Controlling wins and losses

**moo321** · 11-19-2012, 10:25 AM

When playing rated, you can try some tricks to control your wins and losses. Ratholing (hiding chips) is the biggest one, as it makes you look like less of a winner, or possibly a loser. Another method is whether or not you "book" wins by coloring up.

For example, if you have a session where you lose $100, you can color up at the end, and let them book the loss. If you win $1800, just grab the chips and leave. The dealer will yell at you and ask you to color up. Completely ignore them, leave as quickly as possible. They will then have no idea what you won or lost. A dumb floor may just record that you left with nothing (I have had this happen), or leave you in the system for hours, or record that you left with your original buy-in.

Obviously, one risk is that they'll put you down for MORE than you won, but that's why they call it gambling!

**Marlene** · 11-19-2012, 01:50 PM

I made the mistake of bringing purples from the previous session. I only changed in one for green but put the others in front of me. I won and absent mindedly pushed it all in for color up. I am afraid i got credited for more win than I had! Dumb!!

**Marlene** · 11-19-2012, 01:52 PM

Originally Posted by Marlene

I made the mistake of bringing purples from the previous session. I only changed in one for green but put the others in front of me. I won and absent mindedly pushed it all in for color up. I am afraid i got credited for more win than I had! Dumb!!

I just thought that the reverse may work. At color up claim that a few of the blacks or purples you brought with you from previous play so they will not be counted for you. Not every time but occasionally this might work.

**bigplayer** · 11-19-2012, 02:10 PM

Color down black to green and pocket them, pocket the two green chips you get from a $100 blackjack, etc. If your EV is $300-$500/hour shoot to pocket 150% to 200% of your hourly expectation whether you win or lose. When you go to the bathroom take a couple of black chips with you, put one black into your pocket when another player leaves, etc. Everything you can do to minimize your cumulative win helps. Of course if you have a massive up-flux to start ratholing won't be much of a help...your only choice is to continue to play rated, play unrated, or if not well known trash that players card and get a new one with a new name.

**whistry** · 11-19-2012, 02:50 PM

Comp City has a lot of good practical information on minimizing wins/maximizing losses. The Kindle version is something like $8 on Amazon right now and well worth it.

Having an "out of money" friend or spouse coming up and borrowing chips can really help minimize quick upswings too.

**Solo player** · 11-20-2012, 04:45 AM

IMHO...Ratholing can also get you in trouble. At many places the pit comes around and does a quick chip count of there black and even green chips every few minutes depending on the venue and there tolerance for your level of play. Say your the only one at the table betting green. It won't take the pit long to figure out were those missing chips went. I favor unrated play instead of rated anymore and seldom rathole. By far the best thing is to just get up and leave.

**Three** · 11-20-2012, 05:31 AM

I am not sure how practical just getting up and leaving is. If you logged a lose color up and if you didn't you likely have a mountain of chips. How exactly do you scoop up and carry off hundreds of chips. Sometimes I wipe out their supply of green chips and they pay me in black for a while. If I played through some bad counts and won it might be closer to a thousand chips. I think if they were concerned about what you walked off with they would call the eye. Then the eye would review your play to get a close estimate of your stack at your exit point. Neither the pit nor surveillance will appreciate being made to do extra work. The eye might do a skills check and the pit will definitely remember you and watch you close the next time you play.

I try to appear as cooperative as possible when it comes to making their job easy. They come around doing a chip count and take an extra long time because I rather openly pocketed too many but still went unnoticed I tell them I have a lesser number in my pocket. They are usually concerned about employee theft and that makes them stop the investigation of the chip tray. What you want to appear to be is a player that enjoys the game win or lose that wants to help make their job as easy and pleasant as possible. If that is how they see you you are far less likely to get backed off. They may know you will be a winner in the long run but stay under their tolerance and they are happy to have you shill their game by making winning look more likely to the other players. This makes them money from others while you take money. Just don't get greedy or overstay your welcome. They will tolerate this type of player much longer than others but they won't give you the store.

When you make yourself memorable you want it to be for a good reason not a bad one. Of course if your style is to play all over the country or world burning games behind you as you go for a chance at one or two big hits at each store, this strategy doesn't fit your style of play.

**moo321** · 11-20-2012, 08:42 AM

Originally Posted by Tthree

If I played through some bad counts and won it might be closer to a thousand chips.

A thousand chips? Seriously? A thousand chips?

That's 10 racks of chips. So, assuming this is all red, and they bring $1000 each fill, they filled 5 times and you took it all? If that was green, it would be $25k?

**Three** · 11-20-2012, 10:43 AM

If you could read the likely amount I stated after getting a shot was in the hundreds of chips. By that I meant one or two hundred. Then I said closer to one thousand not one thousand. That could be 600, I was shooting for the idea that it was significantly more than one or two hundred chips. You play through waiting bets at $15 a pop and win most of them for a couple shoes for a hundred to two hundred red chips and pink chips. The count finally spikes and you bet your green with great success at two hands of $200 each for a mountain of green chips. The point was not to nail the exact number of chips in front of you but point out that it can get impractical to try to scoop them up and leave in a hurried fashion. It really pisses the pit off when you leave the tray empty except for large denomination chips as well. They will remember you for a long time after that.

**zengrifter** · 11-20-2012, 12:47 PM

User is banned, content deleted.

**Kat** · 11-20-2012, 03:54 PM

Originally Posted by moo321

A thousand chips? Seriously? A thousand chips?

That's 10 racks of chips. So, assuming this is all red, and they bring $1000 each fill, they filled 5 times and you took it all? If that was green, it would be $25k?

I think we all have our delusions of grandeur.

**Three** · 11-20-2012, 04:16 PM

I had over $3,000 invested in the game and won over $3,000 I had more red than green chips along with a stack of pink when I colored up. The dealer wasn't helping manage the chips by overpaying in green and taking red. The average chip value was probably about $12.50 with about $6500 to cash in. That's about 8 chips/$100. So I roughly had 65*8 chips = 520 chips. I really showed them too much. I thought I was going to get backed off so it was my last hurrah session. The suits approached when I was leaving. I figured that was it. They just wanted to offer me a meal and a room and they offered to get me a reserved table if I wanted one on my next trip. I was really interested until they said I would have to set up some casino credit to get a reserved table.

I am not good at looking like I am not paying close attention to the cards but I do manufacture lots of situations to change my bet in opposition to the count moves and I use a pretty complicated system that no one else uses that has me making odd plays that you wouldn't make with systems that only track high and low cards. They made me for a degenerate gambler and were angling at the best way to get me to play more there. This kind of thing has happened more than once, thinking I was about to get the tap from the approaching suits only to be offered the red carpet treatment. One of my weaknesses I am working on is too much exposure. Sometimes I stay waaay longer than I should but I still haven't been backed off because of it. I figured I was toast because all I hear about this joint on the boards is how sweaty this store is and how quick they are to back you off.

**Nyne** · 11-20-2012, 04:46 PM

I don't rely on the dealer to decide to pay me with bigger chips. I generally keep enough green to work with and request payouts in black when appropriate to manage my stack sizes. I'm regularly in and out of my pocket with black and above, without hiding this fact. I play unrated, so I'm not worried about how much they have me winning or losing. Managing my stack sizes has a couple of benefits when it comes time to leave. One is that I don't have 5 racks of chips to deal with. The amount of chips remaining on the table is small enough I can quickly grab the chips and leave when no one is paying attention (while loading cards into the shuffler and retrieving the new shoe, for example. By the time they realize I'm leaving, I'm far enough away that it's futile to ask me to color up, and the chips I took off of the table as I left are not enough to worry about that much. The other benefit is they don't get a chance to ask me to color up my black, which makes it easier to cash out later. The advice in this thread is good for playing rated, but I avoid this as much as I can, and I try to avoid returning to the same place often enough to become well known.

Originally Posted by bigplayer

Color down black to green and pocket them, pocket the two green chips you get from a $100 blackjack, etc. If your EV is $300-$500/hour shoot to pocket 150% to 200% of your hourly expectation whether you win or lose. When you go to the bathroom take a couple of black chips with you, put one black into your pocket when another player leaves, etc. Everything you can do to minimize your cumulative win helps. Of course if you have a massive up-flux to start ratholing won't be much of a help...your only choice is to continue to play rated, play unrated, or if not well known trash that players card and get a new one with a new name.

BP, is this advice intended for short sessions, where 150-200% of your hourly expectation may amount to a few hundred or a thousand dollars, or do you try to rathole at that rate on longer sessions as well?