Casino Surveillance Pro

 Slot machines are often considered one of the worst bets in a casino. Here’s why: Low Odds of Winning : Slot machines are entirely based on luck. The outcomes are randomized, and the odds of hitting a winning combination are extremely low.  Depending on the machine, the chances can range from 1 in 5,000 to a staggering 1 in 34 million Ad 1 . House Edge : Slot machines have a significant house advantage.  The house edge varies, but most slots give the casino an edge of between 2% and 15% 2 . This means that over time, players are likely to lose more money than they win. Progressive Jackpots : While those massive multi-million dollar jackpots are tempting, progressive slot machines are actually the worst.  The house edge for these machines can be as high as 17%, meaning you lose between $12 and $17 for every $100 wagered in the long run 3 . Lack of Strategy : Unlike table games like blackjack or poker, where skill and strategy play a role, slot machines offer no such ...

I had a reader ask, so here is the house rules at the single deck Blackjack game that we offer at the casino that I deal at. I've also included a basic strategy chart for those rules.You should know that our table limits are very low, usually $5 to $50 per hand. And unless there's only one player at the table we shuffle after just two rounds. A single player will be able to get in 3 rounds before a shuffle.  This low deck penetration pretty much negates any advantage play techniques that a player might use, such as card counting or tracking Aces.  But, if you know your basic strategy, and especially know how to use surrender properly, it's not a bad game. A 1.5% house advantage is actually pretty good these days. Especially in a table with only a $5 minimum bet. No I'm not going to tell you exactly where I work, but without too much trouble you should be able to figure it out. I will tell you that it's in Northern Nevada, as opposed to the Vegas area. Anyway  here ...

So last month I posted about some questions that I get from people when they find out what my job is. This is the follow-up to that post and it’s mostly going to be about what cheating from the inside, or cheating by the dealer, would look like if it was going on. The easiest way for a dealer to cheat, on the player’s behalf, would be simply to dump the game. Dumping the game is when you pay the player for a losing hand or overpay the player on a winning hand. If you’re in surveillance and you happen to see this happen oh, the best thing you can do is keep quiet at least for a moment or two and see if it continues. It’s possible that the dealer just made a mistake and paid a losing Hand by mistake. If you continue to watch you’ll see if he’s doing it on a regular basis and if so if he’s doing it to a specific player. This would indicate collusion, or a conspiracy between the player and one or more players to do so. It’s always best to have plenty of information and evidence before movi...

OK, so i havent been blogging as much for the last month or so. Here’s why.  I am back to dealing blackjack and it is taking up a lot of my time. I got a new job at a small, northern Nevada casino (you could track me down without too much trouble, but i am not going to just come out an tell you which one) as a dual rate Manager on Duty and Dealer. Having not dealt cards for over three decades, I have had to do some on the job training to get back in shape.  It’s not quite like riding a bike, in that you never forget how to do it, but it is close. Having spent many of those years in surveillance I still have the mental chops to do it, but the muscle memory is long gone. Throw in some arthritis in my knees (plus chronic leukemia) and standing at a table for 40-60 minutes at a time has been a challenge also.  But enough about my troubles, what I really want to talk about is the “typical” blackjack player that I have been running in to. If I were going to describe them in jus...

I found an awesome house edge calculating webpage online. Click  here  to go to it. If you have a smartphone you should consider placing a link to it on your desktop for quick reference. I’m going to use it to calculate the house advantage at the casino that I deal cards at. Here is the breakdown of our single deck ($5 to $50) Royal Match game rules: Dealer peeks. DD on any first 2 cards. Split Ace’s get one card only. Double after split allowed. Split up to 4 hands. Early surrender. BJ pays 6 to 5 (sorry). 6 card Charlie (6 cards w/o busting wins automatically). Add it all up and you come to a house advantage of 1.121%. the only really disadvantageous role is the 6 to 5 payout on a blackjack. Is it was a standard 3 to 2 payout the house advantage will be down to 0.239%, which on a single-deck game is about as close to even as you can get. At any rate, please use this blackjack House advantage calculator to your advantage, no pun intended. It’s important to know just how much ...

OK, here is how I would go about masking the fact that I am counting cards like a madman.

Check out this article in Forbes magazine. Very interesting reading. Click here .

This post is sponsored by Amazon Prime .  You can get a free 30 day trial of  by clicking  here .  And don't forget about my article, called " Sports Betting: Advanced middle techniques for college and pro football wagering ." It's all about a way to bet on sports with very little risk but high potential rewards. Click  here  to go to the eBay listing. It's only $4.99 plus fifty cents shipping.  Now on to this weeks topic.  I'm sure some of you invest in the stock market. Almost every one has a 401k if their employer offers it. Some off you  might even invest in individual stocks or a mutual fund in a private brokerage account.  So let me ask you what you would do if you got a hot tip from a friend about a tech stock, a "highly volatile" tech stock, that was poised to go through the roof. Maybe they're about to release a new app, and there are rumors that Google is going to buy them out. Maybe you've squirreled away some "mad money...

This post is sponsored by Amazon Prime .  You can get a free 30 day trial of  by clicking  here . Speaking of Amazon, they have some great books about how to win at blackjack, craps, and other casino games. Click on this link:  Good books about Casino gambling And don't forget about my article, called " Sports Betting: Advanced middle techniques for college and pro football wagering ." It's all about a way to bet on sports with very little risk but high potential rewards. Click  here  to go to the eBay listing. It's only $4.99 plus fifty cents shipping.  Ok, here's a story I came across recently, about a cheating conspiracy at a South Dakota tribal casino, involving a dealer, the pit boss and a player. Read it carefully, there will be a test afterwards! Three Men Sentenced In $10,000 Blackjack Table Scam At Northeast SD Indian Casino Pit boss Lito Bolocon, 44, of Sisseton, S.D., and frequent casino blackjack player Jordon Rondell, 29, of Le...

I want to start out by saying that the table games management of the casino industry, including those tasked with surveillance and game protection, is made up mostly of experienced, level headed professionals who conduct themselves in a professional manner, as ladies and gentlemen. Some of them have a college education and a degree, although for most, the education has come from the "School of Hard Knocks".  No one, and I truly mean no one , comes into this industry knowing everything there is to know, so we are all recipients of on-the-job training, in one form or another. That having been said, you do not have to go very far to find persons who are overly opinionated, prejudiced and envious of others who have more talent, opportunity and/or are more successful than themselves. Still others have just been at this for too long, and have a bad case of cynicism and a poor attitude toward everyone and everything. Although this kind of thing happens in every industry, for whate...

Last night, after watching the Philadelphia Eagles/Atlanta Falcons penalty fest on Thursday Night Football, I was too amped up to sleep so I decided to go out and play some blackjack. I live in Sparks now, so instead of going to downtown Reno I just went to the nearby Western Village. I got a seat on first base at one of their $5 minimum, single-deck tables, and bought in with a c-note. I know a lot of card counters like to be the only one at the table, going "heads up" against the dealer. I actually find it easier to count cards at a full table. On a single deck game you're only going to get two hands before the dealer has to shuffle up again. As a result, after you've made your hit/stand decision on the second round, you no longer have to pay any attention to the cards coming out. Take that opportunity to look aimlessly around, ("casino gazing"). Also, the game pace is slower at a full table. thus giveing you even more opportunities to casino gaze, or B...

When you drop 60 bucks in less than 3 minutes playing  Blackjack, it's time for a strategic withdrawal  and a re-evaluation of your personal risk-reward paradigm.  So I cashed  in and decided to write it off with a blog post, thus making it a tax-deductible learning opportunity. Don't you wish you could write off your gambling losses like that? I stopped at the tables at the Bonanza, in North Reno, just after lunch, and got fleeced. I'm not saying I got cheated or anything, the dealer was just hot that's all. No big deal, this kind of thing sometimes happens. Some of you might think that I walked away too early, that only spending three minutes (six hands) at the table is not enough to determine how things are going to go. To that I call bullshit. I have a hard and fast rule that if at any point during your session you lose 5 Hands in a row, you should move to another table or quit. Since there was only one table open I opted for quitting. Losing six hands in a row...

So a few days ago I posted a poll on Twitter asking people to vote on what their favorite movie was about casinos or casino gambling. Because Twitter doesn't offer an unlimited number of voting slots (only 4) I selected 3 movies, plus an other category, where you would have to name the movie in a reply or retweet. The three movies I selected were 21, with Kevin Spacey, Casino with Robert De Niro and The Cooler with William H Macy. These three movies illustrate what I consider to be the best movies out there with casinos and casino gambling at the core of their plots. Here are the results: 1. Casino        .                   73% 2. Other                              13% 3. Tie - 21 and The Cooler 7% each The votes for...

Check out my latest Tweet and vote on your favorite casino gambling movie, here . Click here to become a Patron and help support my blogging. And  here is the link to my Amazon affiliate page and some  Good books about Casino gambling . And you can also get a free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime by clicking on this link here . I am also now selling advertising sponsorships on this blog. I can devote an entire blog post to your product, service or anything else gaming-related. Click on this link to go to my eBay listing here .

Here's another great way to help support my blog. You can get a free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime by clicking on this link here .

Last week I posted a Twitter poll (@casinologger) asking readers to vote on which hand was the hardest to stick to basic strategy on. These were the four poll options, along with what percentage of votes they got: 1. Hard 12 vs dealers 2 up 34% 2. Hard 13 vs dealers 3 up 31% 3. 9,9 vs dealers 7 up  14% 4. A,6 vs dealers 6 up  21% Here is my analysis of your votes: As you can see, hands 1 and 2 together took 65% of the votes, and I'm sure I know why.  I hate when the dealer has a two or a three up and apparently you guys do too. I just know that if the dealer has a ten for a hole card, he will draw an eight. Or if he has a seven for a hole card he'll draw a 10.  I even seem to lose when I stand on a 20 in these situations. The way to play this hand is to remember that when the dealer has a two or three up you hit if you have a hard 12 and stand if you have a hard 13. Now, you can deviate from basic strategy based on the count if you want to. but if you do it to...

As I begin, here is a reminder that I have a Patron page. Click here to become a Patron and support my Blogging. And  here is the link to my Amazon affiliate page and some  Good books about Casino gambling . Now on with the show. I came across this article online and wanted to pass it on to you here. Lucky Idiots' May Be Bigger Casino Threat Than Card-counters Casino bosses who agonize about blackjack card-counters might be focusing on the wrong type of advantage player, a top gambling mathematician says. Instead, they should look closer at the “lucky idiot” who repeatedly plays poorly yet amasses huge winnings, says Eliot Jacobson, owner and president of Jacobson Gaming and operator of www.apheat.net , which analyzes casino games, side bets and methods of advantage play. That “lucky idiot” might be part of a team using advantage-play techniques that are more profitable than card-counting and more difficult for casino supervisors to identify, Jacobson says. In general, adva...

I just put out a Tweet. It's a poll  asking which is your most difficult hand to play correctly (in accordance with basic strategy). Click here to go to it and vote. Once the poll is ended I'll do a blog post analyzing the results. My handle on Twitter is @casinologger BTW, you should follow me if you don't already do so Here is another great way to support my blogging. I'm now an Amazon affiliate and if you click on the link below you will be taken to a page where I get credit for purchases made by you. Amazon has some great books about how to win at Blackjack, craps, and other casino games. Thanks for helping to support my blog, and click below. Good books about Casino gambling

Here is another great way to support my blogging. I'm now an Amazon affiliate and if you click on the link below you will be taken to a page where I get credit for purchases made by you. Amazon has some great books about how to win at Blackjack, craps, and other casino games. Thanks for helping to support my blog, and click below. Good books about Casino gambling

I found another great craps video on YouTube, this one talks about the different pay off amounts on place bets. It's really pretty goofd. Click Here to view it.   I also came across an article in Cigar Aficionado magazine recently. It's about the leader of a group of advantage players, who have taken a large amount of money, if they are to be believed, out of a lot of different casinos. Click here to go to the article. I also want to mention some Android apps that I use on a pretty regular basis. (If you're an iPhone user, sorry you're on your own.) For craps, I use an app called Craps Trainer Pro, by E7systems.com. I use the paid version, I think it was about four or five dollars. It's a fun little Sam, that will not let you make play sore by bets or take off odds unless you bet the right amount of money. And the payoffs are accurate. I used two different apps for training on blackjack. The first is called Blackjack Strategy Trainer by Aeon Apps. it shows yo...