SP21 in the Poconos

Mohegan Sun just started dealing Spanish 21 about a week ago. The dealers and floor are a little on the fuzzy side on payouts and some rules, but one that got my attention was split aces only receive one card just like blackjack, except you can re-split them. In all the SP21 I've ever played, split aces are no different from other splits and can be drawn on, doubled or re-split. Other than that it seemed rather standard. I'm hoping other PA casinos add it soon, as I enjoy it much better than blackjack.

Another odd thing happened there - in the middle of the day, the craps table was jumped from $10 to $50, the only good thing was the current players were grandfathered in at $10. I didn't see anything going on that would cause such a jump and it was the only table open.

Mohegan Sun in CT does the same thing with split aces in Sp21. It kills the game, making HE about the same as H17 no RD Sp21.

They also do not pay the bonuses on split hands. I can't believe they went to the expense of printing up new felt that explicitly states this. Most stores will try to get away with it until one of Los Hermanos educates them and forces them to read the official manual.

Borgata even printed up rules to hand out that denied bonuses on splits. Eventually someone complained to the right person (NJGC?) and now Borg is playing correctly.

Yes, stand your ground on that, even for $5, and even if you see a ploppy getting stiffed. What screws them up is that for some inexplicable reason the $5K Super Bonus is what doesn't pay on a split, and they read that as no bonuses paying on a split.

But sometimes they don't read that at all, as I'm about to relate. I was playing SP21 and got my 8-7-6 on split 7's with $10 down. The dealer didn't want to pay the bonus, I told her to call her supervisor over, a PC came over, called up the shift manager and after a 30 second conversation, came and paid me my $5. Cool, let's play.

Now a few hands later, the pit boss comes back from a break, has a conversation with the PC, stomps over to my table with an angry glare and demands the $5 back. How did I respond? Well, I gave her the same response I would give to any other idiot who asks me for money in a casino. As Sarah Palin would say, I reFUdiated her. She starts screaming at me, how I tricked the dealer, etc. I just told her to get the official rule book out and read it. So she and the PC get the manual out, and the supervisor (not the pit boss) says "Bonuses not paid on doubled hands." The PB goes "See- they're not paid on doubled hands!" And I answer "Yes. Now was my hand a doubled hand, or a split hand?" "Same thing!" At that point I knew I was dealing with a complete moron.

But it gets better. As they are going through the manual trying to find the part that says I don't get a regular bonus on split hands, I noticed the supervisor was actually reading the manual and the PB was just repeating everything. It appeared the pit boss was, literally, illiterate. How did she even get this job? She was not pretty, couldn't have screwed her way in, must have been somebody's mother or sister. Anyway, eventually the two other PC's were catching on and realized I was right, so they kind of led her away from the table, and later on I saw the shift manager talking to her on the far side of the pit, and he did not look pleased. All this for a red chip. I lost more than that in EV with this argument, and the casino lost far more than me.

I guess the real question is with Spanish 21 being a proprietary game, how many of the rules are open to adjustment to the casino's liking? I know they can mess with the split aces, and number of split hands (DE max hands 3 - not sure about PA yet), but how many other ways can they tear down the game to the point of being unplayable?

One thing I'm sure they can't legally do is print up their own felts with their own rules and still call it Spanish 21. But they may have gotten permission from the game owner to do it, being they are the largest SP21 store in the world. The rule with the split aces probably also isn't kosher, but this is an IJ, how is anyone going to enforce it?

But nice to see PA is getting alternative games in, should give us all more options.

I stopped playing SP21 in CT in 2006, when the Split-Ace rule got dropped on me. I asked for clarification, not to my satisfaction, and not in accordance with the rules of SP21 as I knew of them. The game went from about -0.4% to -0.9% as I recall. Very bad.