A New Casino

So this isn’t necessarily “Vegas related” except that it has to do with gambling and casinos.  A new casino opened up near my home in Seattle, on November 6, called Snoqualmie Casino.  It’s about 30 miles East of Seattle, and since it’s a tribal casino, it offers all of the table games, slot machines, and of course, poker.

I’m not sure about the laws in other states, but in Washington, even tribal casinos can’t really offer true no-limit poker.  Instead, betting is capped at $500, making it technically a spread game.  Still, it’s close enough to no-limit that for most people it makes no difference.

I decided to drive to Snoqualmie Casino today to check it out, and play some poker in their poker room.  I played $4-$8 limit Texas Hold’em, and enjoyed the game.  There is no Monty Carlo, meaning the casino doesn’t offer a jackpot for hands like quads, straight flushes and royal flushes.  I like this very much because I don’t like to play a Monte Carlo board; rather, I like to play poker – when I have the best hand, I like to see how much money/chips I can extract from the other players.  When there’s a Monte Carlo jackpot, it changes the way the game is played; when you do have something like a straight flush or quad-something, you tend to check it down, even to mention to the other players that you have a Monte Carlo hand, because after all, you’re already going to win more money than is probably in the pot to begin with.  I refuse to play this way, and have been criticized by other players for taking more of their money when I’ve already made my Monte Carlo hand.  Not that I care too much what other players think; however, I do care that I am playing poker with other players.  I don’t others to play the game differently with me.

At any rate, most tribal casinos don’t offer Monte Carlo jackpots, and Snoqualmie is really no different with the exception that they do have a “bad beat” jackpot, which was only $3500 at the time I played today.  A “bad beat” is paid out when a player has a big hand – usually something like Aces full of Kings, which is beat by quads or better.  When this happens, the loser in the hand wins half of the “bad beat” jackpot; the winner in the hand gets a quarter, and the remaining quarter is divided evenly among the other players at the table.  Rules vary by casino, but this is generally the way a “bad beat” works in Washington State.  Snoqualmie also has a “bad beat” with the rule, as I understood it, that you have to have Aces full of Jacks or better beat by quads or better – with both cards (in Texas Hold’em) playing for the hands.

Snoqualmie casino is large.  The parking garage is at least 6 levels, with considerably more parking available otuside the garage.  Inside, they offer all of the traditional table games and of course, lots and lots of slot machines.  They offer a cigar lounge, which I think is beneficial for us non-smokers; in most tribal casinos I’ve been to around Washington State, the smoke is almost unbearable.  It didn’t seem to be as bad at Snoqualmie, I hope, perhaps, because the smokers were in the cigar lounge.

There are 5 restaurants; something for every budget, ranging from deli type foods to sushi, and of course a buffet.  I tried to order something while playing poker however, and was not able to get service.  In fact, the service at the tables was pretty slow.  A cup of coffee took about 30 minutes, and most people who ordered food waited an hour.  I understand that since they only opened a couple of days ago, they still have to iron out the kinks; but they need to iron them out soon!

Getting to the gaming, I understandably played some poker.  When I got there at about 10:30am, there were two games:  $2-$5 no-limit, and $4-$8 limit.  I put my name on both lists, and ended up at the $4-$8 game.  The players were pretty typical for a small stakes limit game, and I managed to make $301 in just under 4 hours.  The poker room itself was tiny; however, I understand that they intend to move the poker room to a larger room in the near future.  There must still be construction going on, although I didn’t see where.  The poker room had 10 tables, and they were pretty close together.  When they get into the new room it’s going to help tremendously.  The rake is pretty standard – 10% with $3 maximum to the house, and $1 from each pot to the bad beat jackpot.  Tables and chips were as clean as you would expect, being that it’s a brand new casino.

If you live in the Seattle area, it’s definitely worth the trip.

Card Counting: A dying art or a necessity?

Card counting has certainly become popular in recent years; even before the movie “21″ came out in theaters.  I started counting several years ago when I was in college.  Somebody explained to me how it worked, and I remember at the time thinking that it seemed too simple; yet, something I felt I could actually learn.

It turns out that card counting is pretty simple; it just takes a lot of practice.  I spent several years counting cards in the Seattle area, making enough money to supplement my income enough to buy gadgets and go on vacations without dipping into my “real” income.

So when I started going to Vegas for vacations, I was very interested in playing and counting cards there.  I have to be honest though, I was a little disappointed when I started seeing games with rules that significantly increased the casino’s edge over the average player.  They’ve increased the edge so much that card counting is almost a necessity anymore.

In a traditional, single deck blackjack game with the best rules (those rules that are the most advantagous to the player) the house has about a .5% advantage over the player.  For a card counter, this means that the player can increase their edge to about 1-3% over the house.  This is one of the big misunderstandings about card counting.  The player has to play thousands upon thousands of hands in order to make money.  When you’re dealing with about a 2% advantage, you need to play a LOT of hands, and at high enough stakes to make 2% actually worth something.  A few hundered hands at $5 to $50 isn’t going to make a lot of money.  I would argue it might not even be worth playing.

So in Vegas, I saw games that offered such rules as paying 6:5 on a natural, or blackjack instead of 3:2 (this is a horrible rule, and increases the casino’s edge significantly).  Other rules, such as no double downs after splits also increase the casino’s edge.  Sure single and two deck games are available, but the rules increase the casino’s edge so much that it’s almost not worth counting.

So I’ve come to a conclusion:  card counting is almost a necessity if you decide to play blackjack anymore.  In fact, I believe that the casinos almost expect card counting to a certain extent.  I played at Binion’s this year, and I am confident that at least one dealer knew exactly why I increased my bets when I did.  Here’s the thing: I’m not increasing my bet to the table maximum.  I think my bankroll could only support a maximum of $100 per hand.  I would suddenly increase my bet from the table minimum, $5 to my own maximum, $100 in a single hand and nobody even bothered to announce “checks in play!” as they normally do.  Around the Seattle area, if I did that, the floor supervisor is almost guaranteed to stop by and chat with me for a minute.  They’re still pretty paranoid around here.

At $100 maximum, I just think it’s not worth the casino’s attention or time to address the situation.  I’m not going to make a lot of money from them, and even more importantly, with the rules of the game having changed so much, I’m only increasing the edge to maybe 50% at best (in other words, I still don’t really have an advantage).

I suggest that casinos have changed the rules of blackjack enough that they have come to expect card counting, and at low limits, probably don’t even care.

If you’re interested in learning to count cards, there are really plenty of books available.  It’s simple math; all you have to do is keep a tally where you increase or decrease your count by one.  In multiple decks, you have to do some simple division to convert the running count to a true count.  At any rate, I’ll write other blog posts to explain in more detail how it all works.  Just remember that even if as I claim, the casinos don’t really care, you still don’t want to get caught.

Everybody starts by learning basic strategy.  Before you can count, you have to know basic strategy well enough that you don’t even think about it when you’re playing.  After that, you can pick one of the several card counting methodologies available.  I learned the hi/low strategy, where you assign a +1 to low cards (2, 3, 4, 5, 6), 0 to middle cards (7, 8, 9), and -1 to high cards (10, J, Q, K, A).  When the count increases significantly, the player begins to see a slight advantage.  When the count decreases, especially when it is negative, the casino has a better advantage.

Then you have to learn to convert the running count to a true count by dividing the running count by the number of decks remaining in the shoe.  All of this takes a lot of practice, both in terms of keeping track of the count, and doing the conversion.  All of this is done while you are playing perfect basic strategy.  Once you’ve got that down, you start to learn ways you can adjust your play from basic strategy based on the count.  So for instance, according to basic strategy (when surrender is not available) you are supposed to hit 16 against the dealer’s ten card.  If the count is positive however, you might want to stand in that situation.

One of the things I love about card counting is that you can take it as far as you want.  It’s a skill that requires constant practice.

Good Luck!