I have come back home after another Vegas trip. Spent 2 days, mostly wandering around, checking out rules, heats, pens etc. and I made a nice profit. Below are the headlines of my trip:
1) MGM Grand is the best place to play BJ. No CSMs, Good rules, great penetration (80-85%), high # of the 6D games with lower limits (2 $5 tables, numerous $10 and $15 tables), Early Surrender, S17 & H17, DAS, hand-shuffling, No crowd at the tables. I haven't sense any heat with one exception. At the very last table i played, my friend first cashed out like 2-3 hands before me and when dealer informing the pit about cash-out, a pit boss, around his late 50s, came and asked who cashed-out. Pit boss was a little bit late to see the cash-out process. My friend had already had his $200 black chips but he was still sitting at the table and when pit boss came to see who cashed out, he asked the dealer and the dealer pointed my friend and pit boss looked at my friend for a while and said ok. After that, when I was cashing out and getting prepared to leave MGM, the same guy came and said " Thank you for playing Sir!" by staring at me. I think we must have gotten pit's attention while back-counting around because standing by numerous tables and sitting some of them and leaving the table after a while with a considerable profit was very obvious and might have gotten attention quickly because the casino was not that crowded. Anyway, there was no heat sign other than that.
2) LUXOR, where i stayed, was not that good. First of all, the # of the BJ tables are not many. They only have 2 6D tables with $10 min, 6 8D tables with $10, $15 and $25 min where surrender is available and BJ pays 3 to 2 and 2 SD and 2 DD tables where BJ pays 6 to 5. Penetration in all tables were 60-65% which sucks!
3)NEW YORK NEW YORK has mostly 8D tables as well. I back counted a couple of shoes but count never raised above +5. Rules were not that bad, actually similar to the others around but i had read some threads prior to going Vegas so I didnt have any intention to play in NY NY. I was just trying to see what they have and do over there.
4) EXCALIBUR was my transition passage to the strip due to hot weather conditions, 110 F outside temperature. From Luxor to the strip, I always passed through Excalibur
I didn't count any shoe and even pay too much attention to BJ in Excalibur because I knew it was not a good place to play so I passed it on.
5) BELLAGIO is the worst place to play BJ. CSMs in all low limit tables. I saw 2 6D shoe games but the min was $25. The rest of the shoe games are $50, $100 and up. Stay away from Bellagio.
6) PARIS is another bad place to play BJ. There are mostly 8D shoe games. I was told that there is a 6D game somewhere in the 2nd floor but I had already given up on checking it out. Don't even bother to go to Paris unless you like 8D games.
7) HOOTERS was my last stop before leaving Vegas. Although Hooters has a very small casino compared to the others, I wanted to go there and play BJ because of the convenient conditions at tables, especially heat. Rules are not great(no surrender) but heat almost doesnt exist there unlike other bigger casinos. They have only 4 6D tables, 1 DD table and 2 SD tables. Shuffling is not by hand but most dealers are sloppy so I happened to see and track too many cards. The card at the bottom of the deck, the card when the dealer takes the cut-card out of the deck to place to the end and of course the cards exposed when the dealer moved the deck around and some burn cards etc. I sometimes took good advantage of tracking cards. BJ pays 3 to 2, H17, DAS. The bad things about Hooters are crowd and distracting dealers. Especially girls are really non-stop talkers. There was an asian female dealer who never stopped talking and making comments about the cards that came out and the ones who might come out. And if you get BJ or 21 or dealer busts, she gives you her fist to hit your fist
I think she tries to look nice by flattering players to get more tips but it is really weird and distracting. I once left the table because i didnt want to deal with her.
The thing I complained the most in Vegas was the everlasting negative counts. I counted more than 50 shoes in my entire playing hours and 65-70% TC has never reached to 5. When it did, count dropped to negative immediately just in 2 hands. I maybe played 12-13 shoes of 50 shoes i counted. In some of the games, I had to keep playing in some negative counts because of low limit. I was really getting tired of looking to find a hot shoe because back-counting is tiring and it does get attention. The other thing that pissed me off, when i found a hot deck, like +6, and sat the table, i either pushed or lost most of the time. Thanks to surrender, i lowered my losses in those hands and overbet the next hands to score. It worked out and I kept raising my winnings.
