From: Marc.Ringuette@GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Las Vegas Blackjack: Aladdin
Originator: mnr@GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 06:53:00 GMT

My first Vegas trip, Dec. 18-24.  It was an ideal first trip.  Got a
good survey of Vegas and did some moderately serious gambling with my
$2000 bankroll.

Blackjack was much easier than expected; after my first-ever hour of casino
BJ, I felt I was already getting most of my counter's advantage versus the
house.  This is after a couple of days' practice against xblacjack-2.1 and
with a deck of cards.  I use high-low with a small set of adjustments.
I also found that blackjack was fairly relaxing and fun!  I thought it
was going to be harder work than it actually was.

My surprise of the trip was that I by far preferred double deck games
to single deck.  The main reason was, they're much more robust with
respect to the number of players at the table.  There's no beating fast
single deck head-to-head with the dealer, true.  I got that once.  But
when tables are averaging 3-6 players, I was unable to get acceptable
penetration at single deck.  At double deck, it was easy.

On my second day in LV, I went to the Aladdin and really liked their
game.  Pit was relaxed, dealers good, cut card put at about 75% (half a
deck out of the two decks).  After checking out the other games around,
I decided the Aladdin was the place to be, and spent another day and a half
playing there.  My usual mode of play was, start at $10, down to $5 or
up to $50.  I didn't use surrender, which probably cost me significantly,
but I hadn't practiced with it and the rules were good even without it.
Maybe that's why I got no heat at all.

After the fact, I discovered that the cognoscenti agree that the
Aladdin is a good game.  In fact, the latest Blackjack Forum has an
article by the pit boss of the Aladdin (!!) outlining his philosophy:
give a good fast game and have an alert knowledgeable pit and a slick
organization behind the eye in the sky.  Didn't give me any trouble,
though, and I wasn't covering my tracks very hard.

Aladdin conditions:
  Rules:  2D, DOA, DAS, one card to aces, H17, insurance, LSR.  
  Penetration:  cut card at 65%-85%, average 75%.
  Average 4 players at table.  No heat for varying $5-$50 or $10-$75.
  Usually two tables of double deck, one at $5 minimum and one at $10-25.

Other conditions:  Binion's Horseshoe was busy but good double deck,
Frontier was too busy to be good single deck IMO.  Harrah's had blah DD
(50-60% penetration, no cut card), Barbary Coast had DD with cut card
at 50%, which I complained about (the dealer shrugged and claimed that
those were her instructions).  Jay Sipelstein and I went in and sat
down together.  We were pretty obvious about counting and as we were
leaving, after 30-45 min, the pit boss came over and said "Youse guys
can't play blackjack here no more."  Jay was delighted to be "barred at
the Barbary Coast."  I was mildly amused.

My final BJ total was up $400, on about 30 hours at $15 average bet.
My average loss or gain for a 4-hour session was about $500, though, so
it's coincidence that my winnings were of the same order of magnitude
as my advantage.  I fully expected to be up or down $1500 or so at
random.  BJ sure does have high variance!

So, claim of the week: double deck is God, due to 10-1 spreads and 
robustness WRT number of players at the table.  Aladdin is the best
game in town.


--Marc

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