I played poker in a casino today and while observing the game I reached an interesting conclusion. Poker dealers keep their own tips and what I noticed was that as a result of that they tend to keep the game moving and deal around 40 hands an hour to a table of 10 players. They realize that the more hands, the more they make in tips, and the more rake the casino collects. The good poker players make more money too. That's a win, win, win for all concerned.
With blackjack the opposite takes place. Tips are pooled and the fast dealers have no incentive to really crank it up. The slower dealers have no incentive to learn to speed up. Add to this casino management's tendency to slow the games down with less penetration leading to more frequent shuffling causing fewer hands to be dealt per hour, thus less casino winnings per hour. Besides that, casino management tends to want to save a few bucks by keeping fewer tables open and keeping them full of players which leads to a slower game. If they opened more tables and had fewer players per table more hands per hour would be dealt and as a side benefit covariance would be reduced leading to less fluctuations to the casino's bankroll. Labor costs would increase, more decks of cards would be needed, and there would be more maintenance needed on the tables. Even considering the extra costs, more money per hour would be earned by the casino, more than twice as much. The added expenses could be written off as tax deductions, further helping the casino's bottom line.
The casinos that are doing these are saying it's the APs damaging their bottom line. From the mid 90s through 2007 I played several thousand hours of blackjack and during that time frame I saw about 10 counters, 3 of whom appeared to be competent and with enough of a bankroll to be any threat. It seems to me that casino management, or actually casino mismanagement, is more to blame for their problems than APs are.
When are they going to wake up?
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