I guess the casinos failing in AC and dropping like dominoes should have come to me way back when (or talked to any one of us for that matter) to save their sorry, greedy butts from extinction. A post I wrote in 2011 sometime as follows:
Table game players are flocking to PA casinos for the better blackjack rules. There is no such thing as H17 in PA. You have a surrender option in PA. This is cut and dry, plain and simple. Meanwhile, AC casino's "think tank we are so spiffy dept." are wondering why they are losing table game players and are possibly totally clueless as to why this is happening. Allow me to help you out and give you a big hint. The competition right next door is offering a good game of blackjack in which the player's money lasts a bit longer. Okay, picture me in your boardroom doing a powerpoint presentation. It will go as follows with having some cool photos and some of the bullet points on the slide presentation as follows:
-Your game of blackjack licks sweaty rhinocerous balls compared to theirs.
-You wanted more money so introduced a higher "gouge" on the customers to clean them out faster. You wanted to bang 5-10% instead of just 2%.
-You assumed that 100% of your patrons were too stupid to figure out that H17 was not beneficial to them.
-You figured that other casinos offering a surrender option at their blackjack tables would not lure your customers away.
-2% of a huge volume of money cycling along steadily adds up to a lot more than 10% of ZERO volume of money cycling along.
-Even if you pump it up to a whopping 20% house advantage on a ZERO volume of business, the competitor doing the huge volume of business making the steady 2% still wins out and is more profitable, amazingly enough!
-(Slide presentation shows blackjack table full of players) Please make observations of this blackjack table in Pennsylvania.
-(Next slide presentation photo shows a blackjack table with a dealer standing there by himself admiring the architecture) Please take note of this typical Atlantic City blackjack table and tell me if you notice any unusual differences between the two.
This assumption that all recreational players don't understand the ramifications of hard and fast rules, such as H17, 6:5, lack of surrender, etc. is wrong. Many of them do. Players converse with one another and are internet savvy. Anyone that plays blackjack overhears the various conversations at the table and every so often someone makes very valid points on house edge, favorable vs. unfavorable rules (right along with all the other various blackjack related conversations that are often erroneous). Obviously you were not paying attention during the powerpoint presentation... are you a casino employee?
The other assumption is that card-counters are making any considerable "hit" on the casinos. Most novice card-counters fail miserably, making the casinos lots of money and even the most formidable counters are only taking the "scraps" at best. Casinos spend 10 times or more the money to attempt to thwart card-counters than what the card-counters take. Card-counters are not the threat. The casinos true threat is the threat they are to themselves with greed and paranoia. Despite any card-counters in PA casinos (who are groveling for scraps and affect little), they are hauling it in, doing a huge volume of business while AC casinos are shutting down entire pits, laying off dealers. Jack up the house edge all you want but 5% of zero= ZERO, 10% profit on zero= ZERO and this is an amazing fact to have in a powerpoint presentation because most don't understand this but... even a 50% profit on zero STILL= ZERO!
Greed causes them to jack up the rules to make a higher percentage of profit but if your gross volume of business declines drastically due to the rule changes, this backfires and they destroy their profit margins. Paranoia causes them to not only spend huge amounts of money (more than they could possibly ever lose to counters) on countermeasures but to also cause encumbrances on the game itself that affect all players.
Keep in mind that maybe 1% of blackjack players out there are card-counters. Of those, only a tiny percentage of this group is actually successful in the long run. So when you babble about the handful of guys that actually turned a profit for the year in the casinos, try to think of what a tiny and insignificant amount of money this truly is in comparison to the volume of money the casinos generate. Also think of the number of novice card-counters that outnumber them 100 to 1 that lost horribly and are finding out the hard way that being an AP is not an easy task. This means that "it all comes out in the wash" and that casinos in fact make money from card-counters on the whole! Countermeasures? Are you kidding me? Welcome them with open arms!
Customers will already be lured away over geographical convenience, as was pointed out. To have a horrible game that is not competitive in addition to this sweetens the deal and insures your demise. This will lure away additional gamblers that lack any geographical convenience by going to PA casinos and will travel farther away in order to enjoy a better game.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks