After the "M" purchase by Penn National in late 2011 their once superb
BJ and VP games were relegated to the dustbin of gaming history.
I purchased one copy. I was quite disappointed, and I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone. In a small, but prominent casino area(6 casinos in a 1/2mile radius), some of the games I was looking for were updated in 2002 and 2003. This was in December of last year.
I don't remember when I bought it, but I was curious about the relevance of data for my neck of the woods, with few casinos spread apart a large geographic area. I think it was a year or two ago. The info in CBJN was about what, almost 10 years out of date? I could just walk to my local store and correct the info, but driving to the other stores, 3+ hours out of my way, with 10 year old info... Not going to happen. So I'll just scout when I can and generally ignore CBJN entirely, unless there's a compelling reason not to.
It's true that there are casinos in certain areas that have not been updated in a long time. I have never planned a trip without it but usually my trips are to Vegas or Reno and those are up to date with up to date rules.
If you are wondering if it is worth it for your area I suggest e-mailing Al at the BJ21 store in Las Vegas and asking him if the casinos you're interested in have or will have recent updates. Maybe that will prompt Stanford to get the long lost areas updated.
Others have mentioned that there is also other useful info like having a list of most (maybe all?) Casinos in the US and Canada that have blackjack. I like looking at the list because I may plan a blackjack trip somewhere I haven't been that I wasn't aware of just because it has playable blackjack.
I believe it is especially good for red chip straight counters that are disciplined enough not to play marginal games. You can plan trips to casinos with good pen and rules that you may have missed if you never purchased a copy of CBJN.
I am a CBJN reporter. The area I cover is reported regularly and is accurate at the time I make my notes. There have been instances where I email my report to the Editor and I find something new or different my next visit. That gets reported the following month. When I visit out of area casinos, if there are substantial differences from what's reported, I report that, too. Anyone is free to make a report to CBJN if they find something outdated and/or inaccurate.
I recently went to an area I had never been to before. I looked at CBJN and the info was about a year old. I contacted a few APs I knew in that area and they gave me some updated info which was correct - better conditions than reported in CBJN. If you have a good network of AP friends, that is probably more valuable than the publication.
For the most part, I find CBJN relatively accurate. However, don't forget condition can change day to day, shift to shift, dealer to dealer, etc. If you're going to travel, it's definitely worth picking an issue up. Even if it's an out of the way place that hasn't been updated for a while, at least you'll know of its existence and address.
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