How come with all the competition of Indian casinos and even new casinos planned in Massachusetts etc. It doesn't force areas Like Foxwoods , Atlantic City and Vegas to offer better playing conditions at the Black Jack tables? Does anyone think that the game has a chace to get BETTER in the future? Is anyone optimistic?
The first thing that hits my mind is that Vegas is different. People who live near AC or CT Casinos, or near other Indian casinos do go to Vegas, but people who live near an Indian casino in California or the MidWest do not go to Foxwoods for example.
Also, what makes you think that blackjack would not be worse than it presently is if there was no competition. I live near a CA Indian casino that has no competition within a 5 1/2 hour drive. This place offers a bad blackjack game, little in VP and who knows what kind of payout they have on slots. They also give near nothing in comps and sometimes they are so crowded that you can neither find a seat at a machine or table easily. Take that 5 1/2 hour drive and you enter an area where there are several Indian casinos all located about half drive from each other. Some have good blackjack games. The best games are generally found in the places that are a little further from the interstate, perhaps as an incentive but the games are overall better than at the place with no competition and the comps are ten fold better (at least).
So, though games are not good, I think competition has at least kept some playable games available.
One key to getting better games I think would be a decrease in overall profits for these places. Table games today have become less important than machine profits and reduced income on table games may only lead to more machines. We need to see reduced profits on machines also. Unfortunately, using some downtown Vegas places as an example of what casino management does when faced with decreased profits, management has tended to worsen their problems by making the games worse. It is the sickness of increasing the hold, while the drop just drops to a much lower number. On the other end of the spectrum, Reno has kept their 3/2 single deck games, but finds that it is not enough to get people to come back when they have Indian casinos in No. California much closer to home, even though they may have poor games.
Vegas, especially the strip, is a tourist destination. Some casino corporations believe that they can fill their places with tourists that do not care what kind of games are offered. Another corporation takes the same approach but offers some good games mixed in with the bad but often at a higher minimum. It always does make me feel good to walk into MGM in Vegas at 5 AM and see the h-17 either closed or near empty but see action at most tables at the S-17 pit. Of course, perhaps the 5 AM blackjack player is much less a tourist and more an educated player. The fact that the tourists keep coming and have no clue in determining good from bad blackjack, means that overall improvement of games will not happen till those tables, machines, rooms, spas and restaurants start looking empty in my opinion.
What really gets me ...is how they get away with all these CSM and 6:5 payouts in this competitive enviorment.
Since I only play on green and black chip tables, I never am faced with a CSM. I am not sure but there may not be a single black chip table in Vegas with a CSM unless it is some horrid gimmick pit.
The 6/5 garbage is mainly on single deck except for some (mainly Harrah's) junk games.
Both 6/5 and CSM's are also generally found on low limit tables. From the casino beancounter point of view, they are increasing the rent on that cheap seat and trying to get their profit percentage on these games to rival the percentage they make on machines.
The casinos believe that most gamblers don't care about the house advantage on their games, especially low rollers. They want low rollers, because they have learned with penny, nickel, and quarter machines that low rollers equal great profits. They have also learned that low rollers are not very discerning gamblers. So, at least in Las Vegas, they have made most of the low roller blackjack games lousy. Even the quarter tables have seen some of this infection, and we are seeing fewer s17 games and more eight deckers. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see late surrender and das go the way of the dinosaur at quarter tables sometime in the not-so-distant future.
They believe competitiveness lies in the buffet, the casino ambiance, the free shows, the name entertainers and the shopping opportunities, not in the games themselves. There will always be some high rollers who look for good games, and you will probably be able to find decent games with $100 or $200 minimums, but for most players, those games will be out of reach. And the sad fact of the matter is, most players either don't care or don't know the difference between a good game and a bad one.
I could see someone uninformed might play a csm but WHY would ANYONE play a 6:5 game?
People play 6:5 games because they are low limit games. It is almost impossible to find a $5 game on the Strip that isn't a 6:5 game. People who play these games don't know that there are $25 tables on the strip that would cost less per hand than the 6:5 single decker costs at $5 per hand. You could tell them and they probably wouldn't believe you.
Most gamblers who go to Las Vegas expect one of two things: they will either get lucky or they will lose. The house advantage doesn't enter into their thinking.
At the Stratosphere in Las Vegas they have three roulette wheels, one of which is single zero, the other two are double zero. I have on many occasions seen the single zero table void of players and the double zero wheels, with twice the house advantage, packed to the gills. I have come to the conclusion, the same as I have with 6:5 blackjack as well as craps when players play the big 6/8 for even money when they could place the 6 or 8 and get paid 7:6, that most of these players are not even aware that there is any difference. You can't hold the casual player or tourist to the same standards as the advantage player. Management has always known this and the fully exploits it. If you want to get in on the action on the house side, the public casino company's stocks are doing great. Just ask Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn or Kirk Kekorian.
Cobbson
Bootlegger,
You wrote:
People play 6:5 games because they are low limit games. It is almost impossible to find a $5 game on the Strip that isn't a 6:5 game. People who play these games don't know that there are $25 tables on the strip that would cost less per hand than the 6:5 single decker costs at $5 per hand. You could tell them and they probably wouldn't believe you.
Most gamblers who go to Las Vegas expect one of two things: they will either get lucky or they will lose. The house advantage doesn't enter into their thinking.
Let's look at the immortal question: "Why do ploppies play $5 crapjack rather that $25 BJ?"
Consider a ploppy who hits the Strip for an evening of gambling. He's got an ENTIRE Benjie just burning a hole in his pocket, and he wants to match his B.S. skills against the casino for an hour. He's faced with a choice of two tables:
Table 1 is a typical SD Crapjack table: $5 min, SD, 6:5, H17, NoDAS, 50% pen, 7 players. Table 2 is a good LV Strip game: $25 min, 6D, S17, DAS, LS, 5/6 pen, also with 7 players. Given that our ploppy will flat-bet the table min for an hour and use perfect B.S., which table will provide him with the most "bang for his hectobuck"?
Now as CC, we look at the WR and say, as you correctly did, that Table 2 has the higher (in this case, less-negative) WR, a statement that is borne out by the two sims I just ran: his EV for Table 1 is a dismal -$8.43/hour (actually, per 100 rounds), while his EV for Table 2 is -$6.47/hour (again, actually per 100 rounds). From an EV p.o.v. as well, Table 1 is inferior to Table 2: -1.686% vs. -0.259%.
Now, though, let's consider the ploppy's RoR for his hour's "gaming". The SD for each of the tables is remarkable similar in terms of units per hour: 11.26 for Table 1; 11.35 for Table 2. However, the unit for Table 1 is only $5, while that for Table 2 is $25: thus, the SD is more than 5 times as high for Table 2 than for Table 1 in terms of $/hr. If we plug these numbers into Norm's "trip ruin" calculator (no goal, but a 100-round time constraint), we find that our ploppy's RoR for Table 1 is 9.8% (BR=20, WR/100 = -1.6863, SD/100 = 11.2553, Hands=100), while for Table 2 it's an appalling 73.0% (BR=4, WR/100 = -0.2586, SD/100 = 11.3535, Hands=100).
Thus, our ploppy will "survive" 9 times out of 10 at the crappy Table 1, but only 1 time out of 4 at the good Table 2.
Now I'm in no way advocating that WE should all run out and play crapjack: I'm merely pointing out that others may have differing utilities. While we're in it to make money, they're in it to play.
Just my 2 cents!
Dog Hand
Thats what I can't understand. Its just so simple? You don't have to be a skilled advantage player to analyze that getting paid 3:2 over 6:5 is HUGE and the game is probally right next door at the table next to them or for SURE in the casino next to them. Yet they sit down and play it anyway? I am so perplexed. It's like they are masochists or something? I don't care if they don't want to play Quarter table. BUT if no one plays those crapjack games I can't imagine that those games wouldn't go away everywhere except for the worse grind joints.
BUT back to my original question. WHY WITH ALL THESE CASINOS DON'T CONDITIONS IMPROVE? & will they EVER?
I cannot say, except that in the local's casinos in Las Vegas, 6:5 games are the exception and not the rule.
State lotteries have around a 50% house (state) advantage and still dwarf all the casinos in the country combined. Keno has a house PC of about 25%, yet it has been played,in one form or the other,for thousands of years. What about the slot machines, the crack of the gambling world? I suppose it's the draw of the "big win" that will change a person's life, that keeps drawing the lambs to the slaughter. But there is no life-changing win in blackjack. Very few red chip players will win $500, and probably none will ever win $100,000. Blackjack's draw is that it can be beaten. Those who read these boards know it can and do it every year. It is fun besides!
If instead of getting pissed about the poor games, think of them as what really pays for our winnings and comps. In other words "G-d bless the ploppy" and thank him for supporting our cause. And those high percentage games, they will never completely take over. If there are no winners, the sheep won't come to the desert.
Cobbson
Yes, there are a lot of casinos, but many come under the same corporate umbrella.
For example: In AC there are 13 "separate physical casinos", but they are owned by five corporations: Harrah's Corp, Trump, Boyd Corp, Aztar & Colony Capital.
So in essence there are only five casinos in the AC market, and five casinos in one market is not competition.
This is just another example of how we Americans let corporations rule our lives. In the United States, "free market competition" is mostly a myth.
AMEN THERE!!!! If we don't do something about limiting corporate sizes we will ALL eventually be doomed. And I don't mean CASINOS corporations.
When the casinos changed the rules in response to Thorp's Beat the Dealer, people stopped playing blackjack and the casinos scrapped the unfavorable rules changes. That was 1964, when most visitors to Las Vegas were gamblers. Today, most visitors to Vegas are tourists. They have much less understanding than the little-knowing gamblers of the golden age of Las Vegas and of blackjack.
how they addressed this issue.
I'd like to know too.
