Rules Vary Table-to-Table!

[imp]

Forgive me if this has already been touched on; my dial-up service prevents back-reading to any large extent.

The wife & I just returned from a week in Laughlin, by way of flying in to Vegas. Playing at the Nugget in Laughlin, I found that on the table using multiple-decks, doubling after splitting was PERMITTED, but on the single-deck table it WAS NOT!

I called over the pit boss, who turned out to be quite open and friendly, and asked how they possibly could use differernt rules from one table to the next. He informed me they were being sued over it, the Gaming Commission officially frowned on it, but they believed they will prevail in court. I thought, OK, chalk it up to casino concern for losing money on the game.

Lo and behold, we stayed the final night at Sam's Town, in Vegas, and their rules variation was even more pronounced: one single-deck table, a $5 min. table, paid 6 to 5 for blackjack, another single-deck at $25 a crack paid EVEN MONEY for blackjack, and the multi-deck table paid 3 to 2!

Have any other of you long-time players run into this sort of thing?

(I was banned from play at Binion's, downtown Vegas, in 1971!). imp

 

[Nazgul]

I think the pit boss was pulling your leg about the lawsuit. Just about every casino I've played in has had different rules for different games. Sometimes the rules are different because some tables are six deck and others are two deck and they want to keep the house edge consistent. Sometimes every table is six deck but some tables will hit soft 17 and others will stand. Sometimes they will have different rules at tables with different limits or in different pits like a party pit. It's very common.

 

[FLASH1296]

This is all perfectly commonplace.
In fact in most venues it is ubiquitous.

The only constant is that the better the rules the
higher the minimum stakes required to play.

 

[imp]

My "hey-day" of playing was long ago, when I lived in Vegas, early '70s, and at that time it would have been absolutely unheard-of to not have rules consistent for a given game, regardless of stakes, table location, etc.

Admittedly, as more players have gotten an "edge", I am sure the casinos moved in the direction of limiting winnings, rather than eliminate the game from casino play altogether, as Thorp once commented.

Being from the "old-school" is a bit painful, but the game remains fun, for me, anyhow.

 

[Randyk47]

My personal experience of late, having just returned to the playing environment after a ten year absence, is that the rules vary from table to table in a lot of places. The variance, at least as I've noticed, is driven by the table limit. The most "player friendly" rules seem to be at the higher stake tables ($100 high roller rooms) whereas the single deck $5 min tables seem to be the most restrictive. What I call the mid-range tables ($15 and $25 min bet) are always or usually the same from table to table. I can't recall which establishment but I think I saw some difference between a $25 min shoe and $25 min double deck game. Bottom line is that it doesn't seem to be unusual and if Nevada is going out after these places it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact in the past 10 months.

 

[Dyepaintball12]

In the Midwest I rarely see this sort of thing, but in Vegas pretty much every casino has it. I was in a casino and they had 4 different types of tables.

#1 - Double Deck, 50% pen
#2 - Single Deck, 6/5
#3 - 6 decks, 84% pen, DAS, DOA, RSA
#4 - 6 decks, No DAS, D10/11


I didn't even go in the HL room, so it could have been different as well. Crazy.

 

[ihate17]

Leg pulling by the pit

For nearly forever, places have had different rules for different size (number of decks) games and better rules on these same games for higher bet level tables. Often there are different rules in different pits but there are many cases of different rules within the same pit.

All of this means that you need to pay attention and scout your game out.

ihate17