Blackjack

General comments: This area of gaming in St. Louis has suffered the most in terms of 'tightening' by the casinos. Late surrender can no longer be found, hit 17 is becoming more prevalent and the few double-deck games still in existence are barely playable. Several casinos have removed Blackjack tables and replaced them with games like Spanish 21, Double Down Stud and slot machines. I think a lot of that is due to the perceived notion that there are hundreds of card counters out there who prey upon the hapless casinos when, in reality, there are probably no more than a few dozen players here that can actually win at the game. The Casino Queen in East St. Louis, Ill. is a perfect example of this. Why would any casino deal only 3 decks out of a 6-deck shoe unless it was afraid of counters? They may not care, but it must be costing them a fortune to have their dealers shuffling instead of dealing. This shallow penetration is evidently being used to compensate for the fact that no one there knows how to protect their games, so rather than dealing with counters on a one-on-one basis, they simply assume that everyone is a counter and forego thousands in profits each month! Any casino in this area that wants to immediately become the leading spot to play just has to install single-or double-deck Blackjack at ALL of their tables, hire someone who knows how to protect the game and then sit back and watch the crowds pour in. Sure, some counters will make $$$, but that's the lure of Blackjack; people know it can be beaten. Few can actually do it, but the appeal is there.

The course the local casinos are following eventually leads to an inevitable, self-fulfilling philosophy. Their argument is that they're not making enough at the BJ tables, so they change the rules in their favor. This drives away players and the revenue goes down and the casinos complain they're not making enough at the BJ tables. So now they pull some tables and those that want to play can't even find a seat, so they go play Video Poker (because they're smart people, Mr. Casino Manager; they're not going to switch to roulette!) and the revenue from BJ goes down and the casino has to tighten the rules, because they're not making enough at the Blackjack tables. And so the cycle goes.

I didn't mean to turn this into a sermon, so I'll finish with one last comment. Remember when we had high taxes? There was little incentive to earn more $$$ because most of it went to the tax man; it used to be 70%! By lowering the tax rates, the federal government actually collects much, much more money due to the increased economic activity. Casino 'win' (players' losses) is like a tax. Make the tax too high and the activity dries up; lower the tax and you get activity which is higher in proportion, though the loss for each individual customer is less. So what you end up with is busier casinos, happier customers and more profit if, as a casino manager, you know what you're doing. I know it's easier to cut the payouts, but is it more profitable? Okay, back to our current Blackjack situation. Here's a recap of the rules for all casinos.

The GameMaster's Recommendations: For $3 minimum tables, check out the Alton Belle during the day. If you do not count, the Casino Queen has the lowest house edge. For just plain attacking the shoe, the Admiral is the place to go. Ameristar and Harrah's can be good for back-counting.

General Comments: This market has seen everything when it comes to VP. The Alton Belle was the first casino to open here and initially their best game was 6/5 Jacks! As more casinos opened, the VP got great at all the boats and 9/6 Jacks games with progressive Royals were common. But now it's definitely declining again. Just a short while ago, we went full-circle; the President Casino on the Admiral installed Triple-Play machines with a 6/5 Jacks game on it. For the privilege of betting more $$$, they'll give you a 95% return! No wonder they do the least amount of business in the market. Harrah's bought out Players Island and killed most of the good games they had, but there are still some good machines available around here, although most of the best are progressives. As for my listings below, in the case of non-progressive games, I've listed only those with a return of 99% or more. I've tried to give you enough information on each type of game so you'll know what strategy to use, but if you have a question or if I've missed any good games, please e-mail me.

Casino Summary (Last Update January 25, 2003)

Alton Belle

Alton Belle Slot Club: It is based upon coin-in at a rate of one point for each dollar played and the cash-back is 0.25%. I'm not aware of any bonuses at this time.

Casino Queen

Casino Queen Slot Club: They have installed a new club and it appears to be 0.25% cash back, based upon 'coin-in'.

Harrah's Riverport Casino

President Casino on the Admiral

President Casino Slot Club: In keeping with their tradition of offering the lowest paybacks, the slot club is pretty much the same. A player gets one point for each dollar 'in' and it takes 50,000 points for a $100 cash rebate, so it's 0.2%. But they do have some good promotions from time-to-time.

Ameristar Casino St. Charles

Ameristar Casino St. Charles Slot Club: It appears to be a straight 0.25% cash rebate and they do hold multiple-point promotions fairly often.

This is an aspect of casinos which is constantly changing, so to list what types of machines can be found in each casino is futile. There are three variables which you should consider in choosing where to play slots. The first is the slot club cash rebate of a casino and in this market, the cash back is the same for Video Poker and slots, so check that section for what you can expect from each casino. The second consideration is whether or not the casino has 'beatable' slots. These are slots which have some sort of 'banking' feature like Wild Cherry Pie, Double Diamond Mine, Buccaneer Gold, etc. Right now it seems that Ameristar Casino St. Charles has most, if not all, of the games of that type in this market. We'll try to keep this updated as much as possible, but here at GameMaster OnLine, slots have never been our strong point. Moving on, the third factor which you should consider when deciding where to play slots is the overall payback percentages that the casinos report in their monthly filings with the local gaming authorities. One thing you need to remember is that Video Poker and all progressive jackpots are included in those reports so, if a casino has generally high payback Video Poker, it probably means that their slots are correspondingly low in payback. So an ideal situation would be to play the slots at a casino which has mediocre VP and still has a high 'electronic gaming' pay back. The only one that fits that profile at this time is the Casino Queen in East St. Louis, IL. They have only a few 'full-pay' VP machines, but they have the highest overall payback of all casinos in this area; in fact, they have the highest overall payback of all the casinos in Illinois.

We will update these reports on a quarterly basis, but bear in mind that the absolute number isn't as important as the trend of the numbers. If a casino's payback figures seem to be trending toward the 'tight' side, it may mean that their management has adopted a strategy of lower paybacks, but it could also mean that there has been some sort of mathematical anomaly which is causing that. For example, several big progressive jackpots may have gone unhit (is that a word?) for a longer-than-normal time and it will skew the figures to the 'tight' side for a while, but time will eventually even things out. The opposite can happen too, of course. You'll often see where higher-denomination machines like $5 or $10 games will have a 100+% payback for a month and that's usually due to a big jackpot or two being hit. I seriously doubt that any casino is paying back over 100% on any slot!

Overall Payback from Electronic Games

The percentages shown include both slot and Video Poker paybacks.

We try keep five months' data here so that you can see the trends. The last figure is the most recent.

Last update: 4-7-02

Highest Payback by Denomination
(This information will change monthly, but remember that the data presented is several months old because of delays in reporting.)

Last update: 8-20-02 (May, 2002 data)

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