Harrah's New Orleans is a strange, strange place. (I am just finishing a short family vacation in NO, and we happened to be staying close to the casino.) To civilians, the casino is big and nice and fairly snazzy. The hotel looks nice (and they can comp you at adjacent hotels too). It's also in a good touristy location.
All the games outside of high roller are 8D shoes, but at least there's no CSMs. The lowest min tables are $15 ($500 max), those are S17 games. The auxiliary pits generally have $20 mins, those are H17 games. Then the $25 and up tables are S17 again ($2500 max). Any table with a $25 min will get a "no mid shoe entry" slapped on it, and yet, this appears to be only sometimes enforced. Also, you can spread to two hands without betting any more than the table minimum, but there's only five (five!) playing spots on each table.
On the upside, if you're there on a weekend, they have tables open in a bar with go-go dancers accompanied by blasting hip-hop music. If you can count in that environment, you can count anywhere.
The combination of the dreaded 8D shoes (usually 2D cutoff), crowds, NME, and limited spots, meant that White Rabbit became the tactic of choice. Start a shoe, and bail if the count is negative after 3-4 decks. Depending on crowds, I got in only 0-2 shoes of play per session. I backcounted a couple of tables, but I wasn't able to wong in to a single shoe. (I only noticed late about the sporadic enforcement of NME, so maybe I could have gotten away with it). White rabbiting 8D shoe games was definitely not my idea of a good time, but it seemed better than play all.
But you know what was most appealing about the play there? No player's card, no ID, no name, total anonymity. (I didn't think comp-counting would be feasible with the table hopping). It was very liberating to the play without a shred of cover. I'd jump the bet to whatever I wanted, decrease it to whatever I wanted (even after big wins... which was great), play the indexes I knew (I think I only took insurance twice, and won it once). No ratholing, either. The only thing I did was tip the dealers and cocktail waitresses (just my usual restrained amount).
Anyway, as for the play, I ended up with a few aborted shoes, two neutral or barely-positive ones, and two hot ones. The second one was especially ridiculous, as the count got positive early, but then began rubberbanding between positive and neutral. Being able to drop my bets was really handy when the count snapped back to zero. You know what else I learned? If you're playing heads-up, an 8D shoe lasts forever.
The results: Between those two shoes, I won approx. $3700. It was ridiculous. I was winning a good share of hands that should have been losers, and most splits and doubled worked out well (no truly gargantuan hands developed). Also, the trajectory of money was upward from the beginning, I barely had to dip into my wallet once I sat down at the table.
Highlight of the trip: I'm in the go-go pit, trying to decide if the closest dancer looks like Hot Britney or Scary Britney, and a well-dressed youngish guy sits down at the table. At first I thought maybe he was gay, but then I began to think that maybe it was the combo of his southern accent and him being super-polite. Anyway, he buys in for a few hundred and is playing greens, maybe $100 per hand. He loses that, and then he buys in for more, and after the buyin, he starts varying his bets wildly, from $100 to $500 (nearly $1k on a couple hands). For a sec I thought it was up to something AP, but he's got no correlation to the count, and he starts making some really bad plays. He also was a total George; he tipped $25 or $100 for the dealer on quite a few hands (In hindisght, I probably didn't need to tip $5 on a hand when he's tipping $100... what's the point really?). When the pit returned his player's card to him, it wasn't a surprise to see that he was a Harrah's Sevens Seas person. He probably got an awesome Christmas card from HET this year. It was internally hilarious for me to jump a bet from $25 to $100, while this guy just jumped $100 to $700 on the previous hand. Best. Distraction. Ever. And he really was a nice guy, I was glad he walked away a winner (I think).
Anyway, back to me, I'm glad the this bankroll fluctuation was positive (to around $34k total), because I was really scraping against the threshold to where I'd have to reduce my max bet. And I don't want to do that, as it might price a couple good games into unaffordability.
Second highlight of the trip: My stepdad (the slot player) was there too, and I always seem to do well while he's doing poorly, which really just rubs it in his face. Would it be voodoo if I thought of him as my good luck charm?
