Going to Vegas, June 16 through June 18

I'll be going to Vegas on June 16. I'm planning to visit as many casinos as I can in order to collect more info about the updated rules, if any, and make some other observations besides playing BJ. I'll report out my findings and of course results here after I come back.

SERO

p.s. I'm never going to play 8D games since I don't have a single good hearing and/or positive comments about it. Any comments?

rules, heat, pen.

personally, I like to hear what people are talking about at a table.
you know, the ornery mother in law power plays.
the wife that makes cold leftover spaghetti sandwiches.
wild, hardly believable stories from half drunk tourists.
of course, the ploppy plays wins or losses.
superstitious betting strategies. (and their reasoning)
where the hottest gals are. (and their phone numbers)

Vega Bj

Just got back from lost wages. Bionions sinlge deck remains 6/5 and the 4Queens has added a single deck with auto shuffler so your playing with 2 decks. One $10 single deck table was avalable

ROSTY2

I personally think most of the best games are the shoe games on the Vegas Strip. There are a million shoe games in close proximity to one another, which means you won't have to hunt very far for a new table if you Wong.

Back from Vegas

I have come back home after another Vegas trip. Spent 2 days, mostly wandering around, checking out rules, heats, pens etc. and I made a nice profit. Below are the headlines of my trip:

1) MGM Grand is the best place to play BJ. No CSMs, Good rules, great penetration (80-85%), high # of the 6D games with lower limits (2 $5 tables, numerous $10 and $15 tables), Early Surrender, S17 & H17, DAS, hand-shuffling, No crowd at the tables. I haven't sense any heat with one exception. At the very last table i played, my friend first cashed out like 2-3 hands before me and when dealer informing the pit about cash-out, a pit boss, around his late 50s, came and asked who cashed-out. Pit boss was a little bit late to see the cash-out process. My friend had already had his $200 black chips but he was still sitting at the table and when pit boss came to see who cashed out, he asked the dealer and the dealer pointed my friend and pit boss looked at my friend for a while and said ok. After that, when I was cashing out and getting prepared to leave MGM, the same guy came and said " Thank you for playing Sir!" by staring at me. I think we must have gotten pit's attention while back-counting around because standing by numerous tables and sitting some of them and leaving the table after a while with a considerable profit was very obvious and might have gotten attention quickly because the casino was not that crowded. Anyway, there was no heat sign other than that.

2) LUXOR, where i stayed, was not that good. First of all, the # of the BJ tables are not many. They only have 2 6D tables with $10 min, 6 8D tables with $10, $15 and $25 min where surrender is available and BJ pays 3 to 2 and 2 SD and 2 DD tables where BJ pays 6 to 5. Penetration in all tables were 60-65% which sucks!

3)NEW YORK NEW YORK has mostly 8D tables as well. I back counted a couple of shoes but count never raised above +5. Rules were not that bad, actually similar to the others around but i had read some threads prior to going Vegas so I didnt have any intention to play in NY NY. I was just trying to see what they have and do over there.

4) EXCALIBUR was my transition passage to the strip due to hot weather conditions, 110 F outside temperature. From Luxor to the strip, I always passed through Excalibur I didn't count any shoe and even pay too much attention to BJ in Excalibur because I knew it was not a good place to play so I passed it on.

5) BELLAGIO is the worst place to play BJ. CSMs in all low limit tables. I saw 2 6D shoe games but the min was $25. The rest of the shoe games are $50, $100 and up. Stay away from Bellagio.

6) PARIS is another bad place to play BJ. There are mostly 8D shoe games. I was told that there is a 6D game somewhere in the 2nd floor but I had already given up on checking it out. Don't even bother to go to Paris unless you like 8D games.

7) HOOTERS was my last stop before leaving Vegas. Although Hooters has a very small casino compared to the others, I wanted to go there and play BJ because of the convenient conditions at tables, especially heat. Rules are not great(no surrender) but heat almost doesnt exist there unlike other bigger casinos. They have only 4 6D tables, 1 DD table and 2 SD tables. Shuffling is not by hand but most dealers are sloppy so I happened to see and track too many cards. The card at the bottom of the deck, the card when the dealer takes the cut-card out of the deck to place to the end and of course the cards exposed when the dealer moved the deck around and some burn cards etc. I sometimes took good advantage of tracking cards. BJ pays 3 to 2, H17, DAS. The bad things about Hooters are crowd and distracting dealers. Especially girls are really non-stop talkers. There was an asian female dealer who never stopped talking and making comments about the cards that came out and the ones who might come out. And if you get BJ or 21 or dealer busts, she gives you her fist to hit your fist I think she tries to look nice by flattering players to get more tips but it is really weird and distracting. I once left the table because i didnt want to deal with her.

The thing I complained the most in Vegas was the everlasting negative counts. I counted more than 50 shoes in my entire playing hours and 65-70% TC has never reached to 5. When it did, count dropped to negative immediately just in 2 hands. I maybe played 12-13 shoes of 50 shoes i counted. In some of the games, I had to keep playing in some negative counts because of low limit. I was really getting tired of looking to find a hot shoe because back-counting is tiring and it does get attention. The other thing that pissed me off, when i found a hot deck, like +6, and sat the table, i either pushed or lost most of the time. Thanks to surrender, i lowered my losses in those hands and overbet the next hands to score. It worked out and I kept raising my winnings.

Theres a few things going on with this post but for now ill just say that MGM does NOT have early surrender and that you were definitely NOT getting heat at MGM by leaving with 2 black chips. I also question the validity of the 80-85% penetration at MGM.

no tales of half drunk tourists?

thanks for spending the time to note your experiences for us.

Notch in the shoe at MGM

MGM has a notch in the shoe set at about 75% pen, the angle of the stack can change that somewhat.
And yes, it is late surrender and not early.
He also, being on the south strip missed, at his bet level, the second best place to play, the Trop. Main pit has S-17 shoes with basically the same rules as MGM but pen is very dealer dependent. Also, MonteCarlo has a few tables with the MGM shoe game.

ihate17

Reading your comments made me think that MGM changes its rules based on the days because I'm pretty sure that they had early surrender in every table i played. I asked for the surrender option, and the answer I got fro the dealer was " You can surrender in your first 2 cards sir!" I didn't give up on trying to surrender after i got my 3rd card but unfortunately I was not allowed.

By the way, dealer informs the pit about the surrender which was quite odd because I had never seen such thing.

About the penetration, I played 7 or 8 different tables at MGM and they all exactly cut 1 or maybe a little bit more than 1 deck from the bottom which refers to 83% max, or I'd say average 80%. This is one of the other reasons I preferred to spend my hours back counting and playing in hot deck tables. I agree with the angle that makes it look different (less pen).

Since I had only 2 days in Vegas, I was not able to play every casino so I had to make a choice. I don't know why i did not play at Trop. which was right by Hooters. I think I must have had a bias about their games. I'll try it next time. Thanks for the heads up

Tourists

You are absolutely right. There were tons of them around. Europeans, Asians, middle easterns etc.

...unless the dealer has a BJ. If the dealer gets a BJ then you cannot surrender at all. That is late surrender. I don't think any casinos in Nevada (or the US for that matter) offers early surrender...not since AC in the late 70's.

-Sonny-

I’m not surprised. A TC of +5 will only happen about 3% of the time. That means you are spending over 97% of your time backcounting. If you can count 100 hands per hour, you’ll only play 3 of them. You should be jumping in long before +5. Otherwise you won’t get to play many hands and you will be watching a lot of +EV situations pass you by.

That’s fairly normal. Only about 1-in-5 shoes turns profitable so the majority of your time will be spent waiting to find a good bet. Schlesinger's Diary of a Backcounter is an entertaining description of the Wonging lifestyle.

A copy of Wong’s Current Blackjack News ($13) will give you a good idea of what casinos to avoid and which ones to check out. It can save you several days worth of scouting. That can be very important when you’re planning a short trip. You should look into it before your next trip. You will have much more fun if you do your research before you get there.

-Sonny-

I cannot stress this enough to card counters - PLEASE don't be so obvious when backcounting! If you're loitering behind an empty seat for more than 15 seconds or so, someone is bound to question why: if not the pit boss, then definitely surveillance. Remember, when you linger like that, it's not clear whether you're a wussy new player, someone's boyfriend or girlfriend, a card counter, or a thief waiting to grab a player's chips. There's a lot of reasons why they might watch you besides "he might be backcounting".

My personal opinion? Never backcount the table you're standing at. Stand at a full $10 table and backcount the $25 table across the pit; stand at a roulette wheel and count a blackjack table; pick up a brochure about 3-card poker and backcount while pretending to read it.

I'd also suggest sitting down by a pit and observing all the passers-by for 15 minutes. Note where people are looking - at the tables, at the ceiling, at the women - how many sit down, what people look like when they stand up, etc. Then make it your goal to look like the average person as much as possible.

I'm unaware of a 2nd floor at Paris. I'm pretty sure there's only one floor with gambling. There's a second set of pits at Bally's, which is connected to Paris and might be confused for a second floor.

Not surprising. At a TC of 0, you win about 43% of the time and lose about 49% of the time. At a TC of +5, you win about 44% of the time and lose about 48% of the time. This shift is probably imperceptable to everyone who is not a cyborg playing a few hundred thousand hands.

The only reason you make out like a bandit at TC +5 is that you're doubling and splitting more frequently and winning more per win.

I'm 99.99999% sure that no MGM casino on the Strip has early surrender at any time, especially not at the $5/$10 level. Early surrender means you get to surrender before the dealer checks for blackjack.

Early and Late Surrender

Of course no surrender if the dealer has a BJ, i neednt to mention it I think there is a misunderstanding in the description of the early and late surrender which i need to clarify. The early surrender i meant is the surrender at your first 2 cards. The last surrender I'm talking about is the surrender on your 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. cards which is not offered by casinos in Vegas but in the local casinos I played at my hometown. I think it would solve the confliction, would it not?

SERO

Yes that is exactly what I was doing while back-counting. A back-counter needs a cover to hide himself in order to not get any attention of the pit or the eyes-on-the sky. I was trying to look like that I was interested in the other games next to the table i back counted. I also played some other games. However, after a certain period of time, no matter what you get attention because people get to see you around the tables periodically.


I don't agree with you about the numbers you have put. For a +1 increase in TC gives the player 0.5% edge over the house. TC of +5 gives the player an additional 2% edge which makes the players advantage 1.64% over the house in a 6D game with the rules of S17,DAS,LS. Am i making a mistake or should there be a correction on your numbers?

My personal advice is to go to another casino before that period of time expires. Then again, I usually play in Vegas, where walking to the next casino is a matter of minutes, not hours.

No, you're not making a mistake, aside from misunderstanding what the win rate means. I think you're assuming that an edge of +2% means you win 51% of the hands and lose 49%. That would be true if you won and lost the same amount on each hand.

At a TC of 0, you win 43% of the hands and lose 49%. The house edge is much less than 6% because your average win is greater than 1 (doubling, splitting) while your average loss is about 1 (surrender decreases it but losing a double will increase it). Your edge can be calculated by (win percentage)x(average win) - (lose percentage)x(average loss). It's the difference between the average win and average loss that pull the EV up to -0.5% rather than -6%.

At a TC of +5, your win percentage goes up and your lose percentage goes down - but in addition to that, your average win goes up by a lot because you're doubling and splitting more often. You'll still lose more often than you win, but when you win, you'll win a lot more. That's why your EV goes up to +2%.

The TC needs to be absurdly high before you actually will win more hands than you lose.

Both types of surrender are for two-card hands. The difference is whether you can surrender before the dealer checks for a BJ or not.

The only game I know of that offers multi-card surrender (other than the double-down rescue in SP21) is SuperFun21. That game has a house edge of around 1.3% and requires a much different (and very complex) basic strategy. I would suggest that you avoid playing that game.

-Sonny-

Yeah, it needs to be around +17 before you start winning more hands than you lose. That’s pretty absurd. Here’s a link that confirms your explanation:

http://www.blackjackincolor.com/truecount5.htm

-Sonny-

MGM is a good place to play. I wouldn't call it the best. Most (maybe all) MGM properties use a notch for the cut card. Although the cut card can be bent and that will influence the penetration, its not as good as that off dealer that cuts deeper. I would definitely not say that MGM has 80 - 85%. More like 75-80%, but that's nitpicking...

Luxor is much more of a low roller MGM property and is not going to offer as good of a game for the tourists.

NYNY also limits max bets on mid shoe entry. $200???

Excalibur is not a very nice place to play from a casino env. perspective.

Bellagio is a very nice place to play. It all depends on your limits.

Paris is a rough place. Most Harrah's properties don't offer a good BJ game.
Caesar's has a decent double deck game, but it is a 500 min.

Hooter's is very crowded.

I vote we start a new forum - Brutus' Table Trash or some such. zg