (most
players are rated by the number of hours they play, not the number of
hands). But you really have to make sure that you use and follow the
proper Basic Strategy for your game of choice and try to keep your average
bet at about $30.
Good Luck!
Yours for winning, GM,
I would love to see the "robot" tackle certain
Microgaming sites at a larger bet level - at
least 10 dollars and let's see how these sites
hold up. There have been many grumblings on
the different boards about the fairness of
Microgaming. I, myself, am very suspicious
of their software. My last perfect strategy
play resulted in me residing in the 1 per cent
tail-end of the bell curve. The bad tail-end
of that curve, I should say. This is in keeping
with my results at other Microgaming sites I
have played. Should I have enough time (and
money !) I intend to keep accurate records
of my play. For now, I am requesting all my
players' records from all MG sites that I have
played at. This will give me a better picture
of what may be going on. For now, like I said,
I am just suspicious.
One more thing.
For pure gambling information that is helpful
to the bettor, you probably have the best site
on the web.
Hello, Mark.
I, too, would like to see the Microgaming situation cleared up, but to set
the robot on it at the $10 bet level could easily cost us $10,000 in order
to get a significant sample. Consequently, I don't think we'll be doing
that. You'd think that Microgaming would love to have their game checked
by an independent, third-party laboratory, just to prove to the world that
it's fair (which, for the record, I believe it is), but they are a
closed-mouth group. Oh, well. That's the joy of owning a business, I
guess. You get to run it your way and that's exactly what they're doing.
Someday we'll get an answer to this, though. I still have a few tricks up
my sleeve. In the meantime, why not post your "call for information" on
our message board, along with your e-mail address and perhaps you'll get
some additional info. However, let me suggest that you give participants
some sort of form to follow. Reports like, "I lost a bunch of $$$ last
night" just isn't scientific.
Yours for winning, GameMaster, I have a set of all that stuff myself, but hardly ever use it these days. I suggest you get some software like Casino Verite and work with that. You can get it from www.conjelco.com/ for $90. There are other programs available and you'll find a good description of each there. I realize there is no substitute for the real thing, having to maintain the count, make playing decisions, placing bets with real chips, maintaining situational awareness, etc in a real casino. Also, do you know of a place, perhaps a mail order site where such practice "gambling" supplies can be purchased at a reasonable price? This place has a "complete" home Blackjack package for $285: http://www.casino4you.com/ Casino Verite is cheaper and it will help you a lot more., since it's very much like the real thing. I live in Cincinnati where the "boats" here on Ohio River just aren't good playing conditions to enable me to practice with low table minimums, uncrowded tables, and decent set of rules. I understand. That's why software is the answer.
Thanks you again very much for your great lessons! Thank you for the kind words.
Yours for winning, Dear GameMaster,
Hello, Jonathan. Thanks very much for the nice words about our site.
Yours for winning,
Hello, Gamemaster, I arrived at about 10:00am on Sat. and was going to just hang out and watch for a while but there really weren't that many people in there and I thought, at the particular time, that it would look a little suspicious. So, I just sat down, bought in for $100.00 and began to play the minimum of $5.00. There were seven spots on the table and four people were playing including myself (sitting at third base for the whole time because that was the open spot). Two of the other gentlemen playing were playing two hands for a total of six hands at one time for the table. I started out able to count each hand but found myself concerned about winning and losing and receiving the correct pay out and so on and so forth, and began to lose count at the end of each hand. I would pay too much attention to the other aspects of the game and forget to look at the dealers cards after he played them. Oh well, at that point I didn't feel too discouraged because like I said I was able to keep the count for the most part. I just needed to work on a few things ( however I will say that playing my hand was never a concern for me...I've got basic strategy down, and that was a little encouraging). Oh yeah and another quick note...right when I sat down, the table, which had a real novice player at it went into a discussion on splitting tens. The whole table, including the dealer, agreed that if you play like that you shouldn't play with others because you mess up the order of the cards. It was great! It took all my strength not to split the next pair of tens with the dealer showing a 6 just to piss everybody off. Even though I wasn't counting accurately and that might not have been the correct play, I just wanted to get a rise. But, I refrained and played my hands correctly. As you can probably tell, I really don't care what the others at the table think and I also didn't open my mouth once whenever a discussion on correct strategy came up. I just sat there and smiled. Then dealer number two showed up. Can you say hyper?!! I thought he was going to start a fire he was dealing so fast. When he shuffled the cards it looked like he was having a muscle spasm or something. He was just out of control...cards flying into the chip rack, etc. etc. I pretty much gave up on him. After we got rid of Flash Gordon, my kind of dealer showed up. A nice older gentleman who dealt the cards like a snail. Very precise and methodical. Very easy to count. If somebody busted he wouldn't pick their cards up in a hurry. He would just sit there and talk to them about the weather or something dumb like that. After he played his hand it was more small talk. I was able to vary my bet and get everything done I needed to get done and still learn the quickest route to San Diego from Santa Barbara. It was great. I thought I was in. Oh, but then he left and another SuperDealer showed up...and that's also when the weird stuff started happening. The fourth dealer was an Indian and seemed very nice but had a little more pull than the other dealers. I don't know if at Indian casinos some of the dealer's might be a little more higher up than others. Anyway, he didn't have to get approval to change money or pay money out and seemed to almost be giving orders to the pit bosses. Then weird stuff started happening...now this might just be me being overly paranoid but when that dealer came and my confidence was up I tried to keep counting. I lost track and began to hesitate and wasn't keeping up with the rest of the table. He looked at me weird and said to the pit boss, "Hey, Joe (or whatever his name was) I got a joke to tell you later." The pit boss said, "What?" He repeated, "I got a joke to tell you later!" The pit boss responded, "OOOHH! OK." After that a guy showed up and sat next to me in normal clothes and began talking to me about my play...small talk mostly like how are things going and is the dealer hot. But then he said something strange. He said, " Where's he at?" I said, "Where's who at?" He said, "The dealer? I came in mid shoe and I don't know where he's at." I responded, "I'm up a few bucks but I don't know where everyone else is." He shrugged, picked up his three chips ( he bought in for $20.00) and left. Now I thought that was weird. Also, at the same time another dealer stood across the table from me and was concentrating so hard on the game I thought his big vein in his forehead was going to burst. After that the weird stuff stopped. Do you think that is weird? The last three dealers were all nice ladies but very quick. One girl was even faster than hyperboy. She would give someone with a 14 another card, and if was a bust card she wouldn't even lay it on the table. She would use it as a shovel and pick up the other cards and throw them in the discard tray. I played for four hours straight and like I said came away with $205.00 profit. Not a bad first outing but very clear that more practice is needed and practice I shall. I'm really enjoying learning about this game. I just got through reading Professional Blackjack and now I'm going to read Million Dollar Blackjack. Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you, did you know Ken Uston? When and how did he die? I can't find any info on that.
I wanted to thank you for all the info you've given me. I really appreciate it.
Hello, Dusty. Yes, I met Ken Uston back in Atlantic City during what became known as the "Counter's Convention" and he died about 10-15 years ago, in his sleep as I recall, in Paris. Nothing sinister there, either, although I know some "conspiracy" theories have been floating around the 'Net for quite a long time. For a good story about Ken, read my article, "A Blackjack Sting", which is on the GameMaster's Secrets page of my site.
Yours for winning, Howdy GameMaster, I had a question about single deck play in downtown Vegas. I've been playing every weekend for the past few months with positive results. I don't use a graduated betting method when the TC turns positive. Instead, I bet 1 unit for +1 or below, and 3 units for a TC above +1. Although this isn't the most efficient use of my bankroll, I never get any attention from the pit crew, and I haven't noticed any preferential shuffles. I bet in the $5.00 to 15.00 range on a $2,500 bankroll. Do you think I don't get any heat because the bets are too small for the casinos to sweat, or do I simply not have an advantage using just 2 bet sizes? The rules are standard for SD, and I don't play if there are 3 or more players at the table. I typically get about 50% penetration, and I use BS with high/low count. If you have any advice on this, I sure would appreciate it. Again, thank you
for such a terrific resource. Hello, Cindy. At most downtown casinos, 1-3 "red" action goes pretty much unnoticed, so you shouldn't have any problems continuing with your adventure. The fact that you're a woman also doesn't hurt, plus, as you say, it's not like you have a huge edge over them. I've attached a simulation that uses the information you've given me and it shows that your long-term edge is about 0.50%. The simulation I set up assumes a bankroll of 500 $5 units and, if your goal is to double that to $5000, you're operating with about a 10% risk of ruin. A lot of what's in the sim is self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, just let me know. I think you're a very smart player, Cindy, because you're "milking" the game in a conservative way and that could continue for a long, long time. The only thing I'd suggest is to add some enhancements to your game, such as taking insurance at a True Count of 1.5 and perhaps a few other basic strategy variations like that. The "fly in the ointment" in this situation is, with such a small edge, you could go on a losing streak that might last quite a while and it gets to be frustrating. The more you increase your edge, the shorter such a downturn would be. Thanks for the kind words. I'm delighted to hear that we've been a help to you.
Yours for winning, GameMaster,
Hello, Trevor.
Yours for winning, Finally, an Internet site about gaming that appears to be intelligent, honest, and with a great deal of integrity. God Bless You! I believe it when you say that ad revenues will not sway your opinion. And that you are not afraid to upset someone, even a casino with which you are associated, by telling the truth. What more could you ask from any site about gambling, especially one that is free of charge. I have played video poker, both on-line and at off-strip Vegas casinos, almost exclusively for over five years. I know the game well and have made a fair profit, a few bucks for each hour of play. Mostly, it is just for fun and relaxation. I have never played more than one machine at a time, so I am not professional. GameMaster is truly a site I can go to for unbiased opinions about any casino. I'm sure the work is hard for you, but it must also be fun and fulfilling. Keep up the good work.
Yours truly, Hello, Sam. Thanks very much for your kind words. Integrity plays an important part in what we do simply because it's just easier to tell the truth and live with the consequences, rather than lying and trying to live with the consequences of that. Plus, as you say, we have fun with all of this, too. There are a lot of people who make more $$$ than me, but very few who are as happy as me. We're delighted that you have joined our merry band of readers and hopefully we'll be able to provide you with some good information for your Video Poker adventures. Thanks again for writing.
Yours for winning, GameMaster,
Hello, Joe.
Yours for winning, GameMaster, Basically, yes. A such a high count, the dealer probably has a 20 and you would probably end with a pair of 18s. Also, I'm going to Vegas for the first time in a few months and I'm hoping to be a decent BJ player by then, but... a lot of the stuff I need to memorize is based on the rules. Do most of the casinos on the strip/downtown have the same rules? I want to do all my practicing using the rules I will most likely be playing against. The rules vary somewhat from casino to casino, but the biggest difference is the number of decks in play. There are quite a few single-deck games downtown, but few on the Strip. What I suggest is to learn the strategy for a 6-deck game where the dealer hits A-6, you may double on any first two cards and double after split (das) is allowed. You should also learn the rules for late surrender. By learning this strategy first, it's easy to make modifications for such rules as dealer stands on A-6 and no double after split is allowed. That's because you don't have to learn anything new, since you double less when the dealer stands on A-6 and split less when no das is allowed. The big difference comes when you move to single-deck games, but even the required modifications there can be learned with just a few hours' practice before you go to play the game. Prior to heading out, you might want to get a copy of the latest "Current Blackjack News" that is published by Stanford Wong. This has a monthly update of the rules, betting limits, etc. of the Blackjack games in Las Vegas and all the other major gambling areas around the U.S. and Canada. You can get a free, sample copy at www.BJ21.com
Thanks for your help, I'm really enjoying your school! It's a pleasure.
Yours for winning, Hi Gamemaster: It dealt with how Karas turned a few hundred thousand into thirty million, over a three year period (93-96), shooting craps at Binion's Horseshoe. Posessed every $5,000 chip the Horseshoe had in his personal locker. The story is true because Jim Albrecht of the Horseshoe and Jack Binion were interviewed. The sad ending is that Karas gave it all back...lost 11 million dollars in one day! I read your web site regularly and unless I missed it, have seen no mention of this story. I thought your readers might appreciate this one. The Kara's story was shown on the Discovery channel and was part of the
documentary titled,"High Roller's Vegas."
Hello, Mac.
Yours for winning, Hi GameMaster, Hello, Sam. The casino advantage isn't hidden at all; it's listed in the rules for all to see and it's the fact that the dealer wins tied hands. In addition to that, a player's "blackjack" pays only 1 to 1, instead of the usual 3 to 2. The game is fun to play, but it carries a house edge about twice that of a 'normal' Blackjack game.
Yours for winning, GM, We recommend that you leave if the count goes to -1 or lower, as based upon the True Count. In a typical 6-deck game that will happen 70% of the shoes, but if the shuffle card is about to come out, then go ahead and stay for the last round. Admittedly, it's a pain, but it's cheaper to not play than to play when the casino has an edge.
Yours for winning, |