As promised to a certain female Friend of the "Family" who may be joining us in Vegas, I'd like to talk today about the approved Furdell Blackjack Modus Operandi.
The first thing to learn is finding the right table.
One casino's game of blackjack can differ wildly from another's; there are literally hundreds of rule variations that can create billions of combinations, each one providing a different level of "house advantage" -- that is, the percentage of your bet the house can mathematically expect to win, on average, for each hand you play. Obviously, we want to find the tables with the combination of rules that create the lowest house advantage (while still having minimum bets low enough to keep us gambling all weekend).
Las Vegas is a great city for blackjack, because there's so much competition. Unlike Atlantic City, there are no laws governing what the casino must offer in terms of rules; thus, they differ wildly, and if you don't like the rules in one casino, it's easy to walk next door (or head downtown, or off-Strip, or whatever) to find a better game.
When you're touring casinos, here's generally what to look for and what to avoid:
"Dealer draws to 16 and Stands on all 17s." You'll want to look for this line of text on the table in front of the dealer, as opposed to "Dealer hits soft 17." Although it seems like a minor rule change, giving the dealer a chance to improve on his soft 17 is enough bump the house edge up a further 0.22% (that's nearly double in most cases). Oddly enough, the casinos where we hang out the most, Mandalay Bay and Luxor, offer both variations at different tables. However, Luxor usually only has a few stand-on-17 tables running, if any (and the drink service is glacial). Meanwhile, more than half of Mandalay's 55 six-deck tables offer the better stand-on-17s rule, one of the many reasons I always wind up walking down there instead.
The fewer decks, the better. Although the cards appear in the same ratio no matter how many decks there are, thanks to the laws of probability you actually have a better chance of pulling a blackjack at single deck than you do at 6-deck. And, since blackjacks benefit the player more than the dealer (thanks to the 3:2 payout), this is a Good Thing (? of Fine Young Cannibals).
(On the other hand, continuous shuffling machines actually help the player. Who knew?)
Speaking of blackjack payouts:
Avoid 6:5 tables like the plague. This is a new "innovation" we're seeing in Vegas: offer single-deck games, but change blackjack payouts to be 6:5 instead of 3:2 (i.e. 7.5:5). The fact that the game is single-deck doesn't nearly make up for the rule change; it's eight times worse than a 3:2 game. And yet, the more suckers who play it, the more they'll keep rolling it out at casinos. So very sad.
Surrender is a good thing. We debated this at length in an earlier thread so hotly that CNN called us asking us to take over for Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson (ha, yeah right... I think we get better ratings here). Ideological differences aside, if you do decide to use surrender, you give yourself an extra 0.07% advantage.
(That's right, I'm using % signs instead of "percent!" Suck on that, AP style!)
So, knowing all those things, out of the nearly 100 casinos in Vegas offering usually three or four different rules variations each, which ones offer what we're looking for?
casino loc tbls edge dks pen min max rules
Mandalay Bay, south Strip.
Mandlay Strip 3 .28 2 0.8 25 5000 h17,ds,ls,rsa,sc
Mandlay Strip 7 .44 5 4.7 10 2000 h17,ds,ls,rsa,csm
Mandlay Strip 29 .26 6 1.5 10 10000 s17,ds,ls,rsa
Mandlay Strip 26 .46 6 1.5 10 5000 h17,ds,ls,rsa
Mandlay Strip 10 .49 8 1.8 25 2000 h17,ds,ls,rsa
Las Vegas Club (Barrick)
LV Club DT 9 .18 1 0.5 3 500 h17
LV Club DT 2 1.26 8 6.5 5 200 h17,ds,d4,ls,rsa,21e,21s,6,fak2
Source: bj21.com May 2004 newsletter
I've underlined my two favorite games: the stand-on-17s tables at Mandalay, which have a 0.26% house edge, and the single-deck tables at Las Vegas Club, which have a 0.18% house edge. Besides offering some of the best odds in town, these games have low enough minimums for me to stomach ($5-$10), and there are so many tables that finding an open one is fairly easy, except at the busiest times.
Mandalay has a lot of other advantages that we like (great poker room and sports book, champagne brunch, talented/attentive waitresses). Plus, I've found that if 3-5 of us manage to stay alive at a table for a couple hours, and Andrew provides enough entertainment for the dealers and pit boss, we can usually parlay that into a meal comp (even betting at $10/hand, which they usually ignore).
And, while LVC is admittedly trashy, it's also less claustrophobic and is more spread out than some of its downtown cousins. According to my "contact" at the Las Vegas Sun, a new craps table at LVC has knocked out some of those single-deck tables, but it sounds like there are still a good seven or eight of them operating at busy times. So, for a nice change of pace, you can expect to find me there at some point during the weekend. (Just keep me away from that nasty Royal Match.)
Now, granted, you could make the argument that I'm focusing too much on fairly small percentages. But when you consider just how much gambling we put in on a typical Vegas vacation, those numbers can add up. I like to take any edge I can to embiggen my chances of winning; think of it as comparison shopping. I want to find the best combination of casino experience and gambling odds as possible, and then spend several hours there drinking many, many tasty beverages.
In closing: it's all good on the south end of the Strip and the north end of Fremont Street. Plus, now when you find yourself wandering around Vegas and itching for some 'jack, now you have a better idea what to look for. Now, go start studying those basic strategy charts, post haste!