So I'm back from my first trip, and all things considered it went pretty well.
For the most part the casinos were as you as you guys suggested: a few overcrowded tables open while the rest were closed, with anyone who wanted to play a $10 game having to wait for someone to leave a table or roam the casino incessantly. Looking for a $10 minimum, reasonable penetration game with an open seat was bad enough, but having to arrive at the beginning of a new shoe (or the end of one and awkwardly wait through the shuffle and a few hands before deciding to sit down or move on) was even more difficult; 9 times out of 10, by the time I located a positive count, the table had filled or someone had spread to the only open spot at the table. How do others deal with this? Am I just over-paranoid about potential heat, or is it a good idea to avoid making more than 2 back-counting circuits of the same casino's pits during a shift? Also, what about taking over a hand that someone else is spreading into at an otherwise full table? These guys seem to give dirty looks to anyone standing behind them.
I flat-bet a shoe for practice, sitting between a married couple playing off a BS card, getting frustrated every time they lost a hand from a BS play (esp. hitting 16 or 15 vs. 7+) and then ignoring BS on the next hand, losing again. (Mildly amusing, though I'm sure that'll get old.) I counted the next shoe from beginning to end with varying bet size, and at one point had all my remaining chips in play on a split that had been doubled up on. However, the dealer busted that hand and several more, and I ended up ahead. The next game that I back-counted had a count that immediately soared and stayed high for the whole shoe, and I pulled an even bigger profit.
I ended up ahead in several other shoes at the casino with the best rules/penetration, and usually lost a little bit when I tried waiting through the shuffle and playing a new shoe from the beginning, as the count went negative in most of these cases before I wonged out.
Overall, I played pretty conservatively and was therefore limited to playing very few games. It also got somewhat awkward walking around a blackjack pit watching only games that were at the very beginning or end of a shoe, only to run across no positive counts or no open seats and move to the next pit, and eventually return to the same pit. I'm sure there are plenty of ploppy blackjack players who are finicky about what tables they play, but this seems like it would attract the wrong kind of attention.
I got no heat from the games I played, but in the casino I spent the most time at, a dealer asked me for ID when I sat down to play a shoe on day one, which she held in place for about fifteen seconds as she looked over it and then gave it back. The next day, another dealer in this casino asked me AND my girl for ID as I sat down to play a heads-up game, even though she was clearly not entering the game and was just watching me. We told them this twice and they still insisted. The PC watched me intently as our IDs were being looked at, but then left the table and didn't seem to care about my actual play. I'm sure they were just verifying age, since we both look younger than we are, but it was kind of odd, especially since it happened at no other casino. I was hoping to play anonymously - does the eye in the sky get some kind of picture of the ID when they do this?
In the end, I ended up about $250 in the black, plus some modest wins from slots and roulette we had played for fun. It was purely positive variance, since I had played so few shoes, and hadn't even bet my full spread, but nonetheless an encouraging start, and a good first feel for the game. I found the counting itself to be easy enough, and tried as often as possible to count someone's hand by looking near but not directly at it, detecting face cards or 2/7s and 3-6s by peripheral vision, and began doing so while making small talk and throwing around comments with other players about luck and hunches and all that bulls**t.
My biggest weakness most certainly was paranoia at looking out-of-place or drawing too much attention, leading me to play half of the games I probably should've. Next trip I'm going alone, and will make it a point to push the limits as far as possible until I get some heat at one of the casinos I don't really like anyways.
After reading through some threads, I think it might be a good idea to look into Spanish 21 and Walker's book. I also tried mapping out a few of the beatable shuffles I noticed so I can practice some basic tracking, but SP21 seems like the best bet for AC, at least as a next step.
Anyways, I think I got a lot out of the trip as a whole. Count me in for the next game.
For the most part the casinos were as you as you guys suggested: a few overcrowded tables open while the rest were closed, with anyone who wanted to play a $10 game having to wait for someone to leave a table or roam the casino incessantly. Looking for a $10 minimum, reasonable penetration game with an open seat was bad enough, but having to arrive at the beginning of a new shoe (or the end of one and awkwardly wait through the shuffle and a few hands before deciding to sit down or move on) was even more difficult; 9 times out of 10, by the time I located a positive count, the table had filled or someone had spread to the only open spot at the table. How do others deal with this? Am I just over-paranoid about potential heat, or is it a good idea to avoid making more than 2 back-counting circuits of the same casino's pits during a shift? Also, what about taking over a hand that someone else is spreading into at an otherwise full table? These guys seem to give dirty looks to anyone standing behind them.
I flat-bet a shoe for practice, sitting between a married couple playing off a BS card, getting frustrated every time they lost a hand from a BS play (esp. hitting 16 or 15 vs. 7+) and then ignoring BS on the next hand, losing again. (Mildly amusing, though I'm sure that'll get old.) I counted the next shoe from beginning to end with varying bet size, and at one point had all my remaining chips in play on a split that had been doubled up on. However, the dealer busted that hand and several more, and I ended up ahead. The next game that I back-counted had a count that immediately soared and stayed high for the whole shoe, and I pulled an even bigger profit.
I ended up ahead in several other shoes at the casino with the best rules/penetration, and usually lost a little bit when I tried waiting through the shuffle and playing a new shoe from the beginning, as the count went negative in most of these cases before I wonged out.
Overall, I played pretty conservatively and was therefore limited to playing very few games. It also got somewhat awkward walking around a blackjack pit watching only games that were at the very beginning or end of a shoe, only to run across no positive counts or no open seats and move to the next pit, and eventually return to the same pit. I'm sure there are plenty of ploppy blackjack players who are finicky about what tables they play, but this seems like it would attract the wrong kind of attention.
I got no heat from the games I played, but in the casino I spent the most time at, a dealer asked me for ID when I sat down to play a shoe on day one, which she held in place for about fifteen seconds as she looked over it and then gave it back. The next day, another dealer in this casino asked me AND my girl for ID as I sat down to play a heads-up game, even though she was clearly not entering the game and was just watching me. We told them this twice and they still insisted. The PC watched me intently as our IDs were being looked at, but then left the table and didn't seem to care about my actual play. I'm sure they were just verifying age, since we both look younger than we are, but it was kind of odd, especially since it happened at no other casino. I was hoping to play anonymously - does the eye in the sky get some kind of picture of the ID when they do this?
In the end, I ended up about $250 in the black, plus some modest wins from slots and roulette we had played for fun. It was purely positive variance, since I had played so few shoes, and hadn't even bet my full spread, but nonetheless an encouraging start, and a good first feel for the game. I found the counting itself to be easy enough, and tried as often as possible to count someone's hand by looking near but not directly at it, detecting face cards or 2/7s and 3-6s by peripheral vision, and began doing so while making small talk and throwing around comments with other players about luck and hunches and all that bulls**t.
My biggest weakness most certainly was paranoia at looking out-of-place or drawing too much attention, leading me to play half of the games I probably should've. Next trip I'm going alone, and will make it a point to push the limits as far as possible until I get some heat at one of the casinos I don't really like anyways.
After reading through some threads, I think it might be a good idea to look into Spanish 21 and Walker's book. I also tried mapping out a few of the beatable shuffles I noticed so I can practice some basic tracking, but SP21 seems like the best bet for AC, at least as a next step.
Anyways, I think I got a lot out of the trip as a whole. Count me in for the next game.
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