How much longer until the jig is up?

[blackjackomaha]

Never. There will always be opportunities. Conditions are cyclical and fluctuate, but will never cease to be profitable.

[Orangechip2]

Almost every casino game can be beat. Counting cards at BJ is a small advantage compared to many of the other AP options. If the casino makes card counting not worth the trouble some of those APs counting BJ will quit gambling but others will just mve to their advantage plays. Most other advantage plays have a much larger advantage than counting cards. So the casino would accomplish maybe stopping 40% of AP's that will only use BJ counting to gain an advantage of maybe 1%. Then the other 60% of BJ AP's move to other opportunities in the casino at other games and play to a 2%-20%+ edge on the house. It sounds to me like the casino just raised its losses to AP's by about a factor of 10. Right now BJ is ubiquitous and other opportunities may take some research to find that they exist and exploit. AP BJ counting is easy to detect and these other opportunities if not impossible to detect are really difficult for the casino to detect.

The casinos are faced with a decision of losing some to a adversary they can see and detect or losing far far more to an adversary they can't see or detect except by noticing they won hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is a no brainer that keeping AP BJ viable is in the casinos best interest but often casino decisions make you wonder if any of them possess a brain. If you think that it is drying up just move to the next step in AP. You will look back and think that you were wasting your time when you were counting cards. Every AP I know that felt like heat was too much to be worth it have moved onto bigger advantages at better opportunities and feel just that way about when they were counting cards at BJ.

The casinos waste so much time and money worrying about that drip from the sink when the real problem is that burst pipe caused and growing due to all the counters that they caused to seek other opportunities as a result of all that money spent and time wasted on counters. The can't fix the burst pipe but they can stop making the burst pipe worse by wasting resources on counters. A few casinos get it by following the Zender Model of maximizing profits and they are the most profitable on both BJ and in general but most throw away dollars to save from losing pennies only to find if they reach the ultimate success they seek they cause the penny savings to be thousands lost for the dollars they spent.

I am in the process of searching other posts from you, you seem brilliant.

[Three]

Tthree -- I partially disagree. If an AP with a varying skill set can play BJ or other games [with a larger edge / more $$/hour], he's not going to turn down the better game and play BJ instead. Rather, he's going to play the better games, when available. When those good games aren't available, he'll fall back on BJ and play that (like a "last resort" kind of thing). That being said, the APs may decide that if CC is no longer possible or worthwhile, they'll investigate/research/scout for other and better plays. But for the most part, I think those APs who are playing blackjack are only playing blackjack because nothing else is currently available.

It takes time and effort to learn about these opportunities . I agree if an AP has already learned them you are right but what I was talking about was forcing those that would probably stick to card counting to find other edges. Some will find them with any pushing by the casino but many will stick to counting cards as long as it is viable for them. The latter was what my comments were about. These are the ones that countermeasures will affect future choices for. That is the beauty of the Zender Model for casinos. It maximizes casino profit from the game while not chasing community college of AP BJ to go to AP grad school and get a Masters in hitting the most profitable of all the vulnerabilities in the casino when they become a real threat to the casino. The Zender Model only heats up BJ counting AP's that are already a real threat to casinos. Very, very few counter's fit that bill. I have heard the number as 100 to close to 200 people in the country. You can't be a real threat playing smallish stakes unless you are camping at a casino.

[Casino Kid]

I appreciate the optimism in this thread, but I think the OP is spot on. It seems that the casinos want to switch to a Wal-Mart model where volume sales trump high margins. At the closest casino to me, the $5 CSM tables will always be jam packed while the one or two $10 ASM's will have open seats.

I think we're failing to understand the mindset of the vast majority of patrons who are rolling up to the BJ tables. People want to gamble for fun - it's sociable, action-packed, and there's some outside possibility of winning. But winning isn't the object - people who aren't compulsive gamblers are happy to have a gambling budget for their trip of $X and if they lose that amount then it's not really a big deal because that money was already written off as a loss and they had fun while losing it. The longer they can stay at the table and have fun and get free drinks the better, so if they see a table with a lower limit they'll go to that one regardless of what device the cards come out of. Maybe their company was attending a conference in Vegas and some of the boys went out to carouse and have fun at the tables. Hell, for some people losing is just as good. There are people who like to brag about how much money they threw down at the restaurant/track/casino etc. and the fact that they can lose such and such amount and not care about it proves how macho they are. Especially in Vegas - people see it as a badge of honor to throw money away, it's all part of the experience, what happens in Vegas..... How many of these people are getting ready to part with way more money in Pahrump? People on this board will call them "pea-brained ploppies" or whatever, but the fact is that these people don't want to work to have fun, not even spend an hour or two learning BS - they just want to gamble for recreation and I don't think this has any negative correlation with intelligence.

Also the way 6:5 is written and talked about makes it not seem like a big deal to someone who's not going to play a whole lot. "Well you see, in 3:2 blackjack you win $15 on a blackjack, but in 6:5 you win $12 so it's only $3 less." A person who's going to play once a year for low stakes figures they might get dealt a blackjack once or twice and they'll still win more than 1:1 in those situations so what difference does it make?

Avincow says it's almost as if people don't care. That's not quite true - they don't care. Look at all the people at the slot machines - people with this mentality really couldn't care less. Casinos want to attract compulsive gamblers who chase losses with higher wagers, and people who just like to throw the dice, pull the handle, or put their life savings on red for the thrill of it.

Last time I went to Vegas I walked through at least 20 joints on the strip, and I saw 2 offering 3:2 (better on Fremont). But good luck getting a seat at the 6:5 tables during prime time. I think they'd prefer 5 people at a $5 CSM to one person at a $25 ASM any day of the week. In general blackjack tables take up room that several slot machines can be crammed into, plus you have to pay a dealer to stand there instead of a machine that gobbles up the money without the need for any human beings.

And let's not forget video blackjack. Some people are so averse to human contact that they'd rather play with a projected image of a busty female than actually have to sit at a table with other real people. I see people playing the video games while real tables are practically empty.

I personally don't favor these trends, but they seem more or less inevitable to me. Hopefully I'm wrong. Certainly a few places will offer real live blackjack just like there are still a few public pay phones around, but these will be gimmicks or throwbacks for old time's sake and there won't be enough of them to make it economically viable to play.

[AnabelleT]

I can relate to this. I can tell you that even though my local casino does NOT offer 6:5 only 3:2, I sit with people all the time who want nothing but to have a good time. One of the things that makes me lose my count is I can't help but notice horrible plays, I almost want to say something, help them play their game, but these people don't seem to care, they're laughing and drinking, trying to talk to me blah blah blah. On the rare occasion I play in the high limit room it's usually different, people there seem to care a little more, know a little more, but even there it's not always the case. It's all a big party to most casino goers. Don't get me wrong, I love the casino environment, love to have fun, and love playing the games (Baccarat, Pai Gow Poker, specially Blackjack), but I'm more serious about these games than most I see around me.

The people who know what they're doing will sometimes talk to me after I've left the table, compliment me on my play and stuff, but mostly, players don't seem to know much and those who do know don't know enough, and they really don't seem to care. So why should the casinos keep offering us good games when they totally don't have to?

[Three]

It all depends on the area. Some areas are full of people that aren't real bright. They might sit there and get paid a red chip and a white chip rather than a red chip and a pink chip on their $5 bet but in another area with brighter people as often as not the first time they get shorted and should get 25% more of a payoff the patron leaves the table.

You do get side bet ploppies that are really there to play the side bet and could care less about their BJ bet. These people will get upset when they get a BJ and lose their side bet.

At a packed $5 CSM table there will be 6 or 7 players betting a total of $30 or $35 a round. Let's assume the people play at less than BS expectation at a 1% HE. The casino expects to make $0.30 to $0.35 a round. Optimistically at such a table the casino can get 80 rounds/hour. That is an hourly win for the table of $24-$28/hour. Now you subtract the dealers hourly, the Floorman's hourly divided by the number of open tables in the pit, The Pit Boss's hourly divided by the total number of tables in the pits he is responsible for, cocktail waitress, cashiers, cleaning people, security staff, surveillance staff on duty, valets etc all at whatever fractions of the area they are responsible for and the casino is probably losing money on the CSM $5 table. If they had desirable games the discerning players betting green and up that play faster would be in their casino and they would be making money at that table. The average bet per round would be $200 or much higher for the table and they would get at least another 20 to 40 hands an hour out of the shoe. Some places offer good games and make good money and others offer crap and are lucky if the table covers its operating expenses. The ones that follow the $5 CSM model are the ones that are closing and going bankrupt.

[Jabberwocky]

Winning at blackjack is tough work. Like Don has stated, "the casinos don't give it away."

[ZenKinG]

Winning at blackjack is tough work. Like Don has stated, "the casinos don't give it away."

It's easy, if you have the bankroll and live next to many stores, it should be a walk in the park. I would log thousands of hours without getting tired. It's too bad that I dont got the huge bankroll right now that would let me play what I believe are worthwhile stakes. Just a matter of time.

[stopgambling]

I think the csm and 6:5 generally apply to ploppies and new players . Once they graduate to a real degen. gambler and believing the flow of cards ,they would want 3/2 bj and shoe /pitch games. Most of the casino goers are sick ,some are more sick . There are those weekend ploppies that eventually get hook on the action and false hope of winning or just chasing their money because they lost a large amount last weekend.THE VICIOUS CYCLE CONTINUES.

[Exoter175]

Tthree -- I partially disagree. If an AP with a varying skill set can play BJ or other games [with a larger edge / more $$/hour], he's not going to turn down the better game and play BJ instead. Rather, he's going to play the better games, when available. When those good games aren't available, he'll fall back on BJ and play that (like a "last resort" kind of thing). That being said, the APs may decide that if CC is no longer possible or worthwhile, they'll investigate/research/scout for other and better plays. But for the most part, I think those APs who are playing blackjack are only playing blackjack because nothing else is currently available.

Precisely! I've scaled back my table play a little for some of the other AP plays and now I've settled into this happy "zone" of play where I'm raking in probably 35% more daily profit and only sacrificing an hour-ish of table play to do it (depending on the day) its almost to that point now that I've settled into such a groove that I'd have to have a really awful day on the tables to walk out of the casino at a break even. In the last 38 days, I've had ONE day that I've walked out with anything less than the money I came in with.

In relation to the subject of the state of current blackjack, the casinos will be slowly shooting themselves in the foot if the push CSM's and 6:5 further, they'll show decline in popularity from blackjack which is the dominant table game in the industry, and with it the swaths of people playing "multiple" table games will diminish, further declining the table play wholly to the casinos. If they put "beatable" games out there at "budget-friendly-denominations", they'd make a killing. Imagine for a minute that you walk into a casino on the main floor and see nothing but 5/10/15 tables with 3:2, DoA, DAS, RS(A)(up to 4), S17. You'd have that place flooded all the time with people playing blackjack because they are losing slower, but coming back more often. Even with just a .334% house advantage, they'd make a killing on those tables because they'd be full round the clock. Toss a prop bet on it like 21+3 or Royal Match, and you're making more per hour on those players than you would on a 6:5 table with no prop bet.

It's easy, if you have the bankroll and live next to many stores, it should be a walk in the park. I would log thousands of hours without getting tired. It's too bad that I dont got the huge bankroll right now that would let me play what I believe are worthwhile stakes. Just a matter of time.

Eventually you'll play the game you talk about and you'll realize it really isn't that easy, its actually hard work.