I'm the one who reports BH/CC for CBJN :-)Originally Posted by nighterfighter
I walked through today and you're right. There were two 6D games open and both are S17 in the 100 years place. That's a recent change.
By any chance were you playing a pitch game today across the street from Ameristar? I saw 2 counters there that I've never seen before.
Cool, glad to know I wasn't just going crazy.
And that wasn't me. I can't make it out during the week, my actual job calls.
And if you are referring to the one I think you are, isn't that a 6:5 game?
I may be new at learning all this, but I know that's terrible...
How is the heat in Black Hawk and Central City in general for card counters? Would you consider it a sweaty place overall? Do they let you spread to two hands to get more money on the table? A $25 to $100 is not much of a spread at DD unless you can add another hand which I assume would be a big tell.
Yes it is. The guy was playing it like it was a 3:2 game, clearly raising his bet way too early. I've seen more than one person counting the 6:5 games in town. I've run sims on the game and they are clearly playing losing games.
It's much sweatier than you'd expect for such low limits. There's one place (think horse track name) that quickly 86s APs and flyers them around town. I know a guy who went back. They had him arrested and prosecuted for trespassing. I suspect he represented himself, as he was fined and got something like 15 hours of community service!
Almost every place has a rule that if you start with one hand, you can't spread to more than one (on DD, not shoe). If you start with two hands, you have to bet double the table minimum bet on each spot.
COme for the scenery, not the BJ.
Not quite sure what kind of heat you are talking about when you mention Laughlin NV. However, I have made a couple of trip reports on Laughlin and posted them on BJ21. For those that don't have access to the paid portion of BJ21 here are two of them.
Trip report concerning the high temperatures from 2017.
Not too long ago I made another trip to Laughlin. The most I walked was from the Riverside down to the Golden Nugget which is only about a mile. I took the main drag and not the river walk. I made stops at several casinos along the way so it was really more than a mile considering the walk into the casino and back out again. Then late at night I made the return walk. The daytime temperatures were in the mid nineties and probably in the low eighties at night.
When I got back my inner thighs were all red and chafed, and they hurt like hell. Heck, this was only the first day of the trip. I had three more days to go. Now I’m not so fat that my thighs rub together when I walk, but my balls and underwear could have been rubbing. Anyway, this never happens when I’m home. I’m often outside snow shoveling in the winter for up to 2 hours at a time constantly walking around pushing my yooper scoop. I would guess I walk at least two miles snow shoveling.
Anyway this also happened the last time I went to Laughlin. Fortunately, I had some vaseline with me and put that on my inner thighs and that helped, but the damage was already done. I would have died without that Vaseline. Does anyone else get skin chafing when they walk? Do the hot temperatures have anything to do with it? Heck I should have put Vaseline on before I started out.
PS. Beware those bastards at the Edgewater will shuffle up on you if you triple your bet. Riverside may or may not shuffle up on a triple bet.
Very long Laughlin trip report from 2016.
Trip Report: Did Even Better This Time (Long)
Once again I made another very enjoyable trip to Laughlin. I enjoyed eating in the Riverside restaurant and watching the boats go up and down the clear blue waters of the Colorado River. I skipped the buffet at the Riverside entirely as last time I thought the food there was terrible. The Riverside restaurant had good food and all but my first meal was completely comped.
Unlike my last visit to Laughlin where I played almost all of the casinos in Laughlin, this time I devoted all of my blackjack play to just four casinos. They were the Riverside, Aquarius, Tropicana, and the Nugget. The Riverside and Tropicana give good comps. The Aquarius gives terrible comps. It isn’t even worthwhile to play rated there. I never checked what kind of comps the Nugget gave me, but I did get $10 in free slot play for getting a card there.
On this trip I managed to get 37 hours of blackjack play in. I believe, I was way above expected value for the trip. Everything went great the first day. I won all of my sessions at the four casinos I played and even broke even at video poker. I managed to put in 10.5 hours of blackjack play on my first day which is a lot considering my day began at 2:30 am my home time and didn’t end until 6:00 am the following day my home time.
Day 2 was also good, but I had my first losing session on day two. I only got in 9.5 hours of blackjack play on day 2 since I had a late start after sleeping in. I also won my first session on day 3 and this marked the high point of my trip. At this point, I played a total of 10 sessions ranging from a low of 1.5 hours to a high of 4 hours for a session. At this mark in the trip, I only lost 1 out of the 10 sessions I played. Then I racked up some losses, and day 3 turned out to be the only losing day of the 4 days I played blackjack. For the entire trip I played 16 sessions of blackjack and only lost 4 of them. I had net wins at all the four casinos I played even taking into account my terrible loss I racked up at video poker.
I had my largest win at the Aquarius casino, but the Aquarius is also where I had my largest loss so as far as net win goes the Aquarius casino was second best. Here is a tip for fellow red chippers on how to play the Aquarius two deck game. The Aquarius usually has only one two deck game open on a weekday. It is a $10 min game and it might be fairly crowded. However at the 6:00 pm shift change they raise the limit to $25. If you are already playing you are grand fathered in at $10 and since $25 is pretty much for most folks the game is often pretty dead shortly after shift change. You can play heads up at the $10 min or just with one or two other folks and they usually don’t stick around for long.
One of my goals on this trip was to play enough to qualify for a comped flight. I thought it was best to add some video poker to the mix as a lot of folks with very little play were getting comped flights. I decided I would play $1 9/6 JOB, but could not find any such games. I did find 25 cent 9/5 JOB, but I found it boring and I wasn’t making many points. I wanted 9/6 JOB and went hunting again for the game. I finally found a few machines that were 9/6 JOB but they were $5 and $10 min. I decided to give the $5 9/6 JOB a try. At $25 a hand you can go up or down very quickly and the first 6 or 7 hands I played were all losers. $200 was blown in seconds. I gave up and went back to the 9/5 JOB. I figure for the trip I ran about $2,000 through the video poker machines and ended up losing about $300. That is a 15% loss but it was all due to getting losses on the $25 hands. I did play some video poker each day, but found it boring.
At one of the more sweaty casinos I got my goose cooked. I was spreading only about 1 to 8 and losing most of my big bets. Then out of the blue the phone rings, and the pit critter looks up at me with a sly smile on his face and then comes over to our table and inputs some info into the machine on the table. A few minutes later he comes over to the table again and then asks me if I’m (my name). I say yes and ask why? He makes up some nonsense answer, but does not back me off. At this point I figure my goose is cooked, and I only played a little while longer. I figured I better go eat while I still have some comps left on my card. I do not know what he entered in the computer, but does everyone think if I make another trip in the future that I should just play unrated. I still have enough comps on my card for another free buffet so I don’t need to play rated.
I did run into a card counter. At first I thought he was just another ploppy. He only bought in for a couple hundred dollars and you don’t last long at a $25 minimum table with just a couple hundred dollars, but when he busted out he bought in again. As he walked by me in the bathroom he said “I like your act.” I knew right away what he was talking about and answered “is it that obvious.” He was from the upper Midwest and we had a brief conversation about Hinckley and Danbury WI. He played unrated due to previous back offs and left just at the right time with a nice win. He said he came down from Vegas and plays blackjack for a living. He said he is not a member of BJ21 but does subscribe to CBJN. I told him to join green chip so maybe he will.
I didn’t make any big bets at blackjack. My biggest bet was only $100 and I got a blackjack on it. A few $80 bets were made. Most places will call green action and checks play, but I really had no other trouble except for the one place where I got my goose cooked. It is really difficult to make a large spread at the Riverside because if you jump your bet 3 times they will shuffle up on you, but since your spread is weak it is more difficult to spot counters.
And now here is why xxxxx is wrong about Laughlin. First let me say the effort and expense involved for me to get there is not excessive. On this trip my total expenses except airfare was less than $60, and most of that was for a $25 dollar airport parking fee and the rest was tips on meals. Even on a local trip I usually spend close to $100. I should add a correction here because I gave many tips to the waitress for drinks but didn’t track them. They probably amounted to $30 or more for the entire trip, but they were just a dollar blackjack chip and maybe only a 50 cent piece depending if I got a lot of uneven bet blackjacks. I got so dehydrated on this trip that I hardly could pee at the airport before I got on the plane for the return trip home.
Another reason is the blackjack games are better in Laughlin than my closest casino and for me to get to any decent blackjack game it is a 5 hour drive. I just don’t like driving anymore. You have to remember one size does not fit all. I would say the pen on Laughlin’s two deck games is better than what is listed in CBJN as I seen one dealer giving close to .6 decks unseen which is a far cry from the one deck unseen at xxxxx casino. However, the Nugget in Laughlin used a notch on the 2 deck discard tray to mark pen which was about .8 decks unseen as listed in CBJN.
Okay, I did well on the two trips I made to Laughlin. We all know they could have been losing trips just as well, since only two trips mean nothing. I don’t care if I make a lot of money there as I consider myself just a red chip player anyway. However, anytime I’m on a blackjack trip and come home with more than a thousand dollars after all expenses I’m very satisfied. The average of both of my Laughlin trips netted more than a thousand after all expenses. I’m very happy.
PS. I almost forgot. I did qualify for an entirely comped flight next time. It includes the flight and hotel and if I want to bring a guest that is comped too. For the benefit of xxxxxx and anyone else who is interested this is what I did. I just about doubled my blackjack play from last time to around 13 hours and added some video poker to the mix. I don’t know the formula they use, but my play was enough for the free trip. Many other folks on this trip I knew or talked to, and a lot of them are getting free trips also. I also won a tee shirt at blackjack. Now I think I own a total of two shirts with short sleeves.
Last edited by Midwest Player; 06-27-2018 at 03:56 PM.
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