Another one of those folks who asked me not to give their name here asked…
You've mentioned several times on your blog than you used to engage in card-counting at Blackjack and that you played a lot when you went to Las Vegas and won. And you've mentioned that you quit and will never go back to it. I don't think you've explained why you would quit forever if you were winning.
Because, as I've explained several times on this blog. getting ahead and quitting forever is the only way to win at a game like Blackjack. If you keep playing, you will eventually hit a bad patch of luck and give it all back. That would be bad enough but then a little, pernicious voice inside you might very well say, "Hey, you got ahead before! You can do it again!" Which would cause you to start digging deeper and deeper into your wallet, trying to get back ahead again. That can be disastrous.
I've said this many times here but I don't think I ever told about the precise moment I made that decision. I also haven't given credit to the very funny man who said something to me that prompted that decision. It was that fine comedian, Pete Barbutti.
I spent some time there with him when he was performing at various hotels. One evening after he'd done two shows, we were sitting in the lounge at the old Landmark Hotel talking. This was quite some time ago. It had to have been. The Landmark closed in 1990 and they blew it up five years later. We were talking about compulsive gamblers — the kind who even when they win have to give it back trying to win more — and Pete said the following…
"You know what the folks who work the tables here call the money you or I would call our winnings? They call it a 'loan.' You walk away from the table with $500 and they say, 'We just loaned that guy $500.'"
It wasn't a lightbulb that went off in my head. It was more like the big illuminated canopy that opened in Downtown Las Vegas on Fremont Street, about the same time they imploded the Landmark. That canopy has 49.2 million LEDs in it. It can even make me brighter.
Winning at Blackjack had stopped being fun to me. The way I played — the way I won — I might be sitting at the table for three hours to walk away a few hundred ahead. If I'd spent those three hours upstairs in my room on my laptop, I might have written something that paid better than that. And I didn't take up Blackjack for the money. I took it up as kind of a personal challenge…to see if I could do it.
Also back then, it was impossible in Vegas to play Blackjack and not inhale a lot of second-hand cigarette smoke. I dislike few things in this world as much as I dislike cigarette smoke.
At the time Pete said what he said, I was ahead playing Blackjack. And his words gave me the answer — the only answer — how to stay that way. I decided I'd proved whatever I was trying to prove and I quit and I'm still ahead and always will be. If I sound like I'm bragging, yes. I am. I'm proud that I wasn't stupid enough to keep on playing.
And I should mention that if I did ever go back to Blackjack, I wouldn't do it in Las Vegas. Vegas has become a town where there are few bargains and where the corporations who run the place are competing to see who can wring the most dollars out of every visitor. There are no more cheap shows or cheap buffets. There's almost no cheap anything. There are some cheap rooms but even those have "resort fees" that make them non-cheap rooms.
They keep raising prices and since people are willing to pay them, those prices get raised more and more. One Vegas website I follow says all the casinos are getting stingier with comps — free eats, free rooms, free show tickets, etc. They no longer give much of anything to folks who play at my lower levels.
When I was playing Blackjack, I played at tables with $5 minimums. Just try and find one now. Most casinos have $25 minimums on weekdays and some go up to $100 on weekends. Those are minimums and whether you're counting cards or not, it's not a good idea to sit down at a Blackjack table unless your bankroll is a hundred times the table minimum. If you play long enough at any table, there will be a point when the cards turn in your favor but if you get tapped out quickly, you may never get to that point.
Vegas is also changing the rules and not in ways that favor the players. When I played, a Blackjack (also known as "a natural" — an ace and a ten-value card) paid 3-to-2. If you bet a hundred and got one, it paid $150. Now, most tables pay 6-to-5 so a $100 bet gets you $120. That may not sound like a huge change but it really eats into your winnings…or as the casino would call it behind your back, your loans.
So do some other recent rule changes involving doubling-down and/or splitting pairs. If I ever tried card-counting again, I'd have to learn everything all over again as per the new rules. The only thing that would be better than the old days is that there are now smoke-free Blackjack tables around…and that ain't reason enough.
