Recent content by gDGBD

Played at L'Auberge du Lac last weekend and was sorry to see that H17 was still in force. Good news: the dealer had a soft 17 only twice and busted on one of them. Bad news: they don't offer surrender, and I seemed to get a boatload of hard 15's and 16's against a ten.

Back in the 70's, when good single-deck games still existed, I once heard a pit boss tell a player with a basic strategy card, "That stuff only works half the time." I wonder if he knew that was an admission that using BS resulted in an even money game. Then there was the dealer I saw who...

It doesn't have lyrics, and the video quality is bad, but it's a classic instrumental by the great J.D. Crowe, accompanied by a who's-who of incredible pickers (Mark O'Connor, Tony Rice, David Grisman, and Jerry Douglas): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD-vAAO_OZU

It's a joke and a clever reference to William Carlos Williams's famous poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow": so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

Does anyone know of any songs that mention blackjack? The only one I could think of is Ian Tyson's "Summer Wages", the first lines of which are "Never hit seventeen when you play against the dealer/You know that the odds won't ride with you" (of course, Tyson should've referred to a hard 17...

Rose did time for income tax evasion.

I'm trying to resist making some crack about a bathroom break and the sacred flow...

Last time I was there was pre-Katrina, but you could find 6D, S17, and DAS. They didn't offer surrender.

One of the most fun (and strangest) times I've had playing occurred last spring in Vegas. My wife was in our hotel room resting up before dinner, and I was playing at a $25 table, betting $25-$50 a hand. The rules were decent: 6D, S17, DAS, and surrender. I struck up a conversation with a...

The last few times I've been to Shreveport/Bossier City, the Horseshoe has had one 3:2 single deck table, but I've never seen an empty seat.

A friend of mine was going to Vegas for the first time, so I prepared a basic strategy chart for him to use. He later told me that a pit boss, while allowing him to use the chart at the table, had said, "You know, those things are wrong half of the time." When you think about it, this would...