THE CAT AND MOUSE GAME, PART II: IS THE GAME OVER?
By Bill Zender
(From Blackjack Forum Volume XXIV #4, Fall 2005)
© 2005 Blackjack Forum
[Editor's Note: In this article, Bill Zender, a former Gaming Control agent and successful co-owner/casino manager of the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, discusses the resistance of casino managers to objective lessons in casino math he provided at a recent seminar at the University of Nevada, Reno. Any poker player knows that to get action, you have to give action--and that means, give your opponent a chance to win. But casinos seem to want to sit there like the tightest players in the world and give absolutely nobody any chance to win. Bill Zender provides an excellent casino-side analysis of the flaw in this kind of thinking. --Arnold Snyder]
Several years ago I wrote an article on blackjack, published in Blackjack Forum, that detailed the card counting “Cat and Mouse” game that went on at the old Aladdin Hotel and Casino in the mid 1990’s. The article outlined what our pit management at the Aladdin were doing to triage the potential risk to our bankroll; identify advantage players in blackjack that posed a real monetary problem, ignore knowledgeable players who did not wager enough to present an immediate risk, and loosen procedures, especially game protection procedures, that would be beneficial to the profit potential of the games.
During this time I concluded, in agreement with several other gaming experts and even a number of professional players, that an ongoing atmosphere of cat versus mouse was necessary to extend the health and wealth of the casino game of blackjack for all parties involved, including the casino operators, the professional players, and the gambling public. It has always been obvious that the success of blackjack from the 1960’s onwards was primarily due to the fact that casino blackjack can be beaten. Other casino games did not attract anywhere near the same numbers of new players, despite the fact that they provide the customer with the thrill of a gamble.
A healthy balance of customer playability and house profitability was quite successful for the Aladdin Hotel during the middle 90’s. This player-casino ecological equilibrium provided many players with a reasonable blackjack game of decent rules and consistently superior deck penetration, while at the same time providing our casino management at the Aladdin some of the highest drop/win hold percentages in the state. Obviously, players and casinos could pleasantly coexist under certain gaming conditions.
However, blackjack success and happiness seemed to end with the beginning of the new millennium, and have actually taken several steps backwards in the process. Today casino blackjack games are less player friendly while being less productive for the casino, with drop/win hold percentage drifting lower then they have ever been, dipping below 10% several times in the Las Vegas Strip properties over the last twelve months. Why has this happened? Didn’t the Aladdin experiment provide enough information to establish the proper course for blackjack procedures throughout the gaming industry? Why in today’s highly competitive gaming market have casino management deserted procedures that have been productive in the past for those that consistently provide only lukewarm returns?
Today there is no long a balanced cat and mouse game. The casinos have gravitated to the position of trying to kill off the mouse and destroy the profitable blackjack eco-system. This situation didn’t happen overnight. It has occurred for several reasons over the last several years due to casino management’s need to increase win percentage without taking into consideration a statistical feature of gambling known as fluctuation. In an attempt to preempt natural mathematical variation into the negative regions, casino executives have turned their backs on time and motion issues that are the bread-and-butter of all service and manufacturing business, and have opted for more disruptive and pace-inhibiting game protection procedures.
...continued here - (Dead link: http://www.lastresortconsulting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=50&t=22)
By Bill Zender
(From Blackjack Forum Volume XXIV #4, Fall 2005)
© 2005 Blackjack Forum
[Editor's Note: In this article, Bill Zender, a former Gaming Control agent and successful co-owner/casino manager of the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, discusses the resistance of casino managers to objective lessons in casino math he provided at a recent seminar at the University of Nevada, Reno. Any poker player knows that to get action, you have to give action--and that means, give your opponent a chance to win. But casinos seem to want to sit there like the tightest players in the world and give absolutely nobody any chance to win. Bill Zender provides an excellent casino-side analysis of the flaw in this kind of thinking. --Arnold Snyder]
Several years ago I wrote an article on blackjack, published in Blackjack Forum, that detailed the card counting “Cat and Mouse” game that went on at the old Aladdin Hotel and Casino in the mid 1990’s. The article outlined what our pit management at the Aladdin were doing to triage the potential risk to our bankroll; identify advantage players in blackjack that posed a real monetary problem, ignore knowledgeable players who did not wager enough to present an immediate risk, and loosen procedures, especially game protection procedures, that would be beneficial to the profit potential of the games.
During this time I concluded, in agreement with several other gaming experts and even a number of professional players, that an ongoing atmosphere of cat versus mouse was necessary to extend the health and wealth of the casino game of blackjack for all parties involved, including the casino operators, the professional players, and the gambling public. It has always been obvious that the success of blackjack from the 1960’s onwards was primarily due to the fact that casino blackjack can be beaten. Other casino games did not attract anywhere near the same numbers of new players, despite the fact that they provide the customer with the thrill of a gamble.
A healthy balance of customer playability and house profitability was quite successful for the Aladdin Hotel during the middle 90’s. This player-casino ecological equilibrium provided many players with a reasonable blackjack game of decent rules and consistently superior deck penetration, while at the same time providing our casino management at the Aladdin some of the highest drop/win hold percentages in the state. Obviously, players and casinos could pleasantly coexist under certain gaming conditions.
However, blackjack success and happiness seemed to end with the beginning of the new millennium, and have actually taken several steps backwards in the process. Today casino blackjack games are less player friendly while being less productive for the casino, with drop/win hold percentage drifting lower then they have ever been, dipping below 10% several times in the Las Vegas Strip properties over the last twelve months. Why has this happened? Didn’t the Aladdin experiment provide enough information to establish the proper course for blackjack procedures throughout the gaming industry? Why in today’s highly competitive gaming market have casino management deserted procedures that have been productive in the past for those that consistently provide only lukewarm returns?
Today there is no long a balanced cat and mouse game. The casinos have gravitated to the position of trying to kill off the mouse and destroy the profitable blackjack eco-system. This situation didn’t happen overnight. It has occurred for several reasons over the last several years due to casino management’s need to increase win percentage without taking into consideration a statistical feature of gambling known as fluctuation. In an attempt to preempt natural mathematical variation into the negative regions, casino executives have turned their backs on time and motion issues that are the bread-and-butter of all service and manufacturing business, and have opted for more disruptive and pace-inhibiting game protection procedures.
...continued here - (Dead link: http://www.lastresortconsulting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=50&t=22)