UK-21
Well-Known Member
As I may have mentioned in the past, Mrs N and I are saving our pennies in order to visit Sin City, hopefully sometime this year.
Having seen the movie "21", where the counters who are caught get a bashing, and read a little about "heat" and "backrooming", she's somewhat concerned about my wanting to count and has said she thinks I should stick with BS at the table mins. So the dilemma is; do the counting thing and make it a working holiday with the risk of getting backed off, or play BS and not have to keep one eye on the PB, worry about spreading the bets too wide or making deviations from BS as the count shifts. When she visited LV some years back one of the group was told he couldn't play BJ in one of the larger strip hotels - he wasn't counting, or even playing tight BS, just raising his bets as he was winning. Although it's clear now it was no big deal, she said he did wonder whether he would be escorted off the premises if he went back there (so they didn't) and everywhere else he visited he was conscious of it happening again. We don't have all of that $#it here in the UK.
I'll probably play $5 and $10 tables, so at most will be playing $800/hr - taking the EVs, the difference between BS (losing $4) and counting (winning 2units = $20) isn't that great bearing in mind the variance inherrent in the game and the overall cost of the trip from the UK. I'll probably take $2,000 to play with which is holiday money I'm not expecting to come home with (so anything I do bring home will be a bonus). Looking at the WoO's RoR table, it seems that after 37.5hrs of play there's a 5% chance of losing $1,370 (assuming $10 flat betting) and less than a 1% chance of losing the lot.
So I'm in two minds as to whether the counting thing is really worth the hassle, and may just save it for the last day or two - having also experienced seeing 8 and 16 unit bets get consistently swept up at high counts (I play 1-8), I'm also concerned that an adverse swing will see a big chunk of the pocket money going south early on - which'll put a dampner on things (can't think of anything worse than being in LV and not having any money to play with just two days into a week's visit??)
Does anyone have any words of wisdom on the matter to offer ?
On another point, are there any $10 games on the strip?
Having seen the movie "21", where the counters who are caught get a bashing, and read a little about "heat" and "backrooming", she's somewhat concerned about my wanting to count and has said she thinks I should stick with BS at the table mins. So the dilemma is; do the counting thing and make it a working holiday with the risk of getting backed off, or play BS and not have to keep one eye on the PB, worry about spreading the bets too wide or making deviations from BS as the count shifts. When she visited LV some years back one of the group was told he couldn't play BJ in one of the larger strip hotels - he wasn't counting, or even playing tight BS, just raising his bets as he was winning. Although it's clear now it was no big deal, she said he did wonder whether he would be escorted off the premises if he went back there (so they didn't) and everywhere else he visited he was conscious of it happening again. We don't have all of that $#it here in the UK.
I'll probably play $5 and $10 tables, so at most will be playing $800/hr - taking the EVs, the difference between BS (losing $4) and counting (winning 2units = $20) isn't that great bearing in mind the variance inherrent in the game and the overall cost of the trip from the UK. I'll probably take $2,000 to play with which is holiday money I'm not expecting to come home with (so anything I do bring home will be a bonus). Looking at the WoO's RoR table, it seems that after 37.5hrs of play there's a 5% chance of losing $1,370 (assuming $10 flat betting) and less than a 1% chance of losing the lot.
So I'm in two minds as to whether the counting thing is really worth the hassle, and may just save it for the last day or two - having also experienced seeing 8 and 16 unit bets get consistently swept up at high counts (I play 1-8), I'm also concerned that an adverse swing will see a big chunk of the pocket money going south early on - which'll put a dampner on things (can't think of anything worse than being in LV and not having any money to play with just two days into a week's visit??)
Does anyone have any words of wisdom on the matter to offer ?
On another point, are there any $10 games on the strip?
